Read Ebook: Appletons' Popular Science Monthly May 1899 Volume LV No. 1 May 1899 by Various Youmans William Jay Editor

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Author's Preface iii

THE KNOLL, AMBLESIDE " 21

BRANTWOOD, CONISTON LAKE " 29

JOHN RUSKIN IN OLD AGE " 65

THE HOUSE AT HERNE HILL IN WHICH RUSKIN WAS BORN IN 1819 " 75

MEDALLION ON THE RUSKIN MEMORIAL, DERWENTWATER " 82

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE " 85

NAB COTTAGE, RYDAL " 95

WINE STREET, BRISTOL " 103

SOUTHEY'S MONUMENT IN CROSTHWAITE CHURCH, KESWICK " 109

JOSEPH COTTLE, OF BRISTOL " 113

OLD BRATHAY " 123

CHARLES LLOYD AND HIS WIFE " 128

ELLERAY, WINDERMERE " 131

VIEW OF WINDERMERE " 167

YEWDALE " 187

HAWKESHEAD, FROM ESTHWAITE WATER " 203

FOX HOW, AMBLESIDE " 213

BURNESIDE HALL, NEAR KENDAL " 223

SWARTHMORE HALL, ULVERSTONE " 233

GRASMERE AND DOVE COTTAGE

THE ENGLISH OPIUM EATER

THOMAS DE QUINCEY

Loving, and beloved of all who knew him, unsophisticated and child-like as he was in middle and later manhood, he had had as rough an experience of the dark and troublous side of the world as any man of his century.

He was born in Manchester, where his father, who died early of consumption, was a well-to-do manufacturer. His mother, who was of a socially higher grade, and of a rigid Puritan character, never understood her sensitive son, and never took him to her heart or entered his. Very touching are the autobiographic accounts he gives of his sensations on the death of a little sister; how he stole into the silent chamber and kissed the cold lips, and fell apparently into a kind of trance, which, young as he was, made his eyes fill 'with the golden fulness of life'; 'a vault,' he says, 'seemed to open in the zenith of the far blue sky, a shaft which ran up for ever. I, in spirit, rose as if on billows that also ran up the shaft for ever; and the billows seemed to pursue the throne of God; but that also ran before us and fled away for ever,' and so he goes on, 'till,' says he, 'I slept ... and when I awoke I found myself standing, as before, close to my sister's bed.' Later, too, in church, the organ music awoke within him the deep mysticism of his nature, and he beheld with inner vision, as the solemn notes pealed and sobbed, dreams and visions, and heard oracles, and had with God, as he supposed, 'communion undisturbed.' These dream-echoes haunted him more or less all his life. And it was this delicate, refined nature which was terrorized and domineered over by a rough, fighting elder brother, who forced him into conflict with town boys and victimized him incessantly at home. It was this quick-learning, preternaturally intelligent boy--who could beat all his schoolmates at Greek and other book-knowledge--who was sent to dull and cruel masters, who misused him and drove him in the end to run away and hide himself in Wales, and afterwards in London. In the great Metropolis, in a desolate old house at the corner of Greek Street and Soho Square, with only a little waif of a girl to share his misery and solitude, he spent many months, his only other acquaintances a hard old lawyer, who made him a tool, and a girl of the streets, whom he calls 'Poor Ann of Oxford Street,' who had rescued him from death when he lay famishing on a doorstep.

How he was discovered by his family; how he was sent to Oxford, and how when there his sensitiveness led him to shirk the examinations for his degree; how he went to the lakes of Westmorland to live, edited a Kendal newspaper, associated with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Professor Wilson, and many another celebrity of the day; how he married a farmer's daughter, who made him an exemplary wife; how he had contracted the terrific opium habit, and how he fought it, conquered it, and fell again before it; how he filled, even in the days of his poverty and struggling life, one cottage after another with precious volumes of ancient and modern lore; and how he migrated northward, and lived in and near Edinburgh, as he was doing when we first met him--all these things you must read for yourselves in his 'English Opium Eater,' and in his entrancing 'Autobiographic Sketches,' or else in a Life of him by Dr. Japp or by Professor Masson.

