THE BOTANY OF SHAKESPEARE.

The inroads of sensibility into French literature, as exemplified in Marivaux and Prévost in the thirties, followed swiftly by the rank and file, also wrought havoc in the old classical method, though this fact may not without further reflection be conceded. But in the broad realm of psychological observation, where classic art had reigned supreme, the influx of a certain morbid sensibility strangely warped the mental vision of the observer. Diderot, a veritable sinner himself in this respect, admits as much in an unguarded moment: "L'homme sensible est trop abandonné à la merci de son diaphragme ... pour être un profond observateur et conséquemment un sublime imitateur de la nature." Every one knows Voltaire's naïve statement which bears condemnatory evidence to the bluntness of his psychology. "La nature est partout la même." And is it not, we ask, this enigmatical typical man, out of space and out of time, for whom the chimerical theories of universal perfectibility were soon to be woven?

It is incontestably true, then, that the character of human observation undergoes a sensible alteration in the course of the century, and that whereas the individual man had been heretofore studied inasmuch as he was in himself of typical value, henceforward not man the individual will be the object of study, but the observation of human relations will usurp the field, and psychological analysis will yield to social investigation.

I would add a word or two by way of conclusion to illustrate how the encyclopedists in their propaganda, aided in part by the coincident influence of Rousseau, established ideals of thought and conduct which were in the most violent contrast to the ideals cherished in the preceding century. Of course, we readily understand that the encyclopedists threw to the four corners of heaven the outworn respect of religious and political tradition. Furthermore, we may ask ourselves what it is which in a sense makes Molière and La Fontaine isolated in their century; and the answer will not be far to seek when we realize that these two alone of all their fellows urged the suspected authority of instinct as a sufficient guide for conduct. Yet how far were not even these bolder spirits from the natural man of Rousseau or of Diderot?

The views of the two centuries concerning the authority of reason seem at first sight to coincide, yet, while bearing Boileau in mind, we can confidently assert that the doctrine of the sovereignty of reason was not established as a principle of thought until the culminating years of the eighteenth century. Pascal's "taisez-vous raison imbécile"indicates how attempered and attenuated by spiritual faith were the dictates of pure reason in his day, and the reason of Boileau, as I have already observed, was strongly tinged with æstheticism. I need not, with reference to eighteenth-century reason worship, go further than to refer the curious of enlightenment on the subject to the masterly works of Morley on the period in question, in which it is precisely this unflinching devotion to reason or unreason (if the sage of Chelsea will have it thus) which stimulates his calm and logical temperament to positive enthusiasm.

A last element of contrast between the centuries is of interest in connection with the habitual mode of thought which Godwin and his political disciple Shelley borrowed from eighteenth-century French sources with reference to the true relations subsisting between laws and morals. The seventeenth-century mind held tenaciously enough to the theory that it is themoeursof a nation that inspire the laws, but the encyclopedists were inspired in their undying hope of amelioration and human progress to perfectibility by the contrary theory that men, after all, are only bad because the laws have made them so.

It may be conceded, then, that these broad relations of literary movements one with the other, the conflict of converging tendencies, and the more evident causes of the growth and decay of powerful manifestations of a nation's thought, are of quite sufficient moment to have merited fuller treatment at the hands of the eminent critic who has in all other respects fulfilled his task so admirably, that having regard to the necessary conditions of the subject, it would be above criticism if anything could be.

By THOMAS H. MACBRIDE.

The universality of Shakespeare is the common remark of critics. Other great men have been versatile; Shakespeare alone is universal. He alone of all great men seems to have been able to follow his own advice, "to hold as it were the mirror up to Nature." On the clear surface of his thought, as on a deep Alpine lake, the whole shore lies reflected—not alone the clouds, the sky, the woods, the castles, the rocks, the mountain path by which the shepherd strolls; not alone the broad highway by which may march the king in splendor the peasant with his wain; but even the humbler objects by the still water's edge, the trodden grass, the fluttering sedge, the broken reed, the tiniest flower, all things, all Nature in action or repose finds counterpart within the glassy depths.

Hence it is that no man, at least no English-speaking man, reads Shakespeare wrong. Everybody understands him. Here is a sort of Anglo-Saxon Bible in which, so far as the world goes, every soul finds himself, with all his hopes, his doubts, his whims, depicted. We are therefore not surprised that everybody claims a share in Shakespeare; rather claims the poet as his own. The Protestant is sure that Shakespeare despised the hierarchy; the Romanist is quite as certain that he loved the Church. There exists an essay to prove him a Presbyterian; another to show that the great dramatist was a Universalist. A volume has been written to prove the man a soldier; another that he was a lawyer, a printer, a fisherman, a freemason; and here are five or six articles to show that Shakespeare was a gardener.[U]

All this simply means that the poet had a marvelous faculty for close observing; that his vision was accurate, his instinct wonderfully true. It may be therefore worth our while to study for a little this remarkable man from the standpoint of a naturalist, to see how he who so vividly paints a passion can paint a flower; how the man who limns a character, till beyond the photograph it starts to actuality, will catch the essential feature of some natural truth.

