Part 11

“A being of that transcendent dignity who could say, ‘All power is given to me in heaven and in earth,’ would scarcely have been sent for the mere purpose of communicating a clearer knowledge to mankind of their duty, or of setting before them an example of practical holiness. These, no doubt, were among the objects for which the Son of God became man; but they were only collateral objects. In order to appreciate the importance of his mission, we must compare it with the modes adopted on former occasions. When the corruption of mankind drew down the dreadful chastisement of the deluge; and when, after that catastrophe, the patriarchal covenant was renewed, and fresh blessings and privileges were offered to the posterity of the second father of mankind, the only communication of these signal events was announced through Noah. When God vouchsafed the second covenant, and established the Jewish religion by direct revelation, a mere human agent, Moses, was employed. And when the idolatries and wickedness of the Israelites induced the merciful Governor of the universe to interfere, Elijah and other mere prophets were sent to reclaim them.

“If therefore, when Christianity was revealed, the only intention had been to prescribe a purer mode of worship, and to withdraw mankind from their vicious career, why should not that mission have been entrusted to another prophet, instead of requiring the special interference of the Son of God?--Still more, if no other purpose was to have been accomplished by the coming of Christ, why was it ordained that he should suffer death, in attestation of his doctrines? Noah died a natural death; so did Moses, full of years and honour; and Elijah was distinguished by the privilege of not dying at all. From this comparison alone we might safely infer, that the sufferings of our Saviour were connected with some other momentous object--and in all parts of the Scriptures we find that object declared in the most express terms. I will point out to you a few passages which cannot be mistaken or perverted.

“‘He was wounded for our transgressions; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.’ ‘He was made an offering for sin.’ ‘He taketh away the sins of the world.’ ‘If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ.’ ‘Christ, our passover, is sacrificed for us.’ ‘We have redemption through his blood.’ ‘The Son of man came to give his life a ransom for many, a ransom for all.’

“These passages solve that great enigma, and explain in the most distinct language the sublime and merciful object of the Christian dispensation. And now let me ask you all, what are the impressions with which this view of it should fill our hearts? Should we not be overwhelmed with the magnitude of the mercy; and eager to exclaim with the Psalmist, ‘Lord, what is man, that thou so regardest him!’

“But in thus summing up the proof of this mysterious plan of redemption, it is highly necessary to remind you that it is _conditional_; that salvation is offered to you, not forced upon you; and that it is offered solely on the terms of implicit submission to the commands of our Redeemer. If you reject the Gospel; or if, persuading yourselves that you believe in its truth, you allow your actions to be in contradiction to its precepts; or if, in cowardly subservience to the fashions of the world, you seem ashamed of your Mediator and Substitute, then you can claim no share in his ransom. My dear children, the alternative is fairly set before you, and you must make your own choice.”

Mary asked her father whether this third dispensation did not materially differ from the Levitical, in its again embracing _all_ mankind in its offered benefits.

“Yes,” said he, “like the Patriarchal dispensation, it is universal in its object. Christianity is, in fact, but the completion of Patriarchism; the law having been a connecting chain between them. Under the Patriarchal dispensation all men were taught to look forward to the promised Deliverer; under Christianity all men are taught to rejoice in the actual appearance of that promised Deliverer, who has done and suffered everything that was predicted of him.

“Christianity has not yet become universal; but the purpose of the Almighty is still powerfully though silently working. In the appointed time, ‘the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord,’ and the Messiah will be universally acknowledged by Gentiles, Jews, and all nations. ‘Thus from first to last, under the Three Successive Dispensations,’ has God carried on one consistent and harmonious scheme of grace and mercy for the salvation of his fallen creatures.”

_5th._--This evening, in talking of the variety of representations that different historians give of the same facts, my uncle was lamenting the loss of the many ancient works which are alluded to in contemporary authors, but which appear to have perished; and he particularly regretted the 105 books of Livy’s Roman History, which originally consisted of 142.--“But,” he added, “there are some hopes that they may yet be recovered.”

Mary asked him if there was any chance of their being found among the Herculaneum manuscripts?

“Very little indeed,” he replied. “When those famous rolls of papyrus were disinterred nearly eighty years ago, great expectations were formed, of the literary riches they might contain. Their original number was 1700, but by far the greater part were found, on closer inspection, to be so mangled that there was not the least probability of recovering any portion of their contents. Of those that were in a better condition, many were destroyed by the first awkward attempts to unrol them; and, unfortunately, the remainder have suffered great additional injury from long exposure to the air.”

“I should have thought,” said Wentworth, “that having been partly charred by fire, they would be proof against air and damp; as we find old stumps of charred gate posts in the ground, which seem to have remained there an immense time, perfectly unchanged.”

