Chapter 22

Next to England we should place Sweden and Denmark--for their population they have done much, and done it well; then Italy--in Italy science is well organized, and the rulers of her petty states seem to feel a proper emulation in promoting scientific merit--in which laudable rivalry the Archduke of Tuscany deserves honourable mention; America and Russia come next--the former state is zealous, ready at practical application, and promises much for the future, but as yet has not done enough in original research to entitle her to be placed in the van. Russia at present possesses few, if any, native philosophers--her discoverers and discoveries are all imported; but the emperor's zeal and _patronage_ (a word which we scarcely like to apply to science) is doing much to organize her forces, and the mercenary troops may impart vigour, and induce discipline into the national body. In this short enumeration, we have considered each country, not according to the number of its very eminent men; for though far from denying the right which each undoubtedly possesses to shine by the reflected lustre of her stars, yet in looking, as it were, from an external point, it is more just to regard the general character of each people than to classify them according as they may happen to be the birthplace of those

"To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe."

A misunderstanding of the proper use of theory is among the prevalent scientific errors of the present day. Among one set of men of considerable intelligence, but who are not habitually conversant with physical science, there is a general tendency to despise theory. This contempt appears to rest on somewhat plausible grounds; as an instance of it, we may take the following passage from the fitful writings of Mr Carlyle:--"Hardened round us, encasing wholly every notion we form, is a wrappage of traditions, hearsays, mere words: we call that fire of the black thunder-cloud electricity, and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass and silk, but what is it? Whence comes it? Where goes it?"[26]

[26] Carlyle on Hero Worship.

However the experienced philosopher may be convinced that _in themselves_ theories are nothing--that they are but collations of phenomena under a generic formula, which is useful only inasmuch as it groups these phenomena; yet it is difficult to see how, without these imperfect generalizations, any mind can retain the endless variety of facts and relations which every branch of science presents; still less, how these can be taught, learned, reasoned upon, or used. How could the facts of geology be recollected, or how, indeed, could they constitute a science without reference to some real or supposed bond of union, some aqueous or igneous theory? How could two chemists converse on chemistry without the use of the term affinity, and the theoretical conception it involves? How could a name be applied, or a nomenclature adopted, without that imperfect, or more or less perfect grouping of facts, which involves theory? As far as we can recollect, all the alterations of nomenclature which have been introduced, or attempted, proceed upon some alteration of theory.

If not theory but hypothesis be objected to--not the imperfect generalization of phenomena, but a gratuitous assumption for the sake of collating them, this, although ground which should be trodden more cautiously, appears in certain cases unavoidable; in fact, is scarcely separable from theory. Had men not "lectured learnedly" about the two _fluids_ of electricity, we should not now possess many of the discoveries with which this science is enriched, although we do not, and probably never shall, know what electricity is.

On the other hand, among professed physical philosophers, the great abuse of theories and hypotheses is, that their promulgators soon regard them, not as aids to science, to be changed if occasion should require, but as absolute natural truths; they look to that as an end, which is in fact but a means; their theories become part of their mental constitution, idiosyncrasies; and they themselves become partizans of a faction, and cease to be inductive philosophers.

Another injury to science, in a great measure peculiar to the present day, arises from the number of speculations which are ushered into the world to account for the same phenomena; every one, like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, when he wished to cudgel a Puritan, has for his opinion "no exquisite reasons, but reasons good enough." In the periods of science immediately subsequent to the time of Bacon, men commenced their career by successful experiment; and having convinced the world of their aptitude for perceiving the relations of natural phenomena, enounced theories which they believed the most efficient to give a comprehensive generality to the whole. Men now, however, commence with theories, though, alas! the converse does not hold good--they do not always end with experiment.

As, in the promulgation of theories, every aspirant is anxious to propound different news, so, in nomenclature, there is a strong tendency to promiscuous coining. The great commentator on the laws of England, Sir William Blackstone, observes, "As to the impression, the stamping of coin is the unquestionable prerogative of the crown, * * * the king may also, by his proclamation, legitimate foreign coin, and make it current here."[27]

[27] Commentaries, vol. i. p. 277.

As coinage of money is the undoubted prerogative of the crown; so generally coinage of words has been the undoubted prerogative of the kings of science--those to whom mankind have bent as to unquestionable authority. But even these royal dignitaries have generally been sparing in the exercise of this prerogative, and used it only on rare occasions and when absolutely necessary, either from the discovery of new things requiring new names, or upon entire revolutions of theory.

"Si forte necesse est Indiciis monstrare recentibus abdita rerum, Fingere cinctutis non exaudita cethegis Continget, labiturque licentia sumpta pudenter."

