There is, indeed, great difference between tween the mind of children and of adults, and literature should respect and provide for this difference,—although it is true that the best books please and edify both, and the nursery and parlour can meet in pretty full fellowship over "Æsop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," and "Pilgrim's Progress," if not over the "Vicar of Wakefield" and Edgeworth's "Popular Tales." The great distinction between juvenile and adult literature is a very obvious and natural one. Not to discuss now the absence of business cares and ambition, children, in their normal, healthful state, know nothing of love as a passion, whilst it is the conspicuous feature of adult society, and the motive of all romances for readers of advanced years, and especially for all who have just passed into the charmed borders of adult life. I do not say, indeed, that children are to know nothing of love, or that it should be shut out of their habitual reading; for love is a part of human life, and is organized into manners and institutions, and sanctioned and exalted by religion. As a fact, and as sustaining great practical relations, love is to be treated freely in juvenile literature, but not as a passion. Every boy and girl who reads the Prayer-Book, and hears every-day talk, and sees what is going on in the world, knows that men and women marry, and young people fall in love and are engaged. This is all well, and children's stories may tell freely whatever illustrates the home usages and social customs of the people; but the more the love senses and passions are left to sleep in their sacred and innocent reserve within their mystic cells, so much the better for the child whilst a child, and so much the better for the youth when no more a child, and Nature betrays her great secret, and the charming hallucinations of romance open their fascinations and call for the sober counsels of wisdom and kindness.
But if love, as a passion, does not belong to our juvenile literature, its place is fully supplied by a power quite as active and marvellous,—the mighty genius of play. Try to read a three-volume novel of love and flirtation to a set of well-trained, healthfully organized children, or try them with a single chapter that describes the raptures or the jealousies, and gives the letters and dialogues, of the enamored couple, who are destined, through much tribulation, to end their griefs at the altar, not of sacrifice, but of union, and you will find your auditors ready to go to sleep or to run away. The girls may, indeed, brighten up, if a famous dress or set of jewels, a great party or grand wedding, is described; and the boys may open their eyes, if the story turns upon a smart horse-race or a plucky fight. Children, in their normal state, do not enter into the romance of the passion, nor should they be trained to it. They maybe bred in all courtesy and refinement without it; and the girls and boys may be true to their sex, and have all the gentle manners that should come from proper companionship. The boys will not want a certain chivalry in the schoolroom, play-ground, and parlor, and the girls will learn from instinct as well as discipline the delicacy that is their charm and shield. Nothing can be worse than to ply them with love-stories, or throw them into the false society that fosters morbid sentiments and impulses, and gives them the passions without the judgment and control of men and women. Kind Providence, in the gift of play, has mercifully averted this danger, and brought our children into a companionship that needs no precocious passion to give it charm.
How wonderful it is, this instinct for play, and how worthy of our careful and serious study! It is the key to the whole philosophy of juvenile literature: for we take it for granted that books for children belong to the easy play, rather than to the hard work of life; and that they are an utter failure, if they do not win their way by their own charms. Here, in fact, we distinguish between juvenile literature and school-books. School-books are for children, indeed, but not for them alone, but for the teacher also, and they are to be as interesting as possible; yet they are not for play, but for work, and it is best to be quite honest at the outset, and let the little people know that study is work and not play, and that their usual gift-books are not for study mainly, but for entertainment. In this way, study is the more patient and comforting, and reading more free and refreshing. Children make the distinction very shrewdly, and are quite willing to pore carefully over their school-lessons, but are very impatient of lessons that are sugared over with pleasantry, and detect the pedagogue under the mask of the playmate. They are willing to have their pills sugared over, but do not like to have them called sugar-plums.
Playfulness does not require the sacrifice of good sense or sound principle or serious purpose, but subjects them to certain conditions; and there is no form in which exalted characters or sacred truths are brought home more effectually to the hearts both of young and old than in the stones and dramas that make life speak for itself, and play themselves into the affections and fancy. It does require that the laws of attention and emotion, the unities and the varieties of æsthetic art, shall be observed; and as soon as the book is dull, and offers no sparkling waters nor fair flowers nor tempting fruits to lure the flagging reader over its intervals of dusty road or sandy waste, it is a failure, and not what it pretends to be. With children, play demands more thevarietiesthan theunitiesof Art; and their first education deals with those spontaneous sensibilities and impulses that insist upon being played upon freely, with little regard to exact method. Those sports are most pleasing to young children, especially, that touch the greatest number of the keys of sensation and will, and make them answer to the pulse of Nature and companionship. One may learn a deal of philosophy from the most popular nursery rhymes; and Mother Goose, good old soul, who has sung many of those strange old verses to children for a thousand years, if the antiquaries are not mistaken, proves to us that the way to please little ears and eyes is by presenting a variety of images in the easiest succession, without any attempt at intellectual method or logical unity. Her style is that of the kaleidoscope, and she turns words and pictures over as rapidly, and with as little method, as that instrument shows in its handling of colors. As the child's development advances, the varieties need more of the unities, and the favorite sports rise into more method and sequence, nearer the rule of actual life: marbles give way to cricket, and blindman's bluff yields to chess. For a long time, however, anything like severe intellectual unity of plan is irksome, and even the toys that require careful thought and embody extraordinary workmanship are less agreeable thanthe rude playthings that can be knocked about at will, and made to take any shape or use that the changing mood or fancy may decree. The rag baby is more popular with the little girl than the mechanical doll; and a tin pot, with a stick to drum upon it, pleases little master more than the elegant music-box. As long as the child's mind is in a chaos of unsorted sensations and impulses, he does not like plays that are so utterly in advance of his position as to present a perfect order that calls up Kosmos within him before its time. There is a good Providence in this necessity, and Nature is servant of God in her attempt to touch and voice the separate keys of the great organ, before she tunes them together to the great harmonies and symphonies that are to be performed. She is busy with each key first by itself; and there is something winning, as well as healthful, in that intensity which attaches to the sensations and impulses of children in this their first education. They are finding themselves and the universe at once; and the marvellous zest with which they see and feel and hear and handle whatever comes within their reach is a kind of rapturous wedding of the senses to the world of Nature and life, and a prelude to that more interior and spiritual union that is to be.
