.N^ v.v'c-^^r-w; '■^ " V y. ■ ■ <'^-' > €^^ %f^ ■j :* -" ''-wmr. > 1 '4 ^1 i^ '. ■■^^' wm ^, ii:m ^/;4^_, CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FROM The ■^state '-^f '"'..''-. Cornell University Library arY477 Peter Parley's kaleidoscoj 3 1924 032 173 126 olin.anx The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924032173126 r/' <:< X .^ y? "*"<** v«.r "•*.. ♦«•' -fi*^ *ff INUNDATION IN INDIA. See p. 358. Mm5^^W^e^}iMBjM^M ^^^E^^^^^ ---^^PS^^K&fcfe'^'WaiS DKSTRrOTION OF POMPEII. MOUNT VESUVIUS. ) P all the sublime phenomena of our earth, there is nothing that more impresses the imagination than a volcano. Whether in activity or at rest, whether shaking the hills and mountains with its thunders and lighting the skies with its fires, or whether sleeping amid its ghastly heaps of ruins, it affords a display of the stupendous power of the elements among which we live and breathe, calculated at once to exalt our conceptions,- and to subdue and chasten our hearts before Him who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth. [9] 10 MOUNT VESUVIUS, Of all the volcanoes of the earth, Vesuvius, situated in Southern Italy, and near the city of Naples, is the most celebrated, not on account of its elevation, for it is but 4,000 feet high, but because of its eruptions, and the remarkable phenomena which these have presented. It is, moreover, seated in a region which has been populous for ages, whence its explosions have been more carefully recorded than those of any other. ^tstratticrn of ^ontpni. Although Vesuvius had no doubt been subject to periodical eruptions for many previous ages, we have no recorded instance of this kind till the year 63, A. D., when it suddenly became agi- tated, shaking the surrounding country, and pouring forth immense volumes of smoke, ashes, and lava. These fell upon the adjacent towns, and especially upon Pompeii, which lies near its foot and was nearly destroyed. It had but just recovered from this mis- fortune, when, sixteen years afterward, it was overwhelmed and finally destroyed by another eruption, and one of the most terrible upon record. At this period, the Roman empire was in all its splendor, power, and glory. Italy was full of towns, cities, and villages, in which many of the inhabitants lived in the utmost state of luxury. Naples was then a large city, and along the shore of the bay to the east were Herculaneum, inhabited by many rich citizens, Pompeii, a place of considerable commerce, and having ample theatres, temples, fountains, baths, squares, and other public insti- tutions, together with numerous other places of inferior note .and importance. The dreadful explosion began in the afternoon of the 24th of August, A. D. 79. ,At first there appeared over the crater of Vesuvius, and reaching thousands of feet into the air, a black column of smoke, taking the sh'^pe of an immense pine tree. Amid this was seen frequent jets of fire, like lightning. As night came on, the cloud spread far and wide over the country, and now DESTRUCTION OF .POMPEII. 11 showers of cinders* began to fall on all around. The people everywhere became filled with terror ; some fled into the fields, and others took to the ships in the bay. On all sides there was consternation and confusion. The sea rolled and swelled as if agitated by a tempest, and the darkness of the night was rendered terrible by flashes from the mountain like sheets of lightning. Soon the burning cinders and red-hot stones set the towns and villages on fire, while the most fearful sounds filled the air. The people, rushing hither and thither, maddened by fear, were obliged to protect their heads from the terrible storm, by pillows, blankets, and such other things as they could find. All this time the houses shook from side to side, and, though built of stone, many of them were tumbled in heaps to the earth. The groans of the wounded and the wails of the despairing, completed the general scene of terror and of woe. Thus passed the night ; and even when day returned it was still so dark that torches were necessaiy to guide people on their way. It appears that the greater part of the inhabitants of the towns and villages had time to escape ; but in Pompeii, as well as Herculaneum, there were some still left, when a vast mass of cinders, mingled with stones, mud, and water, fell upon them and buried them completely from the sight. Every living thing in them immediately perished. The ashes and mud covered the streets, and even penetrated into many of the houses. The thick- ness of this mass of earth and cinders was from thirty to sixty feet. At Pompeii, it hardened by time into a compact soil ; while at Herculaneum it became a solid body of rock, called tufa. Thus these cities disappeared, and were forgotten for fifteen • centuries. Vesuvius has experienced other eruptions, at intervals, from that time to the present day. Nearly a hundred are recorded. In some cases, the mountain throws out streams of lava, which runs down the sides of the mountain, and after some years hardens into rock ; and in others, it only sends forth smoke, ashes, and scoria. 12 MOUNT VESUVIUS. VESUVIUS AS IT NOW APPEARS, DURING AN EBUPTION gi ®isit to t^e Crate of Wtsxub'ms in IS55. This celebrated mountain lies exactly east of Naples, and ob- trudes itself upon your notice from every part of that city. As you walk about the streets, as you traverse the bay, or ride into the country, it seems to pursue you, to gaze at and frown upon you. By the road, its top is ten or twelve miles from the town ; but in a direct line, it is less than six. To the stranger who is impressed with its history, it has ever an ominous look ; but it is decidedly a favorite with the dwellers around it. Familiarity has shorn it of its horrors, and the romance of its convulsions seems to be a compensation for its destructiveness. Could its fires be forever quenched by a royal edict, I have no idea that the people would consent to it. For ten days after our arrival, its summit was enveloped in clouds ; but it cleared at last, and at 9 o'clock of a fine April morning, we set out, six of us, to visit it. ASCENT TO THECONE. 13 I may as well say, that what is generally called Vesuvius, con- sists of a mountain with two crests^ts southern slopes coming down to the bay, along the verge of which are the towns of Portici, Annunziata, and Resina, with the vestiges of Herculaneum and Pompeii. The northern crest is called Mount Somma, the southei'n Vesuvio. It was once a single pyramid with a single crater. Ages ago, in some mighty convulsion prior to the great eruption of 79, it seems to have broken down its top on all sides, leaving it, as it were, an irregular plain. On the southern side of this a new crater was formed, the various overflows of which, for the last eighteen centuries, have heaped up the pyramid which now bears the name of Vesuvius. The entire mountain is thirty miles in circumference: the' highest elevation about 4,000 feet above the level of the bay. It rises by a very gentle ascent to the height of 2,500 feet : here is the first plain, five miles in extent, which. seems to be the proper basis of the mountain. At this point, on an isthmus of sand tlirown out by some ancient convulsion, and lying between black and hideous rivers of lava, is the Hermitage, as well as the Royal Observatory, devoted to scientific investigations of the volcano. This latter is visible from Naples, and seen between the peaks of Somma and Vesuvius, seems almost as elevated as they are. Yet, when this point is attained, it is found that the crater is still 1,500 feet higher up. As far as the Hermitage, the vegetation is pro- lific, except upon the more recent streams of lava, these being black as forged iron, and absolutely naked. The slopes of the mountain all around are dotted with villas and villages. Vine- yards and olive groves are the chief objects of culture. Huge cacti and gigantic aloes run riot in the soil. gtsant to tl^e Cone. We engaged a guide and horses at Resina, still proceeding up the ascent in our carriage as far as the bleak old stone edifice 14 MOUNT VESUVIUS. called the Hermitage, which we reached in three hours from Naples. Our road hither was a serpentine path up the sandy isthmus I have mentioned. Sometimes we traveled a mile to advance a hundred rods. All the way we were attended by a troop of volunteer boys, ragged as bears, as well as our six horses, lively little beasts that cut across our path, disdaining the beaten road, and clambering over the cliffs of lava like squirrels. Each had a rider as compact and adventurous as himself. We found at the Hermitage an uncouth assemblage of wild-looking men and shaggy boys, some thirty in number, and all waiting for us, sent as a providence for their benefit. It here became us as intelligent tourists, to inquire of our guide for some Lacrymce Christi, the inestimable beverage produced on the shell of this amiable volcano. He referred us to the master of the Hermitage, — a grisly monk, standing under a tree and leaning against its trunk. I called out to him, but he was deep in his breviary and made no answer. I could see his eyes twinkle at the prospect of a transaction, but his lips mumbled away as rapidly as ever. He knew there was no competition, and let me call again and again, without' in the least bestirring himself. In about five minutes, however, the saint uncoiled from his devotion, and brought forth two bottles, one of red and one of white wine — the veritable Lacrymas Christi of Vesuvius, as he told us — made in Calabria, as the guide told us, aside. " How much is it? " we asked. " What you please," was the answer, which always means double what you please. But the wine was very refreshing; and we paid willingly. We found the monk to be a very jolly fellow, and were much edified by liis conversation. Having engaged two chairs fastened to poles, and arranged our corps of assistants, consisting of fourteen pushers and pullers, a guide, and an armed policeman, we mounted on six horses. Pre- cision compels me to mention a detail at first sight unnecessary — that our party consisted of two gentlemen, three ladies, and a little girl of nine years. Besides our regular troop, there was a loose dozen of fellows, some with straps, some with chains, and ASCENTTOTHECONE. 15 some with wine and oranges — depending upon chance for an op- portunity to be useful or obtrusive. We were at least thirty in all, without counting the four-legged members of the expedition. We now left the plain, and with it all signs of vegetation, except here and there some spindling grass or tenacious weed that rooted itself in the iron soil. We soon came to the volcanic fragments, and over these lay our ragged bridle-path. The scene gradually became ghastly, lonesome, and wild. No one, without seeing it, can have any idea of the fearful aspect of a spreading mass of lava, lying at the foot of a volcano rising and smoking above it. By the side of our track lay the torrent which was poured out in 1850. It seemed at least half a mile in width, and several miles in length. It had the appearance of melted scoria, thrown out from a blacksmith's forge. Its complexion is black, slightly tinged with a bluish gray. The surface is undulating and broken into a thousand jagged and ragged forms — twisted, bent, contorted — displaying to the imagination the terrible means by which the dread phenomena were produced — the bowels of the earth converted into a crucible, and the mountain vomiting forth whole seas of rocks, sand, and earth, liquefied by the sulphureous and fiery agency of the elements. The mind is absolutely humbled and oppressed in the presence of such scenes. I felt this myself, and read it visibly in the coun- tenances of our adventurers, save only the child, who rollicked along on her pony, led by a young vandal who had seized her. bridle. While we meditated and soliloquized, she abandoned herself to the delight of her first adventure on horseback. While we gazed thoughtfully upward at the frowning pyramid, or glanced with emotions of wonder and admiration at the far-spreading Bay of Naples, and the glittering cities along its border — all now at our feet — she saw only her pony, and felt only the exhilaration of his bounding motion. After an hour's ride hither and thither, and often over bristling and dangerous points of lava, or along the narrow verges of yawning crevices, seeming to look into the depths of Inferno, we 16 MOUNT VESUVIUS. OLIMBING VF THE CONE. came to the plain called Airio del CavaUo — the termination of our ride. This lies between the craggy elevations of Mount Somma on the north, and the cone of Vesuvius to the south. It is an irregular valley of ashes, sand, and stones, intersected by masses of lava. The cone, about 1,000 feet high, rises at an angle of forty degrees, directly from this valley. It is composed of loose ashes and scorias, and broken, rolling, jagged masses of lava. The ascent of this is the tug of war. Two of the members of our party^the oldest and the youngest — being seated in chairs, were borne up the ascent, each with four men. The rest bravely set out on foot. There was nothing '••::g' THE CRATER. 17 really dangerous, but there was something a little scary in the operation, to say notlung of the discouraging, treadmill sensation in climbing such a mountain, half knee-deep in sand and ashes, or what was worse, over the sharp jagged points of lava. The child went first, and was speedily out of sight in easy unconsciousness, enjoying the luxury of a ride up Vesuvius. One of the elderly personages was soon nearly sea-sick, because of the walloping from side to side, either on account of the bending of the poles, the ruggedness of the way, or, perchance, a mischievous roll now and then put in gratis by the carriers, in revenge for the weight of their burden. Some of the foot-passengers soon began to puff, and now the waiters upon providence, the men with straps, the men with extra chairs, the boys with lusty arms, fell upon them and insisted on lending a hand. It was a regular rape of the Sabines. In vain was all remonstrance, until, descending to the scene of action, I en- deavored to beat them off. They still persisted, however, and it was not till the gendarme actually loaded his carbine and threatened to fire on them, that they gave way. One desperate fellow even defied him, and I expected to see him made a fatal example of, for the soldier took aim, and evidently was not a man to be trifled with. I now understood the necessity of such a guard. These fellows are savage as wolves, and but for the presence of authority armed with power to shoot them down, would render the traveler's condition anything but safe. As it was, they were rude and insulting to the ladies, seeming to consider that in such an ad- venture, and in such a place, the laws of civilization are at least partially repealed, or to be liberally interpreted. flje €xRin. After three fourths of an hour — during which the ascent con- stantly grew more difficult and more formidable^-we all reached the top. The scene amply compensated us for the toil of getting there. Our first attention was absorbed by a deep yawning gulf, 2 18 MOUNT VESUVIUS. out of which was issuing a thin white vapor, strongly impregnated with sulphur. This is a crater formed within the last three months, seeming to forebode a speedy convulsion. Passing beyond this, we came to the crater of 1850. It is a profound excavation, the depth of which we could not determine, as it was filled with smoke. We understood it to be 200 feet. The edges are narrow, permitting one person only to pass at a time ; portions of it consist of masses of pure sulphur, several feet thick. The quan- tities of brimstone here amazed us, and sufficiently indicated the abundant supplies of this ingredient in kindling the fires of the volcano. All around the gas and smoke were issuing from the crevices, and in these the heat was intense. A speculator in eggs had cooked half a dozen for us in one of these fissures. We ate them, as in duty bound, though they had a sulphurous taste, either from the mode of cooking, or from their longevity. The third crater, that of 1839, is still larger and still more active. The smoke issues in volumes, and its odor is such as almost to stop the breath. Six months ago a German gentleman, standing on its verge, was suddenly involved in a puff of exhala- tions, and losing his senses for the moment, fell into the crater, a distance of two hundred feet. With great dif&culty he was found, still alive, but he expired a few moments afterward. The extent of surface embraced in the present grand crater of Vesuvius, which includes the several particular vents I have mentioned, as well as some others, is about two miles in circuit. The great chimney of the mountain, however it may seem to be open in several places, is still encumbered by a huge mass of materials, which have been accumulating since the terrific erup- tion of 1850 ; and hence it is supposed another eruption, necessary to relieve the volcano of its burden, cannot be remote. g. (§lmpt at t^c PjMterarrtan. The view from the top of Vesuvius well repays one for the trouble of ascending its steep and rocky sides. The city of A GLIMPSE AT THE MEDITERRANEAN. 19 Naples, and other towns circling along the northern and eastern shores of the bay ; the bay itself, sparkling in the sunshine ; the rocky islands of Ischia and Capri, to the south ; are all objects of great beauty and interest. But I think the mind is most strongly impressed with the blue expanse of the Mediterranean. The first sight of this famous sea, must always be an era in the life of an American. To an Italian, to a Greek, to an Algerian, to a Si- donian — all accustomed to muddle in it from childhood — ^it is no doubt a very vulgar sheet of water. It is the penalty these people pay for being born and bred in the midst of the world's wonders, that these are to them familiar and unsuggestive scenes. It is the privilege of those only who have seen them, from infancy to maturer years, through imagination, in all the enchantment ■ that distance lends, fully to enjoy the emotions created by their real presence. To such, this is the sea on which navigation had its birth, and commerce its first development ; it was the sea of Homer, and the maritime world of the Greeks. It was along its borders that Tyre, and Sidon, and Carthage, and Rome, and Athens had arisen, flourished, and decayed. It was the sea of the Bible, and of Mythology ;"" it washes alike the foot of Mount Olympus and Mount Ararat; Ulysses and Neptune, Jonah and St. Paul, are woven into its memories. Half the world's history is written upon its bosom and its borders. The bones of antiquity pave its depths and bleach along its shores. If Time writes no wrinkle upon the brow of Ocean, it has still graven every cape and headland, every cove and bay, every gulf and shore of this famous sea, with its ineffaceable deeds. Placed between three continents, and dividing them one from the. other, it was fitted to become the cradle of humanity in its infancy, as well as its battle- ground when nations had increased and become mighty in their own conceit. Favored by nature, blessed above other climes by Heaven, it is now little better than a tomb of the great dead and the little living. The Sultan, squatting cross-legged in the midst of his harem, over the ashes of Constantine, the Pope, counting his beads amid the ruins of the CiESARS, and the Bey of Tunis 20 MOUNT VESUVIUS. THE DESCENT FROM THE MOUNTAIN. smoking opium and inflicting the bastinado, in view of the wrecks of Carthage — are happy illustrations of the Past and Present in this great Central Point of the World. Surely it is good to be here# It is suggestive and instructive, especially to an American, to look on this sea, so full of history, so leading us up to the fountains of knowledge, so enforcing every moral lesson by example. It is indeed good to be here ! Having long studied the summit of the mountain with wonder bordering on fear, and having taken an admiring survey of the DESCENT PROM THE MOUNTAIN. 21 prospect, circling far out to sea on the south, and far over the valleys and mountains to the north, we commenced our descent. This consisted of a series of flying leaps in the sand and ashes — for now we avoided the lava — with a few incidental slumps, tumbles, sprawls and pitches, much more ludicrous than dangerous. Each downward step, or rather jump, could not measure less than twelve or fifteen feet. It is. scarcely possible to describe either the scene or the sensations occasioned by this coming down from the upper to the lower regions. It is, strictly speaking, neither running, nor wallcing, nor flying, nor pitching ; but a compound of them all, attended by a remarkable tendency to turn heels over head. It would be a break-neck business but for the soft feathery bed in which these gymnastics are performed. A fat old man, or a fat old woman, going it strong, beats the witches of Salem. For myself, I felt that gravity was gone, the centre as well as the periphery — gravity physical, moral, and social. I made this observation even more upon others than upon myself. All dignity, all perpendicularity, all putting the best foot first, all look ere you leap, were lost in the funny headlong momentum of the descent. Facilis descensus averni, said Virgil ; and I thus trans- lated the passage at the moment : It is a good deal easier to go down than up Vesuvius. In due time we reached the bottom of the cone, mounted our ponies and proceeded back to the Hermitage. Here we made a settlement, everybody putting in a claim for services rendered — even the men driven off at the muzzle of a carbine. Some rested tlieir rights on leading the ponies, which, however, they were positively forbidden to do. One had carried the signora's shawl, another had picked up her bonnet ; one had given signorina a push at a critical moment of the ascent, — and though she resented it as an insult, he must still be paid. Two men had lent the signore their strap, and wanted a dollar. One chap, a mere thatch of rags — who had trotted along from Resina, and had^ rendered no other service than to look at us by the way — burst into tears when he found his petition rejected. One of the young I 22 MOUNT VESUVIUS. bied'b-eyb vinw of pompeii as it is. ladies, upon this, felt a spontaneous relaxation of her purse strings, to the extent of twenty cents — which greatly comforted the broken-hearted beggar. "We paid our guide a dollar, and four dollars for each chair. The whole expense of the expedition was thirty dollars — a detail which I chronicle for the use of future excursionists and parties of six. Such is a very concise narrative of how we went to see Volcan Vesuve. ^omptii as it is. I hardly know which is most interesting — Vesuvius, the volcano, or Pompeii, the volcano's victim. " I went twice to the buried city, once in a carriage, and once by railroad. It is some fifteen miles from Naples, and lies on the margin of the bay, im- mediately at the foot of Vesuvius. It has been so often described that I shall not impose a detailed account of it upon you. I shall content myself with remarking that, taken in connection with its POMPEIIASITIS. 23 relics at the Borbonico Museum of Naples, it throws more light upon the domestic manners of ancient Rome, than all other sources of information. It is more exciting to the imagination, more satisfactory as a study to our curiosity, than the relics at Rome, whether in the streets or the Vatican. It is difficult, nay, impos- sible, to call up to the fancy the crowds that once thronged the former at the Forum, or -rent the air with acclamations in the Coliseum — but at Pompeii, we can easily picture Diombdbs and his daughter, Sallust, and others, in their houses; for here are their very rooms, fresh with their decorations ; here are their utensils, their books or rolls of papyrus, the very coin found in their purses, the very rings worn on their fingers. Here we see their sofas, their wine jugs, their lamps, their drinking cups, their plates and platters, their pots and kettles. Here, also, were found their bones, dramatically laid out to tell the dread story of their death, and the final catastrophe of a great city. Whoever has read Bulwer's Last Days of Pompeii, has noticed the minuteness of his descriptions — the delineations of objects belonging to persons ; and whoever has visited the place, has found that, in every particular, these are based upon facts which the senses verify. Except that there is a romantic hue and poetic exaggeration — lawful to the novelist — throWn over the scenes and events of the tale, and here and there a fictitious name or incident necessary to the continuity of a story, the whole might be a history, and far more reliable, far more susceptible of realization by the imagination, than the legends of Romulus and Remus, of the Sabine Women, of Egeria and Numa PoMPiLius, of the fight of the three Romans and the three Albans, of the Sybilline Books, of the wrongs of Lucretia, the death of Virginia, or the heroism of Hoeatius Cocles. But while I make these remarks, I feel bound to warn the reader against adopting the extravagant language of critics upon the character of the arts displayed in the relics of Pompeii. It is quite true that the Pompeians seem to have had almost every convenient device common to our households, especially in the 24 MOUNT VESUTIUS. kitchen. Furnaces, stoves, pots, pans, griddles, gridirons, were all in use. Glass, especially in bottles of diversified forms, was abundant. Glass for windows does not seem to have been used, except in a very few cases ; the house of Uiomedes was partially glazed with plates of mica, which are now at the Museum. The shapes of nearly all the utensils, such as vases, lamps, drinking- cups, and all such as admitted of tasteful proportions, were Egyptian in conception, whatever name they bore, as Grecian, Etruscan, and the like. I saw abundant evidence of the fact — becoming more and more evident every day — that Egypt was the great mother of ancient civilized nations and ideas ; that the Pelasgians and Etruscans, the giant shadows of Italian history, as well as the Greeks, whether of the Peninsula or of Asia Minor, were of Egyptian kith and kin. Still, when we come to speak of the fine arts of Pompeii in a modern sense, and compared with modern achievements, our language should be measured. The architecture certainly pre- sents nothing of remarkable excellence. The vaunted frescoes, which have excited so much drooling ecstasy of admiration, would, for the most part, not satisfy the present requirements of a parlor fireboard. They are clever enough, as decorations of the houses of cits of a third-rate Roman town, eighteen hundred years ago. We are surprised, and have reason, therefore, to be delighted at finding the taste of these people so far advanced — at discovering their appreciation of luxury so refined. But to speak of them as exquisite specimens of pictorial art, as we now use language, is absurd. The mosaics, so much extolled, are all coarse and inferior, compared with the best modern productions in this branch of art. Most of the statuary is poor, a few groups only ranking among the higher achievements of sculpture. One thing in these decorations is remarkable — the subjects are almost exclusively drawn from the Greek mythology. Among the thousand specimens, there are scarcely a dozen of a strictly historical character. Venus and Cupid are the great staple of these productions. Is there not a remarkable analogy in this to HERCULANEUM. 25 the more modern paintings of Italy, so largely devoted to the Christian mythology ? Here, the Virgin and Child occupy the first place in palaces, convents, churched, and private houses. Next come the Saints, and the more dubious their legends, the more sure are they of the honors of oil and fresco. Is not this a curious trait in the Italian mind, which seems thus in ancient as well as modern days to insist upon making religion a fable, and fable a religion? Is Italian inspiration safe to those who desire a religion whose basis is immutable truth ? Ptitulaneimt. This city lies nearer to Naples than Pompeii, being about six miles from that city. A small part only of the town is excavated, chiefly because the modern city of Eesina is built immediately above it, on the very lava which covers it. Here, for fifteen hundred years, the people lived, ignorant of the wonders which lay buried beneath them. The chief object of interest among the disclosed relics, is the ancient theatre, of such dimensions that its orchestra was nearly one third more extensive than that of San Carlo of Naples— the largest modern theatre in the world. It is buried nearly one hundred feet in the lava ; the descent is by a deep cut in the rock. It is but partially exca- vated, and parts and pieces of it can only be seen, and that by the light of torches. What an amazing revelation! a theatre which once held 8,000 spectators, now hidden in the earth, and actually beneath the streets of a modern city, whose busy wheels and jarring movements thunder over the head of the explorer ! Though Herculaneum was probably much less populous than Pompeii, it seems to have been more sumptuous. Several of the edifices disinterred, display considerable luxury and taste. Numerous statues, and a large number of valuable antiquities, now in the Museo Borbonico, at Naples, were found here. Among the marbles is the interminable family of Balbuces, including 26 MOUNT VESUVIUS. father and son, both on horseback, and both the subjects of un- bounded critical eulogy. Nevertheless, one of them has got the hearf of somebody else upon his shoulders— though fortunately an old one. This, by the way, is the son's statue ; while the head of the father having been knocked off and lost, its place was supplied by a new one— the work of a modern sculptor, Canaedi ! What an advantage stone has over flesh ! It may be mended even to the extent of fitting another man's head upon a pair of shoulders, and thus it may rise from the dead, and, after eighteen hundred years, stand erect among living generations. But a real head once knocked off, is done for. What a curious commentary on life and the things of this world! Reality dies and turns to ashes : men perish, and all that constitutes existence, their con- sciousness, disappears like vapor : nothing but remembrance, the mere mirror of existence, is perpetuated. And in this dream of the past, how things do get jumbled ! On the old trunk of Balbus we find the vulgar head of some modern Smith or Jones, and to us and to Balbus, it is all one and the same 1 Note.— In the preceding account, it is stated that Vesuvius, in April, 1835, appeared to be preparing for a new eruption. This actually took place a few weeks after. HOBSES DRIVEN BT THE WIND UPON THE ICE. A HURRICANE IN THE CRIMEA, /q^ T appears by the concurrent testimony of various authorities, ra.> that the great plain which extends along the northern '^ borders of the Caspian and Black Seas, is subject to tempests, which, if not of such spasmodic violence as those of tropical regions, are of longer continuance, and, by reason of the severity of the climate, are productive of even more disastrous consequences.. The shores of the Caspian are, indeed, but little known to the world. They are the abode of numerous tribes of Tartars, and are often traversed by the trading caravans of Russia ; but it is rare that we meet with a person who has actually seen these 28 A-HUREICANB IN THE CRIMEA. dreary regions. Nevertheless, it has long been understood that this country is subject to violent winds, which often produce very curious phenomena. A strong breeze from the south drives the waters over the low lands of the north, sometimes to the distance of several miles ; vessels at such times are often borne aloft on the waves and carried so far inland, that on the retiring of tlie sea it is necessary to break them up where they lie, it being im- possible to transport them back to the shore. The north winds have a different effect, inasmuch as the more elevated southern coast presents a barrier to the water : this, however, is heaped up several feet ; but on the subsiding of the gale it rushes back, causing furious currents, not merely inconvenient but dangerous to navigation. In winter, these tempests acquire greater intensity, and become not only terrific, but destructive. During the snow storms, the winds, seeming to burst from the four points of the compass, wrestle over the sea and land in dreadful fury, threatening to destroy every thing that is exposed to their irresistible currents. The large droves of horses owned by the Tartars, are sometimes surprised and overtaken by these tempests, and, unable to resist their violence, become confused, and rushing one against the other, are driven upon the ice along the shore, until at last it breaks beneath their feet, and they are swallowed up in whole droves by the waves. A. few years since, the Kalmuck prince, Tumeni, lost six thousand horses in this way. In the year 1827, the Khirguis tribe lost nearly 300,000 horses, by the severity of the winter. The accounts which reached us from the Crimea, during the siege of Sebastopol, were even more appalling. The following animated and picturesque description, presents a vivid picture of the scenes which transpired during the great hurricane of No- vember, 1854 : "Stern as is the Black Sea in winter, murky its atmosphere, piercing its cold, violent its winds, and turbulent its waves, there has rarely been known a tempest equal in frightful fury to that which raged in those regions on the 14th of November, 1854 : A HUERICANE IN THE CRIMEA. 29 bringing pitiless destruction to ships and mariners, strewing the coast with fragments of vessels and disrupted cargoes of valuable merchandise, and adding manifold to the discomforts of those who, by the exigencies of -war, were living in camps and tents. " Early in the morning of that day, when light had barely dawned, the officers and men encamped on the plateau outside Sebastopol found the strength of their canvas tents exposed to a severe test. The night had been one of heavy rain ; the surface of the plateau had been converted into a sort of slime, through ■which walking was difficult ; and rivulets of muddy water found an entrance into almost every tent, and disarranged every man's bedroom comforts. Gradually the rain abated and the wind arose, rushing over the plateau with a roar as of a distant can- nonade ; until at length, overcoming all obstacles, the wind pierced into and under and around- the tents, in many cases blowing them away altogether. The slimy compost on the out- side, receiving the full action of the blast, was hurled into the faces of the tentless soldiers, producing a scene of unutterable discomfort. " Some of the tent-poles snapping in the middle, the officers or men were for a time buried beneath a load of wet canvas ; and -when, rudely disturbed in their morning slumbers, and deprived of all shelter from the murky heavens above them, they looked around on the plateau, the scene jiresented was friglitful, even though mingled in some instances with the ludicrous. The storm, having no respect for rank or office, had leveled .alike the tent of the staff-officer and that of the subaltern : the strongest was on that day the best, whoever he might- be. Officers, high in rank, were to be seen wildly struggling with the flapping canvas of their overturned tents, or rushing about in the almost hopeless attempt to save their apparel, books, or other chattels, from the fury of the wind. There were a few huts near head-quarters ; and such of these as escaped prostration were speedily sought by tentless officers, who— saturated with miry water, and almost riven by the piercing blast — rushed to find shelter from the storm. " The accounts published of this scene, by newspaper corres- 30 A HURRICANE IN THE CEIMEA. pondents, officers, and privates, were full of strange incidents. ' The principal medical officer of the Bjitish army might be seen in an unusual state of perturbation, seeking for his garments ere he took to flight. Brigadier , with mien for once disturbed, held on, as sailors say, " like grim death to a backstay," by one of the shrouds of his marquee. Captain , in drawers and shirt, was tearing through the rain and through the dirt like a maniac after a cap, which he fancied was his own, and which he found, after a desperate run, was his sergeant's.' Many of the narrators say that the air was filled with blankets, hats, great-coats, little- coats, and even tables and chairs ; that macintoshes, quilts, India- rubber tubs, bed-clothes, sheets of tent-canvas, went whirling like leaves in the gale towards Sebastopol ; that the shingle roofs of the outhouses were torn away, and scattered over the camp ; that large arabas or wagons and ambulances were overturned ; that men and horses were knocked down, and rolled over and over ; that a large and heavy table in one of the tents was lifted off the ground, and whirled round and round till the leaf flew off ; that inside the commissariat yard, overturned carts, dead horses, and groups of shivering men were seen, not a tent standing ; and that ' Lord was seen for hours sitting up to his knees in sludge amid the wreck of his establishment,- meditative as Marius amid the ruins of Carthage.' The power of the hurricane was indeed great. Heavy commissariat stores were hurled down as if they had been light parcels ; compressed masses of hay for the cavalry, weighing 200 pounds each, were whirled over the ground, and down the ravines toward Sebastopol ; and a large flock of sheep was so utterly scattered, that, while some of the poor animals were driven to distant camps, others were almost literally hurled into the beleaguered city. " But what were these miseries, compared with the privations of the common soldiers ? Officers, though rendered tentless for a time, speedily found shelter with and among each other ; but the troops in general, engaged in camp, picket, and trench duties, and ill provided even for fine weather, were plunged into inde- A HUEEICANB IN THE CRIMEA. 