But now there is no "pudor" in the matter. Every man has his own mint; and although their several coins do not pass current very generally, yet they are taken here and there by a few disciples, and throw some standard money out of the market. The want of consideration evinced in these novel vocabularies is remarkable. Whewell, whose scientific position and dialectic turn of mind may fairly qualify him to be a word-maker, seems peculiarly deficient in ear. Take, as an instance, "_idiopts_," an uncomfortable word, barely necessary, as the persons to whom it applies are comparatively rare, and will scarcely thank the Master of Trinity College for approximating them in name to a more numerous and more unfortunate class--the word _physicists_, where four sibilant consonants fizz like a squib. In these, and we might add many from other sources, euphony is wantonly disregarded; by other authors of smaller calibre, classical associations are curiously violated. We may take, as an instance, _platinode_, Spanish-American joined to ancient Greek. In chemistry there is a profusion of new coin. Sulphate of ammonia--oxi-sulphion of ammonium--sulphat-oxide of ammonium--three names for one substance. This mania is by no means common to England. In Liebig's Chemistry, Vol. ii. p. 313, we have the following passage:--"It should be remarked that some chemists designate artificial camphor by the name of hydrochlorate of camphor. Deville calls it bihydrochlorate of térèbène, and Souberaine and Capelaine call it hydrochlorate of pencylène."

So generally does this prevail, that in chemical treatises the names of substances are frequently given with a tail of synonymes. Numerous words might be cited which are names for non-existences--mere hypothetic groupings; and yet so rapidly are these increasing, that it seems not impossible, in process of time, there will be more names for things that are not than for things that are. If this work go on, the scientific public must elect a censor whose fiat shall be final; otherwise, as every small philosopher is encouraged or tolerated in framing _ad libitum_ a nomenclature of his own, the inevitable effect will be, that no man will be able to understand his brother, and a confusion of tongues will ensue, to be likened only to that which occasioned the memorable dispersion at Babel.

Many of the defects to which we have alluded in the course of this paper, time alone can remedy. In spite of all drawbacks, the progress of science has been vast and rapidly increasing; the very rapidity of its progress brings with it difficulties. So many points, once considered impossible, have been proved possible, that to some minds the suggestion of impossibility seems an argument in favour of possibility. Because steam-travelling was once laughed at as visionary, aerial navigation is to be regarded as practicable--perhaps, indeed, it _will_ be so, give but the time _proportionably_ requisite to master its difficulties, as there was given to steam. What proportion this should be we will not venture to predict. There can be little doubt that the most effectual way to induce a more accurate public discrimination of scientific efforts is to turn somewhat more in that direction the current of national education. Prizes at the universities for efficiency in the physics of light, heat, electricity, magnetism, or chemistry, could, we conceive, do no harm. Why should not similar honours be conferred on those students who advance the progress of an infant science, as on those who work out with facility the formulæ of an exact one; and why should not acquirements in either, rank equally high with the critical knowledge of the _digamma_ or the _à priori_ philosophy of Aristotle? Is not Bacon's Novum Organon as much entitled to be made a standard book for the schools as Aldrich's logic? Venerating English universities, we approve not the inconsiderate outcries against systematic and time-honoured educational discipline; but it would increase our love for these seminaries of sound learning, could we more frequently see such men as Davy emanate from Oxford, instead of from the pneumatic institution of Bristol.

Provided science be kept separate from political excitement, we should like to see an English Academy, constituted of men having fair claims to scientific distinction, and not "deserving of that honour because they are attached to science."

It is unnecessary here to touch upon the details of such an Academy. The proposition is by no means new. On the contrary, we believe a wish for some such change pretty generally exists. Iteration is sometimes more useful than originality. The more frequently the point is brought before the public, the more probable is it that steps will be taken by those who are qualified to move in such a matter. The more the present defective state of our scientific organization is commented on, the more likely is it to be remedied; for the patency of error is ever a sure prelude to its extirpation.

CHRONICLES OF PARIS.

THE RUE ST DENIS.