Our best books for children must not forget this great fact, and they must present great variety of impression and images in such sequence and unity as the young reader's mind can easily appreciate and enjoy. The great juvenile classics are rich illustrations of this law, and they have a "variety" as "infinite" as Cleopatra's, whilst they aim at a purpose far more true and persistent than hers, and do not end with a broken life and a serpent's sting. They are invariablysensuousin their imagery, but notsensual; and the great masters of the nursery well know that the senses are not made to be earth-born drudges of the flesh, but godly ministers of the spirit, and their true office is to open the gates of the whole world of truth and goodness and beauty. All who know the ways of true children will understand the distinction betweensensualandsensuousimpression. Hold up before a true child a ripe, red apple, or a bunch of purple grapes, and how the eye sparkles and the hand reaches forth! But the desire expressed is half aspiration and half appetite, and the dainty rises into ideal beauty under this dear little aspirant's gaze, and is seen in a light quite other than that which falls on a gourmand's table, after he is gorged with viands and wine, and ends his gross banquet with a dessert of fruit which his stupid and uncertain eye can hardly distinguish. The child issensuous, the gourmand issensual. We should give the benefit of this distinction to all of our authors who abound in graphic description and encourage pictorial illustration. The senses should be skilfully appealed to, and the higher spheres of the reason, conscience, and affections may thus be effectually reached. Pictures, whether in words or lines or colors, are symbols; and the child's mind is a rare master of all the true symbolism of Nature and Art. There is no end to the range of susceptibility in children to impressions from this source; and all the chords of feeling and impulse, pathos and humor, seem waiting and eager to be played upon. Instead of needing to be laboriously schooled to pass from one emotion or mental state to another, they go by alternations as easy as the changing feet that pass from a walk to a run and back again, as if change were the necessity of Nature, not the work of the striving will.
Our books for children should study this great law, and be free to go "from grave to gay, from gentle to severe," as is the habit of all high literature. They should not be afraid to let the child have a good hearty laugh before or after telling him that he should study or should pray. It is odd to see the rapid transitions through which very well-behaved children will go in an instant; and I have known a child who has been romping in a complete gale of innocent roguery to burst into tears, if not duly called to the table in time to hear gracesaid, and, after clucking with the hens, crying as if heart-broken over a dead bird. I went last spring with a friend to witness a great religious festival at a distinguished ecclesiastical community,—the festival of Corpus Christi, with its gorgeous procession. We were admitted through the private entrance, and saw the altar-boys in the entry waiting in caps and robes to lead off the pageant. They were in high spirits, and pulling and nudging each other like boys of the usual mould. Soon they appeared in church with folded hands, chanting the "Lauda Sion" before the uplifted Host as demurely as if they had walked down from the pictures of seraphs on the walls. "What little hypocrites!" the Philistines at once cry; "what a trick, thus to affect to be pious, after those pranks of mischief!" I say, No such thing; and although not personally given to Corpus-Christi ceremonials as a devotee, I interpret such transitions as I would interpret the conduct of my own children who came from a frolic on the lawn or a game of croquet to a Scripture lesson or the household worship. Let us be true to human nature, and give every genuine faculty and impulse fair play. Our American literature can afford to be more generous to children than it has been, and let them gambol on the play-ground none the less from keeping the library open for grave reading, and the chapel not closed in ghostly gloom.
Our books for children must be truthful as well as interesting; and we are quite strong in the belief that they should be true to all our just American ideas. It cannot be expected, indeed, that our story-tellers, poets, and biographers for the young will desert their pleasant arts, and inflict upon their readers prosy essays upon American law, society, reform, and progress. What we should expect and demand is, that our children should be brought up to regard American principles as matters of course; and their books should take these principles for granted, and illustrate them with all possible interest and power. They should be trained in the belief that here the opportunities for education, labor, enterprise, freedom, influence, and prosperity are to be thrown open to all; and the highest encouragement should be given to every one to seek the chief good. We are not afraid to say that our children's books should be thoroughly republican, or, in the best sense of the word, democratic, and should aim to give respect to the genuine man more than to his accidents, and to rank character above circumstance. They should rebuke the ready American failings, the haste to be rich, the passion of ostentation, the rage for extravagance, the habit of exaggeration, the impatience under moderate means, the fever for excitement, and the great disposition to subordinate the true quality of life to the quantity of appliances of living. They should especially assail the failing to which our children are tempted,—the morbid excitement, precocious sensibility, and airs and ambition to which they are prone. Some of our best juvenile books, especially some of our best magazine writers, do great service in this way; and it has seemed to use that we may well learn wisdom from the juvenile literature of France in this matter, and translate with profit many of those excellent books for children which do not for a moment countenance the idea that they are to have any hot-bed forcing, or have their senses and fancy turn upon the passions and cares that belong to mature years. Christendom has no cause for gratitude to France for its adult romantic literature; and it is an offence to American as to English homes for its free notions of married life. But the French literature for the young is quite another matter, and may teach purity and wisdom to the parents who allow their sons and daughters to ape the ways and often the follies of men and women, and spoil the flower and fruit of maturity by forcing open the tender bud of childhood and youth.
