Part 4

The Brown Hat whence this saying sprung, was merely a hat of common quality and uncommon comfort; soft to the head, not stiff; a screen for eyes from the sun; a thing taking no place among the traveller’s luggage—claiming no package of its own, and thus offering no wrangling-stock to those most tiresome of Jacks among all Jacks-in-office—to wit, Custom-house officers. It was a hat which the _Hatto_ of hats must have accredited as the very perfection of a quiet, middle-aged traveller’s _vade mecum_; something dull-looking, it is true, for those whose thoughts are ‘wide-awake;’ something vulgar, for any one troubled by aristocratic fancies as to his covering, and who loves not to be confounded with his butterman; but withal a hat to be defended by every man of sense, to be clung to by every creature capable of headaches; a hat one could be bumped about in during a day of sixteen hours, in carriage, cart, or third-class railway vehicle; a hat one could lie in bed in for nightcap, or sit upon for cushion; a kindly, comforting, unobtrusive hat—brown, because it was of the felt’s natural colour, pliant as a piece of silk, submissive to wind, impervious to rain. What can we say more? A castor, as the Pilgrim’s _Pollux_ put it, ‘fit to be buried in.’

Yet such was the hat, and none other, which—save your nerves be of granite, your cheeks of brass, and your patience the patience of a beaver—you are hereby solemnly warned not to wear in Friesland. In London, when you please and where you please, but not in Meppel, and not in Zwolle, and not in Sneek, and, most of all, not in the market-place at Leenwarden. As wisely might you have tried to walk down a village-street, in Lancashire, on Lifting-Monday (thirty years ago), thinking to escape from the obliging maids and jolly wives, who lurked behind their doors, bent on tossing every passing male in a kitchen chair, as have hoped for ten seconds of peace,—supposing that in Friesland (two autumns since) you took your walks abroad wearing a Brown Hat!

It will be, peradventure, imagined by those who are not strong in their geography, or who have not studied the Book of Dresses, or who entertain little curiosity concerning one of the most noticeable and original districts in Europe,—that these touchy Friesland folk themselves don or doff nothing worth an Englishman turning his head to admire; carry aloft what all the well-bred world carries,—and therefore cannot afford to let any one thrive, save under the shadow of the ‘regulation beaver,’ to which all polite Europe subscribes. Yet the case happens to be, that if there be a land in which perpetual wonderment could make the traveller wry-necked, that land is North Holland. Hong-Kong can hardly be stranger, either in its composition or its maintenance. _So Sci_ herself (in Mr. Sealy’s capital Chinese tale) did not boast a head-tire more ‘express and surprising,’ than the gentlewomen of all ages, through whose active decision and passive contempt the Brown Hat had to run the gauntlet.

Let us see if we can sketch this—though by no means catholically sure, that some stratum of use or ornament, may not have been overlooked in our specification. First, it is conceived that the hair upon the head of the Frieslander, must be cut as close as though subject to the pumpkin-shell barbarity of the pilgrim-fathers, when their scissors were intent on shearing off love-locks. Upon this closely cropped poll, comes first a knitted cap (Mrs. Loudon, perhaps, can tell whether there be an aristocratic or established stitch formula for its knitting), over that a silk scull cap. These tightly put on, the serious business of the head-gear begins. The victim is next hooped, bound, lined, circled and otherwise clasped up within gilt metal—various in its cut, provided it only fits close, ‘as some one said,’ for headaches, to throb against. The mistress of _Keetje_, the maid, is fond of having her kettle-cap made of gilt silver, sometimes—if she be of old family—of pure gold; and you will see her in the market-place, wearing, in addition to this precious piece of trepanning, a metal tiara, such as Grecian Queens wear upon the stage, stuck over with coarse jewels; nay, more, dangling at the sides of her face, a pair of inconceivable gilt pendants, at a distance looking like bunches of queer keys, or that minikin household furniture our English ladies now choose to suspend from their girdles. But this is not all. At the extreme angles of her forehead, _Keetje’s_ mistress—if a person of high fashion—must stick in two little square plots or tufts of frizzled silk, to pass for curls. This done, she may put on her cap of the finest lace, with its deep border or flap behind, fashioned like the brim of the dustman’s hat, but from the costly daintiness of its material, and the creamy whiteness of the throat it lies against, somewhat more picturesque. Finally, if _Keetje’s_ mistress be a Friesland _Miss Flamborough_ of ‘first water’—a lady who knows the world, and has a spirit superior to old-fashioned prejudices—she must have by way of crown, all to her four caps (one of precious metals), a straw bonnet, a huge, heavy, coal-scuttle, festooned with loops and streamers of gaudy ribbon, and thriftily guarded at the edge with a hem or barrier of stout and gaudy printed chintz. Thus canopied are the comely wives and widows (maidens, possibly dispensing with the bonnet), who shrieked, clapped their hands, and, with every other possible demonstration of offence, pursued the wearer of the Brown Hat in Friesland.

