Part 10

Mr. Clark possessed poetic talents of no ordinary merit. He belonged to the school of Goldsmith and Pope, rather than to that of Byron or Coleridge. He was more remarkable for sweetness than passion, for melody than force, for fancy than imagination. The rank to which he belonged was not the highest, but in that rank he occupied one of the foremost stations. He was distinguished for his grace and euphony. Few men have written so elegantly as Mr. Clark; no man has excelled him in the melody of numbers. He obviously devoted the greatest attention to the composition of poetry, and no piece left his hand until it had received its utmost polish. There was a deep abiding sense of religion in his compositions which commend them to every heart. He was indeed almost the first poet to render the poetry of religion attractive; for Young, Cowper, Wordsworth, and even Milton, too often fail in this. But Mr. Clark was always successful, breathing, as he did, aspirations after a higher and better state of being, and emulating, if that were possible, the rapt enthusiasm of the Hebrew poet, when dreaming of the “better land”—that land to which he has now followed his long-wept wife. Yes! he has gone—

“Gone to his Heavenly Father’s rest! The flowers of Eden round him blowing, And on his ear the murmur blest Of Siloa’s waters softly flowing!— Beneath that Tree of Life which gives To all the earth its healing leaves! In the white robe of angels clad, And wandering by that sacred river, Whose streams of loveliness make glad The city of our God forever!”

Why should we mourn his loss? This is no home for the weary spirit. Earth has nothing to satisfy the immortal mind; but, with a reach after higher and holier things, it struggles to be away, satisfied only when roaming free through the wide expanse of Eternity.

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FAREWELL! IF EVER FONDEST PRAYER,

A BALLAD—WRITTEN BY LORD BYRON.

MUSIC COMPOSED BY J. DODSLEY HUMPHREYS.

_Philadelphia_: John F. Nunns, _184 Chesnut Street_.

Farewell if ever fondest prayer for others’ weal availed on high, Mine will not all be lost in air, But waft, but waft thy name beyond the sky. ’Twere vain to speak, to weep, to sigh, Oh more than

tears of blood can tell, When wrung from guilt’s expiring eye, Are in that word farewell. Are in that word farewell, farewell, When wrung from guilt’s expiring eye, Are in that word, are in that word farewell.

These lips are mute, these eyes are dry, But in my breast and in my brain, Awake the pangs that pass not by, The thought, the thought that ne’er shall sleep again. My soul nor deigns nor dares complain, Though grief and passion there rebel, I only know we lov’d in vain. I only feel farewell, I only feel farewell, farewell, I only know I loved in vain, I only feel, I only feel farewell.

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Sports and Pastimes.

ANGLING.

The prevailing attributes and domestic economy of fishes may be described as exactly the reverse of those of birds. These gay and airy creatures possess the power of surveying distinctly, at a glance, an immeasurable extent of horizon; their acute perception of sound appreciates all intonations, and their glad voices are exquisitely skilled in their production. Though their bills are hard, and their bodies closely covered by down and feathers, they are by no means deficient in the sense of touch. They enjoy all the delights of conjugal and parental affection, and perform their incumbent duties with devotedness and courage. They cherish and defend their offspring, and will sometimes even die in their defence; and of all the wonderful labors of instinctive art, none is so beautiful as the formation of their mossy dwellings. With what deep and continuous affection does the female brood over her cherished treasures!—how unwearied is the gallant male in his tender assiduities, and with what melodious love does he outpour that rich and varied song by which he seeks to soothe her sedentary task!

“Over his own sweet voice the stock-dove broods!”