We may take quite as serious lessons against the wrong of schooling the young in precocious care and calculation,and setting a bounty upon the too ready covetousness of our people. We spend freely, indeed, as well as accumulate eagerly; but there is a fearful over-estimate of wealth amongst us, in the absence of other obvious grounds of distinction; and the evil is nurtured sometimes from childhood. Such books as "The Rich Poor Man and the Poor Rich Man" do vast good; and it is very important that our sons and daughters should have a loving, helpful, cheerful, devout childhood, a true age of gold, to look back upon and ever to remember, without the taint of Mammon-worship that multiplies care, blasts prosperity with inordinate desires, and curses adversity by making it out to be the loss of the supreme good, and little short of hell. It is well to take very high ground with them, and train them to know and enjoy the supreme treasures that are open to them all, to make them observers and lovers of Nature and Art, and to take it for granted that the best gifts of God and humanity are freely offered to every true life. Our magnificent country should be held before them as their rightful heritage, and its flowers, plants, trees, minerals, animals, lakes, rivers, seas, mountains, should be made a part of every child's property. What observers of Nature, in its uses and beauty, bright children are, and how much may be made of their aptness by good books and magazines! I confess, for my own part, that I never saw and enjoyed Nature truly until I learned to see it through a bright child's eyes. Good Providence gave us our little farm and our little May at about the same time; and the child has been the priestess of our domain, and has made spring of our autumn, May of our September. She noticed first only bright colors and moving objects and striking sounds; but with what zest she noticed them, and jogged our dull eyes and ears! Then she observed the finer traits of the place, and learned to call each flower and tree, and even each weed, by name, and to join the birds and chickens in their glee. She gathered bright weeds as freely as garden-flowers, and, with larger wisdom than she knew, came shouting and laughing with a lapful of treasures, in which the golden-rod or wild aster, the violet or buttercup, the dandelion or honeysuckle, were as much prized as the pink or larkspur, the rose or lily. Darling seer, how much wiser and better might we be, if we had as open eye for loveliness and worth within and without the inclosures of our pride and our pets! I called the first rustic arbor that I built by her name; and May's Bower, on its base of rock, with solid steps cut in the granite by a faithful hand, and with a sight of the distant sea through its clustering vines, is to us a good symbol of childhood, as observer, interpreter, and lover of Nature. When I see in a handsome book or magazine for children any adequate sketch of natural scenes and objects, I am grateful for it as a benefaction to children, and a help to them in their playful yearning to read that elder alphabet of God.
How much power there is in the elements of the beautiful that so abound in the universe, and what capacity in children for enjoying them, especially in our American children, may we not say! The constitution of Americans is in some respects delicate, and shows great susceptibility in early life, and capability of æsthetic culture. Our children are vastly wiser and happier by being taught to distinguish beauty from tinsel pretence, and to see the difference between the fine and superfine. The whole land groans in ignorance of this distinction; and the most extravagant outlay for children and adults is made for dress and furniture, toys and ornaments, that are an abomination to true taste. We may begin the reform at the beginning, and apply the ideas of the truly beautiful in the books and magazines that we put before our children. We can make Preraphaelites of them of the right kind, by training their eye, not to love bald scenes and ghostly figures, but to appreciate natural form, feature, and color, and composition, and so possess their senses and fancy with the materials and impressionsof loveliness, that, when the constructive reason or the ideal imagination begins to work, it will work wisely and well, and not only dream fair visions and speak and write fair words, but carve true shapes, and plan noble grounds, and rear goodly edifices for dwelling, or for study, art, humanity, or religion. The child that learns to see the beautiful has the key of a blessed gate to God's great temple, and can find everywhere an entrance to the shrine. What a new and higher Puritanism will come, when we learn to apply pure taste to common affairs, and carry out all the laws of truth and beauty, as the old saints carried out the letter of the Bible! The day is coming, and is partly come. Do not many New-Yorkers look upon the Central Park as being, with its waters and flowers and music for all, as good a commentary on the Sermon on the Mount as any in the Astor Library? and does not solid Boston regard its great organ as a part of that great interpretation of the Divine Mind which Cotton and Winthrop sought only in the sacred book? Give us a thirty years' fair training of our children in schools and reading, galleries and music-halls, gardens and fields, and our America, the youngest among the great nations, will yield to none the palm of strength or of beauty; and as she sits the queen, not the captive, in her noble domain, her children, who have learned grace under her teaching, shall rise up and call her blessed.
In claiming thus for our children's books this embodiment of wholesome truth in beautiful forms, we are not favoring any feebledilettanteism, or sacrificing practical strength to pleasant fancy. Nay, quite the contrary; for it is certain that truth has power, especially with the young, only when it is so embodied as to show itself in the life, and to speak and act for itself. We believe in dynamic reading for children; and we now make a distinct and decided point of this, quite positive, as we are, that books are a curse, if they merely excite the sensibilities and stimulate the nerves and brain, and bring on sedentary languor, and do not stir the muscles, and quicken the will, and set the hand and foot to work and play under the promptings of a cheerful heart. Undoubtedly many children read too much, and spindle legs and narrow chests and dropsical heads are the sad retribution upon the excess. But the best books are good tonics, and as refreshing and strengthening as the sunshine and the sea-water, the singing-circle, and the play-ground. Let us encourage this tonic quality in our juvenile literature, and favor as much of sound muscular morality and religion as stories of adventure, sketches of sports, hints of exercise and health, with all manner of winning illustrations, can give. It is well that Dio Lewis is now on a mission to our Young Folks, and after exhorting adults, and especially the clergy, to repent of their manifold sins against the body, he is now carrying the gospel of health to children; and I have been quite amused at having him quoted against my own physical transgressions, by his most attentive reader, the youngest member of the family. The cure should not stop there; but the tonic force should knock at every door of the mental and moral faculties, and touch every chord of latent power. A fresh, free, dauntless will should breathe through every page, and be the invigorating air of our juvenile literature, and be as essential to its strength as truth is to its light and beauty to its color. The great social, civil, and religious forces that move the nation should be brought to bear upon the young, not by learned essays or by ambitious philosophizing, but by living portraitures and taking life-sketches, stirring songs and ballads. A good home story can express as much of the law and economy of the household as a chapter of Paley or Wayland. Our girls and boys will feel the great pulse-beat of patriotism and loyalty more free, by following the brave old flag through perils to final peace, in graphic sketches of our history, from Washington's times to Lincoln's, from the days of Greene and Putnam to those of Sherman and Grant,than from any learned lectures on the Constitution, or abridgments of Kent and Story. Those more universal and spiritual forces that bind us to our race and to God are surely not to be ignored in books for children, difficult as it is to present them adequately; and the absence of a national church makes religion so various in its ideas and forms as not to offer that ready and common symbolism that makes the cross as expressive as the flag to some nations, and binds the home and country to the altar. But our best writers are finding the way to touch the chords of supreme religion in the young, and the nation is fast developing a faith and worship that meet the wants of youthful feeling and fancy better than catechisms and lectures. Our children have a much more genial church nurture now than their parents had, and the worship in their chapels is sometimes more impressive than that in the churches. I confess to great regret that we, who are now in our prime, had so little joy and action in connection with our early religious impressions, and wish better things for our children, and delight to see the signs of amendment. Our best books are helping it on, and bringing poetry and art, as well as good sense and devout faith, to the rescue of our boys and girls from the prosy pedantry that forgets that the religion of the Bible itself did not begin in the dry letter, but was a rich and various life with Nature and among men, before it was made into a book.