On the habiliments of the male moiety of society, tediousness forbids that we should expatiate; the less, as something will thus be left to be treated on a future day, when the grave question of apparel may be more solemnly entered upon. Enough for the moment, to say that it suits the singularities of this critical land: a land in which a Swimming Lion is the ensign, and of which His Majesty Topsy-Turvy might be sovereign; a land in which there is hardly a crooked horizontal line to be found, save among the sand-hills; a land in which, with all its neatness’ care, scarce a building, be it church or market-house, palace or exchange, can be prevailed upon to stand perpendicular; a land in which for air you breathe extract of juniper, turf, tobacco, and stagnant waters, mixed; a land in which people eat cheese with their tea, and where a child that plucks a nest runs great danger of being whipped as an enemy to Church and State—guilty of trying to let in the republican ocean; a land where full-grown babies set up clockwork gentlemen and _papier mâche_ swans, by way of animating their garden, and the weedy ponds in the same; a land where full-grown men undertake and complete some of the most magnificent enterprises which science can contrive for industry to carry out; a land of teeming plenty and of high prices; a land of bad digestions and beautiful complexions. No, the men of this land—the shippers of Dordrecht, the potters of Delft, the gardeners of Broet, and the dairy farmers of Harlingen, decked out for fair or frolic—must be to-day left with all their uncouth and indescribable finery, undescribable, it may be, for some future parable.

But as if in the above there had not been indicated enough of what yet new and strange for Pilgrim to observe and to tolerate, and to smile at, with English supercilious civility in this country, the very names of places, even (as a descendant of Dr. Dilworth inadequately remarked), ‘are neither Christian nor becoming.’ One might bring one’s mind to bear to be jeered at or stared at, in a land resounding with pompous and euphonious words—by the Wissihiccon, for instance, or on the Mississippi, or at Canandaigna, or among the Inscoraras, or when bound for Passamaquoddy. Even the prize-scold at Billingsgate was silenced and rendered meek by being called a _Chrononhotonthologos_.—There’s much in four syllables! But in Friesland the traveller is handed over from Workum to Higtum, and from Higtum to Midlum; thence perhaps to Boxum, and from Boxum to Hallum, Dokkum, Kollum, &c., &c., &c.; going through the whole alphabet of these ‘make-believe’ names, the very study of which on the map is enough to make properly-brought-up persons disdainful and critical! Yet, so far from feeling any proper sense of their own position; so far from the slightest shame or shrinking; so far from one single deprecatory ‘_Pray don’t make game of us! We are decent folk after all, and well to do in the world, though some of us do come from Sueek!_’—these are the people, so lost to every sense of the ridiculous at home, as to tumble, towzle, and in every other conceivable and contemptuous mode maltreat the useful, comfortable, authentic, and in every respect unobtrusively defensible Brown Hat aforesaid! Did its wearer stop before a shop-window to look wistfully at one of those stupendous jars of pickles, which with a dozen of hard eggs for each guest, form so prominent a feature of the Dutchman’s merry-making suppers; his coat-tails were sure to be pulled by some grinning child, broader than long, and in facture closely resembling Mr. Staunton’s broadly-based new chessman. Did he lean over a gate to admire some magnificent bird, the brilliant cleanlinesss of which on the green carpet, gives us a new idea of the beauty of ox or cow, a head would be picked up from the dyke-side; with a liberal emission of casual slang, and as likely as not, a stone would have been thrown—did Holland contain a single stone for a _David’s_ sling to utter. Did he adventure along the Wall of Zwolle on a glowing autumn evening, or meekly take the second best place on the _treckschuit_ which was to waft him down the canal from Groningen to Delfzel (a water-path in its way, as peculiar and contradictory of all received principles as any railroad ever carried over house-tops at the Minories, or through the great pleasure-gardens and greenhouses of a _Sir Timothy Dod_), it was always one and the same story—one and the same contempt—one and the same experience. Simple laughed with a most disconcerting and noisy sincerity; and Gentle stuffed their handkerchiefs into their mouths—held both their own sides and poked their neighbours. ‘Driving Cloud’ or other of the Ojibbeway Indians if let loose in Clare-Market, would hardly have been made to feel his conspicuousness more signally than our traveller. There was neither privacy, place, nor pity, for the Brown Hat in Friesland.