His death came not unawares to terminate a period of helpless weariness with some delirium, the after-effects of opium doses. But even in delirium his dreams, though they greatly tried him, revealed the gentle spirit of the man. Telling his daughter one of them, he said: 'You know I and the children were invited to the Great Supper--the Great Supper of Jesus Christ. So, wishing the children to have suitable dresses for such an occasion, I had them all dressed in white. They were dressed from head to foot in white. But some rough men in the streets of Edinburgh, as we passed on our way to the Supper, seeing the little things in complete white, laughed and jeered at us, and made the children much ashamed.' His daughter records: 'As the waves of death rolled faster and faster over him, suddenly out of the abyss we saw him throw up his arms, which to the last retained their strength, and he said distinctly, and as if in great surprise, "Sister, sister, sister!"' So he fell on sleep.

OF BOOKS AND CONVERSATION

'A great scholar, in the highest sense of the term, is not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power of combination, bringing together from the four winds, like the Angel of the Resurrection, what else were dust from dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing life.

'And of this let everyone be assured--that he owes to the impassioned books which he has read, many a thousand more of emotions than he can consciously trace back to them. Dim by their origination, these emotions yet arise in him, and mould him through life like the forgotten incidents of childhood.

THE ENGLISH OPIUM EATER

THOMAS DE QUINCEY

We have already seen that De Quincey's collected essays filled, in the edition prepared by himself, as many as fourteen volumes. How many there are in the more recent edition by Professor Masson I do not at the moment remember, but they are in most public libraries, and can be heartily commended both for their careful annotation and the excellence of their typography. This latter point is a great one for the book-lover, who believes that everything he reads should be pleasant to handle and a delight to the eyes, provided always that its price is within reach of a moderately-filled purse.

Of the quality of the contents of the fourteen volumes there are diverse critical opinions. Let me appraise a few of them before offering my own. Dr. Traill , while speaking highly of our author's remarkable powers of literary expression, his wit, pathos, and humour, considers him 'unequal' in merit, and is almost absurdly wrong when he talks of De Quincey dividing a certain portion of his life 'between Bohemianizing in London and lion-hunting in the Lake District.' Two more utterly unsuitable words could hardly have been found with which to describe the early experiences of our quaint, little, oversensitive 'Thomas Paperverius,' as Hill Burton calls him in 'The Book Hunter,' than 'Bohemianizing' and 'lion-hunting.' We will, however, forgive Dr. Traill, since one who was by nature an unsympathetic critic could not possibly rise above his own customary level, and also because he gives De Quincey a place of honour as the originator of the modern school of 'prose poets,' represented by Professor Wilson, his contemporary, and in later years by John Ruskin.

George Gilfillan has far more nearly hit the mark when he pens this critique: 'In all his writings we find a lavish display of learning. You see it bursting out, whether he will or no; never dragged in as by cart-ropes; and his allusions, glancing in all directions, show even more than his direct quotations that his learning is encyclopaedic. His book of reference is the brain. Nor must we forget his style. It is massive, masculine, and energetic; ponderous in its construction, slow in its motion, thoroughly English, yet thickly sprinkled with archaisms and big words, peppered to just the proper degree with the condiments of simile, metaphor, and poetic quotation; select, without being fastidious; strong, without being harsh; elaborate, without being starched into formal and false precision.'

We will pass now from these critical estimates to our own mere likings and preferences among De Quincey's very voluminous 'Selections Grave and Gay.' I give the first place--the place of vantage and of honour--to the autobiography already alluded to above, for it burns and scintillates with the fire of genius, kindled by the action of unique experiences upon a unique temperament. Next must come, of course, the 'Confessions,' which made him famous in the first instance. This is a volume from which, in my limited space, I can make no typical extracts, meandering as the pages do among golden visions and uncanny dreams begotten by the hideous narcotic drug, and lingering lovingly among picturesque sketches of the men and maidens of the villages and country towns he strayed to during his flight from school and home, giving us glimpses now of 'elaborate and pompous sunsets hanging over the mountains of Wales,' and anon plunging us into the profoundest depths of German philosophy and theology. Sometimes he makes us smile at a curious and unexpected phrase, or some simile that is apt, and yet at first sight seems incongruous, with a spice of exaggeration, such as the statement that the shoulders of the porter who carried away his trunk were 'broad as Salisbury Plain.'