“Your reasoning,” replied my uncle, “would not apply to this case, even if the papyri had undergone the action of fire, because it is since their exposure to the atmosphere that they have suffered. They have, indeed, all the appearance of charcoal, even the sticks on which they are rolled; and it was therefore very naturally supposed that this effect had been produced by the heat of the lava which overflowed that devoted city; but Sir Humphry Davy has proved, that they were protected from the heat by a thick bed of sand and ashes, and, in his opinion, their charred appearance has been the result of a gradual process of decomposition.”

“What means, uncle, could be taken to unfold and read manuscripts that were in such a state? Surely all the characters must have been effaced.”

“No, not quite: the characters are seen black and shining upon the black but not shining surface; just in the same way that a letter sometimes appears after we have burnt it, the traces of writing being still visible on the gauzy substance, while it flickers about in the smoke, at the back of the grate. To unrol them, many ingenious contrivances were invented; that which I saw, when at Portici, and which, I believe, has been generally adopted, is to glue some thin flexible material to the back of the papyrus, and then to raise it gently by a number of threads, while the folds are at the same time carefully opened by a pin. In this way a few of the most perfect have actually been restored, and published; but, to the great disappointment of the world, they are works of no value. One is a treatise on the inutility of music, in Greek; a few pages of a Latin poem, and some other fragments, but all equally uninteresting. One of the chief difficulties arose from the adhesion of the folds, as if they had been gummed together; and to conquer this Sir Humphry applied the resources of his profound chemical knowledge. He exposed some of the fragments to the action of chlorine, and to the vapour of iodine, and succeeded to a considerable extent in loosening and detaching the folds; but the jealousy of the Neapolitans prevented his further progress, and he left them to pursue their own plans. Unfortunately, the best specimens were operated on long ago, and those that now remain are in too mutilated a state to afford much hope for the future.”

“But,” said Caroline, “as they are rapidly unburying Pompeii, perhaps some manuscripts may be found there--and in a much more perfect state; for Pompeii was covered with mud and ashes, and not with burning lava like Herculaneum.”

“Several rolls of papyrus,” my uncle replied, “have been already found in the houses of Pompeii, but all in a far worse condition than those of Herculaneum,--having nearly the appearance of the white ashes produced by burning common paper.”

“Then, uncle,” said I, “to what quarter do you look for the lost books of Livy?”

“To the vast collections of vellum manuscripts,” he answered, “which have for centuries been accumulating in public and private libraries. It has been discovered, that many of these have been twice written upon, and some even three times. In the middle ages the art of reading and writing was almost entirely confined to the monks; and all true taste for literature being suspended, it was natural that they should consider the finest effusions of the ancient poets, or the most important records of profane history, as of little value, in comparison with the statutes of their own order, or the histories of their general councils. It appears, therefore, to have been a common practice of those times, to expunge the writing on the parchment manuscripts in their possession, in order to substitute copies of those works which they estimated so much more highly; and in some instances the former characters have been discovered, and successfully traced.”

“But, papa, if the original writing was expunged, how is it now legible?” Frederick asked.

“The ink,” said my uncle, “in general use among the ancients, was merely a mixture of lamp-black and gum; and, as that did not sink into the parchment, a wet cloth in the hands of a monk did the business as effectually and finally as your sponge, Frederick, annihilates your most elaborate calculations from a slate. But the injury to which writing, with such materials, was liable from damp and other accidents, had been long known, and various expedients were adopted to provide a remedy. Pliny says it was difficult to efface ink which had been made with vinegar; and it appears, that at a later period, some preparation of iron was added for the same purpose, as both of these ingredients sink into the parchment. In either of those cases, the lamp-black, or colouring matter, could be only partially removed by washing; so that it was necessary to scrape the surface, in order to obliterate the characters, or to rub it with pumice stone, in the same manner that it had been originally prepared for writing on; and to such a parchment or manuscript the name of _palimpsest_ was given, from a Greek word signifying twice scraped. But though the process that I have described apparently removed the writing, it could not draw out the infusion of iron which had been absorbed by the parchment; and as you all know that ink is nothing but a combination of iron with a solution of _galls_, it will readily occur to you, that by applying that solution with a light brush, to any of the palimpsest manuscripts, the original writing would be revived,--provided there had been any iron in the composition of the ink.”

“What a beautiful discovery!” exclaimed Caroline. “And when generally known, how zealously will all our antiquaries attack the hordes of manuscripts now dormant in the public libraries!”

“Yet,” said my uncle, “it is not a new discovery; the celebrated Montfaucon endeavoured to draw the attention of the learned world to these palimpsest parchments just a century ago; but antiquaries are not put into zealous activity quite so easily as you imagine. In that long interval, nothing very material seems to have been effected till the present accomplished librarian of the Vatican devoted himself to the subject; and the success with which his efforts have been already crowned, more than justify the sanguine hopes which I expressed. Other industrious labourers are also in the field, and what has been already achieved is only a pledge of the rich harvest that will distinguish this age.”