All moving forces, whether domestic, social, civil, or religious, reach children most effectually through personal influence; and not only do they imitate the examples, but they seem to imbibe or breathe in the spirit of their associates and teachers. Hence the importance of having our best people write for children, and give them the precious ministry of all their high qualities of mind and heart. The little readers may not take in the whole of the influence consciously at once, but they are more receptive than they know, and take in the grace of refined manner and pure culture, even as they take diseases, without being aware of the fact at the time. Is it not well to treat them in their relation to human life as God treats them in their relation to the universe? He puts before them the broad earth and the glorious heavens from the first, and He does not strike off a toy edition of Nature to come down to little eyes and ears. Children look upon the whole universe at once, and their first impressions store up truths that years may interpret, but cannot exhaust. Why not throw open the best minds, and their earth and heaven of earthly sense and starry wisdom, with equal generosity to the young, and put them into communication with the best writers and thinkers of the land? They will not take the whole sense and spirit of the talk or story in at once, but they will have a certain impression or germinal seed of it within; and even before they can interpret or explain what they have learned, they will feel and enjoy and apply most of its meaning and power. Especially do they take in more than they know of the higher manifestations of moral and spiritual life; and a good story of a true soul, or an earnest sermon or devout prayer, goes deeper into their minds and hearts than they can understand, and they may have a great deal of religion before they know a word of theology.
In view of this assimilating force of example and personal character, it is cheering to note the number of our first-class writers who are giving their pens and studies to our children. The authors who figure on the list of contributors to our leading juvenile magazine need not hide their heads before any staff of contributors to any periodical in the country; and they do not seem to lose their wisdom or their wit in getting down from their stately heights to chat and romp with the boys and girls who come thronging to meet them. It is a good sign for our American letters; and I am not ashamed to say, that, after reading some of the numbers of that monthly, and talking over the remainder with a bright child of six, and as bright a girl of eighteen, I felt somewhatenvious of the position of those writers, and wondered whether I could write anything that the rising millions of American children would be eager to read. Who might not be envious of the distinction, and which of our poets may not be proud to walk in the steps of Whittier, and sing loving words for the nursery and play-ground, after ringing the liberty-bell and sounding the bugle-call of liberty through the nation?
We close these cursory thoughts by presenting one idea that seems to us of the highest importance, although it may strike others as far-fetched or fanciful. It refers to the start that our children are to take in life, or, rather, to the ground from which they are to start. Their destiny depends, of course, upon what they make of themselves in their career; but does it not also depend upon their starting-ground, and is there not something dreary in the frequent remark that we can make anything of ourselves, and the implication that we are nothing at all at the outset? The old civilization reversed this and the great question was not, What shall a man make of himself? but, What is hisstatus? and his family or national birthright was more urged than his individual enterprise. Now I am not fighting against our American individualism, or expecting to establish a new national caste; yet may I not hint that it would be well, if our children were brought up in such sense of their native privilege, worth, and respectability as to start upon a solid ground of loyalty and reliance, and to go forth into the world with the feeling, that, whilst they have much to win, they have also much to hold? I would not have them bred in Jewish exclusiveness or pride; yet even that is better than no sense of birthright at all. How striking and suggestive is that trait in the life of one of the most benevolent and liberal-minded of our American Israelites, who, when his leg was broken, and his physician advised amputation, stoutly refused to submit to the knife, and said that he would rather die first, since he was of the tribe of Levi, and none of that tribe were allowed to enter the sanctuary with mutilated limbs! A plucky son of Abraham indeed; and his pluck would be worthy of our imitation, if we insisted on such astatusof manly integrity as to refuse to do any wrong to our manhood, on the ground of its destroying our position and selling our birthright. We do need certainly some deeper sense of our personal and national worth at the outset: and our children should be trained to look upon themselves as heirs of the ages, children of Providence, and bound to keep the priceless trust confided to them. A cheerful home should love them before they can return the love, a great nation guard over themselves, and a broad and exalted and genial and helpful church should be mother to them before they know how to interpret her care; and the golden light of the first home should shine upon them as but the faint, earthly gleam of that uncreated light that kindles every rational intelligence, and sends it into the world, as if, "trailing clouds of glory," we came "from God who is our home." We ask our writers for children to throw this cheerful radiance upon the outset of their pilgrimage, and relieve the sore pressure of care, and the anxious burden of never ceasing responsibility, and the force of incessant temptation, by the great and blessed conviction that we start from the supreme good, and, if we go away from it, we not only come short of a precious prize, but we forfeit a sacred birthright. All the ages, nations, leaders, sages, heroes, apostles, have endowed us and our children with a priceless heritage; and we are not to start in life as if we were a set of beggars, aliens, slaves, or heathen. Rome has thought to bless and enrich our America by putting the land under the watch of the immaculate and supernatural Mother. I will not stop now to fight against Rome, but will be content to say that our children have from God a peculiar guardianship from the natural mother who bore them, and fromthat natural humanity which is the daughter of God and the recipient of all natural and supernatural graces. Mystical as this thought may seem, when stated in general terms, every genuine American poem and story is full of its meaning; and our best juvenile literature is making it our household faith and love. We shall see good days, when our children start from the true home feeling, and a sacred memory joins hands with a brave and cheerful hope. Our good old mothers thought so; and our books are good as they repeat their wisdom and renew their love. We might weary our readers, if we tried to say what is in our minds of the American mother in history, and the ideal mother that should charm our books and pictures; but no more now.