31 scribable wretchedness. The marines and riflemen on the cliffs overhanging Balaklava, lost tents, clothes, everything ; the stern rock was rendered nearly bare by the whirl that carried off all rising above the surface, and the poor fellows had to cling to the ground in prostrate attitudes to avoid instant destruction. On the level ground between the ravines, where the camps of the several divisions had been pitched, the rows of neat white tents had almost disappeared, one after another having yielded to the force of the blast ; until the whole plateau became speckled with ragged bits of fluttering canvas, sticking in the black glutinous mire that had become deepened to several inches by the heavy rain. The men, with a kind of patient sullenness, stood near the spots where their tents had lately sheltered them, and bitterly commented on the tardiness, as it appeared to them, of the com- manders : wishing rather to dare all the hazards and horrors of a possibly successful assault on Sebastopol, than to be thus destroyed inch by inch. '' Not only was the wind terrific in violence, but it was accom- panied by rain and snow — a conglomerate of heart-depressing visitations. Hungry and faint, too, were the troops ; for the morning repast had not been taken before the hurricane began ; and the commissariat oflScers, each feeling himself in personal peril, and seeing all his stores whirling in confusion around him, was little able to issue the rations during its continuance. The men on night-duty, who had passed perhaps eight or ten hours as trench-guards, covering-parties, patrols, outlying-pickets, or sentries, staggered back to their camps in the dusky morn, worn and haggard with fatigue, and there found tents down, fires extinguished, food unattainable, rest impossible, comrades murmur- ing, everything disheartening: the trenches being very sloughs of mud and filth, the officers and men employed therein returned to camp in a state of personal discomfort calculated to add materially to the wretchedness. The hospital-tents were mostly struck down, and the poor maimed soldiers, heroes perhaps of Inkermann, were exposed to the pitiless storm ; even the hospitals 32 A HURRICANE IN THE CRIMEA. and storehouses built by the French, with stout planks and rafters, were scattered to the winds ; and many a brave fellow succumbed under the trial, ending his brief career of glory too soon to hear the expression of admiration from the home-country. After the hurricane had endured about six hours, the temperature became colder, the falling snow became thicker, and the weakened men in all the camps were in much danger of perishing through so extraordinary an accumulation of inflictions. Many men died during the later hours of the day ; whether starved or benumbed to death, it might be hard to say. A stable for the horses of Lord Raglan's escort became a choice rendezvous, in which English, French, and Turks, military and civilians, officers and privates, crowded and crouched down in fellowship with the horses. An orderly was sent off to Balaklava, to learn how mat- ters were progressing in that quarter during the storm ; but man and horse, after three quarters of an hour's struggling, and many falls and overturnings, were driven back by the irresistible blast. "The soldiers' letters were full of such recitals. An Ennis- killen dragoon wrote : ' I was on trumpeter's guard at the time the storm came across the plain, accompanied with hailstones and snow ; and it blew all our tents down. The only way to keep still was to lie down ; I had to do so for fear of being borne among the dirt. You may think in what sort of a state our tents were, as, after it was all over, we had to lie down that night on the wet ground without anything to eat, the cooks being unable to keep the fires in.' A private soldier wrote thus : ' Lieutenant had just come in from night-duty. I had got him to bed comfortably, when down came his tent, and left the poor fellow stark naked. I had to carry him away with only a blanket around him, and he remained in that state all day, but he bore it remarkably well. Lieutenant was blown away on his bed- stead. The doctor's cocked hat was blown right into Sebastopol, so we expect to find it on the head of Prince Menchikoff when we get there.' " A rifleman, on the heights above Balaklava, thus records his AHUEEICANEINTHECRIMEA. 33 experience of that memorable day : ' We had such a terrible 'gale that our tents were all blown down, and many blown over the cliffs into the sea ; the one in which I stopped shared such a fate. ... It was a fearful night that we passed ; every now and, again might be seen men rubbing one another as the cramps took them in different parts of the body. The night was long, but morning broke at last ; and it was found that two of our poor fellows were dead from sheer exhaustion.' Another soldier said : ' In spite of all these misfortunes, every man made light of it until the hospital marquee went down: it' was dreadful to see sick and wounded men actually blown away.' " An ofi&cer, after describing his brother-oflBlcers as wandering about, drenched to the skin, in search of shelter, as a consequence of the demolition of their tents, says : ' All the tents have been struck, as nothing could withstand the fury of the tempest, except the Turkish ; these infidels understand tenlrwork better than we civilized folk.' Such, from various concurrent testimonies, ap- pears indeed to be the case. The Turkish tent, although not constructed of such good material as an English bell-tent, resists the wind much more effectually and stands more steadily : on account, possibly, of a better proportioning of its height to its circumference; the men dig about a foot deep and throw the earth round on the sides, where it serves to steady the whole tent, and prevents at the same time the water from penetrating ; in the officers' tents, there is also a raised settee of stamped earth, available as a couch. " Far more serious, however, were the disasters to the fleets on this fatal day. The soldiers, except a small number, surmounted the tempest, and began on the next day to repair the disasters, so far as their means permitted ; but the ships on a furioug sea are wholly at the mercy of the elements— one plank ilven from its place, and hundreds of human beings may be consigned to a watery grave. To present a true picture of the maritime calam- ities, it will be necessary to attend to the harbor-arrangements adopted at Balaklava. 3 34 AHUREICANEINTHECEIMEA. " When this miniature haven became the depot of the British army encamped on the plateau inland, two officers were appointed, Captain Tatham and Captain Christie ; the one as harbor-master, and the other as superintendent of transports : the one to exercise a general control over the whole harbor, and the other to regulate the entry, anchorage, and discharging of the laden transport-ships. When, on the day of the battle of Balaklava, Lord Raglan deemed the harbor in some danger, he gave orders that led to the de- parture of many vessels from thence ; and some of these suffered in the storm three weeks later from this cause : tug-boats drew out the larger vessels ; commissariat and ordnance officers re- embarked many of their stores ; and the whole harbor became disarranged. The orders to this effect appear to have been given by Lord Raglan to Captain Tatham, who, so far as the hai'bor was concerned, controlled Captain Christie and the transports as well as the vessels-of-war. During many days, the harbor remained nearly empty ; the transports being admitted a few at a time only, lest the army of Liprandi should make a second attempt in that quarter. It was felt, however, by Captain Christie and others, that the anchorage outside the harbor was very insecure ; and that, unless a reoccupation of the harbor were permitted, some other place of disembarkation should be chosen. When the Sansjoareil screw-steamer took up a defensive position within the harbor, Captain Dacres became senior officer and harbor-master, under the controlling authority of Lord Raglan ; and all the regulations concerning the admission or non-admission of tugs or transports were then made by him, subservient to the higher military authority. " Seeing that, after the battle of Inkermann, the British sick and wounded were carried down in hundreds, by means of am- bulances, aratas, and any other vehicles that could be obtained, to be shipped at Balaklava for the military hospitals at Scutari, a departure from the plan became absolutely necessary — the ships being required to enter the harbor in greater numbers, to permit the poor fellows to be embarked. Three days after that battle. A HURRICANE IN THE CRIMEA. 35 the Prince arrived at Balaklava, bringing valuable supplies from England ; it was a new sci-ew-steamer of great beauty and value, and the stores contained were of the utmost importance to the wellbeing of the troops during the approaching winter. In . articles of warm clothing alone, the cargo would have been pre- cious ; besides the varied stores of other kinds, specie for the commissariat, and several companies of the 46th regiment. Captain Dacres, as harbor-master, was within the harbor ; Captain CRristie, as transport-master, was outside the harbor, amongst the transports ; and there appears to have been much tedious formality necessary in obtaining the authority of both officers for a ship to enter. The specie and the troops were landed by means of two steam-tugs, and the Fri-nce anchored outside the harbor, with the store of warm clothing on board. " Prom this date, it is hardly possible to narrate in detail the occurrences in the harbor of Balaklava, without incurring a risk of doing injustice to some of the officers engaged. Calamities of a deplorable kind occurred in great number ; soldiers suffered unspeakable miseries as a consequence of these calamities; ac- cusations were brought by an indignant nation against those who were supposed to be in the wrong ; bitter recriminations ensued between various officials; some charges were found to have been unjustly made ; and death, resulting from wounded honor, carried off others too soon for the clearing up of their fair fame. " Much of this confusion and disaster arose from the circum- stances, that the transport-ships were controlled by the transport- agent in the harbor ; that he was controlled by the harbor-master ; that the harbor-master acted in obedience to orders from Lord Eaglan ; that his lordship was three or four miles distant from the harbor ; that the road from the harbor to head-quarters was so wretched as to render the communication of messages difficult ; and that there was thus no available machinery for settling promptly any embarrassments arising from conflicting or disputed authority. The quarter-master general, adjutant-general, commis- 36 A HURRICANE IN THE CRIMEA. sary-general, artillery and engineering commanders, all of whom were looking out anxiously for supplies from England, were connected with the army ; whereas 'the transports, as^ well as the ships-of-war, were connected with the navy ; and hence repeated collisions of authority arose. This much it is necessary to mention at the outset, in explanation of the strange fact that many of the ships were on the outside of the harbor when the great storm arose. " On the 11th of November, a gale sprang up, sufficiently violent to place in some peril the ships outside Balaklava, and to give rise to irritating discussions between the various captains con- cerned in the unfortunate regulations within the harbor. The 12th and the ISth were in like manner rough days ; but it was not until the 14th that the awful visitation came in full force. As the morning dawned, the wind howled and the waves lashed, but when the forenoon approached, the gale increased to a hurricane such as none of the ofiBcers or seamen had before seen in those parts. A dark and gloomy sky aided in filling all minds with dread ; and when the cables strained and the planks creaked, mariners felt that they were in the hands of a greater power than man. " Inside the harbor were about thirty vessels ; comprising four ships-of-war, eight steam and seven sailing transports, four tugs, and the remainder private ships chartered by or for dealers who had settled as shopkeepers at Balaklava village. Outside the harbor were rather more than twenty vessels ; comprising the steam, war-ships Retribution, Niger, Vesuvius, and Vulcan; the steam- transports Prince, Melbourne, Avon, and City of London ; and the remainder sailing transport-ships and freight-ships. The ships on the outside of the harbor speedily became placed in great peril ; they were in danger of snapping cables, and being hurled against the rocks. Many of the captains, seeing the danger, weighed and stood out to sea, knowing that a deep sea is better than a rocky shore during a storm. " The hurricane increased in violence ; the waves rose higher AHtTRBICANEINTHECRIMBA. 37 and higher in their fury ; and the ships, one by one, felt the dread influence of the tempest. First one transport parted from her anchors, ,and was speedily breached and sunk, carrying her whole crew to a watery grave ; then two others met equally rapid destruction, leaving only a few sailors, who were dashed high up against the rocks — they hardly knew how or where ; then, amid the blinding spray and torn waves, might be seen other ships vainly struggling against a power too great for them, yielding one by one to the force, and following their predecessors to the fatal rocks which sternly, bind the mouth of the harbor. The clouds became blacker, the wind shrieked more fiercely, and the warring elements raged with yet greater and greater fury. Transport after transport yielded ; • until at length the splendid Prince, laden with a cargo which raised the total value to at least half a million sterling, parted anchor, and was drifted towards the shore,- despite all the efforts of the engineers to steam out seaward. The crew, hoping to save the vessel by cutting away the mast, expedited the appro^iching catastrophe ; for the fragments became entangled in the screw, stayed its revolutions, and rendered null the power of engines and of helm. The noble vessel struck ; then struck again ; then parted midships ; and then sank to the bottom — leaving only a few relics to tell of the once proud structure. With her sank all but seven of 160 persons who were on board. " The great loss on this tragic day was. that of the Prince; but many other ships swelled the fearful list. The Retribution steam- frigate, the home at that time of the Duke of Cambridge, who had left Inkermann unnerved and invalided, was exposed for four hours to a tremendous infliction ; she parted all her cables but one ; then dragged that one nearly half a mile ; then shipped a hundred tons of water ; and was only saved from dashing against the rocks by the energetic exertions of the crew in throwing all the heavy guns overboard. Even within the little land-locked harbor, though the waves were still, the wind whirled with such fury as. to endanger the vessels there anchored: many ships were torn 38 A HURRICANE IN THE CRIMEA. from their moorings and hurled against others ; many were driven on shore ; others, again, were heeled over almost upon their beam- ends ; while all became injured to a greater or less degree. "The iron paddle-box boat of the Trent steamer, Iveighing seven tons, was lifted bodily into the air by the force of the blast ; smaller boats were hurled high up the gorge of Inkermann towards the plateau ; and a boat containing two men was caught up, the men overturned, and the boat dashed against the wall of a house in Balaklava. Many affecting incidents occurred. The Wild Wave, a small but fine clipper-transport, was deserted by all her crew except three boys, and then left to float to destruction ; many spectators, perched on the rugged cliffs, seeking to render aid, flung out a rope, at which one of the boys sprang, but a raging wave carried him away ; they flung it again, and a second boy was lost in endeavoring to clutch it ; a third time was the rope hurled out, and the remaining boy succeeded In reaching the shore, bruised and senseless, just before the hapless ship was dashed to fragments against the rocks. ." When all was over, and night had given temporary rest to the worn mariners, the scene of devastation was frightful to witness. The Prince* Resolute, Rip Van Winkle, Kenihvorth, * An inquiry, instituted by tlie government, into the circumstances under which the valuable stores in the Prince were lost, made public the curious diversity of the cargo, and the complexity of tlie official arrangements concerned in its management. The list of ordnance stores, in ammunition and elotliing, was immense ; but this list by no means comprised all. There were sent out four complete sets of diving appa- ratus, four galvanic batteries, eight miles' length of conducting wire, a quantity of stores for subaqueous explosions, and men to manage the apparatus— all to be em- ployed in blowing up the Russian ships sunk across the mouth of Scliastopol Harbor; then, besides these and the stores for the army, there was on board a considerable supply of ordnance sttires for the navy, intrenching-tools and shot-boxes, medicines for the army, and 300 tons of provisions. The following list contains the storesand clothing only : „ ,., , , y, to find how much of > imagination and sentiment are to fie found in these relics of the tribes now passed or passing away. Everybody . has read and admired the tales of Cooper, and others of his school, who impute to the savages of the 'forest, the romantic m 68 INDIAN LEGENDS. sentiment and chivalrous conduct of artificial life ; but nobody really believed these things to be true. The character of the Indian, as presented by history, is exceedingly bald, affording only a few strong lights and shadows, such as befit a savage hunter and warrior. And this view is confirmed by his personal appearance, which is that of a being who is wholly occupied with sensible things. His eye is keen and watchful, like that of the tiger, but it has no depth : it sees all that is without and around, but it does not seem to reflect a world of thought within— that world which, to the soul of civilized man, is as real and as boundless as the visible universe. We are, therefore, somewhat surprised when we discover the fact that the Indians really have a mythology, and that they have their poems, fables, proverbs and allegories. For this knowledge, we are chiefly indebted to the intelligent and untiring labors of Mr. Schoolcraft, which have been given to the public in several interesting and instructive volumes. It is from these Mr. Longfellow chiefly derived not only the substance of his story of Hiawatha, but the machinery and the episodes of his remarkable poem. It is, however, curious to remark that, before the appearance of this work, the public had received Mr. Schoolcraft's Indian revelations with coldness, either because they were distrusted, or because they appeared barbarous and repulsive. But the kind of artistic sorcery by which the poet has unfolded a soul in these mystic legends, and still more, the amazing skill with which he has woven the hard and guttural sounds of the Indian tongue into mellifluous verse^making words that were before revolting to the ear, now musical as the songs of birds and waterfalls — have endowed these topics with an irresistible charm. It is probable that the earlyj^ heroes of Greece — Hercules, Theseus, and the rest — w'ere not very different from our Black Hawks and Tecumsehs; their first annalists, their Schoolcrafts, telling the simple truth, it may be supposed, furnished only a rugged outline of the life and action of those early days, it being reserved for the Hesiods and the Homers — the Longfellows of that age — to elevate individuals INDIAN LEGENDS, 69 into heroes and gods, to fill the sea with Nereids, and the woods with Fauns ; to breathe religion into the actions of man, to subdue the rough accents of savages, and convert their language into a worthy vehicle for the story of Ulysses and Achilles, for the songs of Anacreon and the sonnets of Sappho. Since the appearance of Hiawatha, Mr. Schoolcraft has published a volume, presenting in a condensed form the principal portion of his Indian legends. With the new vision which the poet has bestowed, these are read with intense interest. One fact, creditable alike to the historian and the bard, will strike every jnind, and that is the general outline of truth which pervades the poem, not only in the story of Hiawatha, but in all the illustrations and embellishments of the tale. In thought, senti- ment, scenery, costume, habits and customs, the work is consistent : it is all Indian, all savage ; and yet, let us add, it is all human — it is humanity in its childhood. Of the legend which forms the basis of Longfellow's poem, as received by the Western tribes, Mr. Schoolcraft gives the following account : " The myth of the Indians of a remarkable personage, who is called Manabozho by the Algonquins, and Hiawatha by the Iroquois, who was the instructor of the tribes in art and knowledge, was first related to me in 1822, by the Chippewas of Lake Superior. He is regarded as the messenger of the Great Spirit, sent down to them in the character of a wise man and a prophet. But he comes clothed with all the attributes of humanity, as well as the power of performing miraculous deeds. He adapts himself perfectly to thqr manners, and customs, and ideas. He is brought up, from a child, among them. "He is made to learn their mode of life. He takes a wife, builds a lodge, hunts and fishes like the rest of them ; sings his war songs and medicine songs, goes to war, has his triumphs, has his friends and foes, suffers, wants, hungers, is in dread or joy— and, in fine, undergoes all the vicissitudes of his fellows. His miraculous gifts and powers are always adapted to his situation. 70 INDIAN LEGENDS. When he is swallowed by a great fish, with his canoe, he escapes by the exertion of these powers ; but always as much as possible in accordance with Indian maxims and means. He is provided with a magic canoe, which goes where it is bid ; yet, in his fight with the great wampum prince, he is counseled by a wood-pecker to know where the vulnerable point of his antagonist lies. He rids the earth of monsters and giants, and clears away wind-falls, and obstructions to the navigation of streams. But he does not do these feats by miracles ; he employs strong men to help him. When he means to destroy the great serpents, he changes himself into an old tree, and stands on the beach till they come out of the water to bask in the sun. Whatever man could do in strength or wisdom, he could do. But he never does things above the comprehension or belief of his people ; and whatever else he is, he is always true to the character of an Indian. " This myth is one of the most general in the Indian country : it is the prime legend of their mythology. He is talked of in every winter lodge — for the winter season is the only time devoted to such narrations. The moment the leaves come out, stories cease in the lodge. The period of spring in the botapical world, opens, as it were, so many eyes and ears to listen to the tales of men ; and the Indian is far too shrewd a man, and too firm a believer in the system of invisible spirits by which he is surrounded, to commit himself by saying a word which they, with their acute senses on the opening of the spring, can be offended at. "He leaps over extensive regions of country, like an ignis fatuiis. He appears suddenly like an avatar, or saunters over weary wastes, a poor and starving hunter. His voice is at one moment deep and sonorous as a thunder-clap, and at another clothed with the softness of feminine supplication. ' Scarcely any two persons agree in all the minor circumstances of the story, and scarcely any omit the leading traits. The several tribes who speak dialects of the mother language from which the narrative is taken, differ in like manner from each other, in the particulars of his exploits. His birth and parentage are mysterious. Story INDIAN LEGENDS. , 71 says his grandmother was the daughter of the moon. Having been married but a short time, her rival attracted her to a grape- vine swing on the banks of a lake, and by one bold exertion pitched her into its center, from which she fell through to the earth. Having a daughter, the fruit of her lunar marriage, she was careful to instruct her from early infancy, against certain snares that might beset her. This good counsel was at some subsequent period of her life forgotten, and she thus became the victim of the seductive arts of the mighty Ningabiun, or the West Wind." The reader need not be reminded of the . similarity between this delineation and that of the pOem of Hiawatha : the latter is, in truth, a poetic amplification of the historical legend. The embellishments of the poem are alike truthful, either in their particular incidents or their general outline. Even when the story is aided by invention, the scenery is true to nature. Thus, while Hiawatha's wooing, as was meet and proper, is invested with a little romance not found in the books, the name of his bride is derived from an actual locality, and the charm of one of the most beautiful .objects in natural scenery is thus associated with her birth and character. The cascade of Minnehaha, being, in fact, the Little Falls of St. Anthony, near Fort Snelling, has long been noted for its surpassing beauty. Even the savages have been struck with its charms, and have given it a name which signifies Laughing Water. The scenery around is charming. With what admirable tact does the poet connect this delicious scene with his story : "Only once his pace he slackened, Qnly once he paused or halted, Paused to purchase heads of arrows Of the ancient arrow maker, In the land of the Dacotahs, Where the falls of Minnehaha Flash and gleam among the oak trees, Laugh and leap into the valley. 72 INDIAN LEGENDS. "There the ancient arrow maker Makes, his arrow heads of sandstone, Arrow heads of chalcedony, Arrow heads of flint and jasper. Smoothed and sharpened at the edges, Hard and polished, keen and costly. "With him dwelt his dark-eyed daughter, Wayward as the Minnehaha, With her moods of shade and sunshine ; Eyes that smiled and frowned alternate. Feet as rapid as the river, Tresses flowing like the water, And as musical a laughter; And he named her from the river, From the water-fall he named her, Minnehaha, Laughing Water. "Was it here for heads of arrows, Arrow heads of chalcedony, Arrow heads of flint and jasper. That my Hiawatha halted In the land of the Dacotahs? "Was it not to see the maiden, See the face of Laughing Water, ^ Peeping from behind the curtain, Hear the rustling of her garments From behind the waving curtain, As we see the Minnehaha Gleaming, glancing through the branches, As one hears the Laughing Water From behind its screen of branches? " The personification and deification of the powers of nature is common to all races of ipen, in the infancy of society. This is especially manifest in the Indian myths. Among the principal INDIAN LEGENDS. 73 heroes, of the poem of Hiawatha, are, therefore, the four winds. One of them, Wabun, the East Wind, seems to be a sort "of Aurora, and is thus beautifully described in the poem : " Young and beautiful was Wabun ; He it was who brought the morning, . He it was whose silver arrows Chased the dark o'er hill and valley; He it was whose cheeks were painted With the brightest streaks of crimson, And whose voice awoke the village, Called the deer, and called the hunter. "Lonely in the sky was Wabun; Though the birds sang gayly to him. Though the wild-flowers of the meadow Filled the air with odors for him, Though the forests and the rivers Sang and shouted at his coming, Still his heart was sad within him, For he was alone in heaven. "But one morning, gazing eastward, While the village still was sleeping. And the fog lay on the river, Like a ghost that goes at simrise. He beheld a maiden walking All alone, upon a meadow. Gathering water-flags and rushes By a river in the meadow. "Every morning, gazing eastward, Still the first thing ,he beheld there, Was her blue -eyes looking at him. Two. blue lakes among the rushes; 74 INDIAN LEGENDS. And lie loved the lonely maiden Who thus waited for his coming; For they both were solitary — She on earth, and he in heaven. "And he wooed her with caresses, Wooed her with his smile of sunshine, With his flattering words he wooed her, With* his sighing and his singing, Gentlest whispers in the branches. Softest music, sweetest odors — Till he drew her to his bosom, Folded in his robes of crimson — Till into a star he changed her, Trembling still upon his bosom; And for ever in the heavens They are seen together walking, Wabun and the Wabun-Annung, Wabun and the Star of Morning. One of the favorite forms in which Indian lore presents itself in Mr. Schoolcraft's work, is that of allegory. The following is one of these fanciful, but still moral and instructive compo- sitions : ffee MoIf-irDtljK. A solitary lodge stood on the banks of a remote lake. It was near the hour of sunset. Silence reigned within and without. Not a sound was heard but the low breathing of the dying inmate and head of this poor family. His wife and three children sur- rounded his bed. Two of the latter were almost growii up : the other was a mere child. All their simple skill in medicine had been exhausted to no effect. They moved about the lodge in whispers, and were waiting the departure of the spirit. As one THEWOLF-BROTHEE. 75 of the last acts of kindness, the skin-door of the lodge had been thrown back to admit the fresh air. The poor man felt a mo- mentary return of strength, and raising himself a little, addressed his family : " I leave you in a world of care, in which it has required all my strength and skill to supply you with food, and protect you from the storms and cold of a severe climate. For you, my partner in life, I have less sorrow in parting, because I am per- suaded , you will not remain long behind me, and will therefore find the period ' of your sufferings short. But you, my children, my poor and forsaken children, who have just begun the career of life, who will protect you from its evils ? Listen to my words. UnkindnesS, ingratitude and every wickedness is in the scene before you. It is for this cause that years ago, I withdrew from my kin- dred and my tribe, to spend my days in this lonely spot. I have contented myself with the company of your mother and yourselves during seasons of very frequent scarcity and want, while your kindred, feasting in a scene where food is plenty, have caused the forests to echo with the shouts of successful war. I gave up. these things for the enjoyment of peace. I wished to shield you from the bad examples you would inevitably have followed. I have seen you thus far grow up in innocence. If we have some- times suffered bodily want, we have escaped pain of mind. We have at least been kept from scenes of rioting and bloodshed. " My career is now at its close. I will shut my eyes in peace, if you, my children, will promise me to cherish each other. Let not your mother suffer the few days that are left to her ; and I charge you oh no account to forsake your youngest brother — of him I give you both my dying charge to take a tender care." He sank exhausted on his pallet. The family waited a moment as if expecting to hear something further, but when they came to his side, the spirit had taken its flight. The mother and daughter gave vent to their feelings in lamenta- tions. The elder son witnessed the scene in silence. He soon exerted himself to supply, with bow and net, his father's place. 76 INDIAN LEGENDS. Time, however, wore away heavily. Five moons had filled and waned, and the sixth was near its full, when the mother also died. In her last moments, she pressed the fulfilment of their promise to their father, which the children readily received, because they were yet free from selfish motives. The winter passed, and the spring, with its enlivening efl"ects in a northern hemisphere, cheered the drooping spirits of the bereft family. The girl, being the eldest, dictated to her brothers, and seemed to feel a tender and sisterly afl"ection for the youngest, who was rather sickly and delicate. The elder boy soon showed symptoms of restlessness and ambition, and addressed the sister as follows : " My sister, are we always to live as if there were no other human beings in the world ? Must I deprive myself of the pleas- ure of associating with my own kind ? I have determined this question for myself ;• I shall seek the villages of men, and you can- not prevent me." The sister replied, " I do not say no, my brother, to what you desire. We are not prohibited the society of our fellow mortals, but we are told to cherish each other, and to do nothing indepen- dent of each other. Neither pleasure nor pain ought therefore to separate us, especially from our younger brother, who, being but a child, and weakly withal, is entitled to a double share of our affection. If we follow our separate gratification, it will surely make us neglect him, whom we are bound by vows, both to our father and mother, to support." The young man received this address in silence. He appeared daily to grow more restive and moody, and one day, taking his bow and arrows, left the lodge and never returned. Afi'ection nerved the sister's arm. She was not so ignorant of the forest arts as to let her brother suffer from want. For a long time she administered to his necessities, and supplied a mother's cares. At length, however, she began to be weary of solitude and of her charge. No one came to be a witness of her assiduity, or to let fall a single word in her native language. Years which if THBWOLP-BEOTHEE. 