One of the most characteristic of his tales is that of 'The Spanish Military Nun,' a true narrative, unearthed by him from the authentic lore of Spain, of an episode in the conquest of South America, and relating to a certain Catarina who escaped from a convent in the mother country, donned armour, fought battles and duels, was beloved by marriageable girls, forced a passage across the Andes, and finally was drowned in the Western Atlantic. The story is told with humour and much feeling, and has no counterpart, except in the narrative similarly discovered and freely translated by Southey, called 'The Expedition of Orsua, and the Crimes of Aguirre.'

A notable advance in the line of culture entirely indigenous to southwestern Europe has been lately revealed through the interesting discoveries by Piette at the station of Brassempuoy and in the grotto of Mas d'Azil. Carvings in ivory, designs upon bone, evidence of a numerical system, of settled habitations, and, most important of all, of a domestication of the reindeer, of the horse, and the ox in the pure stone age have been found; and that, too, in the uttermost southwestern corner of Europe. In the lake dwellings of Switzerland, as also in Scandinavia, a knowledge of agriculture, pottery, and the domestication of animals is evinced, likewise as a native discovery. From other quarters of the continent in the stone age comes similar testimony to a marked advance of man culturally. The justly celebrated carving of a reindeer from Thayngen, almost worthy of a modern craftsman, betrays no mean artistic ability. The man who drew it was far from being a savage, even if he knew no metals, and buried his dead instead of cremating them. The evidence as to early domestication of animals is perhaps the most startling. Carved horses' heads, with halters and rude bridles, have been surely identified by Piette and others.

The primitive stage of European civilization, to which the term Hallstatt is specifically applied by archaeologists, is characterized by a knowledge both of bronze and iron, although the latter is relatively insignificant. Its rarity indicates that we have to do with the very beginnings of its use. In this early combination of bronze and iron the Hallstatt culture is in strong contrast with the rest of Europe. Almost everywhere else, as in Hungary for example, a pure bronze age--sometimes one even of copper also--intervenes between the use of stone and iron. Here, however, the two metals, bronze and iron, appear simultaneously. There is no evidence of a use of bronze alone. Bearing in mind, what we shall subsequently emphasize in the case of Scandinavia, that in that remote part of Europe man had to put up with the inferior metal for close upon a thousand years before the acquisition of a better substitute, it will be seen that at Hallstatt a remarkable foreshortening of cultural evolution had ensued. Iron, as we have said, was still comparatively rare. Only in the case of small objects, less often in the blades of bronze-handled swords, does this more precious metal appear. But it is far more common than in the earliest Greek civilizations made known to us by Schliemann and others.

The Oriental affinities of the Hallstatt culture have been especially emphasized by recent archaeological discoveries at Koban, in the Caucasus Mountains. A stage of culture transitional between bronze and iron, almost exactly equivalent to that of the eastern Alps, is revealed. Similarities in little objects, like fibulae, might easily be accounted for as having passed in trade, but the relationship is too intimate to be thus explained. Hungary forms the connecting link between the two. In many respects its bronze age is different from that of Hallstatt, notably in that the latter seems to have acquired the knowledge of iron and of bronze at about the same time. In Hungary the pure bronze age lasted a long time, and attained a full maturity. A characteristic piece is represented herewith. In respect of the representation of figures of animals such as these, Hallstatt, Hungary, and Koban are quite alike.

Have we proved that bronze culture came from Asia by reason of these recent finds in the Caucasus? Great stress has been laid upon them in the discussion of European origins. Are we justified in agreeing with Chantre that two currents of culture have swept from Asia into Europe--one by the Caucasus north of the Black Sea and up the Danube; the other across Asia Minor and into the Balkan peninsula, thence joining the first in the main center of Hallstatt civilization, east of the Alps? The point seems by no means established. Relationship does not prove parentage. Far more likely does it appear that the Koban culture is a relic or an offshoot rather than a cradle of bronze civilization. And even Chantre, ardent advocate as he is of Oriental derivations, seems to feel the force of this in his later writings, for he confesses that Koban is rather from Mediterranean European sources than that Europe is from Koban. Most probable of all is it, that both Hallstatt and Koban are alike derived from a common root in the neighborhood of Chaldea.