We shall nowhere lack for material. The plays are full of references to plants and flowers of every sort. England in Shakespeare's day, as now, was a land of bloom, and the poet but reflects the loveliness of beauty and color spread about him. But he does something more. He is not content with flashes of color and breathings of odor, he goes into detail and gives us the individual plant unmistakably. In his description he shows an exactitude, a discriminating perception that, had it been turned to Nature's problems seriously at all, must at once have transformed the science of his age. But Shakespeare was not a man of science; he was a poet. In his views of Nature he resembles the great poets of the world, notably Goethe; and, like Goethe, he not infrequently outruns the science of his time, uses his imagination, divining things invisible. Moreover, Shakespeare's plants are living things; they form a garden, not a herbarium. They stand before us in multitudes, so that it is difficult for the present purpose to know what to select. We must be content with a few specimen forms brought out in quotations no more extensive than seems necessary to the argument. Of course, there are many plants to-daydiscussed of which Shakespeare never heard. He does not speak of many sorts of fungi, of slime molds, microbes; he knew nothing about these. The microscope had hardly been invented, and the unseen world was as yet largely personified. And yet Shakespeare has not failed to note the visible signs of some of our microscopic forms. Critics have wasted their time and the patience of mankind in an effort to identify Hebona, the "leperous distilment" poured into the porches of the royal ear. Almost profitless are such discussions. Yet we may note that we have here to do with an effect; the means of producing it need not be too closely questioned. Before the rush of action, the weird setting, the voice of an apparition, the excited audience cares not what the mysterious vial may contain—ebony, henbane, yew, or whether it were entirely empty. What is called for is a speedy and mysterious taking off. Had the scene been laid in Italy, the effect had been reached by the fateful prick of a jeweled pin, some ring upon a Borgian finger whose pressure was the paralysis of death. But the king died of no such curari. Note the symptoms (Hamlet, i, 5, 64-73):

"The leperous distilment; whose effectHolds such an enmity with blood of manThat swift as quicksilver it courses throughThe natural gates and alleys of the body,And with a sudden vigour it doth possetAnd curd, like eager droppings into milk,The thin and wholesome blood; so did it mine;And a most instant tetter barked about,Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,All my smooth body."

These are the symptoms of blood-poisoning, vividly portrayed; of some contagion, communicable by infection. In foul old London Shakespeare had doubtless seen endemic, zymotic diseases of every description, and drew his picture from the life. Royal blood is notoriously unsound, royal habit leaves the porches of royal ears especially exposed. On our supposition the vial need not have contained very much, not even ebony. The dramatist had plenty of mystery ready to his hand, and the Hebona is perhaps intentionally ambiguous. Bacterial diseases were of old called plagues; they fell from heaven. Listen to King Lear:

"Now, all the plagues that in the pendulous airHang fated o'er men's faults, light on my daughters!"

Or Caliban:

"All the infections that the sun sucks upFrom bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall and make himBy inch-meal a disease!"

Or they were attributed, as already intimated, to unseen personal agencies:

"This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet: he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock; he gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the hare-lip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth."

I quote this latter rather also to show the accuracy and compass of Shakespeare's vision. How many people, not farmers, have seen wheat whitened by the blight! And that is exactly the description, white not "to the harvest," but whiter still to sterility and death.

But leaving aside all microscopic forms which may or may not be incidentally touched upon everywhere, we may turn our attention next to cryptogamic plants which are positively defined. The sudden springing of mushrooms, for instance, especially at night, so unreal and yet realities withal, made their creation a suitable trick for Prospero:

"You demi-puppets thatBy moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastimeIs to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoiceTo hear the solemn curfew."

The "green sour ringlets on the fields whereof the ewe not bites" are "fairy rings." The same thing appears in the speech of Dame Quickly:

"And nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing,Like to the Garter's compass, in a ring;The expressure that it bears, green let it be,More fertile-fresh than all the field to see."

Fungi, toadstools, mushrooms, and so forth, are fructifications only; the vegetative part of the plants permeates the soil, feeds on its organic matter, and spreads almost equally, we may assume, in all directions from the point of starting. When now this vegetative growth has accumulated energy to form fruit, the sporocarps or mushrooms rise all around at the limits of activity; hence, in a circle.

The fungi cut a small figure in Shakespeare—i. e., considering their numbers and almost omnipresence. But we must remember that they were at that time studied by few, their significance and interest little suspected. They formed part of the realm of the world unseen; they came and went at the instance of powers unknown, mostly personified, imaginary, a misty population, the thought of which kept for long ages the childhood of our race in terror. Shakespeare saw the forms of unstudied plants, everything visible to the naked eye, and really omitted very little. He speaks of mosses—the lichens were included with them—chiefly as indicative of age in the object in which they rest:

"Under an oak, whose boughs were mossed with ageAnd high top bald with dry antiquity."

Then again he simply touches them, but in such a way as to reveal his full appreciation of their beauty, as in Cymbeline, iv, 2. For the decoration of Imogen's grave the ruddock would bring flowers—

"... bring thee all this;Yea, and furr'd moss besides, when flowers are none,To winter-ground thy corse."

The "furred moss" to "winter-ground thy corse" is exquisite.

Ferns, though so much larger, so handsome, and in our day so all-attractive, failed generally to impress our fathers.

Butler, writing in 1670, has this to say:

"They spring like fern, that infant weed,Equivocally without a seed,And have no possible foundationBut merely in th' imagination."

Now, as far as Shakespeare was concerned, ferns answered his purpose without seed just as well as with such visible means of perpetuity. His only reference is I Henry, iv, where Gadshill says:

"We have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible";

and Chamberlain replies:

"Nay, by my faith, I think you are more belonging to theNight than to fern-seed for your walking invisible."

In this connection Ellacombe suggests the doctrine of signatures. The God of Nature had written for us his human children prescriptions all over the leafy world. The remedy indicated by its form its own application. Thus a heart-shaped leaf was good medicine for cardiac troubles, a lung-like leaf was good for consumption, a lungwort in fact, and so a liverwort, a spleenwort, and the like. Gerarde, and, in fact, all the old medical writers throughout the centuries, are full of this. Now, what more natural than that a plant which could thus perpetuate itself age after age by means invisible should be able to confer the much-sought gift of invisibility, the power to disappear and reappear at pleasure? Many people so believed. Shakespeare appears to have been skeptical.