One of the longest, the narrowest, the highest, the darkest, and the dirtiest streets of Paris, was, and is, and probably will long be, the Rue St Denis. Beginning at the bank of the Seine, and running due north, it spins out its length like a tape-worm, with every now and then a gentle wriggle, right across the capital, till it reaches the furthest barrier, and thence has a kind of suburban tail prolonged into the wide, straight road, a league in length, that stretches to the town of Sainct-Denys-en-France. This was, from time immemorial, the state-road for the monarchs of France to make their formal entries into, and exits from, their capital--whether they came from their coronation at Rheims, or went to their last resting-place beneath the tall spire of St Denis. This has always been the line by which travellers from the northern provinces have entered the good city of Paris; and for many a long year its echoes have never had rest from the cracking of the postilion's whip, the roll of the heavy diligence, and the perpetual jumbling of carts and waggons. It is, as it has ever been, one of the main arteries of the capital; and nowhere does the restless tide of Parisian life run more rapidly or more constantly than over its well-worn stones. In the pages of the venerable historians of the French capital, and in ancient maps, it is always called "_La Grande Rue de Sainct Denys_," being, no doubt, at one time the _ne plus ultra_ of all that was considered wide and commodious. Now its appellation is curtailed into the _Rue St D'nis_, and it is avoided by the polite inhabitants of Paris as containing nothing but the _bourgeoisie_ and the _canaille_. Once it was the Regent Street of Paris--a sort of Rue de la Paix--lounged along by the gallants of the days of Henri IV., and not unvisited by the red-heeled marquises of the Regent d'Orleans's time; now it sees nothing more _recherché_ than the cap of the grisette or the poissarde, as the case may be, nor any thing more august than the casquette of the _commis-voyageur_, or the indescribable shako and equipments of the National Guard. As its frequenters have been changed in character, so have its houses and public buildings; they have lost much of the picturesque appearance they possessed a hundred years ago--they are forced every year more and more into line, like a regiment of stone and mortar. Instead of showing their projecting, high-peaked gables to the street, they have now turned their fronts, as more polite; the roofs are accommodated with the luxury of pipes, and the midnight sound of "_Gare l'eau!_" which used to make the late-returning passenger start with all agility from beneath the opened window to avoid the odoriferous shower, is now but seldom heard. A Liliputian footway, some two feet wide, is laid down in flags at either side; the oscillating lamp, that used to hang on a rotten cord thrown across the roadway from house to house, and made darkness visible, has given place to the genius of gas--_enfin, la Révolution a passé par là_; and the Rue de St Denis is now a ghost only of what it was. Still it retains sufficient peculiarities of dimensions and outline to show that it is a child of the middle ages; and, like so many other children of the same kind, it contributes to make its mother Paris, as compared with the modern-built capitals of Europe, a town of former days. Long may it retain these oddities of appearance--long may it remain narrow, dark, and dirty; we rejoice that such streets still exist--they do one's eye good, if not one's nose. There is more of colour, of light and shade, of picturesque, fantastic outline, in a hundred yards of the Rue St Denis, than in all the line from Piccadilly to Whitechapel; a painter can pick up more food for his easel in this queer, old street--an antiquarian can find there more tales and crusts for his noddle, than in all Regent Street and Portland Place. We love a ramshackle place like this; it does one good to get out of the associations of the present century, and to retrograde a bit; it is pleasant to see how people used to pig together in ancient days, without any of the mathematical formalities of the present day; it keeps one's eye in tone to look back at works of the middle ages; and we may learn the more justly to criticize what we see arising about us, by refreshing our recollections of the mouldering past. Paris is a glorious place for things of this kind. Thank the stars, it never got burned out of its old clothes, as London did. Newfangled streets and quarters of every age have been added to it, but there still remains a mediæval nucleus--there is still an "old Paris"--a gloomy, filthy, old town, irregular and inconvenient as any town ever was yet; and a walk of twenty minutes will take you from the elegant uniformity of the Rue de Rivoli into the original chaos of buildings--into the Quartier des Halles and into the Rue St Denis. How often have we hurried down them on a cold winter's day--say the 31st of December--to buy bons-bons in the Rue des Lombards, once the abode of bankers, now the paradise of _confiseurs_, against the coming morrow--the grand day of visits and cadeaux--braving the snow some three feet deep in the midst of the street--or, if there happened to be no snow, the mud a foot and a half, splashing through it with our last new pair of boots from Legrand's, and the last _pantalon_ from Blondel's--for cabriolet or omnibus, none might pass that way; and there, amid onion-smelling crowds, in a long, low shop, with lamps lighted at two o'clock, have consummated our purchase, and floundered back triumphant! Away, ye gay, seducing vanities of the Palais Royal or the Boulevards; your light is too garish for our sober eyes--the sugar of your comfitures is too chalky for our discriminating tooth! Our appropriate latitude is that of the Quartier St Denis! One thing, however, we must confess, we never did in the Rue St Denis--we never dined there! _Oh non! il ne faut pas faire ça!_ 'Tis the headquarters of all the sausage-dealers, the _charcutiers_, and the _rotisseurs_ of Paris. Genuine meat and drink there is none; cats hold the murderous neighbourhood in traditional abhorrence, and the ruddiest wine of Burgundy would turn pale were the aqueous reputation of the street whispered near its cellar-door. Thank Heaven, we have a gastronomic instinct that saved us from acts of suicidal rashness! When in Paris, gentle reader, we always dine at the Trois Frères Provençaux; the little room in blue, remember--time, six P.M.; potage à la Julienne--bifteck au vin de Champagne--poulet à la Marengo--Chambertin, and St Péray rosé. The next time you visit the Palais-Royal, turn in there, and dine with us--we shall be delighted to see you!