_6th._--In conversing about our approaching journey, and the fine mountainous tracks that we are to see in Wales, Wentworth asked the meaning of the word _pen_, which is prefixed to some of the Welsh names, as Pen-man-mawr, for instance.

“It is an old British word,” my uncle told him, “signifying head or summit; and it is joined to the names of several of those hills, amongst the inhabitants of which much of that ancient dialect is still to be found.

“It is singular that this term appears to have been used in the same way among the Romans; for we find that the crest of the Alps near Mount St. Bernard was anciently called _Alpes Penninæ_; and that the very same name was also applied by them to the central chain of mountains which extends from the borders of Scotland to the middle of Derbyshire. This Penine chain traverses the great northern coal district; and many of its hills retain the old British term pen, as, Penygent, Pendle hill, &c.”

“There are several wild and very picturesque views,” said my aunt, “in that Penine chain; and its caverns, precipices, and torrents, have all a singular character, particularly the sublime and curious scenery of _The Peak_. I am sure, Caroline, you recollect a beautiful description of the banks of the Greta in Yorkshire, in your favourite poem of Rokeby.”

Caroline immediately repeated these lines--

“Broad shadows o’er the passage fell, Deeper and narrower grew the dell; It seemed some mountain, rent and riven, A channel for the stream had given, So high the cliffs of limestone grey Hung beetling o’er the torrent’s way, Yielding along their rugged base A flinty foot-path’s niggard space; Where he who winds ’twixt rock and wave, May hear the headlong torrent rave, And like a steed in frantic fit, That flings the froth from curb and bit, May view her chafe her waves to spray O’er every rock that bars her way.”

“I have lately read two facts,” Mary said, “which shew the depth of those remarkably abrupt ravines that intersect these craggy mountains in the moorlands of Staffordshire. In Narrowdale, the sun is never seen by the inhabitants for the three winter months; and even when it is visible, it does not rise to them till one o’clock in the afternoon. The other circumstance is this--at Leck, the sun at a certain time of the year, seems to set twice in the same evening: for, after it sinks beneath the top of a high intervening mountain, it again breaks out from behind the steep northern side before it reaches the horizon.”

_7th._--My uncle shewed me to-day a hard black substance of very close grain. I did not know what it could be, for it evidently was not coal, nor flint. He told me, that the soil which covers the great northern coal-field appears to be alluvial, and that it contains masses of all the different rocks that compose the whole district; and among them, portions of this hard black _basalt_ are found every where in abundance.

“I shew you this,” he said, “because the ancient inhabitants of Britain formed the heads of their battle-axes, which are commonly called _celts_, from this stone. They resemble in shape the tomahawks of the South Sea islands. Barbed arrow-heads, neatly finished, and made of pale coloured flint, are also frequently picked up on the moors, and are called _elf-bolts_.”

I asked, if those things were often found in other parts of England, as they must be very interesting in tracing the history of our early ancestors.

“Yes,” said he, “in all parts of Great Britain; and not only weapons, but various utensils; besides other articles, of which the uses have not been ascertained. For instance, at Kimmeridge, on the coast of Dorsetshire, where there are beds of a kind of stony coal, there has been found on the tops of the cliff’s, what the country people call ‘_coal money_.’ The pieces are round, and about two inches and a half in diameter, by a quarter of an inch in thickness; one side is convex, with mouldings, and the other is flat and plain, but with two, or sometimes with four small round holes in the surface. They are, in general, two or three feet below the surface, inclosed between two stones, set edgeways, and covered by a third; and the bones of some animal are always found along with them. A little deposit of this coal-money was also discovered in a shallow bowl of the same material.”

“And was coal ever really used as money, uncle? It would make rather a bulky currency.”

“Some people imagine that they were amulets; others, that they were connected with the ancient Druidical rites; and many suppose them to have been coin. Perhaps the cant, or vulgar expression, ‘down with your coal,’ which means ‘pay your money,’ may assist you in choosing which of these hypotheses you like best.”

_8th._--The back gate of the garden is not often unlocked, and to-day when the gardener was going to open it, the key-hole appeared to be so stopped up, that he took off the lock, and finding a little nest in the inside, he brought it to my uncle.

It proved to be the nest of a species of bee, called _apis manicata_. The cells are formed of two or three layers of a silky membrane, which seems to be composed of a kind of glue secreted by the insect; it resembles gold-beater’s-leaf, but so thin and transparent, that you can distinguish through it the colour of the smallest object. As soon as each cell is completed, I am told that the bee deposits an egg in it, and then nearly fills it with a mixture of pollen and honey; and so proceeds till all the cells are finished and filled. As the situation is rather cold for the grubs, we found the cells plastered over with the same composition, and even a warm outer coating of wool was stuck to this paste to preserve them from any change of temperature. The wool appeared to be the down of some plant; and my uncle says, they have been observed to scrape the down from the leaves of the woolly hedge-nettle, and the common rose campion, with their mandibles; while with their fore legs they roll it into a little ball and carry it to the nest.