Turn we now to the flowering plants: the amount of material at our disposal, as already indicated, is immense. Shakespeare was evidently a great lover of flowers simply as such. His pages from first to last are ornate with color, almost redolent of roses, lilies, eglantine, with every conceivable metaphor and trope—"the bud of love," the "nettle of danger," the "flower of safety." Their lovely shapes areever before him; he is spellbound with their beauty. "England itself is a sea-walled garden." Grammatical forms may vanish, if only the flower may live. Compare Cymbeline, ii, 3:

"Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,And Phœbus 'gins arise,His steeds to water at those springsOn chaliced flowers thatlies."

The image of the morning flowers, the fiery steeds that drink them dry, shall fascinate us so that we forget the grammar. It will not do to say lie; the word must rhyme with "arise," and further on with "eyes":

"And winking Mary-buds beginTo ope their golden eyes:With everything that pretty is,My lady sweet arise."

For the Queen of the Fairies he spreads this sort of a couch:

"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight," etc.

Such cases reveal the impress, the healthy, happy impress which Nature could exercise on this the foremost man of all the world, the harmony between Nature and Nature's child. All the plants in the last quotation are wild flowers, except the musk-roses, and these are so common in England as to be almost wild. The eglantine was the sweetbrier, said to be wild in all the southern part of the island and popular in the literature of all recorded centuries. Gerarde describes as follows: "The leaves are glittering, of beautiful green color, of smell most pleasant.... The fruit when it is ripe maketh most pleasant meats, and banqueting dishes, as tarts and such like, the making whereof I commit to the cunning cook, and teeth to eat them in the rich man's mouth."

The sweetness of the leaf of the eglantine is referred to by Shakespeare in another passage which I venture to quote now for another purpose, to show the accuracy of his description as applied to simple flowers. The lines are from the scene quoted before. Arviragus and Guiderius would bury the swooning Imogen. They think her dead (Cymbeline, iv, 2):

"I'll sweeten thy sad grave: thou shalt not lackThe flower that's like thy face, pale primrose; norThe azured harebell, like thy veins; no, norThe leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander,Out-sweetened not thy breath."

Primroses when pale are the palest of all withering plants. The flowers change color with maturity, especially after fertilization. The paleness of the primrose is the pallor of decay. But the azure harebell—behold it waving on its slender stipe beneath the shade of some great rock—who can look into its delicate cerulean cup again and not bethink him of the blue-veined eyelid sleep that falls upon our human flowers!

The same accuracy of detail is evinced in many other places. Take, for instance, Shakespeare's description of the violet all the way through. It moves him chiefly by its odor (King John, iv, 2):

"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,To throw a perfume on the violet,To smooth the ice, to add another hueUnto the rainbow, or with taper-lightTo seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,Is wasteful and ridiculous excess."

Nevertheless, we have violets dim, and violets blue, and purple violets, and more particularly "blue-veined" violets, as if the poet looked with a lens into the very throat of the flower which Frenchmen call a thought. "And there is pansies—that's for thoughts." His description of the elm is equally exact (Midsummer-Night's Dream, iv, 1, 47-49):

"So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckleGently entwist; the female ivy soEnrings the barky fingers of the elm."

There is nothing better than that, as you may prove by examining the twigs of even some of our American species; the cork elm, for instance. The hawthorn, the cedar, and the pine and the oak especially, are most naturally treated. These are Shakespeare's familiar trees. The cedar of Shakespeare is the cedar of Lebanon, commonly planted throughout Europe since the time of the Crusades. Shakespeare had probably seen specimens in England. He uses it as the type of all that is great and fine. One author thinks he copies Ezekiel, chapter xxxi. The pine was beside him all the while. He knew the secret of the pine knot, and well describes it (Troilus and Cressida, i, 3):

"... checks and disastersGrow in the veins of actions highest reared,As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,Deflect the sound pine and divert his grainTortive and errant from his course of growth."

Any one who has ever examined the case, or even one who has handled knotty lumber, has seen the wood fiber run around the persistent base of some dead limb, and can appreciate these lines.

All these quotations show that Shakespeare used his own eyes and used them well. He saw the real distinctions of things, the hoariness on the willow leaf. He found character in the oak as in the king, and beauty in both. In many of his notices of natural objects, however, the poet is not the original observer. He often uses current opinions, fancies, dreams, for these also were the realities in his day, quite as much sometimes as oaks and forests. There is concerning plants a sort of orthodox mythology, and thousands of years have sometimes contributed to the reputation born by a single species. A curious illustration is found in what Shakespeare has to say about the mandrake (Antony and Cleopatra, i, 5):

"Give me to drink mandragora.Why, madam?That I might sleep out this great gap of time."

Othello, iii, 3:

"Not poppy, nor mandragora,Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleepWhich thou owedst yesterday."

Juliet, reflecting on her proposed entombment in the dark grave of the Capulets, exclaims (Romeo and Juliet, iv, 3):

"Alack, alack! is it not like that I,So early waking, what with loathsome smells,And shrieks like mandrake's torn out of the earth,That living mortals, hearing them, run mad:Or, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,Environèd with all these hideous fears?"

The mandrakeAtropa officinalisbelongs to theSolanaceæ, and, like others of the family, has narcotic properties. This was doubtless known to Shakespeare, as in the passage cited he compares the mandrake with the poppy. The groaning and shrieking are, of course, the purest superstition. The root of the mandrake was supposed to resemble the human form. The favorite habitat assigned to the plant was the foot of the gallows, and men believed that in some way the bodies of criminals were reproduced in the growing plant; their very pains and cries renewed, especially for him who profanely dared to pull the mandrake from the earth. The curious may consult Gerarde.