But close at hand, on that umbrageous bough, sits the fond partner of his joys and sorrows, so that it is in no spirit of selfish solitary musing that he ever murmurs, by woodland stream and shadow-haunted brook, “a music sweeter than their own.” The slender winged and glossy plumaged swallow, which skims the verdure of the new-mown meadow, or dimples the surface of the breezeless lake—the ponderous but giant-pinioned eagle, winging his way from distant isles, o’er waters glittering with redundant life—the proud, far-sighted falcon, which, launching from some hoar cliff or lightning-scathed peak,

“Doth dally with the wind, and scorn the sun,”—

the wild and fearful lapwing, with graceful crest and dark dilated eye, are each and all enslaved for many a long-enduring season by this love of offspring, and toil in its support from dewy morning until latest eve.

But it is far otherwise with our voiceless dwellers in the deep, who exhibit but few attachments, are conversant with no interchanging language, and cherish no warm affections. Constructing no dwellings, they merely shelter themselves from danger among the cavernous rocks of the ocean, in the silent depths of lakes, or beneath the murky shade of the overhanging banks of rivers; and the cravings of hunger alone seem to exercise a frequent or influential action over their monotonous movements. We must not, however, conceive that the life of fishes is not one of enjoyment, for we know that the Great Creator “careth for all his creatures;” and it ought perhaps rather to be said that we cannot appreciate the nature of their feelings, than that they are in any way fore-doomed to a negation of pleasure. Assuredly, however, the hand of nature has been most prodigal in bestowing on their external aspect every variety of adornment. Their special forms are infinite, their proportions often most elegant, their colors lively and diversified—and nothing seems wanting, either in their shape or structure, to excite the unfeigned admiration of mankind. Indeed, it almost appears as if this prodigality of beauty was intended solely for such an end. The brightness of metallic splendor, the sparkling brilliancy of precious gems, the milder effulgence of the hues of flowers, all combine to signalize fishes as among the most beautiful objects of creation. When newly withdrawn from their native element, or still gliding submerged amid its liquid coolness, their colors, fixed or iridescent, are seen mingling in spots, or bands, or broader flashes—always elegant and symmetrical, sometimes richly contrasted, sometimes gradually softened into each other, and in all cases harmonizing with a chaste fulness of effect which Titian and Rubens might envy, but could never equal. For what reason, then, it has been asked, has all this adornment been bestowed on creatures which can scarcely perceive each other amid the dim perpetual twilight of the deep? Shakspeare has already said that there are “more things in _heaven_ and _earth_ than are dreamt of in our philosophy;” and we fear it is no answer to the foregoing question to add, that the same observation applies with even greater truth to the “_waters beneath the earth_.”

NUTRITION AND GROWTH OF FISHES.

The nutritive functions of fishes follow the same order of progression as those of the other classes of the vertebrated kingdom. They seize, and in some measure divide, their food with their teeth; they digest it in the stomach, from whence it passes into the intestinal canal, where it receives a supply of bile from the liver, and frequently a liquid similar to that of the pancreas; the nutritive juices, absorbed by vessels analogous to lacteals, and probably taken up in part also directly by the veins, are mingled with the venous blood which is flowing towards the heart, from whence it is pushed to the branchiæ, in which, coming in contact with the water, it is converted into arterial blood, and then proceeds to the nourishment of the whole body.

Fishes are in general extremely voracious, and the rule of “eat or be eaten,” applies to them with unusual force. They are almost constantly engaged either in the active pursuit or patient waiting for their prey—their degree of power in its capture depending, of course, on the dimensions of the mouth and throat, and the strength of the teeth and jaws. If the teeth are sharp and curved, they are capable of seizing and securing either a large and fleshy bait, or the slenderest and most agile animal; if these parts are broad and strong, they are able to bruise the hardest aliment; if they are feeble or almost wanting, they are only serviceable in procuring some inert or unresisting prey. Fishes indeed, in most instances, show but little choice in the selection of their food, and their digestive powers are so strong and rapid as speedily to dissolve all animal substances. They greedily swallow other fishes, notwithstanding the sharp spines or bony ridges with which they may be armed; they attack and devour crabs and shell-fish, gulping them entire, without the least regard to the feelings of their families; they do not object occasionally to swallow the young even of their own species, and the more powerful kinds carry their warfare into other kingdoms of nature, and revel on rats, reptiles and young ducklings, to say nothing, gentle reader, of the ferocious shark, which not seldom makes a meal even of the lord of the creation. A particular friend of ours has his right leg in the West Indies, in consequence of an act of aggression alike unpleasant and uncalled for, and which a Christian-minded pedestrian finds it easier to forgive than forget. The species which live chiefly on vegetables are few in number, almost all fishes preferring pork to green peas.