There are few gaping Englishmen who have been on the other side of the Channel but have found their way along the Boulevards to the Porte St Denis, and have stared first of all at that dingy monument of Ludovican pride, and then have stared down the Rue St Denis, and then have stared up the Rue du Faubourg St Denis; but very few are ever tempted to turn either to the right hand or to the left, and so they generally poke on to the Porte St Martin, or stroll back to the Madeleine, and rarely make acquaintance with the Dionysian mysteries of Paris. For the benefit, therefore, of such travellers as go to the French capital with their eyes in their pockets, and of such as stay at home and travel by their fireside, but still can relish the recollections and associations of olden times, we are going to rake together some of the many odd notes that pertain to the history of this street and its immediate vicinity.

The readiest way into the Rue St Denis from the Isle de la Cité, the centre of Paris, has always been over the Pont-au-Change. This bridge, now the widest over the Seine, was once a narrow, ill-contrived structure of wood, covered with a row of houses on either side, that formed a dark and dirty street, so that you might pass through it a hundred times without once suspecting that you were crossing a river. These houses, built of stone and wood, overhung the edges of the bridge, and afforded their inhabitants an unsafe abode between the sky and the water. At times the river would rise in one of its periodical furies, and sweep away a pier or two with the superincumbent houses; at others the wooden supporters of the structure would catch fire by some untoward event, and the inhabitants had the choice of being fried or drowned, along with their penates and their supellectile property. Such a catastrophe happened in the reign of Louis XIII., when this and another wooden bridge, situated, oddly enough, close by its side, were set on fire by a squib, which some _gamins de Paris_ were letting off on his Majesty's highway; and in less than three hours 140 houses had disappeared. It was Louis VII., in the twelfth century, who gave it the name it has since borne; for he ordered all the money-changers of Paris to come and live on this bridge--no very secure place for keeping the precious metals; and about two hundred years ago the money-changers, fifty-four in number, occupied the houses on one side, while fifty goldsmiths lived in those on the other. In the open roadway between, was held a kind of market or fair for bird-sellers, who were allowed to keep their standings on the curious tenure of letting off two hundred dozens of small birds whenever a new king should pass over this bridge, on his solemn entry into the capital. The birds fluttered and whistled on these occasions, the _gamins_ clapped their hands and shouted, the good citizens cried "Noel!" and "Vive le Roy!" and the courtiers were delighted at the joyous spectacle. Whether the birds flew away ready roasted to the royal table, history is silent; but it would have been a sensible improvement of this part of the triumphal ceremony, and we recommend it to the serious notice of all occupiers of the French throne.

On arriving at the northern end of the bridge, the passenger had on his right a covered gallery of shops, stretching up the river side to the Pont Notre Dame, and called the Quai de Gesvres; here was a fashionable promenade for the beaux of Paris, for it was filled with the stalls of pretty milliners, like one of our bazars, and boasted of an occasional bookseller's shop or two, where the tender ballads of Ronsard, or the broad jokes of Rabelais, might be purchased and read for a few livres. To the left was a narrow street, known by the curious appellation of _Trop-va-qui-dure_, the etymology of which has puzzled the brains of all Parisian antiquaries; while just beyond it, and still by the river side, was the _Vieille Vallée de Misère_--words indicative of the opinion entertained of so _ineligible_ a residence. In front frowned, in all the grim stiffness of a feudal fortress, the _Grand Chastelet_, once the northern defence of Paris against the Normans and the English, but at last changed into the headquarters of the police--the Bow Street of the French capital. Two large towers, with conical tops over a portcullised gateway, admitted the prisoners into a small square court, round which were ranged the offices of the lieutenant of police, and the chambers of the law-officers of the crown. Part of the building served as a prison for the vulgar crew of offenders--a kind of Newgate, or Tolbooth; another was used as, and was called, the Morgue, where the dead bodies found in the Seine were often carried; there was a room in it called Cæsar's chamber, where the good citizens of Paris firmly believed that the great Julius once sat as provost of Paris, in a red robe and flowing wig; and there was many an out-of-the-way nook and corner full of dust and parchments, and rats and spiders. The lawyers of the Chastelet thought no small beer of themselves, it seems; for they claimed the right of walking in processions before the members of the Parliament, and immediately after the corporation of the capital. The unlucky wight who might chance to be put in durance vile within these walls, was commonly well trounced and fined ere he was allowed to depart; and next to the dreaded Bastile, the Grand Chastelet used to be looked on with peculiar horror. At the Revolution it was one of the first feudal buildings demolished--not a stone of the old pile remains; the Pont-au-Change had long before had its wooden piers changed for noble stone ones, and on the site where this fortress stood is now the Place de Chatelet, with a Napoleonic monument in the midst--a column inscribed with names of bloody battle-fields, on its summit a golden wing-expanding Victory, and at its base four little impudent dolphins, snorting out water into the buckets of the Porteurs d'Eau.