In the green and shadowy woodpath,Where the Fly-bird's[2]golden hue,Like a shower of broken fire,Lights the forests of Peru,'Mid primeval sward and tree,Lives the bird,Dios Te De.There the Indian hunter roamingSoftly through the massive shade,By the Laurel and CinchonaAnd the thick-leaved Balsam made,Halts beneath the canopyAt the sounds,Dios Te De.And the bow unbent reposes,And the poisoned arrows rest,And a gush of solemn feelingThrills with awe the savage breast,While the bird unharmed and freeRocks and sings,Dios Te De.If the name of God thus droppingFrom the preacher of the wild,In the solitude of Nature,Wraps with awe the forest child,—What a meaning deep have weIn the bird,Dios Te De!
In the green and shadowy woodpath,Where the Fly-bird's[2]golden hue,Like a shower of broken fire,Lights the forests of Peru,'Mid primeval sward and tree,Lives the bird,Dios Te De.
There the Indian hunter roamingSoftly through the massive shade,By the Laurel and CinchonaAnd the thick-leaved Balsam made,Halts beneath the canopyAt the sounds,Dios Te De.
And the bow unbent reposes,And the poisoned arrows rest,And a gush of solemn feelingThrills with awe the savage breast,While the bird unharmed and freeRocks and sings,Dios Te De.
If the name of God thus droppingFrom the preacher of the wild,In the solitude of Nature,Wraps with awe the forest child,—What a meaning deep have weIn the bird,Dios Te De!
FOOTNOTES:[1]"May God give thee."[2]Trochilas Chrysurus.
[1]"May God give thee."
[1]"May God give thee."
[2]Trochilas Chrysurus.
[2]Trochilas Chrysurus.
Not the least attractive feature in the study of these animals is the mode of catching them. We will suppose it to be a warm, still morning at Nahant, in the last week of August, with a breath of autumn in the haze, that softens the outlines of the opposite shore, and makes the horizon line a little dim. It is about eleven o'clock, for few of the Jelly-Fishes are early risers; they like the warm sun, and at an earlier hour they are not to be found very near the surface. The sea is white and glassy, with a slight swell, but no ripple, and seems almost motionless as we put off in a dory from the beach near Saunders's Ledge. We are provided with two buckets: one for the larger Jelly-Fishes, the Zygodactyla, Aurelia, etc.; the other for the smaller fry, such as the various kinds of Ctenophoræ, the Tima, Melicertum, etc. Besides these, we have two nets and glass bowls, in which to take up the more fragile creatures that cannot bear rough handling. A bump or two on the stones before we are fairly launched, a shove of the oar to keep the boat well out from the rocks along which we skirt for a moment, and now we are off. We pull around the point to our left and turn toward the ledge, filling our buckets as we go. Now we are crossing the shallows that make the channel between the inner and outer rocks of Saunders's Ledge. Look down: how clear the water is, and how lovely the sea-weeds above which we are floating! dark brown and purple fronds of the Ulvæ, and the long blades of the Laminaria with mossy green tufts between. As we issue from this narrow passage we must be on the watch, for the tide is rising, and may come laden with treasures, as it sweeps through it. A sudden cry from the oarsman at the bow, not of rocks or breakers ahead, but of "A new Jelly-Fish astern!" The quick eye of the naturalist of the party pronounces it unknown to zoölogists, undescribed by any scientific pen. Now what excitement! "Out with the net!—we have passed him! he has gone down! no, there he is again! back us a bit." Here he is floating close by us; now he is within the circle of the net, but he is too delicate to be caught safely in that way; while one of us moves the net gently about, to keep him within the space inclosed by it, another slips the glass bowl under him, lifts it quickly, and there is a general exclamation of triumph and delight;—we have him! And now we look more closely. Yes, decidedly he is a novelty as well as a beauty (Ptychogena lactea, A. Ag.). Those white mossy tufts for ovaries are unlike anything we have found before, and not represented in any published figures of Jelly-Fishes. We float about here for a while, hoping to find more of the same kind, but no others make their appearance, and we keep on our way to East Point, where there is a capital fishing-ground for Medusæ of all sorts. Here two currents meet, and the Jelly-Fishes are stranded, as it were, along the line of juncture, able to move neither one way nor the other. At this spot the sea actually swarms with life: one cannot dip the net into the water without bringing up Pleurobrachia, Bolina, Idyia, Melicertum, etc., while the larger Zygodactyla and Aurelia float about the boat in numbers. These large Jelly-Fishes produce a singular effect as one sees them at some depth beneath the water; the Aureliæ, especially, with their large disks, look like pale phantoms wandering about far below the surface; but they constantly float upward, and if not too far out of reach, one may bring them up by stirring the water under them with the end of the oar.
When we passed an hour or so floating about just beyond East Point, and have nearly filled our buckets with Jelly-Fishes of all sizes and descriptions, we turn and row homeward. Thebuckets look very pretty as they stand in the bottom of the boat with the sunshine lighting up their living contents. The Idyia glitters and sparkles with ever-changing hues; the Pleurobrachiæ dart about, trailing their long, graceful tentacles after them; the golden Melicerta are kept in constant motion by their quick, sudden contractions; and the delicate, transparent Tima floats among them all, not the less beautiful because so colorless. There is an unfortunate Idyia, who, by some mistake, has got into the wrong bucket, with the larger Jelly-Fish, where a Zygodactyla has entangled it among his tentacles and is quietly breakfasting upon it.
Ptychogena lactea.Ptychogena lactea.
During our row the tide has been rising, and as we near the channel of Saunders's Ledge, it is running through more strongly than before, and at the entrance of the shallows a pleasant surprise is prepared for us: no less than half a dozen of our new friends, (the Ptychogena, as he has been baptized,) come to look for their lost companion perhaps, await us there, and are presently added to our spoils. We reach the shore heavily laden with the fruits of our morning's excursion.