77 added to her strength and capability of directing the affairs of the household, brought with them the irrepressible desire of society, and made solitude irksome. At this point, selfishness gained the ascendancy in her heart, for in meditating a change in her mode of life, she lost sight of her younger brother, and left him to be provided for by contingencies. One day, after collecting all the provisions she had been able to save for emergencies, and after bringing a quantity of wood to the door, she said to her little brother : " My brother, you must not stray from the lodge. I am going to seek our elder brother : I shall be back soon." Then taking her bundle, she set off in .search of other habitations. She soon found them, and was so much taken up with the pleasures and amusements of social life, that the thought of her brother was almost wholly obliterated. She accepted proposals of marriage, and after that, thought still less of her helpless and abandoned relative. Meantime, her elder brother had also married, and lived on the shores of the same lake whose ample circuit contained the aban- doned lodge of his father and his forsaken brother. The latter was soon brought to the pinching turn of his fate. As soon as he had eaten all the food left by his sister, he was obliged to pick berries, and dig up roots. These were finally covered up by the snow. Winter came on with all its rigors. He was obliged to quit the lodge in search of other food. Sometimes he passed the night in the clefts of old trees or caverns, and ate the refuse meals of the wolves. The latter at last became his only resource ; and he became so fearless of these animals, that he would sit close by them while they devoured their prey. The wolves, on the other hand, became so familiar with his face and form, that they were undisturbed by his approach, and, appearing to sympathize with him in his outcast condition, would always leave something for his repast. In this way he lived till spring. As soon as the lake was free from ice, he followed his new-found friends to the shore. It happened the same day, that his elder brother was fishing in his canoe a considerable distance out in the lake, when he thought 78 INDIAN LEGENDS. he heard the cries of a child on the shore, and wondered how any- one could exist on so bleak and barren a part of the coast. He listened again attentively, and distinctly heard the cry repeated. He made for the shore as quickly as possible, and as he ap- proached the land, discovered and recognized his little brother, and heard him singing in a plaintive voice — " Neesia — neesia — Shyegwuh goosuh ! Ni my een gwun iewh ! Ni my een gwun iewh ! Heo hwooh ! ' ' The meaning of which is, " My brother — my brother — Ah ! see — I am turning into a wolf ! '' At the termination of his song, which was drawn out with a peculiar cadence, he howled like a wolf. The elder brother was still more astonished, when, getting nearer the land, he perceived his poor brother partly transformed into that animal. He imme- diately leaped on shore, and strove to catch him in his arms, soothingly saying, " My brother, my brother, come to me." But the boy eluded his grasp, crying as he fled, " Neesia, neesia," &c., and howling in the intervals. The elder brother, conscience stricken, and feeling his brotherly affection return with redoubled force, exclaimed in great anguish, " My brother, my brother, my brother ! " But the nearer he approached, the more rapidly the transforma- tion went on ; the boy alternately singing and howling, and call- ing out the name, first of his brother and then of his sister, till the change was completely accomplished, when he exclaimed, " I am a wolf!" and bounded out of sight. THE RAT THAT WENT FISHING. RAT, with greedy appetite, Went fishing with his tail one night He once had seen a fox do that, And if a fox, why not a rat ? For he is surely quite as knowing As any other beast that 's going. Cocking his eye in fond conceit That he knew fish as well as meat, He silent sat upon the shore, And bobbed for half an hour or more. At last, a hungry bite he felt, And deemed it roach, or perch, or smelt : Eager, yet cautious, did he wait To let his prey grasp well the bait ; Then, like a fisher, skilled and nice, He jerked : but lo ! as in a vice His tail stuck fast, and, strange as true. The more he pulled, the worse it grew! 80 THE RAT THAT WENT PISHING. This way and that, in vain he tux'ned — In vain he jerked, and jumped, and squirmed- In vain he yelled with pain and grief — In vain cried murder, fire, and thief! In vain ; for lo ! an oyster vast, Had caught his tail, and held it fast ! At length, the rat perceived the case, And putting on a smiling face — Staying the while his tears and groans. Though pain and terror thrilled his bones — Addressed the oyster thus : " My friend, Here's some mistake ; my latter end Was never made for feast or f^te^ I only put it in for bait ; And as you've ta'en it, I opine That you are caught, and so are mine : I pray you, therefore, oyster tender, ' Just come ashore, and thus surrender." 'The oyster answered not a wink, But in the wave began to sink ; Down, down, by slow degrees he went To the wild rocks, in sheer descent. Dragging the rat, 'mid cries of slaughter, Beneath the '' dark and stormy water." He sank, and o'er him danced the bubbles, In mockery of all his troubles : Nothing was left but this his story. And the plain truth it sets before you. The cunning rat who apes the fox, And risks his tail among the rocks Heedless of dangers, dark and awful. In search of pleasures all unlawful— THE RAT THAT WENT PISHING, 81 Is by a stupid oyster caught, And made the prey of him he sought. Ye cunuing human rats, beware — Unlawful pleasures should you dare To seek along the shores of sin' — Lest some huge oyster pulls you in ! You doubt, and think me a reviler? Well, sirs, ask Huntington and Schuyler. JERUSALEM. ) HIS, in many respects, is the most remarkable city in the -world. It is older than Eome, and has been the scene of more astonishing events than Athens or Constantinople, or even Nineveh and Babylon. It was the city of David and Solomon : here Christ preached, and here he was crucified ; here Christianity had its beginning, and from this city its apostles went forth to Christianize the world : here were the dreadful massacres of Titus and the Crusaders. Jerusalem is at once the hope and the humiliation of the Jews : it is the Holy City of the Christians of all lands, and was formerly the proud capital of a great, people : it is now a miserable and squalid town, whose whole importance lies in its relics of the past,. and its associations with men and things which have passed away. What a strange contrast does this place, known to history for [82] JEEUSALEM. 83 three thousand years, present, to the cities of America — New- York, Boston, Pliiladelphia, Baltimore — counting twenty or thirty times its present population, yet comprising hardly two centuries from the very beginning of their history ! What a difference ! and yet David and Solomon are likely to be remembered, when all the present inhabitants of our great cities are consigned to oblivion. A brief historical notice of this extraordinary place, cannot fail to interest the reader. In the time of King David, it appears that the Jebusites had a considerable town and fortress, upon Mount Zion, named Jebus ; it was built upon a rocky and barren foundation, but possessed many natural advantages for defence, and had also numerous springs and rivulets around it, as well as places of great fertility in the vicinity. In earlier ages it was said to have been the royal residence of Melchizedec, and to have had the title of Salem. Joab, David's chief commander, captured this city, 1046 B. C, and here, on Mount Zion, David established the metropolis of his kingdom. Thus, he is generally regarded as the true founder of Jerusalem. Through the reigns of David and Solomon, this city was the capital of the whole Jewish kingdom, and continued to increase in wealth and splendor. It was resorted to, at the festivals, by the whole population of the country ; and the power and commercial spirit of Solomon, improving the advantages acquired by his father David, centered in it most of the eastern trade, both by sea, through the ports of Elath and Ezion-Geber, and over- land, by the way of Tadmor and Palmyra. Or, at least, though Jerusalem might not have been made a general depot of merchan- dize, the quantity of precious metals flowing into it by direct importation, and by duties imposed on goods passing to the ports of the Mediterranean, and in other directions, was unbounded. Some idea of the prodigious wealth of Jerusalem at this time, may be formed, by stating that the quantity of gold left by David for the use of the Temple, amounted to twenty-one million six hundred thousand pounds sterling, beside three million one 84 JERUSALEM. hundred and fifty thousand pounds in silver ; and Solomon obtained three million two hundred and forty thousand pounds in gold, by one voyage to Ophir ; while silver was so abundant " that it was not any thing accounted of." These were the days of Jerusalem's glory. Universal peace, unmeasured wealth,, the wisdom and clemency of the prince, and the worship of the true God, marked Jerusalem above every city, as enjoying the presence and the especial favor of the Almighty, But these days were not to continue. Intestine divisions and foreign wars, wicked and tyrannical princes, and last of all, the crime of idolatry, most offensive to Heaven, and the one least to be. expected amongst so favored a people, led to a series of calamities, through the long period of nine hundred j'cars, with which no other city or nation can furnish a parallel. After the death of Solomon, ten of the twelve tribes revolted from his successor Rbhoboam, and under Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, established a separate kingdom ; so that Jerusalem, no longer the capital of the whole empire, and its Temple frequented only by the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, must have experienced a mournful declension. Four years after, the city and Temple were taken and plundered by Shishak, king of Egypt. One hundred and forty-five years after, under Amaziah, they sustained the same fate from Joash, king of Israel. One hundred and sixty years from this period, the city was again taken by Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, and Manasseh, the king, was carried a prisoner to Babylon. Within the space of sixty-six years more, it was taken by Pharaoh-Necho, king of Egypt, whom Josiah, king of Judah, had opposed in his expedition to Carchemish. In a battle with the Egyptians at Megiddo, Josiah was killed, and his son Eliakim was placed on the throne in his stead by Necho, who changed his name to Jehoiakim, and imposed a heavy tribute upon him, having ^sent his elder brother, Jbhoahaz, who had been proclaimed king at Jerusalem, a prisoner to Egypt, where he died. Jerusalem was three times besieged and taken by Nebuchad- JERUSALEM. 85 NEZZAR, king of Babylon, within a very few years ; the first, in the reign of the last-mentioned king, Jehoiakim, who was sent a prisoner to Babylon, and the vessels of the Temple transported to the same city ; the second, in that of his son Jehoiachin, when all the treasures of the palace and the Temple, and the remainder of the vessels of the latter which had been hidden or spared in the recent capture, were carried away or destroyed, and the best of the inhabitants, with the king, led into captivity. The third took place in tlie reign of Zbdekiah, the successor of Jehqiachin, in whose ninth year, the most formidable siege which this ill-fated city ever sustained, except that of Titus, was commenced. It continued two years, during a greater part of which the inhabi- tants suffered all the horrors of famine ; when, on the ninth day of the fourth month, in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, which answers to July, in the year B. C. 588, the garrison, with the king, endeavored to make their escape from the city, but were pursued and defeated by the Chaldeans, in the plains of Jericho. Zbdekiah was taken prisoner, and his sons killed before his face at Riblah. After his eyes were put out, he was himself bound with fetters of brass and carried prisoner to Babylon, where he died ; thus fulfilling the prophecy of Ezekiel, which declared that he should be carried to Babylon, but should not see the place, though he should die there. In the following month, the Chaldean army, under their general Nebuzaeadan, entered the city, took away every thing that was valuable, and then burned and utterly destroyed it, with its Temple and walls, and left the whole razed to the ground. The entire population of the city and country, with the exception of a few husbandmen, were then carried captive to Babylon. During seventy years, the city and Temple lay in ruins ; when those Jews who chose to take immediate advantage of the proclamation of Cyrus, under the conduct of Zerubbabel, re- turned to Jerusalem, and began to build the Temple; all the vessels of gold and silver belonging to which, that had been taken away by Nebuchadnezzar, being restored by Cyrus. Their 86 JERUSALEM, work, however, did not proceed far without opposition ; for in the reign of Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, who in Scripture is called Ahasuerus, the Samaritans presented a petition to that monarch to put a stop to the building. Cambyses appears to have been too busily engaged in his Egyptian expedition, to pay any attention to this malicious request. His successor, Smerdis, the Magian, who in Scripture is called Artaxerxes, to whom a similar petition was sent, representing the Jews as a factious and dangerous people; listened to it, and, in the true spirit of a Usurper, issued a decree putting a stop to the further building of the Temple; which, in consequence, remained in an unfinished state till the second year, according to the Jewish, and third, according to the Babylonian and Persian account, of Darius Hystaspes, who is called simply Darius, in Scripture. To him, also, a representation hostile to the Jews was made, by their inveterate enemies, the Samaritans; but this noble prince refused to listen to it, and having searched the rolls of the kingdom, and found in the palace at Achmetha the decree of Cyrus, issued a similar one, which reached Jerusalem in the subsequent year, and even ordered the Samaritans to assist tlie Jews in their work ; so that it was completed in the sixth year of the same reign. But the city and walls remained in a ruinous condition until the twentieth year of Artaxerxes Longimanus, the Artaxerxes of profane history ; by whom Nehbmiah was sent to Jerusalem, with a power granted to him to rebuild them. Accordingly, under the direction of this zealous servant of God, the walls were speedily raised ; but not without the accustomed opposition on the part of tlie Samaritans, who, despairing of the success of an application to the court of Persia, openly attacked the Jews with arms. But the building, notAvithstanding, went steadily on, the men working with an implement of labor in one hand, and a weapon of war in the other. The wall, with incredible labor, was finished in fifty-two days, 445 B. C. After this, the city itself was gradually rebuilt. From this time, Jerusalem remained attached to the Persian empire, but under JERUSALEM. 87 the local jurisdiction of the high-priests, until the subversion of the empire by Alexander, about 330 B. C. This conqueror, who appeared like a meteor suddenly crossing the heavens and startling all mankind, at last approached Judea. After a siege of some months, Tyre had been captured, eight thousand of the citizens falling in the conflict, and thirty thousand being sold into slavery. Gaza, too, had been taken, after a siege of two months. The Jews had refused to supply the invader with money, and now he marched upon Jerusalem to punish the people for their disobedience. The authorities seem to hav0 adopted a measure of deep policy, and accordingly the high-priest, Jaddus, went forth to meet the conqueror, attended by a vast retinue of priests and people, bearing the imposing signs and symbols of the Jewish religion. Alexander seems to have been profoundly affected by the spectacle : he not only pardoned the authorities, but he reverently entered the Temple, and assisted in the sacrifices conducted by Jaddus. At the death of Alexander and the partition of his kingdom by his generals, Jerusalem, with Judea, fell to the Syrian monarchs. But, in the frequent wars which followed between the kings of Syria and those of Egypt, called by Daniel the Kings of the North and South, it belonged sometimes to one, and sometimes to the other ; an unsettled and unhappy state, resulting in general disorder and corruption. The high-priesthood was openly sold to the highest bidder, and numbers of Jews deserted their religion for the idolatries of the Greeks. At length, in the year 170 B. C, Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria, enraged at hearing that the Jews had rejoiced at a false re- port of his death, plundered Jerusalem, and killed eighty thousand men. Not more than two years afterwards, this cruel tyrant, who had seized every opportunity to exercise his barbarity on the Jews, sent Apollonius with an army to Jerusalem, who pulled down the walls, grievously oppressed the people, and built a citadel on a rock adjoining the Temple, which commanded that building, and had the effect of completely overawing the seditious inhabitants. 88 JEEUSALEM. Having thus reduced this unfortunate city into entire submission, and rendered resistance useless, the next step of Antiochus was to abolish the Jewish religion altogether, by publishing an edict which commanded all the people of his dominions to conform to the religion of the Greeks ; in consequence of which the service of the Temple ceased, and a statue of Jupiter Olympus was set up on its altar. But this extremity of ignominy and oppression led, as might have been expected, to rebellion ; and those Jews who still held their insulted religion in reverence, fled to the mountains With Mattathias and Judas Maccab^eus ; the latter of whom, after the death of Mattathias, with his followers and successors, being known by the name of Maccabees, waged successful war with the Syrians^ defeated Apollonius, Nicanoe, and Lysias, generals of Antiochus ; obtained possession of Jerusalem, puriiied the Temple, and restored the service after three years' defilement by the Gentile idolatries. Prom this time, under several succeeding Maceabtean rulers, who were at once high-priests and sovereigns of the Jews, but without the title of king, Jerusalem was able to preserve itself from Syrian violence. It was, however, twice besieged ; first by Antiochus Eupatoe, in the year 163 B. C., and afterwards by Antiochus Sidetes, in the year 134 B. C. But the Jews had caused themselves to be suf&ciently respected to obtain conditions of peace on both occasions, and to save their city ; till, at length, Htrcanus, in the year 130 B. C., shook off the Syrian yoke, and reigned after this event twenty-one years in independence and prosperity. His successor, Judas, made an important change in the Jewish government, by taking the title of king ; which dignity was enjoyed by his successors forty-seven years, when a dispute having arisen between Htrcanus II. and his brother Aeistobulus, and the latter having overcome the former and made himself king, was in his turn conquered by the Romans, under Pompey, by whom the city and temple were taken, Aeistobulus made prisoner, and Hyecanus created high-priest and prince of the Jews, but JEEUSALEM. 89 •without the title of king. By this event, Judea was reduced to the condition of a Roman province, in the year 63 B. 0. Nor did Jerusalem long after enjoy the dignity of a metropolis, that honor being transferred to Cffisarea. Julius C^sab, having defeated Pompey, continued Hyecanus in the high-priesthood, but bestowed the government of Judea upon Antipatee, an Idumean by birth, but a Jewish proselyte, and father of Hbeod THE Great. The capture and destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, the Roman general, A. D. 70, is one of the most terrible events in the histoiy of this wonderful city. For several years, the Jews had been in a state of revolt, and some of the most bloody conflicts in the history of human warfare had taken place between them and their rulers. Vespasian had commanded the Roman army ; but having been declared emperor, he went to Rome, and sent his son Titus to complete the subjugation of Jerusalem, that place having been invested for some time. Notwithstanding their peril from foreign foes, the Jews within the city were divided into factions, who seemed to hate each other even more cordially than their besiegers. Titus now caused his troops to level all the ground, in their approach to the walls, and to make every preparation for a vigorous onset. Some proposals of peace were sent to the besieged, but they were rejected with indignation, and the Romans were consequently ordered to play their war engines against the city with all their energy. The Jews were compelled to retire from those dreadful stones which the enemy threw incessantly, and the battering-rams were at full liberty to ply against the walls. A breach, at length, was made, and the besieged were compelled to retire behind the enclosure. This lodgement was effected about a fortnight after the beginning of the siege. The second wall was then immediately attempted, and the engijies and battering-rams were applied so furiously that one of the towers began to shake. The Jews who occupied it, aware of their impending ruin, set it on fire, and precipitated themselves yO JERUSALEM. into the flames. The fall of this structure aiforded an entrance to the second enclosure ; but, as Titus was desirous of preserving the city from demolition, the breach and the passages were left so narrow that a great number of his men perished for want of room when they were attacked by Simon, the Jewish leader. Titus, however, quickly rectified this mistake, and carried the- place four days after the first repulse, entering that part of the lower city which was within the wall. A famine now raged in this afflicted place, and a pestilence followed in its track. As these calamities increased, so did the cruelty of the factions, who forced the houses in quest of provisions, punishing those with death upon whom they found any, because they had not apprised these robbers of it ; they put others to the most excruciating tortures, under the pretence that they had con- cealed food. Titus again attempted to prevail on the Jews to surrender, by sending Josephus to represent the fatal consequences of their obstinacy, but without effect. He then caused the city to be surrounded by a high wall, to prevent their reception of any kind of succor, or their escape by flight. Nothing was now to be seen in the streets of Jerusalem but putrescent bodies, emaciated invalids, and objects of the deep- est distress ; even those who escaped in safety to the Roman camp were frequently murdered by the soldiers, who inferred, from certain circumstances, that they had swallowed quantities of gold. In searching for this, two thousand of them were ripped up in a single night. While the military operations against the city were making progress, the famine within still grew more and more terrible. In the language of the historian, " Men would fight even their dearest friends for the most miserable morsel. The very dead were searched, as though they might contain some scrap of food. The robbers themselves began to suffer severely ; they went prowling about like mad dogs, or reeling, like drunken men, from weakness, and entered and searched the same house twice or thrice in the same hour. The most loathsome and disgusting food was sold at JERUSALEM. 91 an enormous rate. They gnawed their belts, shoes, and even the leathern coats of their shields ; chopped hay and shoots of trees sold at high prices. Yet what are all these horrors to that which followed ? There was a woman of Perea, Mary, the daughter of Eleazar. She possessed considerable wealth when she took refuge in the city. Day after day she had been plundered by the robbers, whom she had provoked by her bitter imprecations. No one, however, would mercifully put an end to her misery, and, her mind maddened with wrong, her body preyed upon by famine, she wildly resolved on an expedient which might gratify at once her vengeance and her hunger. She had an infant that was vainly endeavoring to obtain some moisture from her dry bosom ; she seized it, cooked it, ate one half, and set the other aside ! " The smoke and the smell of food, quickly reached the robbers. They forced her door, and, with horrible threats, commanded her to give up what she -had been feasting on. She replied, with fierce indifference, that she had carefully reserved for her good friends a part of her meal. She uncovered the remains of her child ! The savage men stood speechless ; at which she cried out with a shrill voice, ' Eat, for I have eaten ; be ye not more delicate thaln a woman, more tender hearted than a mother.' They retired, pale and trembling with horror. The story spread rapidly through the city, and reached the Eoman camp, where it was first listened to with incredulity, afterwards with the deepest commiseration." It was upon hearing of this dreadful deed, that the Eoman general swore to extirpate both city and people, at the same time taking Heaven to witness that this was not his work. Towards the end of summer, the Eomans had made themselves masters of Fort Antonia, and set fire to the gates, after a destruc- tive encounter ; yet, so blind were the Jews to their real danger, that, though nothing was left but the Temple, which must soon fall, they could not persuade themselves that God would permit his holy habitation to be taken by the heathen. On the 17th of July, the daily sacrifice ceased for the first time since its restoration by Judas Maccabeus, there being no proper 92 JERUSALEM. person left in the Temple to make the offering. The gallery that afforded a communication between the Temple and Fort Antonia was now burned down, and the Jews, having filled the western portico with combustibles, induced the Romans, by a feigned flio-ht, to scale the battlements, and set fire to the building ; so that the troops were either consumed in the flames, or dashed to pieces by leaping from the roof. Contrary to the intentions and orders of Titus, who wished to preserve the Temple, one of his soldiers set that noble edifice on fire. Efforts were made to extinguish it, but in vain. With a view to save what he could of its contents, the commander entered the Sanctuary, and the Most Holy Place, where he found the golden candlestick, the table of show-bread, the golden altar of perfumes, and the book of the law, wrapped up in a rich tissue of gold. A dreadful slaughter now ensued, in which many thousands perished ; some by the sword, some by the flame, and others by falling from the battlements. The conquerors, exasperated by the useless obstinacy of the people, carried their fury to such a height as to massacre all whom they met, without distinction of age, sex, or quality, and even to inflict the dreadful torture of crucifixion on many wretches who fell into their hands. All the treasure-houses of the Temple w^ere burned, though they were full of the richest furniture, vestments, plate, and other valuables. In short, they persisted^ in their barbarous work, till the whole of the holy building was utterly demolished, except two of the gates of that part of the court which was appropriated to the women. Great preparations were made, in the mean time, for attacking the upper city, and the royal palace ; and, on the 8th of September, the engines played so furiously on the iniquitous zealots, that they were overwhelmed with confusion, and ran, like lunatics, towards Shiloah, intending to attack the wall of circumvallation, and by that means effect their escape. , They were, however, repulsed by the enemy, and compelled to hide themselves in the public sinks and sewers, while all the other inhabitants were put to the sword, except some of the most vigorous, who were reserved for JERUSALEM. 93 the victor's triumph. Among the latter were John and Simon, the two most desperate rebels. When the slaughter had ceased for want of subjects, and the troops were satisfied with plunder, Titus gave orders for the total demolition of the remaining parts of the city, with its fortifications, palaces, towers, and sumptuous edifices, excepting a part of the western wall, and the three towers of Hippicus, Phasael, and Marjamne, which might prove to future times the astpnishing strength of the city, and the valor of its conqueror. During the whole siege, the number killed was one million one hundred thousand ; that of the prisoners taken, ninety-seven thousand. In truth, the population, not of Jerusalem alOne, but of the adjacent districts — many who had taken refuge in the city, and more who had assembled for the feast of unleavened bread — had been shut up by the sudden formation of the siege. If the numbers in Josephus may be relied on, there must be added to this fearful list, in the contest with Rome, nearly one hundred and thirty thousand slain before the war under Vespasian, one hundred and eighteen thousand during the war in Galilee and Judea, and, after the fall of Jerusalem, nearly nine thousand in other parts of the country. The prisoners, who, in the whole of these wars, amounted to over one hundred thousand, were doomed to be exposed in public, to fight like gladiators, or be devoured by wild beasts ; twelve thousand perished from want, either through the neglect of their keepers, or their own sullen despair. These items swell the number of victims of the war to more than a million and a half of souls. After this dreadful blow, Jerusalem lay in a ruinous condition about forty-seven years, when the emperor ^lius Adrian began to build it anew, and erected there a heathen temple, which he dedi- cated to Jupiter Capitolinus. In this state Jerusalem continued, under the name of ^lia, and inhabited more by Christians and Pagans than by Jews, till the time of the emperor Constantine, styled the Great ; who, about the year 323 A. D., having made Christianity the religion of the empire, began to improve it. 94 JBEUSALEM. adorned it with, many new edifices and churches, and restored, its ancient name. About thirty-five years afterwards, Julian, named the Apostate, not from any love he bore the Jews, but out of hatred to the Christians, whose faith he had abjured, and with the avowed design of defeating the prophecies, which had declared that the Temple should not be rebuilt, wrote to the Jews inviting them to their city, and promising to restore their Temple and nation. He accordingly employed great numbers of workmen to clear the foundations ; but balls of fire bursting from the earth, soon put a stop to their proceedings. This, which was deemed a miraculous interposition of Providence, is attested by many credible witnesses and historians, and in particular by Ammianus Maecellinus, a heathen, and friend of Julian ; Zemuch David, a Jew ; Naz- ianzbn, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Ruffinus, Theodoret, Sozombn, and Socrates, who wrote his account within five years after the transaction, and while many eye-witnesses of it were still living. So stubborn -indeed, is the proof of this alleged miracle, that even Gibbon, who strives to invalidate it, is obliged to acknowledge -the fact. ' Jerusalem continued nearly in the same condition till the beginning of the seventh century, when it was taken and plun- dered by the celebrated Chosroes, king of Persia, by whom many thousands of the Christian inhabitants were killed, or sold as slaves. The Persians, however, did not hold it long, as they were soon after entirely defeated by the emperor Heraclius, who rescued Jerusalem, and- restored it, not to the unhappy Jews, 'who were forbidden to come within three miles of it, but to the Chris- tians. A worse calamity was, however, speedily to befall this ill- fated city. The Mahommedan imposture arose about this time ; and the fanatics who had adopted its creed, carried their a'rms and their religion with unprecedented rapidity over the greater part of th*e East. The caliph Omar, the third from Mohammed, invested the city, which, after once more suffering the horrors of a protracted siege, surrendered on terms of capitulation in the .year 637 ; and has ever since, with the exception of the short JERUSALEM. 95 period it was occupied by the crusaders, been trodden under foot by the followers of the false prophet. Never before nor since, have sucli scenes been witnessed upon the earth, as those of the crusades, which had for their object the delivery of Jerusalem from the infidels. A sudden impulse arose in Europe, which precipitated upon Asia several armies, consisting of hundreds of thousands of men, led on by the ablest kings and princes of Christendom, and all were wasted away, either on the march or in conflict with the Mahommedans in Palestine. Once only, and for a brief space, did the Christians Succeed in their object. In 1099, the crusaders, having the year before taken Nice and Antioch, laid siege to Jerusalem, and car- ried it by assault, with a prodigious slaughter of the garrison and inhabitants, which was continued for three days, without respect either to age or sex, thus showing that the mercy of the followers of the cross was no better than that of the followers of the crescent. Eight days after, the Latin chiefs elected the renowned Godfrey OF Bouillon, to preside over their conquests in Palestine. In a fortnight, he was called out to defend his capital against the powerful army of the sultan of Egypt, and overthrew him at the battle of Ascalon. The four cities of Hems, Hamah, Damas- cus and Aleppo were soon the only relics of the Mahommedan conquests in Syria. The feudal institutions of Europe were in- troduced into this kingdom in all their purity, and a code of laws established. The defeat and dispersion of the armies of the second crusade tended greatly to weaken the Christian cause in the Holy Land, and shake the foundations of the new kingdom of Jerusalem. Treason and dissension also contributed to its overthrow. In the midst of t'hese. Sultan Saladin, a prince uniting refined humanity to valor, policy, and military skill, assailed the kingdom. His com- plaints of the pillage of the caravans of pilgrims being unheeded, he invaded Palestine with eighty thousand horse and foot. In a decisive battle at the siege of Tiberias, the Christians were com- pletely overthrown, with the loss of thirty thousand men. Pol- 96 JERUSALEM. lowing up his victory, Jerusalem was taken by the sultan after a siege of fourteen days ; and the Latin kingdom, though, for a time, sustaining itself on the coast, and even regaining Jerusalem, was at last put an end to in the capture of Acre by the Mame- lukes, about 1290. Palestine continued under Egypt, with two short exceptions, till it fell under the Turks, who have held it for the last three hundred years. Jerusalem at present is but the shadow of what it was in ancient times. It is now a town not far from three miles in cir- cumference, situated on a rocky elevation, surrounded on all sides, except the north, with a steep ascent and deep valleys, and then again environed with other hills at some distance from these. The soil is, for the most part, stony, yet affords corn, wine, and oil, where cultivated. The houses are built with flint stones, one story high. The tops of the dwellings are flat and plastered, having battlements a yard high. In the daytime, the people screen them- selves from the sun under the roof ; in the night, they walk, eat, and sleep on it. The number of inhabitants is about 12,000, con- sisting of Mahommedans, fohr thousand five hundred ; Jews, three thousand ; Christians, three thousand five hundred. To these are to be added, for the convents and garrison, about five hundred more, making in all, eleven thousand five hundred. Surely the glory of Jerusalem is departed, sunk as she is into the neglected capital of a petty Turkish province ! Some streets seem to consist of ruins rather than dwelling- houses. Within the walls, large places lie desolate, covered with stones and earth. In digging for the foundations of the English church, on Zion, forty feet of rubbish and ruins were penetrated. The gardens are badly managed, being surrounded with low walls of mud, which are constantly washing down, and requiring "new repairs. The citizens are tailors, cooks, smiths, or shoemakers — a destitute, immoral race, the refuse of different nations. Jerusalem is surrounded with high walls of hewn stone, flanked with towers. Several of the mosques are splendid structures of great size, and adorned with numerous columns and domes. The JERUSALEM , 97 THE SHKIITE OP THE OHFRCn OF THE HOLT SBPITLCHRK. most magnificent edifice in Jerusalem is called the Mosque of Omar, which consists, in fact, of a collection of mosques and chapels, environed with a vast enclosure. It is upon the site of the ancient Temple. One of the chapels, called the Rock, is an octagon of one hundred and sixty feet in diameter, rising from a platform four hundred and sixty feet long by three hundred and thirty-nine broad, with a marble pavement, raised sixteen feet ; its interior is decorated with great splendor, and is always illuminated with thousands of lamps. Several Christian edifices adorn the holy city. Among these, are the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, said to be built upon the spot where the body of Jesus was entombed ; the Catholic con- vent of St. Savior, in the church of which are gold and silver vessels and ornaments valued at nearly two million dollars ; and the Armenian convent, with more than eight hundred cells for 7 98 . JERUSALEM. the accommodation of pilgrims, many thousands of whom visit this spot every year. We close this sketch with a brief extract from a traveler, who visited Jerusalem'i,,in March, 1857, and who therefore furnishes the most recent intelligence from this desolate but renowned place. " The city seems to be built on a slope, and not crowning the mountains, so often spoken of in the Psalms and .elsewhere. The only really fine and impressive view is from the Mount of Olives. From Eamleh we came up with some hundreds of pilgrims, who are flocking hither from all quarters in numbers heretofore unpar- alleled. It is estimated that there will be more than 15,000, and that there are now about 8,000 in the city. A more rag-tag, des- perate, ill-looking set of vagabonds I never saw ; most of those now here are Armenians and Greeks from the Ionian Islands ; and, though they have great need of the wash in the Jordan to remove the outward impurities, I fear it will have little effect upon the inward man, and should be very sorry, unarmed, to meet any of them among their own hills. ''Jerusalem, consequently, is crowded to overflowing ; the streets are thronged, and numbers of noisy miscreants are to be met with at all hours, in places to which one would desire to go alone ; thus taking away the feeling with which one naturally expects to be filled amidst scenes made sacred by the life and death of the Redeemer. Every spot, too, with which history or tradition can, by any possibility, or impossibility, connect an inci- dent in the life, teachings or death of Christ or the Virgin Mary, is covered by a chapel or church, and one cannot visit it without witnessing the mummeries of Greek or Roman Catholicism, with their tawdry trappings and bare-faced impositions. The Mount of Calvary and the reported place of the Sepulchre are covered by a large and very fine building, called the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The spot where the body was washed is marked by a marble slab ; the holes in the rock where the cross of Christ and those of the thieves stood, are marked by a broad ring of gold JEBtrSALEM. 