Therefore, the wisest of these in advising his son, may have meant to say to him, ‘Never throw your oddity in the teeth of other men’s oddities.’ You cannot expect immunity for your own whims, if you force them upon other people’s whims. Never expect that your ‘_ism_’ will find quarter among their ‘_isms_;’ or (to put the adage otherwise) he may have desired to recommend a reading backwards of the old maxim—worn threadbare, rather by trampling upon, than by carrying about, to wit—‘Live, and let live.’

If then you would live a quiet life in Friesland, NEVER WEAR A BROWN HAT!

ALCHEMY AND GUNPOWDER.

The day-dream of mankind has ever been the Unattainable. To sigh for what is beyond our reach is from infancy to age, a fixed condition of our nature. To it we owe all the improvement that distinguishes civilised from savage life,—to it we are indebted for all the great discoveries which, at long intervals, have rewarded thought.

Though the motives which stimulated the earliest inquiries were frequently undefined, and, if curiously examined, would be found to be sometimes questionable, it has rarely happened that the world has not benefited by them in the end. Thus Astrology, which ascribed to the stars an influence over the actions and destinies of man; Magic, which attempted to reverse the laws of nature, and Alchemy, which aimed at securing unlimited powers of self-reward; all tended to the final establishment of useful science.

Of none of the sciences whose laws are fully understood, is this description truer than of that now called Chemistry, which once was Alchemy. That ‘knowledge of the substance or composition of bodies,’ which the Arabic root of both words implies, establishes a fact in place of a chimera. Experimental philosophy has made Alchemy an impossible belief, but the faith in it was natural in an age when reason was seldom appealed to. The credulity which accepted witchcraft for a truth, was not likely to reject the theory of the transmutation of metals, nor strain at the dogma of perpetual youth and health;—the concomitants of the Philosopher’s Stone.

The Alchemists claim for their science the remotest antiquity possible, but it was not until three or four centuries after the Christian era that the doctrine of transmutation began to spread. It was amongst the Arabian physicians that it took root. Those learned men, through whom was transmitted so much that was useful in astronomy, in mathematics, and in medicine, were deeply tinctured with the belief in an universal elixir, whose properties gave the power of multiplying gold, of prolonging life indefinitely, and of making youth perpetual. The discoveries which they made of the successful application of mercury in many diseases, led them to suppose that this agent contained within itself the germ of all curative influences, and was the basis of all other metals. An Eastern imagination, ever prone to heighten the effects of nature, was not slow to ascribe a preternatural force to this medicine, but not finding it in its simple state, the practitioners of the new science had recourse to combination, in the hope, by that means, of attaining their object. To fix mercury became their first endeavour, and this fixation they described as ‘catching the flying bird of Hermes.’ Once embarked in the illusory experiment, it is easy to perceive how far the Alchemists might be led; nor need it excite any wonder that in pursuit of the ideal, they accidentally hit upon a good deal that was real. The labours, therefore, of the Arabian physicians were not thrown away, though they entangled the feet of science in mazes, from which escape was only effected, after the lapse of centuries of misdirected efforts.