The most interesting part of the work for the naturalist is still to come. On our return to the Laboratory, the contents of the buckets are poured into separate glass bowls and jars; holding them up against the light, we can see which are our best and rarest specimens; these we dip out in glass cups and place by themselves. If any small specimens are swimming about at the bottom of the jar, and refuse to come within our reach, there is a very simple mode of catching them. Dip a glass tube into the water, keeping the upper end closed with your finger, and sink it till the lower end is just above the animal you want to entrap; then lift your finger, and as the air rushes out the water rushes in, bringing with it the little creature you are trying to catch. When the specimens are well assorted, the microscope is taken out, and the rest of the day is spent in studying the new Jelly-Fishes, recording the results, making notes, drawings, etc.
Still more attractive than the rows by day are the night expeditions in search of Jelly-Fishes. For this object we must choose a quiet night; for they will not come to the surface if the water is troubled. Nature has her culminating hours, and she brings us now and then a day or night on which she seems to have lavished all her treasures. It was on such a rare evening,at the close of the summer of 1862, that we rowed over the same course by Saunders's Ledge and East Point described above. The August moon was at her full, the sky was without a cloud, and we floated on a silver sea; pale streamers of the aurora quivered in the north, and notwithstanding the brilliancy of the moon, they, too, cast their faint reflection in the ocean. We rowed quietly along past the Ledge, past Castle Rock, the still surface of the water unbroken, except by the dip of the oars and the ripple of the boat, till we reached the line off East Point, where the Jelly-Fishes are always most abundant, if they are to be found at all. Now dip the net into the water. What genie under the sea has wrought this wonderful change? Our dirty, torn old net is suddenly turned to a web of gold, and as we lift it from the water, heavy rills of molten metal seem to flow down its sides and collect in a glowing mass at the bottom. The truth is, the Jelly-Fishes, so sparkling and brilliant in the sunshine, have a still lovelier light of their own at night; they give out a greenish golden light, as brilliant as that of the brightest glow-worm, and on a calm summer night, at the spawning season, when they come to the surface in swarms, if you do but dip your hand into the water, it breaks into sparkling drops beneath your touch. There are no more beautiful phosphorescent animals in the sea than the Medusæ. It would seem that the expression, "rills of molten metal," could hardly apply to anything so impalpable as a Jelly-Fish, but, although so delicate in structure, their gelatinous disks give them a weight and substance; and at night, when their transparency is not perceived, and their whole mass is aglow with phosphorescent light, they truly have an appearance of solidity which is most striking, when they are lifted out of the water and flow down the sides of the net.
The various kinds present very different aspects. Wherever the larger Aureliæ and Zygodactylæ float to the surface, they bring with them a dim spreading halo of light, the smaller Ctenophoræ become little shining spheres, while a thousand lesser creatures add their tiny lamps to the illumination of the ocean: for this so-called phosphorescence of the sea is by no means due to the Jelly-Fishes alone, but is also produced by many other animals, differing in the color as well as the intensity of their light; and it is a curious fact that they seem to take possession of the field by turns. You may row over the same course which a few nights since glowed with a greenish golden light wherever the surface of the water was disturbed, and though equally brilliant, the phosphorescence has now a pure white light. On such an evening, be quite sure, that, when you empty your buckets on your return and examine their contents, you will find that the larger part of your treasures are small Crustacea (little shrimps). Of course there will be other phosphorescent creatures, Jelly-Fishes, etc., among them, but the predominant color is given by these little Crustacea. On another evening the light will have a bluish tint, and then the phosphorescence is principally due to the Dysmorphosa.
Notwithstanding the beauty of a moonlight row, if you would see the phosphorescence to greatest advantage, you must choose a dark night, when the motion of your boat sets the sea on fire around you, and a long undulating wave of light rolls off from your oar as you lift it from the water. On a brilliant evening this effect is lost in a great degree, and it is not until you dip your net fairly under the moonlit surface of the sea that you are aware how full of life it is. Occasionally one is tempted out by the brilliancy of the phosphorescence, when the clouds are so thick, that water, sky, and land become one indiscriminate mass of black, and the line of rocks can be discerned only by the vivid flash of greenish golden light, when the breakers dash against them. At such times there is something wild and weird in the whole scene, which at once fascinates and appalls the imagination; one seems to be rocking above a volcano, for the surface around is intensely black, exceptwhere fitful flashes or broad waves of light break from the water under the motion of the boat or the stroke of the oars. It was on a night like this, when the phosphorescence was unusually brilliant, and the sea as black as ink, the surf breaking heavily and girdling the rocky shore with a wall of fire, that our collector was so fortunate as to find in the rich harvest he brought home the entirely new and exceedingly pretty little floating Hydroid, described under the name of Nanomia. It was in its very infancy, a mere bubble, not yet possessed of the various appendages which eventually make up its complex structure; but it was nevertheless very important to have seen it in this early stage of its existence, since, when a few full-grown specimens were found in the autumn, which lived for some days in confinement and quietly allowed their portraits to be taken, it was easy to connect the adult animal with its younger phase of life, and thus make a complete history.
Marine phosphorescence is no new topic, and we have dwelt too long, perhaps, upon a phenomenon that every voyager has seen, and many have described; but its effect is very different, when seen from the deck of a vessel, from its appearance as one floats through its midst, distinguishing the very creatures that produce it; and any account of the Medusæ which did not include this most characteristic feature would be incomplete.
In the spring of the year 1853, I observed, as conductor of the weekly journal, "Household Words," a short poem among the proffered contributions, very different, as I thought, from the shoal of verses perpetually setting through the office of such a periodical, and possessing much more merit. Its authoress was quite unknown to me. She was one Miss Mary Berwick, whom I had never heard of; and she was to be addressed by letter, if addressed at all, at a circulating-library in the western district of London. Through this channel, Miss Berwick was informed that her poem was accepted, and was invited to send another. She complied, and became a regular and frequent contributor. Many letters passed between the journal and Miss Berwick, but Miss Berwick herself was never seen.
How we came gradually to establish at the office of "Household Words" that we knew all about Miss Berwick, I have never discovered. But we settled somehow, to our complete satisfaction, that she was governess in a family; that she went to Italy in that capacity, and returned; and that she had long been in the same family. We really knew nothing whatever of her, except that she was remarkably business-like, punctual, self-reliant, and reliable; so I suppose we insensibly invented the rest. For myself, my mother was not a more real personage to me than Miss Berwick the governess became.