99 or brass, as is also the rent in the mountains ; at the place where he was scourged, is an altar ; and in the sepulchre where he was laid is a marble sarcophagus, with lights constantly burning around it and a priest in attendance. At all these places, the pilgrims repeat aves, and bending on their knees, kiss them; some few with an outward appearance of feeling, but most with careless levity and indifference, often laughing and joking. The same' is the case with the tomb of the Virgin Mary, where, during the time that it is open, mass is constantly said. " The only place about Jerusalem at present, possessing any degree of seclusion, is G-eJhsemane, and even that is often crowded. For the city itself, it has no beauty ; the streets are all narrow and filthy to a degree beyond belief, often making the, air intolerable." THE ANT-EATER. OUTH AMERICA can boast of some of the most curious animals in the whole range of zoology. Among them are the tapirs, the armadillos, and the ant-eaters. The latter, of -which there are several species, may be considered as the very oddest creature in existence, seeming to combine in gro- tesque proportions, something of the bear, the sloth, the racoon, and the skunk. We shall give a brief account of the Great Ant-eater, which stands as the head and representative of the family, and whose portrait is herewith presented. This is, in fact, a large animal. The head, from the point of the snout to the ears, is about thirteen inches long ; thence to the insertion of the tail, nearly three feet and a half, and the tail nearly two feet and a half in the solid, and a foot more to the [100] THE ANT-EATER. 101 points of the hair. The whole length is thus about eight feet. The height is about three feet three at the shoulder, but half a foot less at the croup. The hair, excepting on the head, where it is short and close, is shaggy and dry, like that of the sloths. The mouth, which is a long, toothless tube, is small, and the tongue slender, but remarkable for its length. It is in the form of a worm. When in repose, it folds back within the mouth ; but it is protrusile to the length of at least eighteen inches beyond the snout ; and the celerity with which it can be protruded and retracted, forms a remarkable contrast with the sluggish motions of the animal. This celerity of motion in the tongue is, however, just as necessary for a large animal which feeds on such small insects as ants, as swifter progressive motion would be unnecessary. The tongue is covered by a viscid secretion, by which the ants are captured ; as it is laid over them, they are rubbed ofi*fegainst the palate when the tongue is doubled back into the mouth. In order to understand how the parts of this singular organi- zation work together, we must suppose that the animal has arrived at the side of an ant-hill, or rather burrow of social insects, and that he is hungry, and inclined to feed. There is every reason to believe that his sense of smell is acute, as is generally the case with long-snouted animals, and that in obtaining food, he is fully as much guided by that, as by the sight of his small eyes. Well, he arrives at the ant-hill, his broad hind feet forming a firm base, and his long tail balancing him on those feet as on a pivot. The fore foot is then extended to its utmost stretch, but in its general position, and with the claws curving a little backward. In this species, the claws on the fore feet are four in number ; the first and fourth smaller, but the second, two inches, and the third, two inches and a half in length, strong in proportion, and grooved on their posterior surfaces. The stroke of the foot plunges these into the ant-hill up to the roots, and the animal pulls the foot home, tearing a rugged furrow in the insect domain.. The ants, as is their habit, instantly come to the breach in num- bers ; and while they are in agitation there, the tongue is pro- 102 THE ANT-EATBE. truded over them, and withdrawn at the rate of about twice in a second; many dozens being captured at each time. When the first breach is cleared, others are made in the same way. But though the animal subsists in this manner, it is said liever to get fat, notwithstanding its indolence at those times when it is not feeding. It is capable, however, of enduring great privation in the way of food, which might be inferred from its sluggish habits. The position of repose is that of partially rolling itself into a ball, with the snout doubled on the breast, the legs brought together, the long and bushy tail covering the outer part, and the whole animal having something the appearance of a bunch of withered grass. Probably much of its defence from enemies depends on this position, in which it spends the greater portion of its time. Great ant-eaters are pretty generally distributed over all the warmer parts of South America, but they are not numerous in any one locality. The low and swampy grounds, by the sides of streams and pools, or in the forests, are his favorite haunts, though he never either climbs in the woods, or swims in the water. He is wholly a ground animal, but a surface one, and not a burrower. These are slow breeding animals. The female has only one at a birth : she carries it on her back, and tends and nurses it for more than a year. They are remarkably quiet and harmless, living and feeding among the ant-hills, and, not, so far as is known, offering or doing harm to any other creature. So retired are they, indeed, that they are considered as rare, even in their own native forests. The Indians and negroes eat the flesh of this species, which is not unpalatable ; but, as is the case with several others of the ground animals, it has a rank, musky flavor, which is rather offensive to Europeans. The species, now noticed, is the only one of the genus which is literally an " ant-eater," and a dweller exclusively upon the ground ; the remaining species, though they resemble it in having no teeth, have many of their characters so different, that each of them might, perhaps, be made a separate genus. THE BEES AT HOME. fF we were called upon to select the insect which combines in the highest degree, the wonderful and the useful, we should no doubt choose the Honey-bee. A careful examination of the habits of this little creature, in its social capacity, has ex- hibited instincts which approach nearer to the results of reason and reflection, than any thing within our knowledge. To the bee we are also indebted for two Taluable staples of commerce — honey and wax. Since the introduction of sugar, honey has become less an article of general use, and more one of luxury ; but wax is still ex- tensively consumed throughout the civilized world, being in fact a necessity in the arts and in domestic life. Honey is collected from flowers, is swallowed by the bees, and afterwards regurgitated. The bee, laden with honey, returns to the hive, enters a cell, pierces a hole in the crust on -the surface of the honey already therein, disgorges the honey in large drops from its mouth, new models the crust, and closes up the hole: this mode of proceeding is regularly adopted by every bee that contributes to the general store. "Wax is secreted, [108] 104 THE BEES AT HOME. as Ci .._ occasion may require, from small sacs situated between the segments of the body of the bee, on the under side ; it is used for constructing the combs in which the family proyision of honey and the young brood are deposited. The wax of commerce is produced by melting down these combs. ' A bee-hive contains three kinds of individuals— a queen, drones, and workers : the queen is a female, and not only the ruler, but, in great part, the mother of the community ; the drones are males, and the workers are abortive females. The sole office of the queen appears to be the laying of eggs, and this occupies her almost incessantly, as a single one only is deposited in each cell, thus causing her to be in continual motion ; she is slow and majestic- in her movements, and differs from the workers in being larger, having a longer body, shorter wings, and a curved sting. The queen is accompanied by a guard of twelve workers, an office which is taken in turns, but never intermitted: in whatever direction she wishes to travel, these guards clear the way before her, always with the utmost courtesy turning their faces towards her, and when she rests from her labors, approaching her with humility, licking her face, mouth, and eyes, and fondling her with their antennae. The drones are all -males ; they are smaller than the queen, but larger than the workers ; they live on the honey of flowers, but bring none home, and are wholly useless, except as being the fathers of the future progeny : when this office is accomplished, they are destroyed by the workers. A buzzing commences in the hive ; the .drones and the workers sally forth together, grapple each other in the air, and hug and scuffle for a minute, during which operation the stings of the workers are plunged into the sides of the drones, who, overpowered by the poison, almost instantly die. The workers are the smallest bees in the hive, and by far the most numerous ; they have a longer lip for sucking honey than either of the others ; their thighs are furnished with a brush for the reception of tiie pollen of flowers, and their sting is straight. THE BEES AT HOME. 105 The workers do the entire labor of the community : they build the cells, guard the hive and the queen, collect and store the honey, elaborate the wax, feed the young, kill the drones, etc. The average number of these three kinds of bees in a hive, is one queen, 2,000 drones, and 20,000 workers. The eggs are long, slightly curved, and of a bluish color ; when laid, they are covered with a glutinous matter, which instantly dries, attaching them to the bottom of the cell. For eleven months the queen lays only workers' eggs ; after- wards, those which produce drones. As soon as this change has commenced, the workers begin to construct royal cells, in which, without discontinuing to lay the drones' eggs, the queen deposits here and there, about once in three days, an egg which is destined to produce a queen. The workers' eggs hatch in a few days, and produce little white maggots, which immediately open their mouths to be fed ; these the workers attend to with untiring assiduity. In six days, each maggot fills up its cell ; it is then roofed in by the workers, spins a silken cocoon, and becomes a chrysalis ; on the twenty-first day, it becomes a perfect bee. The drones emerge on the twenty-fifth day, and the queens on the sixteenth. It has been already stated, that the queen, for nearly a year, lays no eggs that are destined to produce queens; it therefore follows, that if any evil befall her, the hive is left without a queen. It sometimes happens that she dies, or is taken away by the owner of the hive, to observe the result. For twelve hours little notice is taken of the loss ; it appears not to be known, and the workers labor as usual : after that period, a hubbub commences ; work is abandoned ; the whole hive is in an uproar ; every bee traverses the hive at random, and with the most evident want of purpose. This state of anarchy sometimes continues for. two days ; then the bees gather in clusters of a dozen or so, as though engaged in consultation, the result of which seems to be a final resolution to supply the loss. A few of the workers repair to the cells in which are deposited the eggs of workers ; three of these cells 106 THE BEES AT HOME, are quickly broken into one, the edges polished and the sides smoothed and rounded, a single egg being allowed to remain at the bottom. When this egg hatches, the maggot is fed with a peculiarly nutritive food called royal bee-bread, which is never given to any maggots but such as are to produce queens ; work is now resumed over the whole hive, and goes on as briskly as before. On the siKteenth day the egg produces a queen, whose appearance is hailed with every demonstration of delight, and who at once assumes sovereignty over the hive. When, under ordinary cir- cumstances, a young queen emerges from the chrysalis, ttie old one frequently quits the- hive, heading the first swarm for the season, and flying to some neighboring resting-place, is observed by the owner, captured, placed under a new hive, and a new colony is immediately commenced. Before a swarm leaves the hive, sure indications are given of the intended movement : the workers leave their various occupations and collect in groups, especially near the door of the hive, as though in consultation on the important event about to take place. As the summer advances, many queens are hatched; but the workers do not allow them instant liberty, as severe battles - would take place between them and the reigning queen, in which one would be killed : the workers, therefore, make a small hole in the ceiling of each royal cell, through which the captive queen thrusts her tongue and receives food from the workers. In this state of confinement the young queen utters a low querulous note, which has been compared to singing. When the reigning or * newly-created queen finds one of these captives, she uses every effort to tear open the cell, and destroy her rival : to prevent this the workers often interpose, pulling her away by the legs and wings ; to this she submits for a short time, when, uttering a peculiar cry, called her voice of sovereignty, she commands instant attentioii and obedience, and is at once freed from her assailants. The cocoon spun by the maggots of the workers and THE BEES AT HOME. 107 drones completely envelopes the chrysalis; but that spun by the maggot of the queen appears imperfect, covering only the upper end of the chrysalis. It has been supposed that they are thus designedly exposed to the attacks of other queens, and their destruction, before emerging, facilitated. When the chrysalis of the queen is about to change to a perfect insect, the bees make the cover of the cell thinner, by gnawing awg-y part of the wax ; and with so much nicety do they perform this operation, that the cover at last becomes pellucid, owing to its extreme thinness. The combs of a bee-hive comprise a congeries of hexagonal cells, built by the bees as a receptacle for honey, and for the nurseries of their young. Each comb in a hive is composed of two ranges of cells, backed against each other : the base or partition between this double row of cells is so disposed as to form a pyramidal cavity at the bottom of each. There is a continued series of these double combs in every well-filled hive ; the spaces between them being just sufficient to allow two bees, one on the surface of each comb, to pass without touching. Each cell is hexagonal, the six sides being perfectly equal. This figure ensures the greatest possible economy of material and space ; the outer edges of the cells are slightly thickened, in order to gain strength ; the same part is also covered with a beautiful varnish, which is supposed to give additional strength. The construction of several combs is generally going on at the same time : no sooner is the foundation of one laid, with a few rows of cells attached to it, than a second and a third are founded on each side, parallel to the first, and so on till the hive is filled; the combs which were commenced first being always in the most advanced state, and therefore the first completed. The design of every comb is sketched out, and the first rudi- ments laid, by a single bee ; this foundress-bee forms a block out of a rough mass of wax, drawn partly from its own resources, but principally from those of other bees, which furnish wax from the small sacs before described, taking out the plates of wax with their hind feet, and carrying it with their fore feet to their mouths, 108 THE BEES AT HOME. where it is moistened, masticated, and rendered soft and ductile. The foundress-bee determines the relative position of the combs and their distance from each other, the foundations which she marks serving as guides to the ulterior labors of the wax-working bees, and of those which build the cells, giving them the advantage of the margins and angles already formed. The mass of wax prepared by the assistants, is applied by the foundress-bee to the roof or bottom of the hive, and thus a slightly double-convex mass is formed : when of sufficient size, a cell is sculptured on one side of it by the bees, who relieve one another in the labor. At the back and on each side of this first cell, two others are sketched out and excavated : by this proceeding, the foundations of two cells are laid, the line betwixt them corres- ponding with the center of the opposite cells. As the comb extends, the first excavations are rendered deeper and broader ; and when a pyramidal base is finished, the bees build up walls from its edges, so as to complete what may be called the prismatic part of the cell. The cells intended for the drones are considerably larger and more substantial than those for the workers ; and being formed subsequently, they usually appear nearer the bottom of the combs. Last of all are built the royal cells for the queens : of these there are usually three or four, sometimes ten or twelve, in a hive, attached commonly to the central part, but not unfre- quently to the edge of the comb. The form of the royal cells is an oblong spheroid, tapering gradually downwards, and having the exterior full of holes ; the mouth of the cell, which is always at the bottom, remains open until the maggot is ready for trans- formation, and it is then closed like the rest. When a queen has emerged, the cell in which she was reared is destroyed, and its place supplied by a range of common cells ; the site of this range may always be traced by that part of the comb being thicker than the rest, and forming a kind of knob. The common breeding cells of drones and workers are occasionally made the depositories of honey ; but the cells are never suf&ciently cleansed to preserve the honey undeteriorated. The finest honey THE BEES AT HOME. 109 is Stored in new cells constructed for the purpose of receiving it, their form precisely resembling that of the common breeding cells. These honey-cells vary in size, being larger or smaller according to the productiveness of the sources from which the bees are collecting, and also according to the season. The cells formed in July and August, being intended only for honey, are larger and deeper than those formed earlier ; the texture of their walls is thinner, and thus they have more dip or inclination ; this dip diminishes the risk of the honey's run- ning out, which, from the heat of the weather at this season, and its consequent thinness, it is liable to do. When the cells intended for holding the winter's provision are filled, they are always closed with waxen lids, and are never reopened till the whole of the honey in the unfilled cells is expended. The waxen lids are thus formed : the bees first construct a ring of wax within the verge of the cells, to which other rings are successively added, till the aperture of the cell is finally closed by a lid composed of concentric circles. LEGENDS OF LAKE SUPERIOR. )HIS extraordinary sheet of water — the largest fresh water lake in the world — appears to have made a profound impression upon the minds of the early travelers along its shores. Its vastness and isolation, with the wild rocks along its borders and the wolf-haunted forests that shaded the adjacent country, excited emotions, in which sublimity was mingled with awe. In the following lines, an attempt is made to embody these associations : " Father of Lakes ! " thy waters bend Beyond the eagle's utmost view, When, throned in heaven, he sees thee send Back to the sky its world of blue. [110] LEGENDS OF LAKE SDPEEIOB. Ill Boundless and deep the forests weave Their twilight shade thy borders o'er, And towering cliffs, Uke giants, heave Their rugged forms along thy shore. Pale Silence, 'mid thy hollow caves. With listening ear in sadness broods. Or stai-tled Echo, o'er thy waves. Sends the hoarse wolf-notes of thy woods. Nor can the light canoes that glide Across thy breast, like things of air, Chase from thy lone and level tide. The spell of stUlness deepening there. Yet round this waste of wood and wave. Unheard, unseen, a spmt lives. That, breathing o'er each rock and cave. To all, a wild, strange aspect gives. The thunder-riven oak, that flings Its grisly arms athwart the sky, A sudden, startling image brings To the lone traveler's kindled eye. * The gnarled and braided boughs, that show Their dim foi-ms in the forest shade, Like wrestling serpents seem, and throw Fantastic horrors through the glade. The very echoes round this shore. Have caught a strange and gibbering tone. For they have told the war-whopp o'er. Till the wild chorus is their own. Wave of the wilderness, adieu ! Adieu, ye rocks, ye wilds, ye woods! RoU on, thou element of blue, And fill these awful solitudes! 112 LEGENDS OF LAKE SUPBEIOE. Thou hast no tale to tell of Man — God is thy theme. Ye sounding caves, Whisper of Him, whose mighty plan Deems as a bubble all your waves ! This was written some five-and-twenty years ago ; since that time, the southern shores of this isolated sea have become the haunts of civilized men, who are beginning to make the woods resound with the ax and the anvil, which a few years since echoed only with the wolf-howl and the war-whoop. But, as the aboriginal inhabit- ants are fading away, their history and their legends acquire an interest which they never before possessed. Thus it is, that we begin to read with attention and curiosity the Indian myths and fables, collected by Mr. Schoolceaft, and especially those of the Chippewas, who dwelt in the vicinity of Lake Superior. As might have been anticipated, it is among the inhabitants of these cold northern regions, that "we find the greatest number and the most imaginative of these legends. Here the story of Paup- PUK-KEEWis is made to answer the purpose of our tales of Blue Beaed and Jack the Giant Killee. The vernal equinox in the north generally takes place while the ground is covered with .snow, and winter still wears a polar aspect ; storms of wind, and light drifting snow, expressively called poudre by the French, and pee-wun by the Indians, fill the atmosphere, and render it impos- sible to distinguish objects at a short distance. The fine powdery flakes of snow are driven into the smallest crevices of buildings and fixtures, and seem to be endowed with a subtle power of insinuation, which renders Indian joiner-work but a poor defence. It is not uncommon for the sleeper, on waking up in the morning, to find heaps of snow where he had supposed himself quite secure on lying down. Such seasons are, almost invariably, times of scarcity and hunger with the Indians, for the light snows have buried up the traps of the hunters, and the fishermen are deterred from exer- cising their customary skill in decoying fish through the orifices LEGENDS OF LAKE SUPERIOR. 113 cut in the ice. They are often reduced to the greatest straits, and compelled to exercise their utmost ingenuity to keep their chil- dren from starving. Abstinence on the part of the elder members of the family is then regarded both as a duty and a virtue. Every effort is made to satisfy the importunity of the little ones for food, and if there be a story-teller in the lodge, he is sure to draw upon his cabin lore to amuse their minds and beguile their time, as an alleviation of their sufferings. In these storms, when each inmate of the lodge has his conaus, or wrapper, tightly drawn around him, and all are cowering about the cabin fire, should some sudden puff of wind drive a volume of light snow into the lodge, it would scarcely happen but that some one of the group would cry out, "Ah, Paup-puk-keewis is now gathering his harvest ! " — an expression which has the effect to put them all into good humor. For an account of the Indian hero here alluded to, we must refer the reader to Mr. Schoolcraft's work, which we have already mentioned in a former part of this volume. We quote however, another story, which seems to show, that although the white settlers of America have never been able to induce the European fairies to settle in this country, the Chippewas, around Lake Superior, had long ago peopled these regions with beings of similar endowments. %^t Itririan ^airus. The Pukwudjininees, or fairies of Lake Superior, had one of their most noted places of residence at the great sand dunes of Naigow Wudjoo, called by the French, Les grandes Sables. Here they were frequently seen on bright moonlight evenings, and the fishermen, while sitting in their canoes on the lake, often saw them playing their pranks, and skipping over the hills. There was a grove of pines in that vicinity, called the Manito Wac, or Spirit Wood, into which they might be seen to flee on 8 114 LEGENDS OF LAKE SUPERIOR. the approach of evening ; and there is a romantic little lake on those elevated sand-hills, not far back from the Great Lake, on the shores of which their tracks could be plainly seen in the sand. These tracks were not bigger than little children's footprints, and the spirits were often seen in the act of vanishing behind the little pine trees. They loved to dance in the most lonesome places, and were always full of glee and merriment, for their little voices could be plainly heard. These little men — the pukwudjininees — were not deeply mali- cious, but rather delighted in mischief and freaks ; and would sometimes steal away a fisherman's paddle, or come at night and pluck the hunter's feathers out of his cap, in the lodge, or pilfer away some of his game or fish. On one occasion, they went so far as to entice away into their sacred grove, and carry off, a chief's daughter — a small but beautiful maiden, who had been always inclined to be pensive, and took her seat often in these lonesome haunts. From her baby-name, Neenizu, my dear life, she was called Leelinau ; but she never attained to much size, remaining very slender, but of the most pleasing and sylph-like features, with very bright black eyes, and little feet. Her mother often cautioned her of the danger of visiting these lonely fairy haunts, and predicted playfully that she would one day be carried off by the pukwudjininees, for they were very frolicsome, mis- chievous, and full of tricks. To divert her mind from these recluse moods and tastes, the mother endeavored to bring about an alliance with a neighboring forester, who, though older than herself, had the reputation of being an excellent hunter and an active man, and he had even been creditably on the war-path, though he had never brought home a scalp. To these suggestions, Leelinau had turned rather a deaf ear. She had imbibed ideas of a spiritual life and existence which she fancied could only be enjoyed in the Indian elysium ; and instructed as she was by the old story-tellers, she could not do otherwise than deem the light and sprightly little men who made the fairy footprints, as emissaries from the Happy Laind. LEGENDS OF LAKE SUPERIOR. 115 For this land she sighed and pined. Bloodshed and the taking of life, she said, the Great Spirit did not approve, and they could never be agreeable to minds of a pure and spiritual mould ; and she longed to go to a region where there were no weeping, no cares, and no deaths. If her parents laughed at these notions as childish, her only resource was silence, or she merely revealed her emotions in her eyes. She was capable of the deepest concealment, and locked up in her heart what she feared to utter, or uttered only to deceive. This proved her ruin. At length, after a series of conversations with her parents on the subject, she announced her willingness to accede to the matrimonial proposals, and the day was fixed for this purpose. She dressed herself in the finest manner possible, wreathing flowers in her hair and carrying a bunch of wild-flowers, mixed with tassels of the pine-tree, in her hand. One only request she made, which was to make a farewell visit to the sacred grove of the fairies before she was led to the nuptial bower. This was granted on the evening of the proposed ceremony, while the bridegroom and his friends gathered in her father's lodge, and waited her return. But they waited in vain. Night came, but Leblinau was never more seen, except by a fisherman on the lake shore, who was persuaded that he had seen her go off with one of the tall fairies, known as the Prince of Green Pines, with green plumes nodding o'er his brows ; and it is supposed that she is still roving with him over the Elysian Fields. S o'er a lawn, one autumn day, A. child was sauntering, full of play, There came a light and airy thing, Upon the breezy zephyr's wing. Lit by the morning sun it shone — Yet on it glided, still and lone. Near and more near the feather flew, And caught the child's admiring view ; She reached and sought the waif to clasp, But lo ! it shunned her eager grasp ; And rising on the eddying air. Flew swift, as if the chase to dare. With outspread hand and longing view, The little maiden did pursue, Up hill and down, the romping race — Her cheeks all glowing in the chase, Her locks unbound, in dancing curls, Like morn-light on a river's whirls. Thus on she flew, her brow all bright With silvery hope — life's sunrise light. [116] THE CHASE OP THE GOSSAMER. 117 At last the soft coquettish spray, Paused gently in its airy way — As if, perchance, it changed its thought, And now was willing to be caught: The little maiden made a grasp, And seized and crushed it, in her clasp! Let maundering age, with grisly frown, Compare life's joys to thistle down, That woo like fairies on their wings. But caught and crushed, are worthless things : A better moral let us trace In this light tale — a gossamer chase. Look on that little maiden now, With health and beauty on her brow! What though the fickle toy she caught Is crushed and gone — a thing of nought — Yet still the chase was glorious fan. And joyous all her pulses run, While smiling lip and glowing cheek. Her laughing triumph gayly speak! Ah, simple child, let others spurn — I choose of thee a truth to learn : 'Tis Heaven that teaches thee to seize Light joys that float on life's fresh breeze ; Gentle and pure, they cheer thy way. And give thee grace — for work or play! THE ARMADILLO. >HIS animal is well worthy a place in our book of artificial and created wonders. Amid all the infinite devices and contrivances in nature, which distinguish the multifarious kingdom of quadrupeds, nothing appears more curious than those which belong to the Armadillo. This is a flat, squat, corpulent creature, its body some fourteen inches long, with thick short legs, a long tail, little stupid eyes, a pointed, keen-scented nose, and erect, sharp, quick-hearing ears. But the most remarkable thing about this creature is his armor, or coat-of-mail, which consists of three hard bony bucklers, one on the head, one on the shoulders, and one along the back, extend- ing to the rump. These. are so measured and fitted to the body as completely to protect the flesh, even down the sides, and partially covering the belly. This crust greatly resembles the plate-armor of the middle ages, in which knights errant rode about Christendom, to win glory at tournaments, or in delivering [118] THE ARMADILLO. 119 fair dames shut up in enchanted castles, or in personal conflicts, incited by the mere love of a free fight. Nevertheless, despite this provision of nature, seeming to invite him to become a warrior, the armadillo is a shy little beast, living in his burrow by day, and only stealing forth at night in quest of such innocent food as fruits, roots, maize, worms, and insects, that chance to come in its way. It does not, however, disdain carrion, and is a great frequenter of the pampas, where, with other wild animals, it has a perpetual feast on the carcasses of the cattle killed by the people for their skins. It then gets enormously fat, and being roasted in the shell, is esteemed a great delicacy. It is an exceedingly amiable thing in the arma- dillo to furnish a shell to be cooked in, especially on the pampas, where plates and gridirons aire scarce, and this merit is duly acknowledged by the hunters. In case of danger, the armadillo runs away, if there is a chance, and with remarkable celerity too, considering its short legs and dumpy form. If it is captured, it does not bite, but rolls itself into a ball, its vital parts completely shielded by its buckler. If it is pursued among high rocks and cliffs, it will pack itself in its case, and tumble down from precipice to precipice, till it reaches the bottom and is safe from the reach of its enemy. The only instance in which it seems to become a robber, like the knights of old, is in occasionally ripping open an ant-hill, and devouring the inhabitants without distinction of age, sex, or condition. There are several species of this curious animal, but, with various peculiarities, they have a general resemblance to each other. They are common in Brazil and the states of Buenos Ayres. In the woods and pampas, they are particularly abundant. The inhab- itants take them in traps, at night. They burrow with amazing facility : if one of them is discovered at a distance from his retreat, he will sometimes bury himself, by making a new hole in the earth, and thus escape. They are great breeders, and bring forth five and six young ones at a time. Nevertheless, the mother has but four teats, so that some of these little fellows 120 THE ARMADILLO. are in much the same condition as ofiSce-seekers, applying to a government just inaugurated, and which has always more appli- cants than places. Finally, we have to state, that the armadillo can be easily tamed, and might thus be multiplied like rabbits, in a warren. In some future age of the world, we shall no doubt see this done, and we may then have armadillo shows, as well as cattle fairs and hen conventions. GROTTO OP P08II.IP0, NAPLES. )HE City of Naples, for many reasons, is one of the most interesting cities in the world. Its picturesque form, rising in a crescent, terrace above terrace ; its lovely bay, leaping and laughing in the sunshine ; its delicious climate, seem- ino- to be a perpetual sermon in behalf of mirth and music ; its ° [121] 122 NAPLES. history, reaching back to the early days of Greece, and finally, its terrific neighbor, Vesuvius, hoary with centuries, and blasted by its own convulsions — altogether form a spectacle of unrivaled beauty and sublimity. It is a city of picturesque and striking contrasts, and to an American is full of things strange and beau- tiful, grotesque and graceful, merry and mournful. As I visited it in 1855, 1 propose to give a few glimpses of the city, noting only those objects which seem to be specially worthy of notice. The houses of Naples are chiefly built of a soft olive-covered sand-stone, of which there is an abundance in and around the city : these, on account of their light color, give the place a cheerful and even gay appearance. The stone is easily wrought, being less hard than brick. When exposed to the weather it becomes friable, and is soon injured and destroyed. It is therefore only useful for interior work, or when it is to be covered with stucco. But it is an exceedingly cheap and convenient material, and has no doubt contributed largely to the growth of the city. For the streets and great public roads, which are admirably paved, flat slabs of tufa are used, of which there are numerous quarries — the whole country, in the neighborhood, being underlaid with it. For public buildings, requiring a durable material, tufa is also used. The grottoes and catacombs around Naples are among its won- ders. That of Posilipo, which is a tunnel 2,250 feet long, 22 feet wide, and 25 to 70 feet high, is in fact a public thoroughfare through the rocks consisting of stratified tufa, leading at once by a short cut, from the sea shore into the country. But for this, it would be necessary to travel round the cliffs, a distance of several miles. It is ventilated by holes cut through the roof, and is lighted by lamps. Its history is traced back to Augustus ; but there are several other perforations of even greater extent, which appear to be the work of the ancient colonists. Of this nature are the Catacombs, which are believed to extend to Pozzuoli, a distance of over eight miles, embracing also numerous ramifications. It is probable they were partly wrought for build- NAPLES. 