These ideas, it is needless to say, are very old; Pliny refers to them, and, if I recollect well, Vergil has his hero pull up some plant amid the strangest of sights and sounds. With these old myths are tied up, perchance, the mandrakes of King James's version. Nay, the superstition still survives; look at the woodcut inWebster's Unabridged, and you will discover that the artist who set out to illustrate the word mandrake for that somewhat venerable authority was by no means able to free himself from the ancient spell. Credulity is evermore a factor in the compound called human nature. Men love to be fooled, or to find some support for belief in manifest absurdity. There is nothing so silly but has its advocates among men who ought to know better.

A year or two since, a man brought from Ohio to the University of Iowa an innocent five-parted, digitate, black fungus. It was treasured in alcohol. Why? Because of its origin. An honest mechanic meeting with accident lost his fingers under the surgeon's knife. The amputated members were neglected, but presently discovered and duly buried in the garden. The following spring from the "identical spot" uprose a swarthy hand, black without, white within. The hand was a perfectmain-de-gloirefor that sensation-loving community. The matter was discussed in newspapers. A long and careful account of the wonder was prepared, put in print and circulated among the friends of the deceased—fingers! "What fools we mortals be!" For sheer superstition and crass stupidity who may say that the nineteenth century may not yet discount the days of the virgin Queen?

But I said at the outset that Shakespeare had in some instances anticipated modern scientific teaching. To illustrate this in its most striking instance, I am compelled to offer a somewhat long quotation (Winter's Tale, iv, 4, 76-106):

"Polixenes.Shepherdess,A fair one are you, well you fit our agesWith flowers of winter.Perdita.Sir, the year growing ancient,Not yet on summer's death, nor on the birthOf trembling winter, the fairest flowers o' the seasonAre our carnation and streaked gillyvors,Which some call nature's bastards: of that kindOur rustic garden's barren; and I care notTo get slips of them.Polixenes.Wherefore, gentle maiden,Do you neglect them?Perdita.For I have heard it saidThere is an art which in their piedness sharesWith great creating nature.Polixenes.Say there be;Yet nature is made better by no mean,But nature makes that mean: so, over that artWhich you say adds to nature, is an artThat nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marryA gentler scion to the wildest stock,And make conceive a bark of baser kindBy bud of nobler race: this is an artWhich does mend nature, change it rather, butThe art itself is nature.Perdita.So it is.Polixenes.Then make your garden rich in gillyvors,And do not call them bastards."

"Polixenes.Shepherdess,A fair one are you, well you fit our agesWith flowers of winter.

Perdita.Sir, the year growing ancient,Not yet on summer's death, nor on the birthOf trembling winter, the fairest flowers o' the seasonAre our carnation and streaked gillyvors,Which some call nature's bastards: of that kindOur rustic garden's barren; and I care notTo get slips of them.

Polixenes.Wherefore, gentle maiden,Do you neglect them?

Perdita.For I have heard it saidThere is an art which in their piedness sharesWith great creating nature.

Polixenes.Say there be;Yet nature is made better by no mean,But nature makes that mean: so, over that artWhich you say adds to nature, is an artThat nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marryA gentler scion to the wildest stock,And make conceive a bark of baser kindBy bud of nobler race: this is an artWhich does mend nature, change it rather, butThe art itself is nature.

Perdita.So it is.

Polixenes.Then make your garden rich in gillyvors,And do not call them bastards."

Here we have brought out very distinctly the effect of cross-fertilization in flowers, the result of grafting and the development of varieties. Better than that, we have here the recognition of that tendency in organisms to vary that lies at the very root of the development of species. Natural selection, survival of the fittest, were impossible were it not true that "Nature is made better by no mean but Nature makes that mean"; or, as it is more broadly stated a few lines further on, "This is an art which does mend Nature, change it rather, but the art itself is Nature." I consider these very remarkable statements when we reflect on the time in which they were written. Darwin, in 1860, does but unfold the thought. The selection which Shakespeare notes as practiced by gardeners, and a similar selection seen in the world of domestic animals, gave Darwin his cue of natural selection. The beauty of Darwin's thesis lies in the fact that the process is natural, and such is Shakespeare's dictum. Later on, lines 112-128, Perdita brings out another remarkable observation that has only lately been confirmed by the conclusions of science:

"... Now my fairest friend,I would I had some flowers o' the spring that mightBecome your time of day; and yours; and yours;That wear upon your virgin branches yetYour maidenheads growing: O Proserpina,For the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fallFrom Dis's wagon! daffodils,That come before the swallow dares, and takeThe winds of March with beauty; violets dim,But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyesOr Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,That die unmarried, ere they can beholdBright Phœbus in his strength—a maladyMost incident to maids; bold oxlips andThe crown imperial; lilies of all kinds;The flower-de-luce being one!"

Primroses are dimorphic—i. e., on the same species we find flowers of different sorts. These are complete, but in any particular flower the essential organs fail of adaptation to each other—the style in one too long, in another too short, to receive pollen from the stamens of its own flower. For fertilization such flowers are absolutely dependent upon the assistance brought by insect visitors. Perdita's primrose isPrimula veris, the early primrose, "that takes the windsof March with beauty," and dies ere it beholds "bright Phœbus in his strength," and it is precisely this species that forms the basis of one of Darwin's earliest and most fruitful studies in the cross-fertilization of flowers. The styles in one form of the early primrose are three times as long as in the other, the stigmas differ, and the coadaptation of the parts of the different flowers extends even to the grains of pollen. Such flowers in the absence of insects are entirely unproductive. Insects are rare so early in the year, and accordingly many of the primroses die, as Perdita says, "unmarried."

Of course, it is not pretended that Shakespeare knew anything of this; but that he should have discovered the fact that the early primrose bears little or no seed, and that he should have been impressed by the truth that this is due to lack of fertilization, is wonderful. This circumstance might well lead to the suspicion that the poet was a gardener.