To indicate the uncertainty of proof in these matters, let us suppose that the Hallstatt civilization, for example, is the result of an immigration of a brachycephalic Oriental civilized race overlying a primitive native long-headed one. That seems best to conform to the data, which northern Italy at least affords. Suppose the new people--call them Celts with the best authorities, if you please--brought not only bronze and iron, but the custom of incineration. Prior to their appearance inhumation was the rule. What would be the result if one attempted to determine the physical character of that people from a study of the remains in their necropoli? All the crania to be found in the graves with the precious objects of bronze would in no wise represent the people who brought that bronze. They burned their bridges behind them at death, and disappeared for good and all. And the remains left to the archaeologist would represent precisely that class in the population which had nothing to do with the main characteristics of its civilization. And then, again, we must bear in mind that the interments in these necropoli as a whole, both with burned or buried dead, constitute a selected type. Neither Hallstatt, Watsch, nor any of the burial places of their type were open to the great mass of the common people. They were sacred spots, far removed among the mountains from any centers of population. Only the rich or powerful presumably had access to them. They are no more typical of the Hallstatt people, therefore, than interments in Westminster Abbey are representative of the English masses. All our data are necessarily drawn from a class within a class. Inductions from them must be very gingerly handled.

The situation above described seems to prevail almost everywhere in the Hallstatt cultural area. Two distinct burial customs denote possibly two separate peoples, the inhumers being certainly the older. In the Hallstatt necropolis, for example, about one third of the graves once contained human remains, all the others containing mere ashes. So ancient are these graves that only eight crania from the hundreds of interments of the first class are available for study. These are of a pronounced long-headed type. The modern populations of this part of Europe are, as we have seen, among the broadest-headed people in the world, as are also all the modern Illyrians. Yet from the great necropolis at Glasinac in Bosnia, with its twenty thousand tumuli, the meager Hallstatt returns are amply corroborated. The ancient inhabitants were as long-headed as they are pronouncedly of the opposite type to-day. Up in Bohemia and Moravia also, according to Niederle, the first bronze-age people, such as we know them, were still dolichocephalic quite like their predecessors in the pure stone age. And here also is incineration just about frequent enough to make it uncertain whether the human remains are typical or not.

In the outlying parts of Europe, perhaps even in Gaul, it is extremely doubtful whether any closer connection between race and culture exists than in the Alps. It has long been maintained that the brachycephalic people of the Round Barrows introduced bronze into Britain. Surely, as we have already shown, things point to that conclusion. Beddoe, Dawkins, and other authorities maintain it at all events. Yet Canon Taylor makes it pretty evident that the new race arrived in Britain, as it certainly did in Gaul, considerably in advance of any knowledge of the metals. As for Scandinavia, much the same relation holds true. Both race and culture, as we shall see, came from the south, but it is by no means clear that they arrived at the same time or that one brought the other. In Spain, Siret has asserted that bronze came in the hands of a new immigrant broad-headed race, but the authoritative opinion of Cartailhac discovers no direct evidence to this effect.

The final conclusions which would seem to follow from our tedious summary is this: That the nearly contemporaneous appearance of a brachycephalic race and the first knowledge of metals indicative of Oriental cultural influences in western Europe, is more or less a coincidence. The first civilized peoples of the Hallstatt period seem to have been closely allied, both in physical type and culture, with the Greeks and other peoples of the classic East. Among them, perhaps over them, swept the representatives of our broad-headed Alpine type who came from the direction of Asia. These invaders may have been the Scythians, although the matter is incapable of proof. Pressure from this direction set both culture and population in motion toward the west, in much the same way that the fall of Constantinople in the fifteenth century induced the Renaissance in Italy.

The influence of the second or native element in prehistoric Italian civilization appears most clearly in the Etruscan period. Etruria, lying south of the Apennines, was more essentially Italian, as we might expect, than the region about Bologna, where the Umbro-Hallstatt or continental culture flourished. It is easy to note the superiority in the former case. It is most clearly indicated in the pottery. Here we find an art which is truly indigenous to the climate and soil of the Mediterranean.