123 ing materials, and partly as passage-ways. It is conjectured that they had also, in remote ages, some connection with the mys- terious rites of pagan superstition. In later times, they have served the purposes of sepulture, and even now, the coverings, the inscriptions, and the mouldering bones of the tombs, are abundant. In some places, large chapels have been wrought out, and numer- ous legends of saints and martyrs are related at particular localities, by the guides. The great Gallery of Naples, the Museo Borbonico, has numerous interesting relics derived from these mysterious chambers. ^ Naples, though older than Rome, displays few present antiqui- ties. The early structures of the Phoenicians, Greeks, and others, who settled and inhabited it, have been mostly buried and hidden from the view, by succeeding generations. Could its foundations be upturned, as in the case of Pompeii, no doubt the vestiges of the various races who have been its masters, might be found in abundance. But at present it seems to be almost wholly a modern city. Nevertheless, its museum, just mentioned, supplied with historical mementoes from the surrounding country, is the richest in the world. Pompeii, Herculaneum, Bai«, Cumje, and oftier adjacent places, have furnished it with innumerable treasures, to which are added some of the finest ancient Greek and Roman sculptures in the world, collected from various sources. This city has 257 churches, a sufficient indication of the religious bias of the people. Many of them are sumptuous, but there is no St. Peter's. The Cathedral of San Gennaro still exhibits the miracle of the " Liquefaction of the Blood " of its patron saint, who was decapitated 1500 years ago, and some of whose blood was caught and preserved in two phials. For three centuries, the performance of this miracle, which takes place twice a year, and is repeated eight successive days, has been regarded by the people of Naples as their greatest holiday. The masses believe it to be a genuine miracle, and not long since, an article in a leading American Catholic organ, spoke of it as a dispensation of Provi- dence, intended to compensate the people here for the dangers of 124 NAPLES. their situation, in the midst of a region of earthquakes and vol- canoes ! A staunch Irish Catholic, however, whose acquaintance I made at Naples, and who is a resident here, told me under his breath, that it was known by all well-informed people to be a trick, but as it was considered of good tendency, in supporting the faith of the ignorant, it was sustained alike by the Church and the Government. The general explanation of the miracle is, that the seeming blood is composed of some chemical substance which melts in the warmth of the hand, communicated to the phials as they are handed from one person to another. I may here remark, that the crowds of people, especially of the lower classes, which throng to the churches on the numerous festival days, are immense. The idleness, and beggary, so preval- ent here, are largely attributable to these constant interruptions of labor, and encouragements to dissipation. The people are particularly delighted with the theatrical show and pantomimic pomp of the Church. The procession in celebration of the recent discovery of the immaculacy of the Virgin, headed by the bare- headed King and his nobles, was two miles long, and took seven hours to pass a given point. Nowhere has the Madonna's new dignity been hailed with more enthusiasm than here, especially by the lazzaroni and the street eaters of maccaroni. The friars who preach to these fellows in the open air, tell them that the Virgin, being now declared by the Church to be free from orig- inal sin, has much greater power in heaven than before, and therefore it is a prodigious advantage to them, as they can pray to her for blessings on themselves, their friends, the Church, and the city of Naples, with more confidence than ever ! There are two royal palaces in Naples, and several in the vicinity. They are not too large for King Bomba, who is a giant of a man — six feet high, and of enormous proportions. The old families, once so rich and renowned, have dwindled down to about twenty. Some of their palaces are still sumptuous, but their glory is gone. Several of their former occupants are lying in prison among the hundreds— perhaps I ought to say thousands— of NAPLES. 125 victims to the jealousy and vengeance of the miserable tyrant who holds the throne. The lazzaroni are less numerous than formerly, and have lost something of their distinctive character. It is said, notwithstanding the misgovernment of the country, that Naples has improved and is still improving ; the result of that irresistible tendency to progress which is now visible over the whole world. After all, things here are not worse, nay, not so bad as might have been expected. What might not be hoped from the eight millions of the Two Sicilies, under a good and wise government ? In spite of the indolence prevalent here, there is a large amount of active and productive industry, though far less than there should be. On approaching Naples, one can hardly fail to be struck with the number of athletic men and vigorous women at work, with good effect, in the fields. The ground is usually tilled with the spade, the plow being little used. Women, in troops of twelve to twenty, hoe the trenches between the rows of wheat. They all have white cloths laid over their heads, after the Roman fashion, and invariably sport red petticoats, with boddices of green or yellow. Gold ear-rings and silver combs are universal with these female cultivators, even though barefoot. I had noticed the carrying of burdens of various kinds upon the head at Marseilles, where there is a set of women devoted to the practice. In Naples, the custom is more general. I have seen here three men carrying a grand piano in this way. It is amazing to see the immense burdens which are thus constantly transported from place to place. The head, here, seems to take the place of the hand-cart or wheelbarrow with us. What we dignify with the title of knowledge-box, and conceive to be the throne of reason, is at Naples a servile drudge, and though not without brains, it is treated like -a beast of burden. Among the manufactures of Naples, maccaroni takes a high rank. Along the road to Vesuvius, you see enormous quantities of it hung out on poles to dry. If I might speak of cooking it, I should say that the custom of basting it with gravy at Naples, is an abominable abuse of a very elegant invention. As to eating 126 NAPLES. it, the Neapolitans may challenge the world. It is one of the amusements of the stranger to order a quantity, and call on the loafers around to come and devour it. Discreetly ambitious to see all that ought to be seen, I bought a half dollar's worth, in a crowded street, and had it cooked. When it was reeking with fat and parmesan, a shout was set up : " Ho ! ye eaters of maccaroni, come to the feast ! " And come they did. First come, first served. Two huge paws were suddenly thrust into the dish, and down it went into the cavernous gullets of two lazzaroni, hot and hissing as it was. It disappeared as if it was plunged into bottomless pits. There was no strangling and no choking. It was done as easily as the " twa dips and twa swallops" of treacle, hawked about in Edinburgh for a " bawbee." Two such salamander gluttons I do not expect to see again. The " working" of coral is carried to great perfection here ; and bracelets in this material may be had at prices as high as $150. A single breastpin often sells for $100. The carvings in lava are beautiful, and reach to the rank of a fine art. Nearly every poetic and historical subject of Greek and Roman antiquity, may be had exquisitely wrought in these charming reliefs. The beautiful bay and the enchanting shores round Naples give encouragement to a multitude of boatmen, who are allowed a stand in the most favored part of the city. On a fine day, trips to Capri and Ischia are easily and safely made, and nothing can be more delightful. The resources of Naples for boat- sailing are unrivaled, both in the pleasure of the excursions themselves, and in the interesting scenes to which they introduce the excursionist. I pass by, unnoticed, the long processions of priests, frequently visible in this gay and picturesque city, as well as the masses of troops constantly seen marching in one direction or another : I say nothing of the lugubrious fraternities of misericordia, passing the dead on their way to the tomb. All these have been often described. I must even let the harlequin costumes of the country- people, in the market-places, go undescribed. But there is one , NAPLES. 127 conspicuous inhabitant of this city to which justice has not been done, and therefore I beg leave to say a few words respecting him. The Ass is an animal not very common iij our country ; but in Europe, Asia, and Africa, it is really one of the great, common blessings of society. It is too slow for us : we must have railways and electric telegraphs ; but in many eastern lands, it is exactly suited to the lazy, languid habits of the people. In France, Switzerland, Italy, and Greece, it is particularly the friend and helper of the poor. Those who cannot afford to ride in coaches drawn by horses, can still own an ass. He will toil for them, and ask little in return. He will take kicks and stripes, and still patiently carry his master on his back, or transport his vegetables to market. He will bear any burden he can stand under, and will be satisfied with thistles and pure water for his living. In some of the cities of Italy, and especially at Naples, there is an astonishing number of these animals. This place is famous for the incessant outcries of people selling various things in the streets. A love of noise seems to characterize this buzzing race of perambulating traders. The outcries of venders of friction- matches and oranges, and other trifles, are absolutely deafening. The vociferation is usually in proportion to the insignificance of the articles offered for sale. But the eloquence of these gifted sons of thunder, is quite outdone by that of the ass. Among the obtrusive sounds of this sonorous city, his voice is conspicuous. It begins in the morning and ceases not till midnight. As a general thing, it may be remarked that the music of nature is sad : the cricket on the hearth, the nightingale in the grove, the owl in the wood, the wolf in the glen, the jackal in the desert, all have melancholy and plaintive voices, set to melancholy melodies. But the bray of the Neapolitan ass is deeper, wider, more desponding. It seems the wail of one not only broken-hearted, but utterly without hope. It begins in woe and ends in despair. It sounds like a rasp in agony, or a file giving up the ghost. It is half tender, and. half 128 NAPLES. misanthropic. It is the outpouring of a bosom overwhelmed with sorrow and rendered malignant by injury. It is now a bellow and now a sigh — a mingled blessing and curse. It rings far and wide upon the air. In the city, it echoes from street to street ; in the adjacent country, it trembles from the valley up the hill-side to the mountain top. It is strange the world can laugh at such sad melody — which, in fact, seems a pathetic appeal to earth and heaven against abuse, injustice, and imposition. You see one of these mild, patient, sapient creatures crawling along, like Issachae of old, between two burdens, and, as he staggers beneath his load, you laugh to hear him bray an awful bray, as if he would blow out his bowels in the effort! And yet, historically, the ass is the most honored of brutes. Our Savior rode an ass into Jerusalem ; Bonapaete crossed the Alps on a mule — the ass's first cousin. Esop, as well as other sensible fabulists, has made him the oracle of wit and wisdom. Balaam's ass spoke, and to the purpose. The instincts of the ass are as marvelous as his virtues. Nay, if rightly viewed, he is beautiful ; for, of all beasts, he contributes most to the em- bellishment of a landscape. Having thus done some justice to this amiable and excellent creature, I must say a word of another animal, conspicuous in this city of strong lights and deep shadows— namely, the Goat. This is usually associated with the ass, and, like that, is given up to a sort of general contempt merely because it is a friend of the poor ; but to me.it is interesting, because it is not only useful, but it is one of the liveliest and most cheerful and sociable of four-footed things. When young, it is the very personification of grace, frolic and fun ; when old, it is sage, familiar, industrious, and moral. In our country, this animal is comparatively rare : with our rich pastures we can afford to keep cows, and therefore do not need to rely upon the saving, economical goat, who can get a living amid barren hill-sides and moss-covered rocks. But what would Naples do without goats ? Indeed, what would Italy, and Greece, and Switzerland, and the Tyrol, do without them ? NAPLES , 129 lu Naples, they are a study. You must know tliat neither this city nor the vicinity has any pastures. All the arable land is occupied with gardens and vineyards. The few cows which furnish milk to the rich and to the hotels, are fed on grass, cut by hand, and on grain and garden vegetables. The avenues to the city are at evening crowded with women carrying fresh bundles of cow-feed on their heads. What would the rest of the people do for milk, if it were not for 'the goats ? These creatures come into the city at evening by thousands, attended by their herdsmen. In the morning they go forth again to their grazing, such as it is. They carry little bells on their necks, and their tinkling at even-tide and early morn, is a gentle kind of music, soon associated with all recollections of Naples. In passing through the grotto of Posilipo, I have seen at once twenty flocks of thirty each. They come and go with the steady march of so many sages. I never saw among them a single reprobate. They get their living in the steepling rocks and dizzy declivities around the city, and thus convert from idle waste to useful purposes, the vagrant vegetation of the sterile portions of the soil. Their milk is thin and tasteless, say the epicures, but it is better than none. Nay, the physicians of Naples prescribe a tumbler of goat's milk every morning about spring time, as a guarantee of health for the season. What admirable economists, what thrifty graziers, what blessed mediciners are these creatures ! Yet the world gives them a name which is synonymous witli contempt. " As silly as a goat," says the proverb ! The world is certainly wrong ; and so think the Neapolitans^ for in truth they cherish these animals with all the kindness of fellow-feeling and mutual affection. There are few sights more interesting to me, than the boy or girl goat-herds in the midst of their flocks, upon the craggy hill-sides of Italy. However listless may seem the master of the flock, his eye is upon each and all. A straggler is readily brought in by a whistle or a call. The darino- and diligence of the goats are marvelous. From morning 130 NAPLES. to night they cease not their activity. They climb giddy rocks, and fearlessly kneel down on the edges and reach over their heads to get at the tufts of grass, sprouting from the fissures. It makes one dizzy to see these desperate feats, which are performed, how- ever, with perfect coolness. They pluck the leaves from briars and thorns ; they gather succulent stalks from dark ravines and hidden crevices ; they stand upon their hind legs and strip off the leaves from the drooping branches of the trees. And all this is done with a neat dexterity, and a crisp, hearty manner, betokening cheerfulness, good will, and good appetite. Others may laugh at these creatures, but I claim the privilege of thinking them a very moral and picturesque generation. TEMPLE OF ABOO-SIMBEL AS IT HOW APPEAKB. THE ROCK TEMPLE OF ABOO-SIMBEL. I OW remote — how vast are the historical associations which the very name of Egypt excites in the mind ! The annals of this country not only embrace the entire period of sacred history from Abkaham to the Christian dispen- sation, but, in its profane history, it seems to issue at once from the. mists of time, already a great and powerful nation. To us, Egypt has no historical infancy. Evidence remains in the ruins of her vast structures, of her maturity four thousand years ago. These are the records of her social condition at that period ; and the earliest historians, and the latest and most profound inquirers, confirm the claim which her imperishable pyramids and temples offer to her ancient greatness. The discovery by which the hieroglyphic records of Egyptian history have become legible, and a lost language recovered, is one almost unparalleled in human research. It is not more than ;i3n 132 THE ROCK TBHPLE OF ABOO-SIMBEL, TEMPLE OF ABOO - 812IBEL, RE8T0KBD. thirty years ago that this discovery was made : before that time, our knowledge of this most ancient people was chiefly derived from Herodotus, who traveled in Egypt at a period low in the date of her history, though this historian is the most ancient of profane authorities. He wrote on Egypt in the fifth century B. C. ; , and from materials furnished by tradition and the priesthood, sketched her history. But he wrote of a people whose high civilization and established government had existed two thousand years before his visit to their land, and a thousand years after the THE BOCK TEMPLE OF ABOO-SIMBEL. 133 eighteenth dynasty of her kings — the most glorious period of her annals. When the " Father of History" visited Egypt, she had fallen from her greatness, and was under the government of the Persians ; but she had been conquered and ruled by the Ethiopians and Saites, before the destructive curse of the Persian invasion under Cambtses, which occurred 520 B. C. The hatred of this monarch to the people of the Valley of the Nile led him to destroy many of their monuments : the strength of others defied his power ; he • tried in vain to demolish those records which are still legible to us, the " hand-writing on the wall " of their own history. These hieroglyphics, which had become and remained a mystery for nearly two thousand years, have been disclosed in our own day. The very writings which might have been, and doubtless were read by Abraham, which were familiar to Joseph, and in which Moses " was learned," still remain to us. ' These inscriptions on their monuments were left by the ancient Egyptians themselves ; , they are nOt copies or translations, but. the actual characters which these patriarchs might have beheld, and which we can still behold — the original traces on stone, from which we can yet read much of the history of those who left them there, three or four thousand years ago. Among all the stupendous monuments of antiquity found in the valley of the Nile, nothing strikes the beholder with more aston- ishment than the remains of the great Temple of Aboo-Simbel, which are situated in Nubia, on the west bank of the Nile, in latitude 22° 22'. At this place, it appears, that the valley of this river is contracted to a narrow space, and on the left side consists of a wall of rocks : this has been fashioned, thousands of years ago, into the fronts of two edifices, called the lesser and larger Temples of Aboo-Simbel. Both were discovered by Burckhaedt ; the first he called the Temple of Isis ; the latter, which exceeds in magnitude any other work of the kind, is now regarded as having been erected by Sesostris, or as he is more generally called, Eemeses II, who flourished nearly forty centuries ago. 134 THE BOOK TEMPLE OP ABOO-SIMBBL. The discovery of this extraordinary temple was made by Burck- HAEDT, on his return from Mahass,' after an ineffectual attempt to reach Dongola, in the spring of 1813. He had visited the lesser temple, and having, as he supposed, seen all the antiquities here, he was about to ascend the sandy side of the mountain by the same path that he had descended, when "having," as he says, "luckily turned more to the southward, I fell in with what is still visible, the front of a temple, consisting of four immense colossal statues, cut out of the rock, at a distance of about two hundred yards from the lesser temple. They stand in a deep recess, excavated in the mountain ; but it is greatly to be regretted that they are now almost entirely buried beneath the sands, which are blown down here, in torrents. The entire head and part of the breast and arms of one of the statues are yet above the surface." In 1816, Bblzoni ascended the Nile into Nubia, with the inten- tion of opening the great Temple of Aboo-Simbel, and commenced his undertaking ; but the chiefs of the country threw so many obstacles in his way, that at length his funds failed, and he was obliged to discontinue, but not until he had cleared downwards twenty feet in the front of the temple. It is remarkable that this is the first time the natives learned the use of money as a recom- pense for labor. In the spring of 1817, he returned to his excavations at Aboo- Simbel,. accompanied by Mr. Beechby. At Philce, they had the good fortune to be joined by Captains Irby and Mangles, then on their journey in the East. The united exertions of these gen- tlemen accomplished the entrance to the Great Temple, in defiance of the dangers and difficulties thrown in their way, and which are most interestingly narrated in Ieby and Mangles' travels. Belzoni and his friends removed forty feet of sand, which had accumulated above the top of the door, before the recent excava- tions ; but they carried them no further than three feet below the top of the entrance, when they effected their passage into this tem- ple, and saw the most extraordinary work that remains to us of the age of Eemeses II. Bblzoni describes its fagade as one hundred • THE BOCK TEMPLE OP ABOO-SIMBEL. 135 and seventeen feet wide and eighty-six feet high ; the height from the top of the cornice to the top of the door being sixty-six feet six inches, and the height of the door twenty feet. Each of these enormous statues — the largest in Egypt or Nubia, except the Sphinx of the Pyramid — measures from the shoulder to the elbow fifteen feet six inches, the face seven feet, the ears three feet six inches, across the shoulders twenty-five feet four inches. Their height, as they sit, is about fifty-one feet, not including the caps, which are about fourteen feet. These, the most beautiful colossi yet found in any of the Egyptian ruins, represent Remesbs II ; they are seated on thrones attached to the rock. On the sides, and on the front angles of the thrones, and between the legs of the statues, are sculptured female figures, supposed to be of his wife and children ; they are well preserved, though the material is a'coarse, friable gritstone. During the exe- cution, defects in the stone were filled and smoothed with stucco, and afterwards painted, of which traces yet remain. The upper part of the second figure has fallen, but the faces of these colossi exhibit a beauty of expression the more striking as it is unlooked for in statues of such dimensions. Such is the external aspect of this amazing structure. Its enormous proportions — the awful repose impressed upon the countenances of the gigantic images — its manifest formation of a part of the solid rock— all combine to produce an impression of almost overwhelming sublimity upon the beholder. "When the inquirer goes back to the time of its builder, an epoch of perhaps four thousand years ago, and reflects upon the appearance which it then presented, and especially during the solemn and sumptuous religious festivities of that remote era* — contrasting all with the utter solitude and desolation which now reign over the scene — it is impossible not to experience the most profound emotions of wonder and of awe. * The engraving, p. 132, is intended to represent this temple, as it appeared in its original condition. 136 THE EOCK TEMPLE OP ABOO-SIMBEL. But however deep may be the feelings thus inspired, they are still enhanced when we come to enter the temple itself. The access was accomplished under the superintendence, and chiefly by the active; personal exertions, of the travelers, whose names will always be associated with Aboo-Simbel — amidst difficulties, threats, privations and excessive labor, " and continued," says Belzoni, " during twenty-two days, besides eight days in 1816, after working eight hours a day, with the thermometer in the shade, at an average of 114° Fahrenheit." As soon as the sand had been cleared away three feet from the top of the door, these determined nien entered, and enjoyed the reward of their labor in bringing again to human sight the finest and most extensive of the excavated temples of Nubia, after its concealment from the knowledge of mankind for probably 3,000 years. " From what we could perceive at the first view," says Belzoni, " it was evidently a large place, but our astonishment increased, when we found it to be one of the most magnificent temples, enriched with beautiful intaglios, paintings, colossal figures, &c. We entered at first into a large pronaos, fifty-seven feet long and fifty-two wide, supported by two rows of square pillars, in a line from the front door to the door of the sekos. Each pillar has a figure not unlike those of Medinet-Aboo, finely executed, and very little injured by time ; the tops of their turbans reach the ceiling, which is about thirty feet high ; the pillars are about five feet and a half square. Both these and the walls are covered with beautiful hieroglyphics, the style of which is somewhat superior, or at least bolder, than .that of any others in Egypt, not only in the workmanship, but also in the subject. They exhibit battles, storming of castles, triumphs over the Ethiopians, sacrifices, &c. Some of the colors are much injured by the close and heated atmosphere, the temperature of which was so hot, that the ther- mometer must have risen to above 130°." Beyond the pronaos are two other chambers before reaching the adytum, or sanctuary ; out of each of the central chambers of THE ROCK TEMPLE OP ABOO-SIMBEL. 137 the temple, doors lead into lateral chambers ; altogether, eight rooms open on the grand hall. The entire length excavated from the entrance to the adytum, is estimated at nearly two hun- dred feet, beside the colossi and the slope of the facade. Mr. Roberts, the artist, who has painted such admirable sketches of the wonders of Egypt and the Holy Land, says, " On descend- ing into the splendid hall, over the sand, which again almost reaches to the top of the door, a double row is seen of colossal figures, representing Remeses the Great, attached to square pil- lars, which appear to support the roof ; the placid expression of these statues is still finer than that of the colossi without. There are four on each side, their arms crossed on their breasts, and bearing in their hands the crook and the scourge — emblems of government or power ; those on one side wear the high conical cap, and on the other, what is called the corn-measure. The walls and pillars are covered with the most interesting sculptured representations of the victories of Remeses, painted in vivid colors, and in excellent preservation.; across the roof are repe- titions of the sacred falcon. " The principal decorations of the interior are the historical subjects, relating to the conquests of Remeses II, represented in the great hall. ' A large tablet, containing the date of his first year, extends over the great part, of the north wall ; another, between the two last pillars on the opposite side of this hall, of his thirty-fifth year, has been added long after the temple was completed." Such is one of the scenes found in Nubia, a country almost hid- den from the world for centuries, and even now only known to us by its crumbling ruins and fleeting traditions. "What a striking contrast does this majestic antiquity, this imposing desolation, decay and death, present to the aspects of things around us here in America, where all is recent, youthful and progressive, yet cheerful as the hues of the rainbow 1 Who can venture to foretell what shall be the condition of things here, when four thousand years shall have rolled away ? One point is certain, that whether 138 THE BOOK TEMPLE OP ABOO-SIMBEL. the nations shall live or die, no temple like that of Aboo-Simbel will here exist, to chronicle in rock-hewn architecture, a gigantic image like that of Sesosteis, which Time itself cannot destroy. Such things only belong to the past ! THE USES OF ASTRONOMY. ^N the 28th of August, 1856, the Dudley Observatory, at Albany,* was inaugurated with imposing ceremonies. The chief feature of the occasion, was the Oration by Edward Everett, which is not merely remarkable for its beauty of thought and expression, but its important historical facts, and admirable illustrations of discovery, art, and science. The tone of feeling, throughout the performance, is elevating, and not unfrequently rises into sublimity. We cannot, therefore, do a better service to our readers than to give it a place in these pages. The Oration is as follows : * The Dudley Observatory stands a mile from the Capitol, in the city of Albany, on the crest of a steep hill: Its form is that of a Latin cross. It is of two stories, and* is quite the most elegant structure in the United States, devoted to a similar object. The astronomical instruments provided for the institution, are of the most recent and anproved construction. * ^^ [139] 140 THEUSESOFASTRONOMY. " Assembled as we are, under your auspices, in this ancient and hospitable city, for an object indicative of a highly-advanced stage of scientific culture, it is natural, in the first place, to cast a historical glance at the past. It seems almost to surpass belief, though an unquestioned fact, that more than a century should have^passed away, after Cabot had discovered the coast of North America for England, before any knowledge was gained of the noble river on which your city stands, and which was destined by Providence to determine, in after times, the position of the com- mercial metropolis of the Continent. It is true that Verazzano, a bold and sagacious Florentine navigator, in the service of France, had entered the Narrows in 1524, which he describes as a very large river, deep at its mouth, which forced its way through steep hills to the sea ; but though he, like all the naval adventurers of that age, was sailing westward in search of a shorter passage to India, he left this part of the coast without any attempt to ascend the.river ; nor can it be gathered from his narrative that he believed it to penetrate far into the interior. f ogage of Ptttirrick fuirsoir. "Near a hundredT years elapsed before that great thought acquired substance and form. In the spring of 1609, the heroic but unfortunate Hudson, one of the brightest names in the history of English maritime adventure, but then in the employment of the Dutch Bast India Company, in a vessel of eighty tons, bearing the very astronomical name of the Half Moon, having been stopped by the ice in the Polar Sea, in the attempt to reach the East by the way of Nova Zembla, struck over to the coast "of America in a high northern latitude. He then stretched down southwardly to the entrance of Chesapeake Bay, of which he had gained a knowledge from the charts and descriptions of his friend, Captain Smith ; thence returning to the north, entered Delaware Bay ; standing out again to sea, arrived on the second of September in sight of the 'high hills' of Neversink, pronouncing it 'a good THE USES OP ASTRONOMY. 141 land to fall in with, and a pleasant land to see;' and, on the following morning',, sending his boat before him to sound the way, passed Sandy Hook, and there came to anchor on the third of September. 1609 ; two hundred and forty-seven years ago next Wednesday. What an event, my friends, in the history of American population, enterprise, commerce, intelligence, and power — the dropping of that anchor at Sandy Hook! Jistofrtrg of tije Pttbson ^ibtx. " Here he lingered a week, in friendly intercourse with the natives of New Jersey, while a boat's company explored the waters up to Newark Bay. And now the great question : shall he turn back, like Verazzano, or ascend the stream? Hudson was of a race not.prone to turn back, by sea or by ^and. On the eleventh of September he raised the anchor of the Half Moon, passed through the Narrows, beholding on both sides ' as beautiful a land as one can tread on ; ' and floated cautiously and slowly up the noble stream — the first ship that ever rested on its bosom. He passed the Palisades, nature's dark basaltic Malakoff ; forced the iron gateway of the Highlands ; anchored, on the fourteenth, near West Point ; swept onward and upward, the following day, by grassy meadows and tangled slopes, hereafter to be covered with smiling villages ; by elevated banks and woody heights, the destined site of towns and cities — of Newburg, Poughkeepsie Catskill : on the evening of the fifteenth arrived opposite ' the mountain!? which lie from the river side,' where he found ' a very loving people and very old men ; ' and the day following sailed by the spot hereafter to be honored by his own illustrious name. One more, day wafts him up between Schodac and Castleton ; and here he landed and passed a day with the natives — greeted with all sorts of barbarous hospitality — the land ' the finest for culti- vation he ever set foot on,' the natives so kind and gentle, that, when' they found he would not remain with them over night, and feared that he left them — poor children of nature! — because he 142 THE USES OP ASTEONOMY. was afraid of their weapons — he, whose quarter-deck was heavy with ordnance — they ' broke their arrows in pieces and threw them in the fire.' On the following morning, with the early flood-tide, on the nineteenth of September, 1609, the Half Moon 'ran higher up, two leagues above the Shoals,' and came to anchor in deep water, near the site of the present city of Albany. Happy if he could have closed his gallant career on the banks of the stream which so justly bears his name, and thus have escaped the sorrowful and mysterious catastrophe which awaited him the next year. Cljantplain's ©'ogage ani> tljj grofetl^ ai ffiobttits. " But the discovery of your great river and of the site of youi" ancient city, is not the only event which renders the year 1609 memorable in the annals of America and the world. It was one of those years in which a sort of sympathetic movement toward great results unconsciously pervades the races and the minds of men. While Hudson discovered this mighty river and this vast region for the Dutch East India Company, Champlain, in the same year, carried the lilies of France to the beautiful lake which bears his name on your northern limits; the languishing estab- lishments of England in Virginia were strengthened by the second charter granted to that colony; the little 'church of Eobinson removed from Amsterdam to Leyden, from which, in a few years, they went forth to lay the foundations of New England qn Plymouth Rock ;■ the seven United Provinces of the Netherlands, after that terrific struggle of forty years — the commencement of which has just been embalmed in a record worthy of the great event, by an American historian— wrested from Spain the virtiial acknowledgement of their independence, in the Twelve Years' Truce ; and James the First, in the same year, granted to the British East India Company their first permanent charter- corner-stone of an empire destined in two centuries to overshadow the East. THE USES OP ASTRONOMY. 