We must not forget to notice, too, in this connection, that carnations—i. e., pinks—are remarkable for the great number of their varieties. We have, if I may so say, pinks of every color, from crimson to white, even brown it is said. This was true in Shakespeare's time, if one may trust Gerarde again; he says, "A great and large volume would not suffice to write of every one at large considering how infinite they are, and how every year the climate and country bringeth forth new sorts and such as have not heretofore been written of."

Another passage in which the poet has instinctively hit upon a scientific truth is found in Sonnet IV, the last ten lines. The beauty of the passage as a whole is so remarkable that the delicate touches in particular lines are apt to be overlooked:

"For never-resting time leads summer onTo hideous winter and confounds him there;Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,Beauty o'ersnowed and bareness everywhere:Then, were not summer's distillation left,A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass.Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,Nor it nor remembrance what it was:But flowers distilled though they with winter meet,Lose but their show; their substance still lives sweet."

No botanist can read the line "A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass" and not recognize the exact portrayal of the living vegetable cell. The living protoplasm is a liquid prisoner sure enough, hemmed in by walls transparent. There could be no more striking image. And when in herb and tree, in every living plant, the summer's work is ended and hideous winter falls, the new cells, summer's distillation left, do in all perennials actually survive, lest of the effectof beauty, beauty be bereft. There is no more marvelous picture in all the vegetal world than that of a great tree with all its myriad cells, in summer so filled with the rush of life's activity and change that we might hear its music, in autumn sinking to quiescence, and the winter's silent chill where liquid prisoners sleep 'neath walls of glass. The poet did not understand it; he simply prophesied better than he knew. He makes us think of Goethe, of Lucretius. These men made happy guesses. Lucretius especially surprises us by his views of the constitution of matter—unverified, so far as we can know. Goethe lived in the age of science and went on laboriously to verify his surmises. The only natural science which Shakespeare knew was gardening—if that may be called a science. His Sonnets are supposed to have been written about 1590, and the first scientific glimpse of the "prisoner pent in walls of glass" came about 1670, through the lenses of Nehemiah Grew, a Puritan physicist and botanist.

I am aware that it is said by some that in a critique like this we are apt to read much into the writings of our author. The quotations I have submitted show, it seems to me, that this is unnecessary in the present case at least. The words are generally unequivocal. Of course, the language is poetical, metaphoric, but the metaphor has reference to something else; the description is not the metaphor. But, in fact, ought we to expect in Shakespeare very exact or complete description? His whole art lies in the power of suggestion. The deep impressions a man of genius makes upon our minds lie often, if not always, in what he does not say. A word or two and the vision rises, whether in Nature or in life, a passion or a landscape. Take the broken phrases of Ophelia depicting her broken heart, her "no more but so"; or the picture of the winter woods in Sonnet LXXIII:

"That time of year thou mayst in me beholdWhen yellow leaves or none or few do hangUpon those boughs which shake against the cold,Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang."

Does any one pretend that we are reading into the lines when we appreciate the marvelous sorrow of the one picture or the exquisite truthfulness and splendor of the other?

Shakespeare's natural eye was clear indeed, but none the less he seems to have seen everything with the eye of his mind. Faraday so saw the world of force, Newton of mathematical law, and Tyndall's scientific use of the imagination lies in the same direction.

And so the man of science and the poet have much in common. Both use the natural world, and the imagination is for each an instrument of effort. The poet's generalization is a splendid visionin a world ideal, suggested, no doubt, by what is actual and liable here and there to coincide with truth; the generalization of the scientific man is likewise a vision, but it rests upon the actual, upon the ascertained fact at the greatest number of points possible, and disappoints us only that it is not everywhere coincident. The poet dreams of Atlantis, the lost continents, the islands of the blest, and builds us pictures that vanish with his song; the man of science too beholds the continents rise; scene after scene he likewise makes to pass across our startled vision; but his are history, his tapestries are wrought in the loom of time.

The poet writes the book of Genesis, with the herbs bringing forth fruit after their kind; the man of science figures fossil leaves and cones and fruit. Only at the last do poetry and science possibly again agree:

"The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself—Yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve,And like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind!"

And when the man of science gathers all his data, and collates fact with fact, and builds the superstructure of his vision, with him, too, all things fade and vanish in the infinity of the future.

By MARCUS BENJAMIN, Ph. D.

Industrial expositions are a natural development of the fairs of the middle ages. The latter are believed to have originated in the religious gatherings which afforded an opportunity for the sale of wares to large numbers of people. Such fairs still persist in northern Europe, and the best known of them is probably that held three times a year in Leipsic, to which, it is said, "some twenty-five or thirty thousand foreign merchants" are still attracted each year.

In course of time international exhibitions at which specimens of the arts and industries of the great nations of the world were contrasted came into vogue. These began with the International Exhibition held in London in 1851, and of them three have been held in the United States, as follows: The first in New York, in 1853; the second in Philadelphia, in 1876; and the third in Chicago, in 1893. The great magnitude of such expositions has led in recent years to their specialization or subdivision into expositions at which only a specialty was presented. Notable among such have been the following, whichwere for the most part international: Of articles connected with the leather industry, held in Berlin, in 1877; of all kinds of paper and pasteboard, held in Berlin, in 1878; of fisheries, held in Berlin, in 1880; of electricity, held in Paris, in 1881; of geography, held in Venice, in 1881; of cotton, held in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1881; of early data in American history, held in Madrid, in 1881; of fisheries, held in London, in 1883; of historical matters pertaining to Columbus and the discovery of America, held in Madrid, in 1892; and of hygiene, including chemical, pharmaceutical, and sanitary objects, held in Naples, in 1894.