The advance in culture typified by our vases was equaled in all the details of life. The people built strongly walled cities; they constructed roads and bridges; their architecture, true predecessor of the Roman, was unique and highly evolved. All the plain and good things of life were known to these people, and their civilization was rich in its luxury, its culture and art as well. In costumes, jewelry, the paraphernalia of war, in painting and statuary they were alike distinguished. Their mythology was very complex, much of the Roman being derived from it. Most of our knowledge of them is derived from the rich discoveries in their chambered tombs, scattered all over Italy from Rome to Bologna. There can be no doubt of a very high type of civilization attained long before the Christian era. Roman history is merged in the obscurity of time, five or six hundred years later than this. The high antiquity of the Etruscan is therefore beyond question. But its highly evolved art and culture show that we have no longer to do with European origins; to discuss it further would lead us to trench upon the field of classical rather than prehistoric archaeology.

That this region was necessarily uninhabited during the Glacial epoch, long after the advent of man in southern Europe, is indubitable. It is proved by the extent of the glaciated area, which extends on the mainland as far south as Hamburg, Berlin, and Posen, and over the entire British Isles at the same time. It was by the melting of this vast sheet of ice that those high level river terraces in France and Belgium were formed, in which the most ancient and primitive implements of human manufacture occur. In the area beneath this ice sheet no trace of human occupation until long after this time occurs. This fact of itself, is not absolutely conclusive, for glaciation would have obliterated all traces of anterior habitation or activity. As to the possibility of a tertiary population before the Glacial epoch, it presents too remote a contingency for us to consider, although we do not deny its possibility. It too far antedates prehistory, so to speak.

Tardy in its human occupation and its stone culture, Scandinavia was still more backward, as compared with the rest of Europe, in its transition to the age of bronze. This is all the more remarkable in view of the rich store of raw materials on every hand. Nowhere else in Europe does the pure stone age seem to have been so unduly protracted. A necessary consequence of this was that stone-working reached a higher stage of evolution here than anywhere else in the world save in America. In other parts of Europe the discovery of metal-working, of course, immediately put an end to all progress in this direction. The ultimate degree of skill to which they attained is represented in the accompanying cuts. The first, a flint poniard, shows the possibilities, both in the line of form and finish, of manufacture by the chipping process. To equal this example one must look to the most skillful of the American Indians, as in Tennessee, where they were too remote from mines of native copper to make use of a ready substitute for stone. Our second implement is an axe hammer, made of diorite. To shape, sharpen, bore, and polish a piece of stone like this certainly required a long apprenticeship in the art.

Bronze culture, when it did at last appear in this remote part of Europe, came upon the scene suddenly and in full maturity. Whether this was as early as the eighth to the tenth century, as Montelius avers, is disputed by many. All are nevertheless agreed that evidence is absolutely lacking that the art was of indigenous origin. From what part of the world this knowledge of bronze ultimately came we leave an open question, as also whether it came with Phoenician traders or direct from Greece, as Worsaae affirms. It was certainly introduced into Sweden, making its way into Norway about the same time directly from the peninsula of Jutland. Its first appearance is in a highly evolved state. Such crude attempts at manufacture as Chantre finds so long prevalent along the Rhone Valley, for example, are entirely absent. Both in form and ornamentation the hand of the master is apparent. This bronze age, like that of stone, lasted a very long time--far longer than anywhere else on the continent. Central Europe passed through three stages of metallic progress while Scandinavia was evolving two. Not until the second or third century of our era--not until the time of the Romans, it would appear--did iron begin to supplant bronze. History repeats itself. The excessive duration of the bronze age, as in the case of stone antecedently, led to the attainment of a remarkable skill. The two accompanying cuts are typical of the best work of this time. In the one case, merely superficial ornament, especially the skillful use of the spiral; in the other, real beauty of form in the bracelet, are clearly apparent. Possessed of such skill in the working of bronze, it is small wonder that the need of a better metal was not felt. Only when fashioned into weapons of war does iron reveal its supremacy over bronze. This, of course, with the campaigns of historical times, brings us to the end of our chronicle.

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