143 " One more incident is wanting to complete the list of the memorable occurrences which signalize the year 1609, and one most worthy to be remembered by us on this occasion. Cotem- poraneously with the events which I have enumerated — eras of history, dates of empire, the starting-point in some of the greatest political, social, and moral revolutions in our annals — an Italian astronomer, who had heard of the magnifying glasses which had been made in Holland, by which distant objects could be brought seemingly near, caught at the idea, constructed a telescope, and pointed it to the heavens. Yes, my friends, in the same year in which Hudson discovered your river and the site of your ancient town — in which Robinson made his melancholy hegira from Amsterdam to Leyden — Galileo Galilei, with a telescope, the work of his own hands, discovered the phases of Venus and the satellites of Jupiter; and now — after the lapse of less than two centuries and a half, on a spot then embosomed in the wilderness, the covert of the least civilized of all the races of men — we are assembled — descendants of the Hollanders, desceadants of the Pilgrims — in this ancient and . prosperous city, to inaugurate the establishment of a first-class Astronomical Observatory, (Barig Jags oi gklbang. " One more glance at your early history. Three years after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Fort Orange was erected, in the center of what is now the business part of the city of Albany; and, a few years later, the little hamlet of Beverswyck began to nestle under its walls. Two centuries ago, my Albanian friends, this very year, and I believe this very month of August, your forefathers assembled, not to inaugurate an observatory, but to lay the foundations of a new church, in the place of the rude cabin which had hitherto served them in that capacity. It was built at the intersection of Yonker's and Handelaar's, better 144 THE USES OF ASTRONOMY. known to you as State and Market streets. Public and private liberality cooperated in the important work. The authorities at the Fort gave fifteen hundred guilders ; the patroon of that early day, with the liberality coeval with the name and the race, contributed a thousand ; while the inhabitants, for whose benefit it was erected, whose numbers were small and their resources smaller, contributed twenty beavers ' for the purchase of an oaken pulpit in Holland.' Whether the largest part of this subscription was bestowed by some liberal benefactress, tradition has not informed us. " Nor is the year 1656 memorable in the annals of Albany alone. In that same year your imperial metropolis, then number- ing about three hundred inhabitants, 'was first laid out as a city, by the name of New Amsterdam. In eight years more. New Netherland becomes New York ; Port Orange and its dependent hamlet assumes the name of Albany. A century of various fortune succee|is ; the scourge of French and Indian war is rarely absent from the land ; every shock of European policy vibrates with electric rapidity across the Atlantic ; but the year 1756 finds a population of 300,000 in your growing province. Albany, however, may still be regarded almost as a frontier settlement. Of the twelve counties into which the province was divided a hundred years ago, the county of Albany comprehended all that lay north and west of the city ; and tlie city itself contained but about three hundred and fifty houses. ifeff ^unbrcb- gtars. " One more century : another act in the great drama of empire ; another French and Indian war beneath the banners of England; a successful Revolution, of which some of the most momentous events occurred vithin your limits; a union of States; a Consti- THE USES OF ASTRONOMY. 145 tution of Federal Government ; your population carried to the St. Lawrence and the great Lakes, and their waters poured into the Hudson ; your territory covered with a net-work of canals and railroads, filled with life, and action, and power, with all the works of peaceful art and prosperous enterprise, with all the institutions which constitute and advance the civilization of the age ; its population exceeding that of the Union at the date of the Revolution ; your own numbers twice as large as those of the largest city of that day — you have met together, my friends, just two hundred years since the erection of the little church of Beverswyck, to dedicate a noble temple of science, and to take a becoming public notice of the establishment of an institution, destined, as we trust, to exert a beneficial influence on the progress of useful knowledge at home and abroad, and through that, on the general cause of civilization. ^rientifit ^rogwss. " You will observe that I am careful to say, the progress of science ' at home and abroad ; ' for the study of Astronomy in this country has long since, I am happy to add, passed that point where it is content to repeat the observations and verify the results of European research. It has boldly and successfully entered the field of original investigation, discovery, and specula- tion ; and there is not now a single department of the science, in which the names of American observers and mathematicians are not cited by our brethren across the water, side by side with the most eminent of their European contemporaries. " This state of things is certainly recent. During the colonial period, and in the first generation after the Revolution, no depart- ment of science was, for obvious causes, very extensively cultivated in America — astronomy perhaps as much as the kindred branches. The improvement in the quadrant, commonly known as Hadley's, had already been made at Philadelphia, by Godfrey, in the early part of the last century ; and the beautiful invention of the col- 10 146 THE USES OP ASTEONOMY. limating telescope was made at a later period by Rittbnhouse, an astronomer of distinguished repute. The transits of Venus of 1761 and 1769 were observed, and orreries were constructed in different parts of the country; and some respectable scientific essays are contained, and valuable observations are recorded, in the early volumes of the Transactions of the Philosophical Society, at Philadelphia, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, at Boston and Cambridge. But, in the absence of a numerous class of men of science to encourage and aid each other, without observatories and without valuable instruments, little of impor- tance could be expected in the higher walks of astronomical life. g^nwritEir ©bstrtatinns. " The greater the credit due for the achievement of an enterprise commenced in the early part of the present century, and which would reflect honor on the science of any country and any age ; I mean the translation and commentary on Laplace's Mecanique Celeste, by Bowditch ; a work of whose merit I am myself wholly unable to form an opinion, but which I suppose places the learned translator and commentator on a level with the ablest astronomers and geometers of the day. This work may be considered as open- ing a new era in the history of American science. The country was still almost wholly deficient in instrumental power ; but the want was generally felt by men of science, and the public mind, in various parts of the country, began to be turned towards the means of supplying it. In 1825, President John Quincy Adams brought the subject of a National Observatory before Congress. Political considerations prevented its being favorably entertained at that time; and it was not till 1842, and as an incident of the exploring expedition, that an appropriation was made for a depot for the charts and instruments of the navy. On this modest basis has been reared the National Observatory at Washington ; an institution which has already taken and fully sustains an honorable position among the scientific establishments of the age. THE USES OF ASTEONOMY. 147 " Besides the instiktion at Washington, fifteen or twenty ob- servatories have, within the, last few years, been established in different parts of the country ; some of them on a modest scale, for the gratification of the scientific taste and zeal of individuals, others on a broad foundation of expense and usefulness. In these establishments, public and private, the means are provided for the highest order of astronomical observation, research, and instruction. There is already in the country an amount of instrumental power — to which addition is constantly making — and of mathematical skill on the part of our men of science, adequate to a manly competition with their European contemporaries. The fruits are already before the world, in the triangulation of several of the States, in the great work of the Coast Survey, in the numerous scientific surveys of the interior of the continent, in the astronomical department of the Exploring Expedition, in the scientific expedition to Chili, in the brilliant hydrographical labors of the Observatory at Washington, in the published observations of Washingtoji and Cambridge, in the Journal conducted by the Nestor of American Science, now in its eighth lustrum ; in the Sidereal Messenger, the Astronomical Journal, and the National Ephemeris; in the great chronometrical expeditions to determine the longitude of Cambridge, better ascertained than that of Paris was till within the last year ; in the prompt rectification of the errors in the predicted elements of Neptune ; in its identification with Lalande's missing star, and in the calculation of its ephe- meris ; in the discovery of the satellite of Neptune, of the eighth satellite of Saturn, and of the innermost of its rings; in the establishment, both by observation and theory, of the non-solid character of Saturn's rings ; in the separation and measurement of many double and triple stars, amenable only to superior instrumen- tal power ; in the immense labor already performed in preparing star catalogues, and in numerous accurate, observations of standard stars ; in the diligent and successful observation of the meteoric showers ; in an extensive series of magnetic observations ; in the discovery of an asteriod, and ten or twelve telescopic comets ; 148 THE USES OF ASTRONOMY. in the resolution of nebulas which had defied every thing in Europe but Lord Rosse's great reflector ; in the application of electricity to the measurement of differences in longitude ; in the ascertain- ment of the velocity of the electro-magnetic fluid, and its truly wonderful uses in recording astronomical observations. These are but a portion of the achievements of American astronomical science within fifteen or twenty years, and fully justify the most sanguine anticipations of its further progress. " How far our astronomers may be able to pursue their researches, will depend upon the resources of our public institutions, and the liberality of wealthy individuals in furnishing the requisite means. With the exception of the observatories at Washington and West Point, little can be done, or be expected to be done, by the government of the Union or the States ; but in this, as in every other department of liberal art and science, the great dependence — and may I not add, the safe dependence?^ — as it ever has been, must continue to be upon the bounty of enlightened, liberal, and public-spirited individuals. ^t ^abltg ©btritHtorg. " It is by a signal exercise of this bounty, my friends, that we are called together to-day. The munificence of several citizens of this ancient city, among whom the first place is due to the gener- ous lady whose name has' with great propriety been given to the institution, has furnished the means for the foundation of the Dudley Observatory at Albany. On a commanding elevation on the northern edge of the city, liberally given for that purpose by the head of a family in which the patronage of science is heredi- tary, a building of ample dimensions has been erected, upon a plan which combines all the requisites of solidity, convenience, and taste. A large portion of the expense of the structure has been defrayed by Mrs. Blandina Dudley ; to whose generosity, and that of several other public-spirited individuals, the institution is also indebted for the provision which has been made for an adequate THEU8ES0PASTR0N0MY. 149 supply of first-class instruments, to be executed by the most emi- nent makers in Europe and America ; and which, it is confidently expected, will yield to none of their class in any observatory in the world. " With a liberal supply of instrumental power ; established in a community to whose intelligence and generosity its support may be safely confided, and whose educational institutions are rapidly realizing the conception of a university ; countenanced by the gentleman who conducts the United States Coast Survey with such scientific skill and administrative energy ; committed to the immediate supervision of an astronomer to whose distinguished talent has been added the advantage of a thorough scientific edu- cation in the most renowned uliiversities of Europe, and who, as the editor of the American Astronomical Journal, has shown himself to be fully qualified for the high trust: under these favorable circumstances, the Dudley Observatory at Albany takes its place among the scientific foundations of the country and the world. Waxiistxs oi '^sixmxam^. " It is no affected modesty which leads me to express the regret that this interesting occasion could not have taken place under somewhat difl"erent auspices. I feel that the duty of addressing this great and enlightened assembly, comprising so much of the intelligence of the community and of the science of the country, ought to have been elsewhere assigned ; that it should have devolved upon some one of the eminent persons, many of whom I see before me, to whom you have been listening the past week, who, as observers and geometers, could have treated the subject with a master's power ; astronomers, whose telescopes have pene- trated the depths of the heavens, or mathematicians, whose analysis unthreads the maze of their wondrous mechanism. If, instead of commanding, as you easily could have done, qualifica- tions of this kind, your choice has rather fallen on one making no 150 THE USES OF ASTRONOMY. pretensions to the honorable name of a man of science, but whose delight it has always been to turn aside from the dusty paths of active life for an interval of recreation in the green fields of sacred nature in all her kingdoms, it is, I presume, because you have desired on an occasion of this kind, necessarily of a popular character, that those views of the subject should be presented which address themselves to the general intelligence of the community, and not to its select scientific circles. There is, perhaps, no branch of science which to the same extent as astron- omy exhibits phenomena which, while they task the highest powers of philosophical research, are also well adapted to arrest the attention of minds barely tinctured with scientific culture, and even to teach the sensibilities of the wholly uninstructed observer. The profound investigations of the chemist into the ultimate con- stitution of material nature, the minute researches of the physi- ologist into the secrets of animal life, the transcendental logic of the geometer, clothed in a notation the very sight of which ter- rifies the uninitiated — are lost on the common understanding. But the unspeakable glories of the rising and the setting sun, the serene majesty of the mooii, as she walks in full-orbed brightness through the heavens ; the soft witchery of the morning and the evening star ; the imperial splendors of the firmament on a bright, unclouded night ; the comet, whose streaming banner floats over half the sky — these are objects which charm and astonish alike the philosopher and the peasant, the mathematician who weighs the masses and defines the orbits of the heavenly bodies, and the untutored observer who sees nothing beyond the images painted upon the eye. SS'lfat is an g^shonomital ©bstrfratorg ? " An astronomical observatory, in the general acceptation of the word, is a building erected for the reception and appropriate use of astronomical instruments, and the accommodation of the men of science employed in making and reducing observations of the heavenly bodies. These instruments are mainly of three THE USES OF ASTEONOMY. 151 classes, to wMcli I believe all others of a strictly astronomical character may be referred. " 1. The instruments by which the heavens are inspected, -with a view to discover the existence of those celestial bodies which are not visible to the naked eye (beyond all comparison more numer- ous than those which are), and the magnitude, shapes, and other sensible qualities, both of those which are and those which are not thus visible to the unaided sight. The instruments of this class are designated by the general name of Telescope, and are of two kinds — the refracting telescope, which derives its magnifying power from a system of convex lenses ; and the reflecting teles- cope, which receives the image of the heavenly body upon a concave mirror. " 2. The second class of instruments consists of those which are designed principally to measure the angular distances of the heavenly bodies from each other, and their time of passing the meridian. The transit instrunient, the meridian circle, the mural circle, the heliometer, and the sextant, belong to this class. The brilliant discoveries of astronomy are, for the most part, made with the first class of instruments ; its practical results are wrought out by the second. " 3d. The third class contains the clock, with its subsidiary apparatus, for measuring the time and making its subdivisions with the greatest possible accuracy— indispensable auxiliary of all the instruments, by which the positions and motions of the heavenly bodies are observed, and measured and recorded. " The telescope may be likened to a wondrous cyclopean eye, endowed with superhuman power, by which the astronomer extends the reach of his vision to the further heavens, and surveys galaxies and universes compared with which the solar system is but an atom floating in the air. The transit may be compared to the measuring rod which he lays from planet to planet, and from star 152 THE USES OP ASTRONOMY, HEKSCHEL'S TELE8C0PK.* to star, to ascertain and mark off the heavenly spaces, and trans- fer them to his note-book ; the clock is that marvelous apparatus by which he equalizes and divides into nicely measured parts a portion of that unconceived infinity of duration, without begin- * This is -what is called a ■' reflecting telescope," which, until recently, had attained the greatest celebrity. The total length of the tube is 39 feet 4 inches, and its clear diameter 4 feet 10 inches. It is constructed entirely of iron. It contains 1050 lbs. of metal. The reflecting surface is 12'566 square feet. It is placed in the obseryatory of Slough, a village twenty-one miles west of London. THE USES OP ASTRONOMY. 153 LOBD BOSSE'S TELESCOPE.' ning and without end, in which all existence floats as on a shoreless and bottomless sea. , " In the contrivance and the execution of these instruments, the * This is the largest and moat poweriVii telescope ever constructed. The clear aperture is 6 feet: the reflecting surface is 28 '274 square feet; being greater than that of Herschel's in the proportion of 7 to 3. It is used, at present, as a Newtonian telescope, but provision is made for using it as a Herschelian instrument. The great tube is of wood, hooped with iron ; is 7 feet in diameter, and 52 in length. This noble instrument is at the seat of the Earl of Rosse, in Parsonstown, sixty-two mUes "W. S. W. of Dublin, Ireland. 154 THE USES OP ASTRONOMY. utmost stretch of inventive skill and mechanical ingenuity has been put forth. To such perfection have they been carried, that a single second of magnitude or space is rendered a distinctly visible and appreciable quantity. ' The arc of a circle,' says Sir J. Heeschel, ' subtended by one second, is less than the 200,000th part of the radius, so that on a circle of six feet in diameter, it would occupy no greater linear extent than 1-5700 part of an inch, a quantity requiring a powerful microscope to be discerned at all.' The largest body in our system, the sun, whose real diam- eter is 882,000 miles, subtends, at a distance of 95,000,000 miles, but an angle of little more than 32 ; while so admirably are the best instruments constructed, that both in Europe and America a satellite of Neptune, an object of comparatively inconsiderable diameter, has been discovered at a distance of 2,850 millions of miles. Wilitg of ^stxanamkul ®hsexbuiiam. " The object of an observatory, erected and supplied with instru- ments of this admirable construction, and at proportionate expense, is, as I have already intimated, to provide for an accurate and systematic survey of the heavenly bodies, with a view to a more correct and extensive acquaintance with those already known, and as instrumental power and skill in using it increase, to the discovery of bodies hitherto invisible, and in both classes to the determination of their distances, their relations to each other, and the laws which govern their movements. " Why should we wish to obtain this knowledge ? What induce- ment is there to expend large sums of money in the erection of observatories, and in furnishing them with costly instruments, and in the support of the men of science employed in making, discussing, and recording, for successive generations, these minute observations of the heavenly bodies ? " In an exclusively scientific treatment of this subject, an inquiry into its utilitarian relations would be superfluous — even weari- THE USES OF ASTRONOMY. 155 some. But on an occasion like the present, you will not, perhaps, think it out of place if I briefly answer the question. What is the use of an observatory, and what benefit may be expected from the operations of such an establishment in a community like ours ? "1. In the first place, then, we derive from the observations of the heavenly bodies which are made at an observatory, our only adequate measures of time, and our only means of comparing the time of one place with the time of another. Our artificial time- keepers — clockSj watches, and chronometers — however ingen- iously contrived and admirably fabricated, are but a transcript, so to say, of the celestial motions, and would be of no value without the means- of regulating them by observation. It is impossible for them, under any circumstances, to escape the imper- fection of all machinery the work of liuman hands ; and the moment we remove with our time-keeper east or west, it fails us. It will keep home time alone, like the fond traveler who leaves his heart behind him. The artificial instrument is of incalculable utility, but must itself be regulated by the eternal clock-work of th^^ies. .w ^flations httiatm |[atural ^l^tnomraa anJtt ^ailg ITift. " This single consideration is sufficient to show how completely the daily business of life is affected and controlled by the heavenly bodies. It is they — and not our main-springs, our expansion balances, and our compensation pendulums — which give us our time. To reverse the line of Pope : ""Tis with our watches. as our judgements: none Go just alike, but each believes his own.' But for all the kindreds and tribes and -tongues of men, each upon their own meridian, from the Arctic pole to the equator, from the equator to the Antarctic pole, the eternal sun strikes twelve at noon, and the glorious constellations, far up in the everlasting belfries of the skies, chime twelve at midnight : 156 THE USES OF ASTRONOMY. twelve for the pale student over his flickering lamp ; twelve amid the flaming glories of Orion's belt, if he crosses the meridian at that fated hour ; twelve by the weary couch of languishing humanity ; twelve in the star-paved courts of the Empyrean ; twelve for the heaving tides of the ocean ; twelve for the weary arm of labor ; twelve for the toiling brain ; twelve for the watch- ing, waking, broken heart ; twelve for the meteor which blazes for a moment and expires ; twelve for the comet whose period is measured by centuries-; twelve for every substantial, for every imaginary thing, which exists in the sense, the intellect, or the fancy, and which the speech or thought of man, at the given meridian, refers to the lapse of time. " Not only do we resort to the observation of the heavenly bodies for the means of regulating and rectifying our clocks, but the great divisions of day and month and year are derived from the same source. By the constitution of our nature, the elements of our existence are closely connected with celestial times. Partly by his physical organization, partly by the experience of the race from the dawn of creation, man as he is, and the times and .§§&- sons of the heavenly bodies, are part and parcel of one system. The first great division of time, the day-night, with its primal alternation of waking and sleeping, of labor and rest, is a vital condition of the existence of such a creature as man. The revo- lution of the year, with its various incidents of summer and winter, and seed-time and harvest, is not less involved. in our social, material, and moral progress. It is true that at the poles, and on the equator, the effects of these revolutions are variously modified or wholly disappear ; but as the necessary consequence, human life is extinguished at the poles, and on the equator attains only a languid or feverish development. Those latitudes only in which the great motions and cardinal positions of the earth exert a mean influence, exhibit man in the harmonious expansion of his powers. The lunar period, which lies at the foundation of the month, is less vitally connected with human existence and devel- opment ; but is proved by the experience of every age and race THE USES OF ASTRONOMY. 157 to be eminently conducive to the progress of civilization and culture. " But indispensable as are these heavenly measures of time to our life and progress, and obvious as are the phenomena on which they rest, yet owing to the circumstance that, in the economy of nature, the day, the month, and the year are not exactly commen- surable, some of the most difficult questions in practical astronomy are those by which an accurate division of time, applicable to the various uses of life, is derived from the observation of the heav- " enly bodies. I have no doubt that, to the Supreme Intelligence which created and rules the universe, there is a harmony, hidden to us, in the numerical relation to each other of days, months, and years ; but in our ignorance of that harmony, their practical adjustment to each other is a work of difficulty. The great embarrassment which attended the reformation of the calendar, after the error of the Julian period had, in the lapse of centuries, reached ten, or rather twelve, days, sufficiently illustrates this remark. It is most true that scientific difficulties did not form the chief obstacle. Having been proposed under the auspices of a Roman pontiff, the Protestant world, for a century and more, rejected the new style. It was in various places the subject of controversy, collision, and bloodshed. It was not adopted in England till nearly two centuries after itg introduction at Rome ; and in the country of Steuve and the Pulkova equatorial, they persist at the present day in adding eleven minutes and twelve seconds to the length of the tropical year. » " 2. The second great practical use of an Astronomical Observ- ' atory is connected with the science of geography. The first page of the history of our Continent declares this truth. Profound meditation on the sphericity of the earth was one of the main reasons which led Columbus to undertake his momentous voyage ; and his thorough acquaintance with the astronomical science of / 158 THE USES OP ASTRONOMY. that day was, in his own judgement, what enabled him to overcome the almost innumerable obstacles which attended its prosecution. In return, I find that Copernicus in the very commencement of his immortal work De Revolutionibus Orhium Ccelestium, fol. 2, appeals to the discovery of America as completing the demonstra- tion of the sphericity of the earth. Much of our knowledge of the figure, size, density, and position of the earth, as a member of the solar system, is derived from this science ; and it furnishes us 'the means of performing the most important operations of prac- tical geography. Latitude and longitude, which lie at the basis of all descriptive geography, are determined by observation. No map deserves the name, on which the position of important points has not been astronomically determined. Some even of our most important political and administrative arrangements depend upon the cooperation of this science. Among these I may mention the land system of the United States, and the determination of the boundaries of the country. I believe that till it was done by the Federal Government, a uniform system of mathematical survey had never in any country been applied to an extensive territory. Large grants and sales of public land took place before the Revolution, and in the interval between the peace and the adop- tion of the Constitution ; but the limits of these grants and sales were ascertained by sensible objects, by trees, streams, rocks, hills, and by reference to adjacent portions of territory, prev- iously surveyed. The uncertainty of boundaries thus defined, was a never-failing source of litigation. Large tracts of land in the western country, granted by Virginia under this old system of special and local survey, were covered with conflicting claims ; and the controversies to which they gave rise formed no small part of the business of the Federal Court after its organization. But the adoption of the present land-system brought order out of chaos. The entire public domain is now scientifically surveyed before it is ofi'ered for sale ; it is laid off into ranges, townships, sections, and smaller divisions, with unerring accuracy, resting on the foundation of base and meridian lines : and I have been THE USES OP ASTRONOMY. 159 informed that under this system, scarce a case of contested loca- tion and boundary has ever presented itself in court. The General Land Office contains maps and plans, in which every quarter-section of the public land is laid down with mathematical precision. The superficies of half a continent is thus transferred in miniature to the bureau at Washington ; while the local Land Offices contain transcripts of these plans, copies of which are furnished to the individual purchaser. When we consider the tide of population annually flowing into the public domain, and the immense importance of its efficient and economical adminis- tration, the utility of this application of Astronomy will be duly estimated. " I will here venture to repeat an anecdote, which I heard lately from a son of the late Hon. Timothy Pickering. Mr. OcTAVius Pickebing, on behalf of his father, had applied* to Mr. David Putnam of Marietta, to act as his legal adviser, with respect to certain land claims in the Virginia Military district, in the State of Ohio. Mr. Putnam declined the agency. He had had much to do with business of that kind, and found it beset with endless litigation. ' I have never,' he added, ' succeeded but in a single case, and that was a location and survey made by General Washington, before the Revolution ; and I am not ac- quainted with any surveys, except those made by him, but what have been litigated.' " At this moment, a most important survey of the coast of the United States is in progress ; an operation of the utmost conse- quence, in reference to the commerce, navigation, and hydrography of the country. The entire work, I need scarce say, is one of practical astronomy. The scientific establishment which we this day inaugurate, is looked to for important cooperation in this great undertaking, and will no doubt contribute efficiently to its prosecution, " Astronomical observation furnishes by far the best means of defining the boundaries of States, especially when the lines are of great length and run through unsettled countries. Natural IQQ THE USES OP ASTEONOMY. indications, like rivers and mountains, liowever indistinct in ap- pearance, are in practice subject to unavoidable error. By the treaty of 1783, a boundary was established between the United States and Great Britain, depending chiefly on the course of rivers and highlands dividing the waters which flow into the Atlantic Ocean from those which flow into the St. Lawrence. It took twenty years to find out which river was the true St. Croix, that being the starting point. England then having made the extraordinary discovery that the Bay of Fundy is not a part of the Atlantic Ocean, forty years more were passed in the unsuc- cessful attempt to re-create the highlands which this strange theory had annihilated ; and just as the two countries were on the verge of a war, the controversy was settled by compromise. Had the boundary been accurately described by lines of latitude and longitude, no dispute could have arisen. No dispute arose as to the boundary between the United States and Spain, and her successor, Mexico, where it runs through untrodden deserts and over pathless mountains, along the 42d degree of latitude. The identity of rivers may be disputed, as in the case of the St. Croix.; the course of mountain chains is too broad for a dividing line ; the division of streams, as experience has shown, is uncertain ; but a degree of latitude is written on the heavenly sphere, and nothing but an observation is required to read the record. ^mestioirs of §ottn:i)arg. " But scientific elements, like sharp instruments, must be handled with scientific accuracy. A part of our boundary between the British Provinces ran upon the forty-fifth degree of latitude ; and about forty years ago, an expensive fortress was commenced by the government of the United States, at B,ouse's Point, on Lake Champlain, on a spot intended to be just within our limits. When a line came to be more carefully surveyed, the fortress turned out to be on the wrong side of the line ; we had been building an expensive fortification for our neighbor. But in the general THE USES OP ASTEONOMT, 161 compromises of the Treaty of Washington by the Webster and Ashburton Treaty in 1842, the fortiiication was left within our limits. "Errors still more serious had nearly resulted, a few years since, in a war with Mexico. By the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in 1848, the boundary line between the United States and that country was in part described by reference to the town of El Paso, as laid down on a specified map of the United States, of which a copy was appended to the treaty. This boundary was to be surveyed and run by a joint commission of men of science. It soon appeared that errors of two or three degrees existed in the projection of the map. Its lines of latitude aod longitude did not conform to the topography of the region ; so that it became im- possible to execute the text of the treaty. The famous Mesilla Valley was a part of the debatable ground; and the sum of $10,000,000, paid to the Mexican Government for that and for an additional strip of territory on the southwest, was the smart- money which expiated the inaccuracy of the map — the necessary result, perhaps, of the want of good materials for its construc- tion. "It became my official duty in London, a few years ago, to apply to the British Government for an authentic statement of their claim to jurisdiction over New Zealand. The official Gazette for the 2d of October, 1840, was sent me from the Foreign Office, as affording the desired information. This number of the Gazette contained the proclamations issued by the Lieutenant Governor of New Zealand, ' in pursuance of the instructions he received from the Marquis of Normanby, one of Her Majesty's principal Secretaries of State,' asserting the jurisdiction of his government over the islands of New Zealand, and declaring them to extend 'from 34° 30' North to 47° 10' South latitude.' It is scarcely necessary to say that south latitude was intended in both instances. This error of 69° of latitude, which would have extended the claim of British jurisdiction over the whole breadth of the Pacific, had, apparently, escaped the notice of that government. 11 162 THE USES OP ASTRONOMY. Comtnm^mtb ^atrigation. " It would be easy to multiply illustrations in proof of the great practical importance of accurate scientific designations, drawn from astronomical observations, in various relations connected with boundaries, surveys, and other geographical purposes ; but I must hasten to " 3. A third important department, in which the services ren- dered by astronomy are equally conspicuous. I refer to commerce and navigation. It is majnly owing to the results of astronomical observation, that modern commerce has atta,ined such a vast ex- pansion, compared with that of the ancient world. I have already reminded you that accurate ideas in this respect, contributed materially to the conception in the mind of Columbus of his immortal enterprise, and to the practical success with which it was conducted. It was mainly his skill in the use of astronomical instruments — imperfect as they were — which enabled him, in spite of the bewildering variation of the compass, to find his way across the ocean. " With the progress of the true system of the universe toward general adoption, the problem of finding the longitude at sea presented itself. This was the avowed object of the foundation of the observatory at Greenwich ; and no one subject has received more of the attention of astronomers, than those investigations of the lunar tlieory on which the requisite tables of the navigator are founded. The pathways of the ocean are marked out iri the sky above. The eternal lights of the heavens are the only pharos whose beams never fail, which no tenipest can shake from its foundation. "Within my recollection, it was deemed a necessary qualification for the master and the mate of a merchant-ship, and even for a prime hand, to be able to ' work a lunar,' as it was called. The improvements in the chronometer have in practice, to a great extent, superseded this laborious operation ; but ob- servation remains, and unquestionably will for ever remain the, THE USES OF ASTRONOMY. 