The growth of these creatures depends greatly on the nature and amount of food, different individuals of the same species exhibiting a large disparity in their dimensions. They grow less rapidly in small ponds or shallow streams, than in large lakes and deep rivers. We once kept a minnow, little more than half an inch long, in a small glass vessel for a period of two years, during which time there was no perceptible increase in its dimensions. Had it continued in its native stream, subjected to the fattening influence of a continuous flow of water, and a consequent increase in the quantity and variety of its natural food, its cubic dimensions would probably have been twenty times greater; yet it must have attained, long prior to the lapse of a couple of years, to the usual period of the adult state. The growth itself seems to continue, under favorable circumstances, for a length of time, and we can scarcely set bounds to, certainly we know not with precision, the utmost range of the specific size of fishes. Salmon sometimes attain a weight of eighty pounds and upwards, and the giant pike of Kaiserslautern is alleged to have measured nineteen feet, and to have weighed 350 pounds. No doubt, an incorrect allegation does not in any way increase the actual size of fishes, and few people now-a-days can take exact cognizance of what was done at Mannheim in the year 1497; but, even in these degenerate days, amid our own translucent waters, and among species in no way remarkable for their ordinary dimensions, we ever and anon meet with ancient individuals which vastly exceed the usual weight and measure of their kind. But, in spite of this, let no angler, whether in the bloom of early youth, the power of matured manhood, or with the silver locks of “hoar antiquity” above his wrinkled brow, ever induce within himself, or express to others, the belief that, at all times and places, he is perpetually catching enormous trouts in vast numbers, because we happen to know that this is not the case. We don’t insist upon any one weighing every fish he captures, but we insist that no one, after jerking out a few pair, will maintain next morning, or even that very night, that he has had a most toilsome but very glorious day, and has killed five dozen and four of the finest trouts the human eye ever gazed upon. “All men are liars”—and several anglers—is a proposition the exact import of which depends much on the mode of construction.

THE MUSCULAR MOVEMENTS OF FISHES.

The vertebral column, composed of numerous articulations, united by cartilages which permit of certain movements, curves with great facility from side to side; but the vertical motion is much more restricted, chiefly in consequence of the projection of the upper and under spiny processes of the vertebræ. The great organ of movement in all fishes is the tail. The muscles, by which it is brought into play, extend in lengthened masses on either side of the vertebral column. The body, being supported chiefly by the swimming bladder, (which, however, is absent in several species), is propelled forward by the rapid flexure of the extremity acting laterally upon the resistance offered by the water. Generally speaking, neither the pectoral nor the ventral fins are of any material use during swift progressive motion; they rather serve to balance the body, or to aid its gentler movements while in a state of comparative repose. In _flying fishes_, as they are called, the pectoral fins are of such great length and expansion as to support these creatures in the air; and the strength of muscular action might probably suffice even for a longer flight, but for the necessity of constant moisture for the purposes of respiration. The drying of the gills in an individual of this class is attended by results analogous to those produced in the case of a land animal; and a flying fish is obliged to descend to respire, in like manner as a swimming quadruped, or disguised mammiferous animal, as we may term a whale, is under the necessity of ascending for the same purpose.

The heads of fishes exercise but a slight movement independent of the rest of the body, but the jaws, opercular bones, branchial arches, and other parts, are very free in their motions. The muscles, like those of other vertebrated animals, are composed of fleshy fibres more or less colored, and of tendonous fibres of a white or silvery aspect. With the exception, however, of certain spinal muscles, which are sometimes of a deep red, the flesh of fishes is much paler than that of quadrupeds, and still more so than that of birds. In several species it is even entirely white.

THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND SENSES OF FISHES.

As fishes respire through the intervention of water alone, that is, as they can scarcely avail themselves, in rendering their blood _arterial_, of anything more than the small portion of oxygen contained in the air which is suspended in the water, their blood is necessarily cold, and the general energy and activity of their senses are by no means so great as those of quadrupeds and birds. Their brain also, though of similar composition, is proportionally much smaller, whether as compared with the total size of the body, with the mass of nerves which proceed from it, or with the cavity of the cranium in which it is contained. In the turbot (_Gadus lota_) for example, the weight of the brain to that of the spinal marrow is ascertained to be as 8 to 12, and to that of the whole body as 1 to 720; and it has been ascertained that the brain of a pike, weighed in proportion to the whole body, is as 1 to 1305. Now, in many small birds, the brain, viewed in relation to the rest of the body, is equal to a twentieth part. In the generality of fishes, the spinal cord extends along the whole of the caudal vertebræ, and it is thus that it preponderates over the brain; but the fishing frog, or sea devil (_Lophius piscatorius_), the moon fish (_Lampris guttatus_), and a few others, form exceptions to this rule, the spinal marrow disappearing before it reaches the eighth vertebra. The brain of fishes by no means fills up the cavity of the cranium; and the interval between the _pia mater_, which envelopes the brain itself, and the _dura mater_, which lines the interior of the skull, is occupied only by a loose cellulosity, frequently impregnated by an oil, or sometimes, as in the sturgeon and thunny, by a more compact fatty matter. It has also been remarked that this void between the cranium and the brain is much less in young subjects than in adults; from which it may be inferred that the brain does not increase in an equal proportion with the rest of the body. Cuvier, in fact, has found its dimensions nearly the same in different individuals—of the same species—of which the general size of one was double that of the other.

Although we should be sorry to lower the subjects of our present observation in the estimation of society, we think it undeniable that, of all vertebrated animals, fishes exhibit the smallest apparent symptoms of refined sensibility. Having no elastic air to act upon, they are necessarily mute, or nearly so, and all the sweet sensations which the delightful faculty of voice has called into being among the higher tribes, are to them unknown. Their glazed, immovable eyes, their fixed and bony faces, admit of no playful range in their physiognomical expression, of no variation connected with emotion. Their ears, surrounded on every side by the bones of the cranium, destitute of external conch, without any internal cochlea, and composed merely of certain sacks and membranous canals, scarcely suffice for the perception of the loudest sounds. Yet they will sink affrighted into the darksome depths of lakes, beneath the banks of rivers, or in oceans blue profound, when the “sky lowers and mutters thunder,” and with elemental fierceness the sheeted lightning flashes broad and bright above their liquid dwellings.

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REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

_The Quacks of Helicon: A Satire. By_ L. A. Wilmer. _Philadelphia: Printed by J. W. Macclefield._

A satire, professedly such, at the present day, and especially by an American writer, is a welcome novelty, indeed. We have really done very little in the line upon this side of the Atlantic—nothing, certainly, of importance—Trumbull’s clumsy poem and Halleck’s “Croakers” to the contrary notwithstanding. Some things we have produced, to be sure, which were excellent in the way of burlesque, without intending a syllable that was not utterly solemn and serious. Odes, ballads, songs, sonnets, epics, and epigrams, possessed of this unintentional excellence, we could have no difficulty in designating by the dozen; but, in the matter of directly-meant and genuine satire, it cannot be denied that we are sadly deficient. Although, as a literary people, however, we are not exactly Archilocuses—although we have no pretensions to the ηχεηντες ιαμβοι—although, in short, we are no satirists ourselves, there can be no question that we answer sufficiently well as subjects for satire.