Similarly there has been a development in the United States from local fairs, such as those of the various mechanics' institutes, typical of which is the one held annually since 1828 in New York city under the auspices of the American Institute, into interstate expositions. Of these, since 1880, the following have been held: Cincinnati Industrial Exposition, Cincinnati, Ohio, September 30 to October 4, 1883; Southern Exposition, Louisville, Kentucky, August 16 to October 25, 1883; World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana, December 16, 1883, to June 30, 1884; Central Exposition of the Ohio Valley and Central States, Cincinnati, Ohio, July 4 to October 7, 1888; California Midwinter Fair, San Francisco, California, January 1 to July 4, 1894; Cotton States and Industrial Exposition, Atlanta, Georgia, September 18 to December 31, 1895; Tennessee Centennial Exposition, Nashville, Tennessee, May 1 to October 31, 1897; and Trans-Mississippi International Exposition, Omaha, Nebraska, June 1 to November 1, 1898.

Of the foregoing, the more important were those held in New Orleans, in 1884; in San Francisco, in 1894; in Atlanta, in 1895; in Nashville, in 1897, and in Omaha, in 1898; especially so from the fact that all of these received recognition by the Government; and, with the exception of that held in San Francisco, liberal appropriations were made for their support by Congress. Moreover, at each of them, excepting again that held in San Francisco, a special Government building was erected in which the national Government made exhibits of the workings of the several executive departments, together with the Smithsonian Institution and its dependencies and the Fish Commission.

The first named, that of New Orleans, was held as a celebration of the centenary of the cotton industry in the United States. The first record of cotton as a factor in the foreign trade of this country appeared in the shipment in 1784 of six bags, amounting to about one bale, from Charleston, South Carolina. Audubon Park was the site on which the buildings were erected.

The exposition held in San Francisco, in 1894, had for its purposethe affording of an opportunity to foreign exhibitors at the World's Fair to further display their goods in the United States, and in consequence a great number of exhibits were shipped direct from Chicago to the Pacific coast. The exposition was located in Golden Gate Park.

The Atlanta Exposition had its inception in a belief that the agricultural, mineral, and manufacturing resources of the South were not adequately represented in Chicago in 1893. It was believed that a better exhibit of the products of the Southland would tend to foster greater trade relations between that section of our country and other parts of the United States, as well as with foreign countries, especially those to the south, such as Mexico. The Cotton States Exposition was held in Piedmont Park.

The exposition in Nashville was designed primarily to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the admission of Tennessee into the Federal Union. Recognizing the commercial and educational advantages to be derived from such a demonstration, it was deemed wise to characterize the celebration as an exhibit of "the matchless resources of Tennessee, and at the same time to lead to their greater development." The old West Side Park was chosen as the site of the "Centennial City."

The exposition held last year in Omaha had for its purposes to do for the Trans-Mississippi States what the more local exhibitions had done for Atlanta and Nashville. It was claimed that it would for the "first time fully illustrate the wealth-producing power and the extent of productive industries of the Greater West," and it did. The exposition grounds were included within what was called the Kountze tract and the old fair grounds.

Each of these expositions has been projected for distinct commercial reasons. They have had for their immediate purposes the presentation of the products of the region in which they were located to their neighbors, to the nation, and to the world. In this sense they have been simply the offspring of the fairs of the middle ages, differing from them only in that the feature of sale has been largely eliminated. That they have been successful in accomplishing the results desired is beyond doubt; indeed, the expositions in Nashville and Omaha were even financial successes. But they have done more than this; they have accomplished a world of good in the way of education.

Let us consider some of these benefits. Beginning with the grounds, these have been given over to the charge of some competent landscape architect under whose skillful supervision the desert has been made to blossom like a rose. The sand hills of San Francisco became the beautiful "Palm City," which since the close of theexposition has become one of the most attractive spots in the Golden Gate Park. At Nashville the landscape effects were claimed by many to excel in beauty those of the World's Fair in Chicago. "Evergreens, vines, and shrubs are everywhere, and three lakes break this vista of green," was the opinion of one visitor. Besides the general architectural effect of the buildings, which can not but impress those who are so fortunate as to visit these expositions, there is a special value in the reproductions of historical buildings. At Atlanta the Massachusetts Building was a representation of the Craigie House, the headquarters of Washington when in Cambridge at the beginning of the Revolution, and later the home of the poet Longfellow. It was a fortunate inspiration of the late Dr. G. Brown Goode that led to its presentation by the State of Massachusetts to the local Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution. The architectural feature of the Nashville Exposition was the replica of the Athenian Parthenon in all its artistic beauty. Every detail was true to the original in design and coloring. It was the chief glory of the centennial, and as it was a permanent structure it will long remain to the "Athens of the South" a memorial of its exposition. Of less conspicuous interest were the reproductions of the Rialto of Venice and the Alamo of San Antonio.

The only architectural feature of historic character announced for Omaha was that "the Arkansas Building will be a reproduction of the mansion of General Albert Pike in 1843." The long oval waterway around which the buildings were grouped afforded, however, excellent opportunity for studying the architecture of the buildings, which, it was claimed with much justice, approached those of the never-to-be-forgotten "White City" in their beauty of design.

From the exterior to the interior is a natural method of progression. Let us therefore pass to a brief consideration of the educational features that are to be derived from an examination, no matter how cursory, of the displays that are to be seen within the buildings. First of all, and indeed frequently the most important, is the exhibit made by the national Government. In the special building devoted to that purpose are shown the exhibits of the several executive departments, including also that of the Smithsonian Institution and its dependencies, and the Fish Commission. As a result of the years of accumulated experience there has been in each of the expositions previously mentioned, except that in San Francisco, a distinct improvement in the installation of the exhibits in the Government Building, until it was recognized in Atlanta that the display was superior to that in Chicago, and in Nashville "the best exhibit ever made" was the verdict of those who had seen the successive expositions previous to that in Omaha. Therefore the telling of a story bymeans of objects in the best manner possible is the result sought for and attained most perfectly by those who installed the Government exhibits.