163 only dependence for ascertaining tlie ship's time, and deducing the longitude from the comparison of that time with the chro- nometer. "It may, perhaps, be thought that astronomical science is brought already to such a state of perfection, that nothing more is to be desired, or at least that nothing more is attainable, in reference to such practicable applications as I have described. This, however, is an idea which generous minds will reject, in this, as in every other department of human knowledge. In astronomy, as in every thing else, the discoveries already made, theoretical or practical, instead of exhausting the science, or putting a limit to its advancement, do but furnish the means and instruments of further progress. I have no doubt we live on the verge of discoveries and inventions, in every department, as brilliant as any that have ever been made ; that there are new trutlis, new facts, ready to start into recognition on every side ; and it seems to me there never was an age, since the dawn of time, when men ought to be less disposed to rest satisfied with the progress already made, than the age in which we live ; for there never was an age more distinguished for ingenious research, for novel result, and bold generalization. " That no further improvement is desirable in the means and methods of ascertaining the ship's place at sea, no one, I think, will from experience be disposed to assert. The last time I crossed the Atlantic, I walked the quarter-deck with the officer in charge of the noble vessel, on one occasion, when we were driving along before a leading breeze and under a head of steam, beneath a starless sky at midnight, at the rate certainly of ten or eleven miles an hour. There is something sublime, but approaching the terrible, in such a scene : the rayless gloom — the midnight chill — the awful swell of the deep — the dismal moan of the wind through the rigging — the all but volcanic fires within the hold of the ship. I scarce know an occasion in ordinary life, in which a reflecting mind feels more keenly its hopeless dependence on irra- tional forces beyond its own control. I asked my companion 164 THE USES OP ASTRONOMY. how nearly he. could determine his ship's place at sea, under favorable circumstances. Theoretically, he answered, I think, within a mile ; practically, and usually, within three or four. My next question was, how near do you think we may be to Cape Race ? —that dangerous headland which pushes its iron-bound unlighted bastions from the shore of Newfoundland far into the Atlantic — first landfall to the homeward-bound American vessel . We must, said he, by our last observations and reckoning, be within three or four miles of Cape Race. A comparison of these two remarks, under the circumstances in which we were placed at the moment, brought my mind to the conclusion, that it is greatly to be wished that the means should be discovered of finding the ship's place more accurately, or that navigators would give Cape Race a little wider berth. But I do not remember that one of the steam packets between England and America was ever lost on that formidable point. " It appears to me by no means unlikely that, with the improve- ment of instrumental power, and of the means of ascertaining the ship's time with exactness, as great an advance beyond the present state of art and science in finding a ship's place at sea may take place, as was effected by the invention of the reflecting quadrant, the calculation of lunar tables, and the improved construction of chronometers. ^■ahhn^z'e §iSmnu Patljhie. " In the wonderful versatility of the human niind, the improve- ment, when made, will very probably be made by paths where it is least expected. The great inducement to Mr. Babbage to attempt the construction of an engine by which astronomical tables could be calculated, and even printed, by mechanical means and with entire accuracy, was the errors in the requisite tables. Nineteen such errors, in point of fact, were discovered in an edition of ' Taylor's Logarithms,' printed in 1796 ; some of which might have led to the most dangerous results in calculating a THE USES OP iSTRONOMY. 165 sMp's place. These nineteen errors, of which one only was an error of the press, were pointed out in the Nautical Almanac for 1832. In one of these errata the seat of the error was stated to be in cosine of 14° 18' 3". Subsequent examination showed that there was an error of one second in this correction ; and, accord- ingly, in the Nautical Almanac of the next year a new correction was necessary. But in making the new correction of one second, a new error was committed of ten degrees. Instead of cosine 14° 18' 2", the correction was printed cosine 4° 18' 2", making it still necessary, in some future edition of the Nautical Almanac, to insert an erratum in an erratum of the errata in ' Taylor's Logarithms.' " In the hope of obviating the possibility of such errors, Mr. Babbage projected his calculating, or, as he prefers to call it, his difference machine. Although this extraordinary undertaking has been arrested, in consequence of the enormous expense attend- ing its execution, enough has been achieved to show the mechanical possibility of constructing an engine of this kind, and even one of far higher powers, of which Mr. Babbage has matured the conception, devised the notation, and executed the drawings — themselves an imperishable monument of the genius of the author. " I happened on one occasion to be in company with this highly distinguished man of science, whose social qualities are as pleasing as his constructive talent is marvelous, wjien another eminent savant, Count Strzelecki, just returned from his Oriental and Australian tour, observed that he found among the Chinese a great desire to know something more of Mr. Babbage's calculating machine, and especially whether, like their own swampan, it could be made to go into the pocket. Mr. Babbage good-humoredly observed that, thus far, he had been very much out of pocket with it. Iiiraaselr Commmtir of InstruntJittal ^obset. "Whatever advances may be made in astronomical science. 166 THE USES OF ASTRONOMY. theoretical or applied, I am strongly inclined to think that they will be made in connection with an increased command of instru- mental power. The natural order in which the human mind proceeds in the acquisition of astronomical knowledge, is minute and accurate observation of the phenomena of the heavens, the plvillful discussion and analysis of these observations, and sound philosophy in generalizing the results. " In pursuing this course, however, a difficulty presented itself, which for ages proved insuperable, and which, to the same extent, has existed in no other science, viz. : that all the leading phe- nomena are in their appearance delusive. It is indeed true, that, in all sciences, superficial observation can only lead, except by chance, to superficial knowledge ; but I know of no branch in which, to the same degree as in astronomy, the great leading phenomena are the reverse of true ; while they yet appeal so strongly to the senses, that men who could foretell eclipses, and who discovered the precession of the equinoxes, still believed that the earth was at rest in the center of the universe, and that all the host of heaven performed a daily revolution about it as a center. " It usually happens in scientific progress, that when a great fact is at length discovered, it approves itself at once to all com- petent judges. It furnishes a solution to so many problems, and harmonizes with so ipany other facts, that all the other data, as it were, crystallize at once about it. In modern times, we have often witnessed such an impatience, so to say, of great truths to be discovered, that it has frequently happened that they have been found out simultaneously by more than one individual ; and a disputed question of priority is an event of very common occur- rence. Not so with the true theory of the heavens. So complete is the deception practiced on the senses, that it failed more than once to yield to the suggestion of the truth ; and it was only when the visual organs were armed with an almost preternatural instrumental power, that the great fact found admission to the human mind. THE USES OF ASTEONOMY. 167 %^t Coptnxkan Sjsttnt. " It is supposed that in the very dawn of science, Pythagoras, or his disciples, explained the apparent motion of the heavenly bodies about the earth, by the diurnal revolution of the earth on its axis. But this theory, though bearing so deeply impressed upon it the 'great seal of truth, simplicity, was in such glaring contrast with the evidence of the senses, that it failed of acceptance in antiquity or the middle ages. It found no favor with minds like those of Aristotle, Archimedes, Hipparchus, Ptolemy, or any of the acute and learned Arabian or mediseval astronomers. All their ingenuity and all their mathematical skill were exhausted in the development of a wonderfully complicated and ingenious, but erroneous theory. The great master truth, rejected for its simplicity, lay disregarded at their feet. " At the second dawn of science, the great fact again beamed into the mind of Copernicus. Now, at least, in that glorious age which witnessed the invention of printing, the great mechanical engine of intellectual progress, and the discovery of America, we may expect that this long-hidden revelation, a second time pro- claimed, will command the assent of mankind. But the sensible phenomena were still too strong for the theory ; the glorious delusion of the rising and the setting sun could not be overcome. Tycho de Brahe furnished his observatory with instruments superior in number and quality to all that had been collected before ; but the great instrument of discovery, which, by augment- ing the optic power of the eye, enables it to penetrate beyond the apparent phenomena, and to discern the true constitution of the heavenly bodies, was wanting at Uranienburg. The observations of Tycho, as discussed by Kepler, conducted that most fervid, powerful, and sagacious mind, to the discovery of some of the most important laws of the celestial motions ; but it was not till G-alileo, at Florence, had pointed his telescope to the sky that the Copernican system could he said to be firmly establis/ sd in the scientific world. 168 THE USES OF ASTEONOMY.' SClje Pome ai (^sdilta. " On this great name, my Friends, assembled as we are to dedicate a temple to instrumental Astronomy, we may well pause for a moment. " There is much, in every way, in the city of Florence to excite the curiosity, to kindle the imagination, and to gratify the taste. Sheltered on the north by the vine-clad hills of Fiesoli, whose Cyclopean walls carry back the antiquary to ages before the Roman, before 'the Etruscan power, the flowery city, Fiorenza, covers the sunny banks of the Arno with its stately palaces. Dark and frowning piles of mediasval structure ; a majestic dome, the prototype of St. Peter's ; basilicas which enshrine the ashes of some of the mightiest of the dead ; the stone where Dante stood to gaze on the Campanile ; the house of Michael Angelo, still occupied by a descendant of his lineage and name ; his ham- mer, his chisel, his dividers, his manuscript poems, all as if he had left them but yesterday ; airy bridges, which seem not so much to rest on the earth as to hover over the waters they span ; the loveliest creations of ancient art, rescued from the grav#of ages again to enchant the world ; the breathing marbles of Michael Angelo, the glowing canvas of Raphael and Titian, museums filled with medals and coins of every age from Cyrus the younger, and gems and amulets and vases from the sepulchres of Egyptian Pliaraohs coeval with Joseph, and Etruscan Lucumons that swayed Italy before the Romans — libraries stored with the choicest texts of ancient literature — gardens of rose, and orange, and pomegran- ate, and myrtle — the very air you breathe languid with music and perfume — such is Florence. But among all its fascinations, addressed to the sense, the memory, and the heart, there was none to which I more frequently gave a meditative hour during a year's residence, than to the spot where Galileo Galilei sleeps beneath the marble floor of Santa Croce ; no building on which I gazed witli greater reverence, than I did upon the modest mansion at TliE USES OP ASTKONOMY. 169 Arcetri, villa at once and prison, in which that venerable sage, by- command of the Inquisition, passed the sad closing years of his life. The beloved daughter on whom he had depended to smooth his passage to the grave, laid there before him ; the eyes with which he had discovered worlds before unknown, quenched in blindness : Ahime ! quegli occlii si son fatti oscuri, Che vider piu di tutti i tempi antichi, E luce fur dei secoli futuri: That was the house, ' where,' says Milton, another of those of whom the world was not worthy, ' I found and visited the famous Galileo, grown old — a prisoner to the Inquisition, for thinking on astronomy otherwise than as the Dominican and Franciscan licensers thought.' Great Heavens! what a tribunal, what a culprit, what a crime ! Let us thank God, my friends, that we live in the nineteenth century. Of all the wonders of ancient and modern art, statues and paintings, and jewels and manuscripts — the admiration and the delight of ages — there was nothing which I beheld with more affectionate awe than that poor, rough tube, a few feet in length, — the work of his own hands — that very ' optic glass,' through which the ' Tuscan Artist' viewed the moon, " At evening, from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe : " that poor little spy-glass, for it is scarcely more, through which the human eye first distinctly beheld the surface of the moon — first discovered the phases of Venus, the satellites of Jupiter, and the seeming handles of Saturn — first penetrated the dusky depths of the heavens — first pierced the clouds of visual error, which, from the creation of the world, involved the system of the Uni- verse. " There are occasions in life in which a great mind lives years of rapt enjoyment in a moment. I can fancy the emotions of Gali- 170 THE USES OF ASTRONOMY. LEO, when, first raising the newly-constructed telescope to the heavens, he saw fulfilled the grand prophecy of Gopernicus. and beheld the planet Venus crescent like the moon. It was such another moment as that when the immortal printers of Mentz and Strasburg received the first copy of the Bible into their hands, the work of their divine art ; like that when Columbus, through the gray dawn of the 12th of October, 1492 — Copernicus, at the age of eighteen, was then a student at Cracow — beheld the shores of San Salvador ; like that when the law of gravitation first revealed itself to the intellect of Newton ; like that when Frank- lin saw by the stiffening fibers of the hempen cord of his kite, that he held the lightning in his grasp ; like that when Leverrier received back from Berlin the tidings that the predicted planet was found. '" Yes, noble Galileo, thou art right. E pur si muove. ' It does move.' Bigots may make thee recant it ; but it moves, nevertheless. Yes, the eartli moves, and the planets move, and the mighty waters move, and the great sweeping tides of air move, and the empires of men move, and the world of thought moves, ever onward and upward to higher facts and bolder theo- ries. The Inquisition may seal thy lips, but they can no more stop the progress of the great truth propounded by Copernicus, and demonstrated by thee, than they can stop the revolving earth. " Close now, venerable sage, that sightless, tearful eye ; it has seen what man never before saw — it has seen enough. Hang up that poor little spy-glass — it has done its work. Not Hbrschel nor Rosse have, comparatively, done more. Franciscans and Dominicans deride thy discoveries now ; but the time will come when, from two hundred observatories in Europe and America, the glorious artillery of science shall nightly assault the skies, but they shall gain no conquests in those glittering fields before which thine-shall be forgotten. Rest in peace, great Columbus of the heavens— like him scorned, persecuted, broken-hearted ! — in other ages, in distant hemispheres, when the votaries of science, with solemn acts of consecration, shall dedicate their stately edi- THE USES OP ASTRONOMY. 171 fices to the cause of knowledge and truth, thy name shall be mentioned with honor. '^tia ^triniis in gistronoraixai Stitna. " It is not my intention, in dwelling with such emphasis upon the invention of the telescope, to ascribe undue importance, in promoting the advancement of science, to the increase of instru- \nental power. Too much, indeed, cannot be said of the service rendered by its first application in confirming and bringing into general repute the Copernican system ; but for a considerable time, little more was effected by the wondrous instrument than the gratification of curiosity and taste, by the inspection of the planetary phases, and the addition of the rings and satellites of Saturn to the solar family. Newton, prematurely despairing of any further improvement in the refracting telescope, applied the principle of reflection ; and the nicer observations now made, no doubt, hastened the maturity of his great discovery of the law of gravitation ; but that discovery was the work of his transcendent genius and consummate skill. " With Bradley, in 1741, a new period commenced in instru- mental astronomy, not so much of discovery as of measurement. The superior accuracy and minuteness with which the motions and distances of the heavenly bodies were now observed, resulted in the accumulation of a mass of new materials, both for tabular comparison and theoretical speculation. These materials formed the enlarged basis of astronomical science between Newton and Sir William Herschbl. His gigantic reflectors introduced the astronomer to regions of space before unvisited— extending beyond all previous conception the range of the observed phen- omena, and with it proportionably enlarged the range of con- structive theory. The discovery of a new primary planet and its attendant satellites was but the first step of his progress into the labyrinth of the heavens. Contemporaneously with his observa- tions, the French astronomers, and especially La Place, with a 172 THE USES OP ASTRONOMY. geometrical skill scarcely, if at all, inferior to that of its great author, resumed the whole s)rstem of Nbwtoi^, and brought every phenomenon observed since his time within his laws. Difficulties of fact, with which he struggled in vain, gave way to more accu- rate observations ; and problems that defied the power of his analysis, yielded to the modern improvements of the calculus. "But there is no Ultima Thule in the progress of science. With the recent augmentations of telescopic power, the details of the nebular theoiy, proposed by Sir W. Hbrschel with such courage and ingenuity, have been drawn in question. Many — most — of those milky patches in which he beheld what he regarded as cosmical matter, as yet in an unformed state — the rudimental material of worlds not yet condensed — have been resolved into stars, as bright and distinct as any in the firmament. I well recall the glow of satisfaction with which, on the 22d of September, 1847, being then connected with the University at Cambridge, I received a letter from the venerable director of the Observatory there, beginning with these memorable words : ' You will rejoice with me that the great nebula in Orion has yielded to the powers of our incomparable telescope I * * * It should be borne in mind that this nebula, and that of Andromeda, which has been also resolved at Cambridge, are the last strong- holds of the nebular theory.' " But if some of the adventurous speculations built by Sir Wil- liam Herschel on the bewildering revelations of his telescope have been since questioned, tlie vast progress which has been made in sidereal astronomy, to which, as I understand, the Dudley Observatory will be particularly devoted, the discovery of the parallax of the fixed stars, the investigation of the interior rela- tions of binary and triple systems of stars, the theories for the explanation of the extraordinary, not to say fantastic, shapes discerned in some of the nebulous systems — whirls and spirals THE USES OP ASTRONO.MY. 173 radiating through spaces as vast as the orbit, of Neptune ; the glimpses at systems beyond that to which our sun belongs ; these are all splendid results, which may fairly bo attributed to the school of Herschel, and will for ever insure no secondary place to that name in the annals of science. " In the remarks which I have hitherto made, I have had mainly in view the direct connection of astronomical science with the uses of life and the service of man. But a generous philosophy contemplates the 'subject in higher relations. It is a remark as old, at least, as Plato, and is repeated from him more than once by Cicero, thai all the liberal arts have a common bond and relationship. The different sciences contemplate as their imme- diate object the different departments of animate and inanimate nature ; but this great system itself is but one, and its parts are so interwoven with each other, that the most extraordinary relations and unexpected analogies are constantly presenting themselves ; and arts and sciences seemingly the least connected, render to each other the most effective assistance. " The history of electricity, galvanism, and magnetism, furnishes the most striking illustration of this remark. Commencing with the meteorological phenomena of our own atmosphere, and term- inating with the observation of the remotest heavens, it may well be adduced, on an occasion like the present. Franklin demon- strated the identity of lightning and the electric fluid. This discovery gave a great impulse to electrical research, with little else in, view but the means of protection from the thunder-cloud. A purely accidental circumstance led the physician Galvani, at Bologna, to trace the mysterious element, under conditions entirely novel, both of development and application. In this new form it became, in the hands of Davt, the instrument of the most extraor- dinary chemical operations ; and earths and alkalies, touched by the creative wire, started up into metals that float on water and 174 THE USES OF ASTEONOMT. kindle in the air. At a later period, the closest affinities are observed between electricity and magnetism, on the one band; while, on the other, the relations of polarity are detected between acids and alkalies. Plating and gilding henceforth become electri- cal processes. In the last applications of the same subtle medium, it has become the messenger of intelligence across the land and beneath the sea; and is now employed by the astronomer to ascertain the difference of longitudes, to transfer the beats of the clock from one station to another, and to record the moment of his observations with automatic accuracy. How large a share has been borne by America in these magnificent discoveries and applications, among the most brilliant achievements of modern science, will sufficiently appear from the repetition of tbo names of Franklin, Henry, Moese, Walker, Mitchell, Lock, and Bond. f jrsatilitg of #titms. "It has sometimes happened, whether from the harmonious relations to each other of every department of science, or from rare felicity of individual genius, that the most extraordinary intellectual versatility has been manifested by the same person. Although Newton's transcendent talent did not blaze out in childhood, yet as a boy he discovered great aptitude for mechanical contrivance. His water-clock, self-moving vehicle, and mill, were the wonder of the village ; the latter propelled by a living mouse. Sir David Brewster represents the accounts as differing, whether the mouse was made to advance ' by a string attached to its tail,' or by ' its unavailing attempts to reach a portion of corn placed above the wheel.' It seems more reasonable to conclude that the youthful discoverer of the law of gravitation intended, by tlie combination of these opposite attractions, to produce a balanced movement. It is consoling to the average mediocrity of the race, to perceive in these sportive essays that the mind of Newton passed through the stage of boyhood. But emerging from boyhood, what a bound it made, as from earth to heaven ! Hardly com- THE USES OF ASTRONOMY. 175 mencing bachelor of arts, at the age of twenty-four, he untwisted the golden and silver threads of the solar spectrum ; simultaneously or soon after, conceived the method of fluxions ; and arrived at the elemental idea of universal gravity before he had passed to his master's degree. Master of Arts, indeed ! That degree, if no other, was well bestowed. Universities are unjustly accused of fixing science in stereotype. That diploma is enough of itself to redeem the honors of academical parchment from centuries of learned dullness and scholastic dogmatism. " But the great object of all knowledge is to enlarge and purify the soul, to fill the mind with noble contemplations, to furnish a refined pleasure, and to lead our feeble reason from the works of nature up to its great Author and Sustainer. Considering this as the ultimate end of science, no branch of it can surely claim .precedence of Astronomy. No other science furnishes such a palpable embodiment of the abstractions which lie at the founda- tion of our intellectual system — the great ideas of time, and space, and extension, and magnitude, and number, and motion, and power. How grand the conception of the ages on ages required for several of the secular equations of the solar system ; of dis- tances from which the light of a fixed star would not reach us in twenty millions of years ; of magnitudes compared with which the earth is but a foot-ball ; of starry hosts — suns like our own — numberless as the sands on the shore; of worlds and systems shooting through the infinite spaces, with a velocity compared with which the cannon-ball is a way-worn, heavy-paced traveler ! ®^t Sptrtatlt of t^t Pesfrms. " Much, however, as we are indebted to our observatories for elevating our conceptions of the heavenly bodies, they present, even to the unaided sight, scenes of glory which words are too feeble to describe. I had occasion, a, few weeks since, to take the early train from Providence to Boston ; and for this purpose rose at two o'clock in the morning. Every thing around was 176 THE USES OP ASTRONOMY. wrapped in darkness and hushed iii silence, broken only by what seemed at that hour the unearthly clank and rush of the train. It was a mild, serene midsummer's night ; the sky was without a cloud, the winds were whist. The moon, then in the last quarter, had just risen, and the stars shone with a spectral luster but little affected by her presence ; Jupiter, two hours high, was the herald of the day ; the Pleiades, just above the horizon, shed their sweet influence in the east ; Lyra sparkled near the zenith ; Andromeda veiled her newly discovered glories from the naked eye in the south ; the steady Pointers, far beneath the Pole, looked meekly up from the depths of the north to their sovereign. THE USES OF ASTRONOMY. 177 ,M OKKIMG. " Such was the glorious spectacle as I entered the train. As we proceeded, the timid approach of twilight became more per- ceptible ; the intense blue of the sky .began to soften ; the smaller stars, like little children, went first to rest ; the sister-beams of the Pleiades soon melted together ; but the bright constellations of the west and north remained unchanged. Steadily the won- drous transfiguration went on. Hands of angels, hidden from mortal eyes, shifted the scenery of the heavens ; the glories of night dissolved into the glories of the dawn. The blue sky now turned more softly gray ; the great watch-stars shut up their holy eyes; the east began to kindle. Faint streaks of purple soon 12 178 THE USES OP ASTROMOMY. blushed along the sky ; the whole celestial concave was filled with the inflowing tides of the morning light, which came pouring down from above in one great ocean of radiance ; till at length, as we reached the Blue Hills, a flash of purple fire blazed out from above the horizon, and turned the dewy tear drops of flower and leaf into rubies and diamonds. In a few seconds, the everlasting gates of the morning were thrown wide open, and the lord of day, arrayed in glories too severe for the gaze of man, began his course. " I do not wonder at the superstition of the ancient Magians, who, in the morning of the world, went up to the hill-tops of Central Asia, and, ignorant of the true God, adored the most glorious work of his hand. But I am filled with amazement when I am told, that in this enlightened age, and in the heart of the Christian world, there are persons who can witness this daily manifestation of the power and wisdom of the Creator, and yet say in their hearts, ' There is no God.' Wnbisrokab gobies. " Numerous as are the heavenly bodies visible to the naked eye, and glorious as are tkeir manifestations, it is probable that in our own system there are great numbers as yet undiscovered. Just two hundred years ago this year, Huyghens announced the dis- covery of one satellite of Saturn, and expressed the opinion that the six planets and six satellites then known, and making up the perfect number of twelve, composed the whole of our planetary system. In 1729, an astronomical writer expressed the opinion that there might be other bodies in our system, but that the limit of telescopic power had been reached, and no further discoveries were likely to be made. The otbit of one comet only had been definitively calculated. Since that time, the power of the telescope has been indefinitely increased : two primary planets of the first class, ten satellites, and forty-three small planets revolving between Mars and Jupiter, have been discovered,; the orbits of six or seven hundred comets, some of brief period, have been ascertained; and it has been computed that hundreds of thousands of these THE USES OP ASTRONOMY. 179 mysterious bodies wander through our system. There is no reason to think that all the primary planets which revolve qbout the sun, have been discovered. An indefinite increase in the number of asteroids, may be anticipated ; while outside of Neptune,, between our sun and the nearest fixed star, supposing the attraction of the sun to prevail through half the distance, there is room for ten more primary planets, succeeding each other at distances increas- ing in a geometrical ratio. The first of these will, unquestionably, be discovered as soon as the perturbations of Neptune shall have been accurately observed; and with maps of. the heavens, on which the smallest telescopic stars are laid down, it may be discovered much sooner. f ^t Wusimss oi Criatioir. " But it is when we turn our observation and our thoughts from our own system, to the systems which lie beyond it in the heavenly spaces, that we approach a more adequate conception of the vastness of creation. All analogy teaches us that the sun which gives light to us, is but one of those countless stellar fires which deck the firmament ; and that every glittering star in that shining host, is the center of a system as vast and as full of subordinate luminaries as our own. Of these suns — centers of planetary systems — thousands are visible to the naked eye, millions are discovered by the telescope. Sir John Hbrschel, in the account of his operations at the Cape of Good Hope, calculates that about five and a half millions of stars are visible enough to be distinctly counted in a twenty-foot reflector, in both hemispheres. He adds, ' that the actual number is much greater, there can be little doubt.' His illustrious father estimated on one occasion, that 125,000 stars passed through the field of his forty-foot reflector in a quarter of an hour. This would give 12,000,000 for the entire circuit of the heavens-in a single tefescopic zone ; and this estimate was made under the assumption that the nebulas were masses of luminous matter not yet condensed into suns. "These stupendous calculations, however, form but the first 180 THE USES OP ASTRONOMY. column of the inventory of the universe. Faint white specks are visible, even to the naked eye of a practiced observer, in different parts of the heavens. Under high magnifying powers, several thousands of such spots are visible— no longer, however, faint white specks, but many of them resolved by powerful telescopes mto vast aggregations of stars, each of which may with propriety be compared with the milky way. Many of these nebula, how- ever, resisted the power of Sir William Herschel's great reflector, and were, accordingly, still regarded by him as masses of unformed matter, not yet condensed into suns. This, till a few years since, was perhaps the prevailing opinion ; and the nebular theory filled a large space in modern astronomical science. But with the increase of instrumental power, especially under the mighty grasp of Lord Rosse's gigantic reflector, and the great refractors at Pulkova and Cambridge, the most irresolvable of these nebulEe have given way; and the better opinion now is, that every one of them is a galaxy, like our own milky way, composed of millions of suns. In other words, we are brought to the bewildering conclusion that thousands of these misty specks, the greater part of them too faint to be seen with the naked eye, are, not each a universe like our solar system, but each a ' swarm' of universes of unappreciable magnitude. The mind sinks over- powered by the contemplation. We repeat the words, but they no longer convey distinct ideas to the understanding. ^oneepttons of tljt Sitifurst. " But these conclusions, however vast their comprehension, carry us but another step forward in the realms of sidereal astronomy. A proper motion in space, of our sun, and of the fixed stars, as wo call them, has long been believed to exist. Their vast distances only prevent its bein* more apparent. The great improvement of instruments of measurement, within the last generation, has not only established the existence of this motion, but has pointed to the region in the starry vault around which our whole solar and THE USES OF ASTEONOMY. 181 stellar system, with its myriad of attendant planetary worlds appears to be performing a mighty revolution. If, then, we assume that outside of the system to which we belong, and in which our sun is but a star like Aldebaran or Sirius, the different nebulae of which we have spoken — thousands of which spot the heavens — constitute a distinct family of universes, we must, following the guide of analogy, attribute to each of them also, beyond all the revolutions of their individual attendant planetary systems, a great revolution, comprehending the whole ; while the same course of analogical reasoning would lead us still further onward, and in the last analysis, require us to assume a transcendental connection between all these mighty systems — a universe of universes, circling round in the infinity of space, and preserving its equilibrium by the same laws of mutual attraction which bind the lower worlds together. " It may be thought that conceptions like these are calculated rather to depress than to elevate us in the scale of being ; that, banished as he is by these contemplations to a corner of creation, and there reduced to an atom, man sinks to nothingness in this iniinity of worlds. But a second thought corrects the impression. These vast contemplations are well calculated to inspire awe, but not abasement. Mind and matter are incommensurable. An immortal soul, even while clothed in ' this muddy vesture of decay,' is, in the eye of God and reason, a purer essence than the brightest sun that lights the depths of heaven. The organized human eye, instinct with life and soul, which, gazing through the telescope, travels up to the cloudy speck in the handle of Orion's sword, and bids it blaze forth into a galaxy as vast as ours, stands higher in the order of being than all that host of luminaries. The intellect of Newton, which discovered the law that holds the revolving worlds together, is a nobler work of God than a universe of universes of unthinking matter. , " If, still treading the loftiest paths, of analogy, we adopt the supposition — to me, I own, the grateful supposition — that the countless planetary worlds which attend these countless suns, are 182 THE USES OP ASTRONOMY. the abodes of rational beings like man, instead of bringing back from this exalted conception a feeling of insignificance, as if the individuals of our race were but poor atoms in the infinity of being, I regard it, on the contrary, as a glory of our human nature, that it belongs to a family which no man can number of rational natures like itself. In the order of being they may stand beneath us, or they may stand above us ; lie may well be content with his place, who is made ' a little lower than the angels.' CoKtcraplEtifftt 0f tljt "^fs&tm. " Finally, my friends, I believe there is no contemplation better adapted to awaken devout ideas than that of the heavenly bodies — no branch of natural science which bears clearer testimony to the power and wisdom of God than that to which you this day con- secrate a temple. The. heart of the ancient world, with all the prevailing ignorance of the true nature and motions of the heav- enly orbs, was religiously impressed by their survey. There is a passage in one of these admirable philosophical treatises of Cicero composed in the decline of life, as a solace under domestic bereave- ment and patriotic concern at the impending convulsions of the state, in which, quoting from some lost work of Aristotle, he treats the topic in a manner which almost puts to shame the teachings of Christian wisdom. " ' Nobly does Aristotle observe', that if there were beings who had always lived under ground, in convenient, nay, in magnificent dwellings, adorned with statues and pictures, and every thing which belongs to prosperous life, but who had never come above ground ; who had heard, however, by fame and report, of the being and power of the gods ; if, at a certain time, the portals of the earth being thrown open, they had been able to emerge from those hidden abodes to the regions inhabited by us ; when sud- denly they had seen the earth, the seas, and the sky ; had perceived the vastness of the clouds and the force of the winds ; had contem- plated the sun, his magnitude and his beauty, and still more his THE USES OF ASTRONOMY. 