We repeat, that we are glad to see this book of Mr. Wilmer’s; first, because it is something new under the sun; secondly, because, in many respects, it is well executed; and, thirdly, because, in the universal corruption and rigmarole amid which we gasp for breath, it is really a pleasant thing to get even one accidental whiff of the unadulterated air of _truth_.

The “Quacks of Helicon,” as a poem and otherwise, has many defects, and these we shall have no scruple in pointing out—although Mr. Wilmer is a personal friend of our own;[4] and we are happy and proud to say so—but it has also many remarkable merits—merits which it will be quite useless for those aggrieved by the satire—quite useless for any _clique_, or set of _cliques_, to attempt to frown down, or to affect not to see, or to feel, or to understand.

[4] Of Mr. Poe’s.

Its prevalent blemishes are referrible chiefly to the leading sin of _imitation_. Had the work been composed professedly in paraphrase of the whole manner of the sarcastic epistles of the times of Dryden and Pope, we should have pronounced it the most ingenious and truthful thing of the kind upon record. So close is the copy, that it extends to the most trivial points—for example to the old forms of punctuation. The turns of phraseology, the tricks of rhythm, the arrangement of the paragraphs, the general conduct of the satire—everything—all—are Dryden’s. We cannot deny, it is true, that the satiric model of the days in question is insusceptible of improvement, and that the modern author who deviates therefrom, must necessarily sacrifice something of merit at the shrine of originality. Neither can we shut our eyes to the fact, that the imitation, in the present case, has conveyed, in full spirit, the higher qualities, as well as, in rigid letter, the minor elegances and general peculiarities of the author of “Absalom and Achitophel.” We have here the bold, vigorous, and sonorous verse, the biting sarcasm, the pungent epigrammatism, the unscrupulous directness, as of old. Yet it will not do to forget that Mr. Wilmer has been _shown how_ to accomplish these things. He is thus only entitled to the praise of a close observer, and of a thoughtful and skilful copyist. The images are, to be sure, his own. They are neither Pope’s, nor Dryden’s, nor Rochester’s, nor Churchill’s—but they are moulded in the identical mould used by these satirists.

This servility of imitation has seduced our author into errors which his better sense should have avoided. He sometimes mistakes intention; at other times he copies faults, confounding them with beauties. In the opening of the poem, for example, we find the lines—

Against usurpers, Olney, I declare A righteous, just, and patriotic war.

The rhymes _war_ and _declare_ are here adopted from Pope, who employs them frequently; but it should have been remembered that the modern relative pronunciation of the two words differs materially from the relative pronunciation of the era of the “Dunciad.”

We are also sure that the gross obscenity, the filth—we can use no gentler name—which disgraces the “Quacks of Helicon,” cannot be the result of innate impurity in the mind of the writer. It is but a part of the slavish and indiscriminating imitation of the Swift and Rochester school. It has done the book an irreparable injury, both in a moral and pecuniary view, without effecting anything whatever on the score of sarcasm, vigor or wit. “Let what is to be said, be said plainly.” True; but let nothing vulgar be _ever_ said, or conceived.

In asserting that this satire, even in its mannerism, has imbued itself with the full spirit of the polish and of the pungency of Dryden, we have already awarded it high praise. But there remains to be mentioned the far loftier merit of speaking fearlessly the truth, at an epoch when truth is out of fashion, and under circumstances of social position which would have deterred almost any man in our community from a similar Quixotism. For the publication of the “Quacks of Helicon,”—a poem which brings under review, by name, most of our prominent _literati_, and treats them, generally, as they deserve (what treatment could be more bitter?)—for the publication of this attack, Mr. Wilmer, whose subsistence lies in his pen, has little to look for—apart from the silent respect of those at once honest and timid—but the most malignant open or covert persecution. For this reason, and because it is the truth which he has spoken, do we say to him from the bottom of our hearts, “God speed!”