It is, of course, understood that the purpose of the Government exhibit is to familiarize the public with the methods of carrying on the functions of the different departments. Thus, in the post-office exhibit there is shown the entire sequence of postage stamps, both of the United States and foreign countries, the various kinds of mail bags, figures of the mail carriers in their different uniforms, and finally models or pictures of the methods of transportation. The Treasury Department shows the working of the mint by the striking of commemorative medals, while a full series of the existing medals and coins of the country are displayed in cases on the wall. The functions of the Department of the Interior are shown by exhibits of a series of models of some important invention, as, for instance, a sequence showing the development of the sewing machine. In this way—for of course the blanks and other documents are shown—the working of the Patent Office is demonstrated; while the Geological Survey, also of the Department of the Interior, presents a series of minerals, showing the economical wealth of the country, together with its maps and reports, results of work accomplished. Everything can not be shown, but a most excellent idea of what each department does can be had from a study of the exhibits of the Government.

Next in importance to the Government Building is the one devoted to commerce, and here are usually to be found the weak points of our American expositions. In lieu of a series of exhibits showing the progress in a given industry or trade, we find too frequently a collection of nondescript articles without much if any relationship to each other. This is due primarily to a lack of proper organization in soliciting exhibits, and also because the awards or medals of the jurors are so often of no relative value. The second condition is an outcome of the first. To be more specific, in Nashville there were no exhibits from any one of the larger and well-known silver firms, and yet American silverware has a recognized status as one of the most successful of our American art industries. Cut glassware is another branch in which our artisans or art workmen have achieved splendid results, and still there were no exhibits from art glassmakers in Nashville. Certain varieties of art pottery and art glassware, such as the Rookwood pottery and the Tiffany glass, are seldom seen at these smaller expositions. In consequence the juror makes an award to the best article of its kind on exhibition, which may be but a third-rate article compared with others; still it is the best shown in the exposition, and therefore worthy of recognition. Another unfortunate feature must be mentioned at this point. It is the decorative feature.At the last World's Fair held in Paris there was a colossal figure of George Washington in chocolate exhibited by an American manufacturer of that article. While it might be considered as a laudable attempt to make known to the French nation the features of the "Father of his Country," and from that point of view worthy of recognition, still it was no evidence of the superiority of the chocolate, and therefore could not be considered in connection with the giving of an award. This condition of affairs prevails at every exposition, and too frequently an exhibit of a meritorious article is made in such a modest manner that its claims are overshadowed by the pretentious display of something quite inferior.

Two conditions thus present themselves—namely, the lack of proper exhibits and the improper presentation of certain exhibits. The first condition may be overcome by a more perfect canvass of the industries of the country. In nearly every one of these there is a national organization, and it should be the duty of that body to consider the matter. By the appointment of committees and working among the representatives of the industry, either a good exhibit from the leading firms could be secured, or else a collective exhibit of the best from many firms could be obtained. Typical of the last named was the exhibit made by the potters of the country at the World's Fair in Chicago. By the adoption of such a method of displaying the products of manufacturers the possibility of the second condition would be entirely eliminated.

After all, the value of these expositions is chiefly educational, and surely no more perfect way of educating the visitor or sightseer could be found than by placing before him a historical series of products, beginning with the one made first in point of time, continuing with better specimens, showing the improvements that have resulted from increased experience and knowledge, and culminating with the finest product now made. The contrast between the first and the last would be indeed most striking.

It must not be thought from the foregoing remarks that these interstate expositions have been lacking in the presentation of the products of their own home industries. Far from it. In San Francisco, in Atlanta, in Nashville, and in Omaha the local manufacturers did themselves great credit by the admirable way in which their goods were shown, but it was just in this particular feature that the weak point indicated previously made itself most conspicuous. A local silversmith could hardly be expected to compete with the more famous manufacturers in the same line in larger cities, and yet in the absence of an exhibit by the better known firm an award would naturally be given to the smaller manufacturer, thus creating a false impression to the world at large.

It must not be assumed that the educational value of the exhibits in the Commerce Building is without commendation. Next to making a thing, the seeing of it is most important, and surely no one can pass along the aisles of any exposition without noticing much that is new or unusual, no matter what his previous experience may have been. It is in this connection that the foreign section is frequently most instructive. Warm furs from Russia and the north, rich fabrics and strange metal ware from the Orient, rare porcelains from Copenhagen, and brilliant glassware from Bohemia and Hungary, tell the story with striking vividness of the special products of the Old-World nations.

As has been shown, the finished products of manufacturers are those that are housed in the building devoted to commerce and manufacturing, but the raw materials require a building or two for themselves. That in which the products of the earth are exhibited is usually designated the "Minerals and Forestry Building." This requires but brief mention, and has its chief interest for the expert. Geological specimens, including paleontological and lithological exhibits, show the age and character of the soil, while the rocks further indicate the possibilities of the territory, for they show the geological horizon. In natural order are shown the minerals of the country. At Atlanta and Nashville the richness of the mineral wealth of the Southern States was fully demonstrated. Not only ores such as those of iron and manganese, but the combustible minerals, as coal, lignite, and petroleum, were exhibited. More striking, perhaps, are the great numbers of economic minerals that these expositions show. The materials—phosphate rock, sulphur, and nitrates—used in making artificial fertilizers; the marbles; the pigment-yielding minerals, including ochres, umber, and barite; the clays, with their products of earthenware and pottery, bricks, and tiles; and even mineral waters are among the different minerals to be seen. It is from such exhibits that something of an idea is obtained of the enormous wealth that is contained in the earth, waiting only to be excavated and fashioned into articles of beauty and utility. While such exhibits are frequently to be seen in museums, still the average mind is more impressed by the casual examination of these things in expositions, and one's pride of home increased by the rich stores of mineral wealth attractively installed. It is customary also to show models of the machinery used in mining, and even books, maps, and drawings are not uncommonly seen.