183 effectual power, that it is he who makes the day, by the diffusion of his light through the whole sky ; and, when night had, dark- ened the earth, should then behold the whole heavens studded and adorned with stars, and the various lights of the waxing and yaning moon, the risings and the settings of all these heavenly bodies, and the courses fixed and immutable in all eternity • when, I say, they should see these things, truly they would believe that there were gods, and these so great things are their works.' " There is much by day to engage the attention of the Observ- tory ; the sun, his apparent motions, his dimensions, the spots on his disc — to us the faint indications of movements of unimagined grandeur in his luminous atmosphere — a solar eclipse, a transit of the inferior planets, the mysteries of the spectrum ; all phenomena of vast importance and interest. But night is. the astronomer's accepted time ; he goes to his delightful labors when the busy world goe^ to its rest. A dark pall spreads over the resorts of active life ; terrestial objects, hill and valley, and rock and stream, and the abodes of men disappear ; but the curtain is drawn up which concealed the heavenly hosts. There they shine and there they move, as they moved and shone to the eyes of Newton and Galileo, of Kbplbk and Copernicus, of Ptolemy and Hippar- CHUS ; yea, as they moved and shone when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy! All has changed on earth ; but the glorious heavens remain unchanged. The plow passes over the site of mighty cities, the homes of powerful nations are desolate, the languages they spoke are for- gotten ; but the stars that shone for them are shining for us ; the same eclipses run their steady cycle ; the same equinoxes call out the flowers of spring, and send the husbandman to the harvest - the sun pauses at either tropic as he did when his course began ; and sun and moon, and planet and satellite, and star, and constel- lation, and galaxy, still bear witness to the power, the wisdom, and the love, which placed them in the heavens and uphold them there ! " MEMOIRS OF THE BAT FAMILY )HOUGrH tlie bats are, upon the whole, ijseful, rather than hurtful to man, they are creatures to which poetry and superstition have in all ages had recourse, to deepen the feelings of loathing and horror. The bats are things of the doubtful light — the dim twilight — which, in ages of ignorance, converts white stones into ghosts, and bushes into spectres. They dwell in the ruined wall or riven earth, and they also often iind their way into the sepulchres and catacombs of the ancients. They were thus dwellers with desolation and death ; and it was but stretching the imagination a little further, to suppose that they were in league with these loathed and dreaded powers. The rapacity of the bats in their feeding during the twilight [184] MEMOIRS OF THE BAT FAMILY, 185 gloom, and llio miscellaneous nature of their food, gave still further color to the supposition. Hovering about the temples, they ate greedily the blood and other remains of the sacrifices ; when famine or pestilence, which were then of frequent occurrence, though fortunately known to us chiefly by name, strewed the earth with the bodies of the dead, and when night closed upon the horrors of the battle-field, the bats came to the nocturnal feast. As in all cases they came fluttering, and apparently formless, with wing, most unlike any organ bearing the same name which is spread to the light of day or the sun of heaven, they perfected their claim of poetical alliance with the infernal regions, and the powers which held dominion there. As the peacock was the bird sacred to Juno, the queen of heaven, so the hat was the creature sacred, or accursed, if the word is better liked, to Proserpine, the empress of hell. The use of bats for these purposes, is as old as Homer, who very skillfully manages them in heightening the graphic effect of the splendid passage in which ho describes the shrieks and wailings of the ghosts in the regions of woe ; and after Homer, all poets and painters who have ventured upon similar delineations, have made use of the bats for the purposes of effect. Even to this day, painters must borrow the winga of bats for their devils, in the same way that they borrow the wings of doves for their angels ; and one has only to throw a deep Rembrandt shade over a piece of canvas, and shew a bat's wing partly displayed from a cave, in order to give an infernal air to it, and make it, with very little painting, a good poetical representation of the gates of hell. It is easy to see how a race which is linked with such associations, should have had but a scanty measure of justice meted out to it by the half-superstitious naturalists of the Middle Ages; and a remnant of the same superstition is, no doubt, the cause of much of the horror which is still associated with some of the larger species of warm countries. When we come to study the family of bats in the light of natural history, not only does the traditional horror to which we '186 MBMOIES OF THE BAT FAMILY. have alluded, vanish, but in their structure and habits we find much that is exceedingly curious. Their organs of sense are variously developed. The ears are in general large, and in some of the species they have a duplicature, or second concha, as if there were one ear within another. It is hence presumed that the sense of hearing is acute ; and it may be that those which have the dupli- cature to the ears, have thus the means of closing up the auditory passage, so that they may not be disturbed in their repose during the day. The nostrils and mouth are also sometimes surrounded by produced membranes, the use of which is not very well known. Perhaps they aid the sense of smelling, which is generally acute in nocturnal feeders ; perhaps they assist in the capture of the insect prey, and perhaps they are in some measure organs of touch. The eyes are very small, and deeply imbedded, something like the eyes of moles, and though they must have the power of vision, it does not appear that they are essential to the animal in finding its way, even when that is intricate. The well-known experiments of Spallanzani, which were verified by others, proved that when blindfolded, or even blinded, bats can find their way between obstacles of which they could have had no previous knowledge ; and indeed, though we, reasoning from ourselves as the example, are very apt to suppose that what we call the caution of animals is a matter of experience, yet, prejudice and false analogy apart, experience appears to have little or nothing to do in the matter. Spallanzani suspended willow rods in the room in which he turned the blind bats loose to fly ; but though he frequently shifted these so as to make the passage ^bet^een them as varied and as intricate as possible, the bats never struck against one of them, though they kept flying about in all direction's ! A question has hence been raised, as to the means by which bats contrive to avoid obstacles ; and the same question may be extended to very many other animals. A horse, in the dark, pauses when he comes to a closed gate, though he never was on MEMOIRS OF THE BAT FAMILY. 187 the road before ; nocturnal beasts do not more frequently fall into pits and over precipices, than beasts which are abroad during the day, and have their eyes to guide them, and nocturnal birds do not fly against trees, any more than day-light birds. People,/ too, will keep a well-known path, though the night be pitch dark.. In the last case, we are in the habit of saying that " the feet know the road," and the saying is. probably not very wide of the truth. " Feet" or " head," we know that which we have learned. Animals need no learning in the performance of their natural functions ; they know all ways, instinctively, which their habits lead them to ; the nocturnal ones have no more difficulty in the dark, than the diurnal ones have in the brightest sunshine. This, it will naturally be said, is not an answer to the question ; but though it would be easy enough to write more, it is, in truth, all that can philosophically be given. That the animals feel a different resistance in the air, in time to avoid the obstacle, the pit, or the precipice, is evident ; but how they feel it, or even what name we are to give it as a sense, is another matter. Of sensation we have no knowledge beyond the experience of our own senses ; what is said respecting them, even by those who are accounted " authorities" in matters of physiology, is vague enough. The most rational theory on the subject is, that as the sentient animal is one ; all the senses are essentially one also, only modified by diflferent organs ; and if modified by different organs in the same body, much more may they be modified by bodies which are specifically difi'erent, so that the sense which has apparently a similar organ, and to which, on that account, we give the same name, may be very different in two different animals. We^are accustomed to say that a blood-hound which follows on the " slot," ' has a very exquisite sense of smell ; but the hound cares nothing for roses or mignonnette, or all the perfumes in the world ; and the eye of the eagle, much as it has been descanted on in respect to its powers of vision, has no perception of beauty either in forms or colors. The flying membranes of bats, thin as they are, contain ' a beautifully reticulated plexus, or net-work of nerves, and the 188 MEMOIRS OF THE BAT FAMILY. texture of these, externally, is of that description with which we • usually associate a very delicate sense of touch. But still we cannot say that such a surface is absolutely necessary ; for it appears that the whiskers of cats, the delicate fringes in which the wing feathers of owls terminate, and many other surfaces and substances in which there do not immediately appear to be any nerves, give indications equally delicate and certain. A blow on the horn of an ox appears to pain the animal even more than a similar blow on the hide ; and treading on the toe is none the less painful for its being fortified with the mail of a corn. The breeding of bats takes place at the very hottest time of the year ; the young, which are usually two in number, are naked and helpless at their birth, capable only of clinging to the teats of their mother, which, however, they do with the greatest firmness and pertinacity. This habit in them is necessary, for the mother does not lie down, or even stand on the ground, when she suckles her young, as is the case with most of the mammalia. She hangs suspended by the nails of her thumbs, or more generally by those of her hind feet, to the branch of a tree, or some cranny or irregularity in a ruin or a cavern. There is no nest in which she can leave the young ones when she goes out to feed, and thus she must bear them about, attached to her body, till they are capable of flight. The female has no marsupium, but this habit resembles somewhat that of the marsupial animals. The youhg arc very immature when produced, and their nest, and place of safety and repose, is the body of their mother. Some of the species occasionally fly during the day, but that prac- tice is by no means common, and is confined to some of the foreign species which are in part vegetable feeders. In temperate cli- mates they conceal themselves during the day, even in the season of their greatest activity. Caverns, holes of trees and walls, and ruined buildings, are their retreats, and from these they issue forth as dusk begins to set in, flutter about in their kborious flight, and capture such insects as are then on the wing — gnats, musquitoes, moths and beetles — their wide gape, with its formi- MEMOIRS OP THE BAT FAMILY. 189 dable teeth, being an excellent trap for the capture of such prey. The service which they render to vegetation by the destruction of insects, which in the larva state prey upon it, is very consider- ble, even in temperate climates ; some of the hot countries in which these swarm by myriads, could not, but for them, be inhabited. In humid places on the margins of tropical forests, musquitoes are troublesome enough as it is, but if the bats did not reduce their numbers they would be utterly unbearable. Those species, too, which, frequent the towns and settlements, are useful in other respects. Most of the race are miscellaneous in their feeding, and not very delicate in their taste. They devour, indiscrimin- ately, all animal substances, whether "raw or dressed, and whether in a fresh or putrid state, thus removing a great deal of noxious and dangerous matter. So far, our account having reference to the bats with which we are acquainted in temperate countries, we have spoken of them as a gentle and useful race ; but truth compels us to declare, that there are, in far-off tropical countries, larger and more formidable creatures of this family. In the Island of Java, there is a species known by the name of Rousette, of which a portrait is given at the head of this article. They are very abundant, hanging in black rows or groups during the day, with their heads down and wings folded, on 'the trees. At evening, they take to their wings, and, guided by unerring instinct, resort to the gardens and plan- tations, where they seek the delicate fruits, such as melons, oranges, and even cocoa-nuts. In this way, they do immense damage. So troublesome are they, .that the inhabitants, in some places, are obliged to protect their fruit by loose nets or baskets of split bamboo. In South America, there is a species of bat, which has acquired the horrid name of Vampire. It lives on the blood of animals, and usually sucks while its victim is asleep. It is said to fan the unconscious sufferer with its wings, so as to lull him into more profound repose, by a soothing coolness. The ears of horses and 190 MEMOIRS OP THE BAT FAMILY. cattle, the combs and wattles of fowls, and the toes of men, are said to be its favorite points of attack: Nevertheless, neither the body of this, nor that of the rousette bats, exceed six inches in length, though their wings stretch out to two feet ; therefore, all the legends of their dangerous and destructive character are to be regarded as idle exaggerations. It is probable that these larger bats, however, have given rise to some of the superstitions which appear in classical literature. Thfe harpies, which were flying creatures, with the faces of women and the bodies, wings and claws of birds, and at the same time emitting a noisome stench and polluting whatever they touched, might very easily have been framed by popular imagin- ation out of the more formidable species, which, no doubt, once inhabited the southern portions of Europe, as well as the con- tiguous countries of Asia and Africa. The still more terrible myth of a demon, which sucked the blood of persons during the night, and which acquired the name of Vampire, is very likely to have sprung from the stealthy performances of bats resembling those of South America. By a similar process, no doubt, the dragons, basilisks, wiverns, and griffins, which figure in the legends of the middle ages, were created from the crocodiles, ser- pents, and other animals, which the Crusaders saw, for the first time, in their visits to the East. In a rude age, the imagination needs little encouragement to convert objects so really curious and strange as those we have been describing, into hideous mon- sters, endowed with supernatural powers. It is the province of education and enlightened reason, to reduce these horrid creations of fancy, to the comparatively simple and innocent dimensions of truth. ^N the 27th September, 1855, the "Puhlishers' Association" of New York, held a " Fruit Festival," at the Crystal Palace in that city, in compliment to the Authors and Booksellers assembled from various parts of the United States, Mr. William Appleton presiding. There were present many of the most distinguished literary men of the country, and the occasion was, in various aspects, one of the most gratifying that has ever occurred in this country. Many eloquent and instruc- tive addresses were made : among these was the following, by the Kev. E. H. Chapin : " Sib : There are some things which overwhelm opposition, and disdain alliance. The man who tries to drown the thunder of [191-] 192 THE PRINTING PEESS. Niagara with his voice, appears not much more insignificant than the poet or orator who undertakes to illustrate and eulogize it. It is very much so, with ' the Printing Press of the Age of Steam and Electricity.' As it far outruns the rivalry of human speech, and delivers its messages to millions in a day, so it is, in itself, much more eloquent than anything that can be said about it. At least, sir, as it stands before us, harnessed to those twin powers of Might and Swiftness, and, more like an intelligent being than a machine, with its slim fingers picks up and scatters into the world its burden of thought to go abroad ' noiseless as snow-flakes, but potent as thunder' — it is quite certain that the profoundest suggestions which it excites are inexpressible, and that what can be spoken is very obvious. " And so, sir, as you have invited mc to speak upon this theme, if I merely reiterate that which has been thought and spoken many times over, I must refer you for my apology to the theme itself. " Mr. President, the printing press of the age of steam and electricity, stands before us in a three-fold aspect — as an indicator of mechanical and general progress ; as an actual power ; and as an agent of great and beneficent uses. A few Avords upon each of these ' very obvious points.' " I doubt whether we can select an illustration of the mechanical progress of the last four hundred years, that is so obvious and tangible as the printing press. For, in the first place, within that period there has been no other mechanical agent of such direct and momentous importance. "We divide time into epochs and crises perhaps too much, forgetting that there is no period or event which is sudden and complete in itself, but that historical changes work in sublime unity and silence, like the elements which filter among the ribs of the earth. But if ever, out of uninspired history, there was palpable sign and embodied symbol of crisis and change for the world, it appeared in that creaking, clumsy machine of Faust and Guttenbeeg. " Yes, that was a queer, portentous creature, that rickety thing THE FEINTING PRESS. 193 of wood and iron, that came stalking into the world among kings and priests, thrones and castles, and other feudal respectabilities. There was a revolutionist, there was a troublesome democrat, there was a voice for the groaning people, there was a prophet of free and beautiful thought, there was a working-preacher that should tear the chained Word of God from the pillars of monasteries, and scatter it all over the world, and kindle the light to read it by ! "And if the printing press was thus important, both as an agent and a symbol of improvement, it is equally true that the greatest inventions and discoveries since that time have been allied with it, and in some way brought to serve its vast ends. " Surely, the applications of steam-power are not more splendidly illustrated even in the rail-car and the steamship — great instru- ments of civilization as they are — than in the working of a hundred marvelous pieces of machinery, to publish and multiply those vehicles of intelligence out of which all genuine civilization flows. " Surely, the electric telegraph — ajnd the man* is here to-night whose name is imperishably linked with it, and who, if he lives but a few years longer, will see its living nerve stretching around the globe, and feel the heart of China Ijeating against his own — surely, the electric telegraph demonstrates its capacity in no way so wonderfully as in the capacity of a reporter for the daily paper ; bringing the last word from fusion conventions and confusion caucuses, telling us that Sebastopol is at length taken, revealing the midnight interior of senates, touching our sympathies with a glimpse of poor fever-smitten Norfolk, and daguerreotyping the passing life and interest of a world upon our breakfast table ! " I say, then, that the printing press, through all stages of its improvement, may be taken as the fitting symbol of the mechanical progress of the last four hundred years. " And now, in o^der that you may realize the marvel of that progress, I only ask you to go back in imagination to the work- * This was an allusion to Professor Moese, who was present. 13 194 THE PRINTING PRESS. shop of GuTTENBERG, striking off that very copy of the Bible which is lodged scarcely more than a mile from this spot ; or into the presence of Caxton, holding up a damp sheet of the ' Histories of Troy,' or the ' Golden Legend ;' and then just take a walk 'through the vast manufactories of our Harpers and Appletons. Begin down cellar, with the best hand they have in the shop — the old fire-eater that tugs away there with forty or fifty horse power, and keeps everything moving and all hands busy ; and then go on and go up, through Chinese walls of printing paper, and catacombs of type, and armies of well-employed men, and healthy, happy girls, each with an appointed task ; and look at the iron arms lifting and folding ; the whizzing wheels, the enormous slabs of pressure, the delicate stamps — the countless agents that, with inconceivable quickness, work between the manuscript and the printer's book, turning brains — where they do not themselves furnish the original material — into lead, and lead into print, and print into folded sheets, and sheets into volumes, and volumes into influences of diffused and illimitable power ! " Now, certainly, this is a vast . sweep of mechanical improve- ment ; but you will observe that it is not mechanical improvement merely, for it is absurd to talk of ' mere mechanical improvement ' as though it involved every thing else. It presupposes a prior improvement, a development and enlightenment of the common mind that is represented in these marvelous agents ; and it argues a coexistent improvement in the public intelligence which creates the demand for those productions. " But, sir, the printing press of the age of steam and electricity, is likewise ' an actual and mighty power. Let its tendencies balance whicTi way they may, for good or for evil, here it stands, and no man, with half a soul in him, would chain it if he could. I suppose there is no agent of our time that has so much power as the printing ptess, considering all the influences that are involved with it. " I do not say that it is the most excellent power ; that it is better in quality or mightier in proportion to its area than some THE PEINT?NG PRESS. 195 Others. I think that the human voice has a greater power within the sphere of its influence, and that nothing can equal the living utterance of truth, the effect of a magnetic personality. Nor do I speak of it as especially an independent power. Perhaps it is full as much the organ as the guide of public opinion — a barom- eter compressed by the air, and not always a reflector of the pure daylight ; so that we can tell, from this or that newspaper, how low down or in what social stratum it hangs, and learn by a book, as well as a bottle, what currents are running. " But even as the concentrated force of public opinion or the expression of live thought, it is an incalculable power. From its iron lips, thousands take truth or error. It lines the humblest cottages with its cheap libraries. Men will as soon go without their breakfast as without the daily paper ; and so wide is its scope and so rapid its movements, that people half way up to Albany will read a report of this meeting to-morrow morning, before we are half out of bed. And if it engenders evil, it is the only vehicle through Avhich the remedy can be poured into the world. And then, sir, just consider its power as a money interest. We are hardly aware, many of us, of the amount of capital which is employed ; of the amount of wealth imbedded in stereotype and electrotype plates alone, crowded in the vaults of our great publishers as a merchant crowds the hold of his ship. " Why, sir, in this very city there is buried treasure, treasure under ground ; not diamonds, not ingots, but treasure worth far more than any said to have been hidden by Captain Kidd ; genii, imprisoned in little boxes, that at the beck of the publisher start out with a power more potent than that of the spirit described in the Arabian tale. Surely, then, the press does indeed constitute the ' fourth estate ; ' and if it were not, as I have observed, so democratic, I should say that to it belongs one of the great dia- dems of the world. " And thus, Mr. President, the third phase of the printing press of the age of steam and electricity assumes the most momentous interest ; for nobody can study this wonderful instrument without 196 THE prinAng press. discovering that mainly, that on the whole, it is an agent of great and beneficent uses. " I shall not enter, now, into any abstract argument to prove that this is the case, by showing that freedom and intelligence, and virtue and religion are linked indissolubly together ; and that old Milton was right in what he said about truth being left free to combat with error. But, d priori, I should believe that the printing press, in the age of steam and electricity, must be the agent of the highest uses — the best ends, because; sir, I believe that there is no great action of the natural or social world permitted by Providence, without these ends. There was truth in the old conceit that the stars are mated with human des- tiny, and that distant planets reflect aspects of this earth. There is truth in the conception that every great movement of being and of power involves the purposes of God in regard to humanity. " Do you think all these splendid vehicles of communication were matters of pleasure and profit, of commerce and the custom- house, only ? I see a Providential purpose levying on these railroads and telegraphs to do its work, and far out on lonely seas it hangs its signal-lanterns on the bows of your steamships. And almost the first thought — the comprehensive and most glorious thought — which the printing press awakens in your mind and my mind, and in the mind of every man, is that of great and beneficent uses. All its appurtenances are quickly translated into this meaning. Human measures are defeated, methods fail, but God's own pur- poses never ; and the processes of his eternal righteousness and truth run in the iron grooves of the printing press. " And so, Mr. President, it is the moral interest of the great power that is represented here to-night, that lends to the occasion its most suggestive aspect. It is the fact that the power wielded by this Publishers' Association is so much power working, on the whole, against the wrong and the falsehood that are in the world. I look upon these great printing-offices and factories of books as so many moral encampments, and upon these ranks of working-men and working-women as indeed a vast army, arrayed against huge THE PRINTING PRESS. 197 Eedans and Malakoffs of evil. Gentlemen of the New York Publishers' Association, I thank you for those munitions of war, those embattled hosts and yonder glittering signals of success. Women, bending over your work, toil on, for it leads to a result well worthy the spirit and the true mission of woman. And you, my brethren, with roUed-up sleeves, remember it is a world-wide, a final conflict in which you are engaged. The rumble of the power-press is better than the rattle of artillery. The click of composing-sticks is more inspiring than the clank of armor, and every type, more sure than a bullet, and shooting noiseless as the summer air, shall hit the mark, though it be a thousand years ahead. Advance, battalions ! for with every forward step the old wrong and falsehood of the world grows weaker, and is made ready to pass away ! " MOUNT ETNA, ^HIS volcano, situated near the sea-coast in the north- eastern part of the island of Sicily, has been longer known to history, and is of vastly greater extent, than Vesuvius ; in comparison with it, the latter is indeed only a hill. Its eruptions are recorded nearly a thousand years before Christ, and thus we know it to have mustered its energies, and poured forth its flames at intervals, for nearly three thousand years. It rises to a height of about 11,000 feet, and its base occupies a surface ninety miles in circumference. The lava streams of Vesuvius do not exceed seven miles in length ; while those of Etna extend to eighteen miles in length, five in width, and from fifty to a hundred feet in thickness. The mountain, which is a single elevation, separate from every [198] MOUNT ETNA. 199 other, appears to be a natural elevation covered with a mass of volcanic materials — stone, earth, ashes, and lava — thrown out at different periods, doubtless reaching back for long ages prior to the first records of history. i From the earliest times, it has attracted the attention of man- kind. In remote periods, before science had scattered the specters of superstition, it was the imaginary workshop where Vulcan, and his assistants, the Cyclops, forged the thunderbolts of Jupiter, and performed the other marvels attributed to these giant black- smiths. The mountain can be ascended to the top of the crater, though it is a matter of some dSfficulty. The lower parts are fertile, and are teeming with vineyards, oranges, olives, and other fruits. Then, as you ascend, comes a wooded region, and finally a cone — pierced with one grand crater in the center, and sixty or seventy lesser ones at the sides — absolutely destitute of vegetation, and for six months of the year covered with snow and ice. These latter constitute some of the chief articles of commerce for the adjacent country. The eruptions of Etna seem to be less frequent than those of Vesuvius ; about sixty, however, being recorded. One of the most terrible eruptions was that of 1669, in which fourteen towns and villages, some having a population of three or four thousand inhabitants, were overwhelmed by the enormous flood of lava. This at last reached the walls of Catania, situated at the foot of the mountain, yet at a point nearly fifteen miles from the crater. These walls were of great height, and had been constructed to protect the city. The lava was arrested for a time ; but it gradually rose, and at last poured into the town, destroying a great part of it. In one place, the lava was sixty feet thick, and was eight years in cooling ! Thirty thousand people perished in this fearful convulsion of nature. In 1792, an eruption commenced, which continued, almost without cessation, for a whole year. It began by a tree-shaped mass of black smoke, rising to the clouds ; then were heard loud 200 MOUNT ETNA. rumblings in the bosom of the mountain, with occasional sounds like the discharges of artillery. After a few days, lava began to flow forth from several mouths in the sides of the mountain, and the streams, rushing forward, broke over the old beds of lava with loud crackling sounds, and at the same time swept the ground, carrying along with them the earth, stones, trees, and other substances which they found in their passage. They also filled up valleys, overwhelmed vineyards, and even approached the walls of towns. When flowing freely, these currents of lava were almost thirty feet thick ; but in some places they accu- mulated to the depth of three hundred feet 1 The city of Catania, situated, as we have said, at the foot of the mountain, is one of the most beautiful places in the world. It is of high antiquity, and has frequently suffered from earthquakes and volcanic eruptions ; yet it seems always to rise, like the phcenix, more beautiful from its ruins. The very substance which at various periods ravaged its plains has, by its own decomposi- tion, covered them with a soil fertile as that of tiie fabled Hesperides. The lava which formerly brought death and de- struction to the city and all within it, now converted into stone, is the great building material for houses; palaces, churches, convents, and other public edificeg ; thus contributing to the restoration and embellishment of that which it before over- whelmed. MORNING, NOON, AND NIGHT. WAS morn, and, wending on its way. Beside my patli a stream was playing ; And down its banks, in humor gay, A thoughtless hoyden boy was straying. Light as the breeze, they onward flew — That joyous youth and laughing tide — And seemed each other's course to woo, For long they bounded side by side. And now the dimpling water stayed. And glassed its ripples in a nook ; And on its breast a bubble played, Which won the boy's admiring look. He bent him o'er the river's brim. And on the radiant vision gazed ; For lovelier still, it seemed to him That, in its breast, Us image blazed. [201] 202 MORNING, NOON AND NIGHT. With beating heart, and trembling finger, He stooped the wondrous gem to clasp, But, spell-bound, seemed a while to linger, Ere yet he made th' adventurous grasp. And still a while the glittering toy. Coquettish, seemed to shun the snare ; And then more eager grew the boy, And followed with impetuous air. Eound and around, with heedful eyes. He chased it o'er the wary river : , He marked his time, and seized his prize ; But, in his hand, it burst forever ! Upon the river's marge he sate, The tears adown his young cheek gushing ; And long — his heart disconsolate — He heeded not the river's rushing. But tears will cease : and now the boy Once more looked forth upon the stream ; 'Twas morning still ; and lo ! a toy, Bright as the lost one, in the beam. He rose — pursued — the bubble caught ; It burst — he sighed — then others chased: And as I parted, still he sought New bubbles in their downward haste. My onward path "I still pursued, Till the high noon-tide sun was o'er me ; And now, though changed in form and mood, That youth and river seemed before me. MORNING, NOON AND NIGHT. 203 The deepened stream more proudly swept, Though chafed by many a vessel's prow ; The youth, in manhood's vigor stepped. But care was chiseled on his brow. Still on the stream he kept his eye, And wooed the bubbles to the shore, And snatched them as they circled by, Though bursting as they burst before. Once more we parted. Yet again We met, though now 't was evening dim ; Onward the waters rushed amain And vanished o'er a cataract's brim. Though fierce and wild the raging surge, The bubble-chaser still was there. And, bending o'er the cataract's verge, Clutched at the gaudy things of air. With staff in hand, and tottering knee, Upon the slippery brink he stood. And watched, with doting ecstasy, Each wreath of foam that rode the flood. " One bubble more ! " I heard him call, And saw his eager fingers play : He snatched, and down the roaring fall, With the lost bubble, passed away! J-^"* :^>-.-