From the period we have last spoken of, until the commencement of the eleventh century, the only Alchemist of note is the Arabian Geber, who, though he wrote on the perfections of metals, of the new found art of making gold, in a word, on the philosopher’s stone, has only descended to our times as the founder of that jargon, which passes under the name of ‘gibberish.’ He was, however, a great authority in the middle ages, and allusions to ‘Geber’s cooks,’ and ‘Geber’s kitchen,’ are frequent amongst those who at length saw the error of their ways after wasting their substance in the vain search for the elixir.

A longer interval might have elapsed but for the voice of Peter the Hermit, whose fanatical scheme for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre was the cause of that gradual absorption, by the nations of the West, of the learning which had so long been buried in the East. The Crusaders, or those, rather, who visited the shores of Syria under their protection—the men whose skill in medicine and letters rendered them useful to the invading armies—acquired a knowledge of the Arabian languages, and of the sciences cultivated by Arabian philosophers, and this knowledge they disseminated through Europe. Some part of it, it is true, was derived from the Moors in Spain, but it was all conveyed in a common tongue which began now to be understood. To this era belong the names of Alfonso the Wise, King of Castile; of Isaac Beimiram, the son of Solomon the physician; of Hali Abbas, the scholar of Abimeher Moyses, the son of Sejar; of Aben Sina, better known as Avicenna, and sometimes called Abohali; of Averroes of Cordova, surnamed the Commentator; of Rasis, who is also called Almanzor and Albumasar; and of John of Damascus, whose name has been latinised into Johannes Damascenus. All these, physicians by profession, were more or less professors of alchemy; and besides these were such as Artephius, who wrote alchemical tracts about the year 1130, but who deserves rather to be remembered for the cool assertion which he makes in his ‘Wisdom of Secrets’ that, at the time he wrote he had reached the patriarchal—or fabulous—age of one thousand and twenty-five years!

The thirteenth century came, and with it came two men who stand first, as they then stood alone, in literary and scientific knowledge. One was a German, the other an Englishman; the first was Albertus Magnus, the last Roger Bacon.

Of the former, many wonderful stories are told:—such, for instance, as his having given a banquet to the King of the Romans, in the gardens of his cloister at Cologne, when he converted the intensity of winter into a season of summer, full of flowers and fruits, which disappeared when the banquet was over; and his having constructed a marvellous automaton, called ‘Androïs,’ which, like the invention of his contemporary, Roger Bacon, was said to be capable of auguring all questions, past, present, and to come.

To know more than the rest of the world in any respect, but particularly in natural philosophy, was a certain method by which to earn the name of necromancer in the middle ages, and there are few whose occult fame has stood higher than that of Roger Bacon. He was afraid, therefore, to speak plainly—indeed, it was the custom of the early philosophers to couch their knowledge in what Bacon himself calls the ‘tricks of obscurity;’ and in his celebrated ‘_Epistola de Secretis_,’ he adverts to the possibility of his being obliged to do the same thing, through ‘_the greatness of the secrets_ which he shall handle.’ With regard to the invention of his greatest secret, we shall give the words in which he speaks of the properties of gunpowder, and afterwards show in what terms he concealed his knowledge. ‘_Noyses_,’ he says, ‘_may be made in the aire like thunders_, yea, with greater horror than those that come of nature; _for a little matter fitted to the quantity of a thimble, maketh a horrible noise and wonderful lightning_. And this is done after sundry fashions, _whereby any citie or armie may be destroyed_.’ A more accurate description of the explosion of gunpowder could scarcely be given, and it is not to be supposed that Bacon simply confined himself to the theory of his art, when he knew so well the consequences arising from a practical application of it. On this head there is a legend extant, which has not, to our knowledge, been printed before, from which we may clearly see why he contented himself with the cabalistic form in which he conveyed his knowledge of what he deemed a fatal secret.