This went on until December, 1854, when the Christmas number, entitled "The Seven Poor Travellers," was sent to press. Happening to be going to dine that day with an old and dear friend, distinguished in literature as "Barry Cornwall," I took with me an early proof of that number, and remarked, as I laid it on the drawing-room table, that it contained a very pretty poem, written by a certain Miss Berwick. Next day brought me the disclosure that I had so spoken of the poem to the mother of its writer, in its writer's presence; that I had no such correspondent inexistence as Miss Berwick; and that the name had been assumed by Barry Cornwall's eldest daughter, Miss Adelaide Anne Procter.
The anecdote I have here noted down, besides serving to explain why the parents of the late Miss Procter have looked to me for these poor words of remembrance of their lamented child, strikingly illustrates the honesty, independence, and quiet dignity of the lady's character. I had known her when she was very young; I had been honored with her father's friendship when I was myself a young aspirant; and she had said at home, "If I send him, in my own name, verses that he does not honestly like, either it will be very painful to him to return them, or he will print them for papa's sake, and not for their own. So I have made up my mind to take my chance fairly with the unknown volunteers."
Perhaps it requires an editor's experience of the profoundly unreasonable grounds on which he is often urged to accept unsuitable articles—such as having been to school with the writer's husband's brother-in-law, or having lent an alpenstock in Switzerland to the writer's wife's nephew, when that interesting stranger had broken his own—fully to appreciate the delicacy and the self-respect of this resolution.
Some verses by Miss Procter had been published in the "Book of Beauty," ten years before she became Miss Berwick. With the exception of two poems in the "Cornhill Magazine," two in "Good Words," and others in a little book called "A Chaplet of Verses," (issued in 1862 for the benefit of a Night Refuge,) her published writings first appeared in "Household Words" or "All the Year Round."
Miss Procter was born in Bedford Square, London, on the 30th of October, 1825. Her love of poetry was conspicuous at so early an age, that I have before me a tiny album, made of small note-paper, into which her favorite passages were copied for her by her mother's hand before she herself could write. It looks as if she had carried it about, as another little girl might have carried a doll. She soon displayed a remarkable memory and great quickness of apprehension. When she was quite a young child, she learned with facility several of the problems of Euclid. As she grew older, she acquired the French, Italian, and German languages, became a clever piano-forte player, and showed a true taste and sentiment in drawing. But as soon as she had completely vanquished the difficulties of any one branch of study, it was her way to lose interest in it and pass to another. While her mental resources were being trained, it was not at all suspected in her family that she had any gift of authorship, or any ambition to become a writer. Her father had no idea of her having ever attempted to turn a rhyme, until her first little poem saw the light in print.
When she attained to womanhood, she had read an extraordinary number of books, and throughout her life she was always largely adding to the number. In 1853 she went to Turin and its neighborhood, on a visit to her aunt, a Roman Catholic lady. As Miss Procter had herself professed the Roman Catholic faith two years before, she entered with the greater ardor on the study of the Piedmontese dialect, and the observation of the habits and manners of the peasantry. In the former she soon became a proficient; and on the latter head, I extract from her familiar letters, written home to England at the time, two pleasant pieces of description.
"We have been to a ball, of which I must give you a description. Last Tuesday we had just done dinner at about seven, and stepped out into the balcony to look at the remains of the sunset behind the mountains, when we heard very distinctly a band of music, which rather excited my astonishment, as a solitary organ is the utmost that toils up here. I went out of the room for a few minutes, and on my returning, Emily said,—
"'Oh! that band is playing at thefarmer's near here. The daughter isfiancéeto-day, and they have a ball.'
"I said,—
"'I wish I was going!'
"'Well,' replied she, 'the farmer's wife did call to invite us.'
"'Then I shall certainly go,' I exclaimed.
"I applied to Madame B., who said she would like it very much, and we had better go, children and all. Some of the servants were already gone. We rushed away to put on some shawls, and put off any shred of black we might have about us, (as the people would have been quite annoyed, if we had appeared on such an occasion with any black,) and we started. When we reached the farmer's, which is a stone's throw above our house, we were received with great enthusiasm; the only drawback being, that no one spoke French, and we did not yet speak Piedmontese. We were placed on a bench against the wall, and the people went on dancing. The room was a large whitewashed kitchen, (I suppose,) with several large pictures in black frames, and very smoky. I distinguished the 'Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian,' and the others appeared equally lively and appropriate subjects. Whether they were Old Masters or not, and if so, by whom, I could not ascertain. The band were seated opposite us. Five men, with wind instruments, part of the band of the National Guard, to which the farmer's sons belong. They played really admirably, and I began to be afraid that some idea of our dignity would prevent my getting a partner; so, by Madame B.'s advice, I went up to the bride, and offered to dance with her. Such a handsome young woman! Like one of Uwins's pictures. Very dark, with a quantity of black hair, and on an immense scale. The children were already dancing, as well as the maids. After we came to an end of our dance, which was what they call a Polka-Mazourka, I saw the bride trying to screw up the courage offiancéto ask me to dance, which, after a little hesitation, he did. And admirably he danced, as indeed they all did,—in excellent time, and with a little more spirit than one sees in a ball-room. In fact, they were very like one's ordinary partners, except that they wore ear-rings and were in their shirt-sleeves, and truth compels me to state that they decidedly smelt of garlic. Some of them had been smoking, but threw away their cigars when we came in. The only thing that did not look cheerful was, that the room was only lighted by two or three oil-lamps, and that there seemed to be no preparation for refreshments. Madame B., seeing this, whispered to her maid, who disengaged herself from her partner, and ran off to the house; she and the kitchen-maid presently returning with a large tray covered with all kinds of cakes, (of which we are great consumers and always have a stock,) and a large hamper full of bottles of wine, with coffee and sugar. This seemed all very acceptable. Thefiancéewas requested to distribute the eatables, and a bucket of water being produced to wash the glasses in, the wine disappeared very quickly,—as fast as they could open the bottles. But elated, I suppose, by this, the floor was sprinkled with water, and the musicians played a Monferrino, which is a Piedmontese dance. Madame B. danced with the farmer's son, and Emily with another distinguished member of the company. It was very fatiguing,—something like a Scotch reel. My partner was a little man, like Pierrot, and very proud of his dancing. He cut in the air and twisted about, until I was out of breath, though my attempts to imitate him were feeble in the extreme. At last, after seven or eight dances, I was obliged to sit down. We stayed till nine, and I was so dead beat with the heat that I could hardly crawl about the house, and in an agony with the cramp, it is so long since I have danced."