A similar arrangement is followed in regard to the forest products. Logs and sections of trees, as well as samples of wood and timber of all kinds, are shown. Then come the finished products—boards, shingle, and moldings—and finally the manufactured articles, suchas pails, tubs, and then furniture. Barks, as for tanning or dyeing, seeds and gums, and the wood pulp for paper are on exhibition. Among the miscellaneous products deserving mention are fibers, as used in basket-making or cane work.

Forestry as a science is made the basis of a series of exhibits. These include timber culture, tools used, and methods employed in planting and caring for trees. And finally lumbering as a science finds a place in the scheme followed in this department. This includes the tools used in lumbering and the methods employed, as well as exhibits illustrating the tan-bark industry, the turpentine industry, and the charcoal industry. So it happens that there is much that can be learned by the student who will devote a little time to the analysis of the exhibits in the building devoted to the products of the mines and the forest.

A visit to the Agricultural Building reveals to the interested observer those products of the soil that are for the most part the result of cultivation, and so we find exhibits of cereals—wheat, oats, barley, and the like—and then their immediate products: bread, pastes such as macaroni, and starches. The sugar-yielding plants, together with honey and the manufactured product, as candy and other confections, come next in order. The root crops, such as potatoes or beets, and the vegetables, are of much importance. Preserved meats and food preparations, dairy products, spices, tea, and tobacco are among the articles on exhibition. Then come the plants yielding fibers, as cotton and the like; but we hasten on to make mention of the exhibits of implements used in agriculture and its special subdivisions, such as horticulture, viticulture, floriculture, and arboriculture. Who will gainsay the fact that the farmer can not do otherwise than learn much from a visit to the home of the products of the soil? It it also customary to include a live-stock exhibition during some period of the exposition.

Mention has been made of the building devoted to the finished products of manufactures and of the buildings in which the crude materials are displayed. Besides these there are usually several buildings devoted to the exhibition of the means by which the original substances, whether from the mine, forest, or farm, are made up into the commercial product for the merchant. One of these is called the "Transportation Building," and in it we find the various means by which the raw materials are conveyed to the factory. From the lower forms of transportation of which man is the motive power, such as the wheelbarrow, upward through the various forms of vehicles of which the power comes from horses and other animals, until as the topmost member of the series is shown the magnificently equipped train of railway cars, provided with all the conveniences that modernluxury can devise. If the visitor is not content with land locomotion, more than likely he can find an exhibit in which transportation on water is possible, as by means of a naphtha or steam launch.

Machinery is the active means by which the immediate transposition of the crude material into the finished article is accomplished. And in a building where the ceaseless belt moves with the rapidly revolving pulley may be seen the many forms of machinery which the active brain of the ingenious mechanic has devised to cheapen labor and increase production. The change of the cotton fiber into cloth, or the passage of the silken thread into the finished handkerchief; the revolving cylinder on which the virgin sheet of white paper becomes the printed purveyor of news; or the many and varied appliances by which the piece of leather is fashioned into a covering for the foot; or again the means by which the strip of steel is made into a pin or needle, are among the interesting things that may be seen in Machinery Hall.

Conspicuous among the many interesting wonders of science that were shown at the Centennial, in 1876, were the few, insignificant, blue, flickering, and unstable lights that ushered into existence a new era in the history of electricity. In Atlanta, in Nashville, and in Omaha a building was necessary to hold the appliances and products of the latest of our sciences. Telephones no longer impress us by their newness, and the appliances of electricity to heating and lighting are now household necessities. To those who treasured the memory of the beauty of the lighted Court of Honor at the White City in Chicago there was given a greater joy when the entire grounds of the beautiful Centennial City in Nashville were illuminated with more than seventeen thousand incandescent lamps. Daylight had faded into darkness only to emerge into an electric day of brilliancy unsurpassed. Thus was told the story of the progress of the science which as a result of the studies of Franklin, Henry, Morse, and Graham Bell may well be regarded as the American science.

A parting word must be given to the amusement features. How the Streets of Cairo, now so hackneyed, linger in one's memory! The Enchanted Swing was one of the novel features of the Midwinter Fair in San Francisco, and of weird interest was the Night and Morning in Nashville. The Mexican and Japanese villages were excellent features in Atlanta, and so was the Chinese village in Nashville, although the "Old Plantation" was more popular. Panoramas such as that of the Battle of Gettysburg, or pyrotechnic spectacular shows such as The Storming of Wei-Hai-Wei, are of value. The musical features must not be forgotten, even if popular fancy leans toward Dixie, for the occasional "Gems from the Operas" help to leaven the mass. At Nashville the military drills by the national and Statetroops were of considerable interest, and much had been hoped for in Omaha in this respect, but the war prevented.

In this analysis, incomplete, it is true, of these American interstate expositions something has been shown of their design and more of their benefits. They have had for their purpose the exhibition of the materials, processes, and products of manufacture, but their ultimate benefit has been that of education. To the thoughtful an opportunity has been afforded of following the crude material through the processes of manufacture until the finished product has been exhibited. The variety of crude materials was shown him, the different processes were contrasted, and finally the completed article was exhibited which possessed this merit or that advantage according to the process followed. For the mere pleasure-seeker there were the delights of attractive surroundings, the beauty of the exhibits, and the delights of music or other entertainments. Indeed, all the influences are for good.

Let it then be the effort of every one, whether official, exhibitor, or visitor, to use his influence to improve and elevate these expositions so that only the most desirable localities shall be chosen in which to hold them, and let the selection of exhibits be made so as to include the most worthy; for then, and only then, will the visitor derive the greatest benefit.

And so from time to time and in various places we shall have these interstate expositions, which will show to the world the advancement made in the development of the resources of our great country.

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