Attached to Roger Bacon’s laboratory, and a zealous assistant in the manifold occupations with which the learned Franciscan occupied himself, was a youthful student, whose name is stated to have been Hubert de Dreux. He was a Norman, and many of the attributes of that people were conspicuous in his character. He was of a quick intelligence and hasty courage, fertile in invention, and prompt in action, eloquent of discourse, and ready of hand; all excellent qualities, to which was superadded an insatiable curiosity. Docile to receive instruction, and apt to profit by it, Hubert became a great favourite with the philosopher, and to him Bacon expounded many of the secrets—or supposed secrets—of the art which he strove to bring to perfection. He instructed him also in the composition of certain medicines, which Bacon himself believed might be the means of prolonging life, though not to the indefinite extent dreamt of by those who put their whole faith in the Great Elixir.

But there never yet was an adept in any art or science who freely communicated to his pupil the full amount of his own knowledge; something for experience to gather, or for ingenuity to discover, is always kept in reserve, and the instructions of Roger Bacon stopped short at one point. He was himself engaged in the prosecution of that chemical secret which he rightly judged to be a dangerous one, and, while he experimented with the compound of sulphur, saltpetre and charcoal, he kept himself apart from his general laboratory and wrought in a separate cell, to which not even Hubert had access. To know that the Friar had a mysterious occupation, which, more than the making of gold or the universal medicine, engrossed him, was enough of itself to rouse the young man’s curiosity; but when to this was added the fact, that, from time to time, strange and mysterious noises were heard, accompanied by bright corruscations and a new and singular odour, penetrating through the chinks close to which his eyes were stealthily rivetted, Hubert’s eagerness to know all that his master concealed had no limit. He resolved to discover the secret, even though he should perish in the attempt; he feared that there was good reason for the accusation of dealing in the Black Art, which, more than all others the monks of Bacon’s own convent countenanced; but this apprehension only stimulated him the more. For some time Hubert waited without an opportunity occurring for gratifying the secret longing of his heart; at last it presented itself.

To afford medical assistance to the sick, was, perhaps, the most useful practice of conventual life, and the monks had always amongst them practitioners of the healing art, more or less skilful. Of this number, Roger Bacon was the most eminent, not only in the monastery to which he belonged, but in all Oxford.

It was about the hour of noon on a gloomy day towards the end of November, in the year 1282, while the Friar and his pupil were severally employed, the former in his secret cell, and the latter in the general laboratory, that there arrived at the gate of the Franciscan convent a messenger on horseback, the bearer of news from Abingdon that Walter de Losely, the sheriff of Berkshire, had that morning met with a serious accident by a hurt from a lance, and was then lying dangerously wounded at the hostelry of the Chequers in Abingdon, whither he had been hastily conveyed. The messenger added that the leech who had been called in was most anxious for the assistance of the skilful Friar Roger Bacon, and urgently prayed that he would lose no time in coming to the aid of the wounded knight.

Great excitement prevailed amongst the monks on the receipt of this intelligence, for Walter de Losely was not only a man of power and influence, but moreover, a great benefactor to their order. Friar Bacon was immediately sought and speedily made his appearance, the urgency of the message admitting of no delay. He hastily enjoined Hubert to continue the preparation of an amalgam which he was desirous of getting into a forward state, and taking with him his case of instruments with the bandages and salves which he thought needful, was soon mounted on an easy, ambling palfrey on his way towards Abingdon, the impatient messenger riding before him to announce his approach.