"The wedding of the farmer's daughter has taken place. We had hoped it would have been in the little chapel of our house; but it seems some specialpermission was necessary, and they applied for it too late. They all said, 'This is the Constitution. There would have been no difficulty before!'—the lower classes making the poor Constitution the scapegoat for everything they don't like. So, as it was impossible for us to climb up to the church where the wedding was to be, we contented ourselves with seeing the procession pass. It was not a very large one; for, it requiring some activity to go up, all the old people remained at home. It is not the etiquette for the bride's mother to go, and no unmarried woman can go to a wedding,—I suppose for fear of its making her discontented with her own position. The procession stopped at our door, for the bride to receive our congratulations. She was dressed in a shot silk, with a yellow handkerchief, and rows of a large gold chain. In the afternoon they sent to request us to go there. On our arrival, we found them dancing out-of-doors, and a most melancholy affair it was. All the bride's sisters were not to be recognized, they had cried so. The mother sat in the house, and could not appear; and the bride was sobbing so, she could hardly stand. The most melancholy spectacle of all, to my mind, was, that the bridegroom was decidedly tipsy. He seemed rather affronted at all the distress. We danced a Monferrino,—I with the bridegroom, and the bride crying the whole time. The company did their utmost to enliven her, by firing pistols, but without success; and at last they began a series of yells, which reminded me of a set of savages. But even this delicate method of consolation failed, and the wishing good-bye began. It was altogether so melancholy an affair, that Madame B. dropped a few tears, and I was very near it,—particularly when the poor mother came out to see the last of her daughter, who was finally dragged off between her brother and uncle, with the last explosion of pistols. As she lives quite near, makes an excellent match, and is one of nine children, it really was a most desirable marriage, in spite of all the show of distress. Albert was so discomfited by it that he forgot to kiss the bride, as he had intended to, and therefore went to call upon her yesterday, and found her very smiling in her new house, and supplied the omission. The cook came home from the wedding declaring she was cured of any wish to marry; but I would not recommend any man to act upon that threat, and make her an offer. In a couple of days we had some rolls of the bride's first baking, which they call Madonna's. The musicians, it seems, were in the same state as the bridegroom; for, in escorting her home, they all fell down in the mud. My wrath against the bridegroom is somewhat calmed by finding that it is considered bad luck, if he does not get tipsy at his wedding."
Those readers of Miss Procter's poems who should suppose from their tone that her mind was of a gloomy or despondent cast would be curiously mistaken. She was exceedingly humorous, and had a great delight in humor. Cheerfulness was habitual with her; she was very ready at a sally or a reply; and in her laugh (as I remember well) there was an unusual vivacity, enjoyment, and sense of drollery. She was perfectly unconstrained and unaffected; as modestly silent about her productions as she was generous with their pecuniary results. She was a friend who inspired the strongest attachments; she was a finely sympathetic woman, with a great accordant heart and a sterling noble nature. No claim can be set up for her, thank God, to the possession of any of the conventional poetical qualities. She never, by any means, held the opinion that she was among the greatest of human beings; she never suspected the existence of a conspiracy on the part of mankind against her; she never recognized in her best friends her worst enemies; she never cultivated the luxury of being misunderstood and unappreciated; she would far rather have died without seeing a line of her composition in print than that I should have maunderedabout her here as "the Poet" or "the Poetess."
With the recollection of Miss Procter, as a mere child and as a woman, fresh upon me, it is natural that I should linger on my way to the close of this brief record, avoiding its end. But even as the close came upon her, so must it come here, and cannot be staved off.
Always impelled by an intense conviction that her life must not be dreamed away, and that her indulgence in her favorite pursuits must be balanced by action in the real world around her, she was indefatigable in her endeavors to do some good. Naturally enthusiastic, and conscientiously impressed with a deep sense of her Christian duty to her neighbor, she devoted herself to a variety of benevolent objects. Now it was the visitation of the sick that had possession of her; now it was the sheltering of the houseless; now it was the elementary teaching of the densely ignorant; now it was the raising up of those who had wandered and got trodden under foot; now it was the wider employment of her own sex in the general business of life; now it was all these things at once. Perfectly unselfish, swift to sympathize, and eager to relieve, she wrought at such designs with a flushed earnestness that disregarded season, weather, time of day or night, food, rest. Under such a hurry of the spirits, and such incessant occupation, the strongest constitution will commonly go down; hers, neither of the strongest nor the weakest, yielded to the burden, and began to sink.
To have saved her life then, by taking action on the warning that shone in her eyes and sounded in her voice, would have been impossible, without changing her nature. As long as the power of moving about in the old way was left to her, she must exercise it, or be killed by the restraint. And so the time came when she could move about no longer, and took to her bed.
All the restlessness gone then, and all the sweet patience of her natural disposition purified by the resignation of her soul, she lay upon her bed through the whole round of changes of the seasons. She lay upon her bed through fifteen months. In all that time her old cheerfulness never quitted her. In all that time not an impatient or a querulous minute can be remembered.
At length, at midnight on the 2d of February, 1864, she turned down a leaf of a little book she was reading, and shut it up.
The ministering hand that had copied the verses into the tiny album was soon around her neck; and she quietly asked, as the clock was on the stroke of one,—
"Do you think I am dying, mama?"
"I think you are very, very ill to-night, my dear."
"Send for my sister. My feet are so cold! Lift me up."
Her sister entering as they raised her, she said, "It has come at last!" and, with a bright and happy smile, looked upward, and departed.
Well had she written,—