I have been excessively busy putting my garden in order before we set out. Indeed, I have become so wonderfully active, that you would scarcely know your little indolent girl; and I am often inclined to sing the old nursery song to myself, “Sure this is none of I.” Among other things, I have performed a grand operation in my hyacinth beds. Lady Binning, you know, is a great florist; I heard her speak of the manner in which her gardener manages the hyacinths, for which her garden is remarkable; and I determined to try it. As soon as the leaves become all yellow, he takes up the bulbs, removes the loose skins and offsets and all the fibres that are decayed, and immediately replants them in a bed of fresh compost. Her ladyship told us, that when treated in this manner, they equal the Dutch hyacinths in strength.

All this was duly executed yesterday. I had been watching the leaves for some time, as I wanted them to be quite yellow; and I now flatter myself with having a very grand display next year.

I had also many cuttings to make, and seedlings to plant out, as well as layers of pinks and carnations, and various plants to trim and tie up; besides the daily occupations of weeding, watering, pruning, and earthing.

_9th._--I have just found the most curious miniature cocoons of yellow cotton, sticking on a chrysalis of the cabbage caterpillar. Some time ago I put up two of these caterpillars in paper boxes; they were regularly fed, and made quite comfortable; and now though one is a perfectly sound chrysalis, the other is only an empty skin. In the little book which I have so often mentioned, Mary shewed me the cause of this in the dialogue between Lucy and her mother on _ichneumons_; it was from their eggs, which were deposited in the body of the caterpillar, that the maggots proceeded who destroyed it, and then spun those pretty little yellow cocoons. It is a great pleasure, mamma, to have traced a curious fact of this kind for myself, and actually to have seen one chrysalis dwelling in another. These ichneumons must be very useful in thus destroying other mischievous insects: Reaumur found, that out of thirty common cabbage caterpillars which he put into a glass to feed, twenty-five were killed by an ichneumon; and my aunt says, that if the myriads of caterpillars which prey on our vegetables, are compared with the small number of butterflies that they usually produce, it will appear that they are destroyed in a still larger proportion. This is one of the innumerable instances of the goodness of Providence, which balances the necessary evils of one tribe of animals by the instinctive efforts of another.

My aunt told me, that in St. Domingo the cassada and indigo plantations are materially injured by a large caterpillar. When it changes to its last robe of sea-green, its tortures begin; a swarm of ichneumon flies fasten themselves all over the poor victim, drive their stings into the skin, and then deposit their eggs in the wounds they have made. The caterpillar swells and becomes of a deeper green, and in a fortnight, when the eggs are hatched, it appears covered with little worms, which start out of every pore. The existence of these worms is but short; after raising themselves on one end, shaking their heads, and swinging themselves in every direction, each of them begins to form its cocoon; and in two hours the caterpillar is completely clothed in a white robe. In eight days the ichneumon flies are hatched, and the little cocoons they leave behind are composed of a very fine silky cotton of the most dazzling whiteness, which may be used without any preparation, as soon as the flies have quitted them.

The quantity of this glossy substance, produced by the millions of those little parasites, is so great, that it is said a single person has collected a bushel in two hours. But the chief importance of their services is, the keeping within bounds the mischievous cassada caterpillars; and as these caterpillars are destroyed by heavy rain, it has even been proposed to collect and put them under cover as soon as the ichneumon’s eggs are deposited, in order to multiply these useful insects.

_10th._--June is really a most lovely month here;--the trees are clothed in foliage of the freshest green, and flowers are scattered everywhere in profusion. Mowing is just beginning, and everybody looks busy, active, and cheerful.

I was very happy yesterday; we went to see the sheep-shearing at Farmer Moreland’s; it seemed to be almost a festival, and was conducted with a degree of regularity and ceremony that was quite amusing. Caroline delights in these rural employments; and we were all allowed to go there early in the morning. We found the sheep enclosed in a fold under the shade of an ash-grove, and the shearers seated on the knotted roots of some of the old trees. Dame Moreland gave us some brown bread and new milk; and before the day grew very hot we returned home. In the evening, however, having dined early, we returned to the pretty grove and the poor bleating sheep, whom I could not help pitying when thrown down to be shorn; though they looked a great deal more comfortable as soon as they were relieved from their thick hot clothing.

I saw some of them washed a day or two before the shearing began; their fleeces were well rubbed and rinced in the stream, and then the poor creatures ran to a sunny bank,