Part 19

The novelty of a real work of genius is sufficient to decry it with the incredulous public. All new things, much out of the ordinary way, must make a struggle for existence. It is but the way of the world. The Jesuits of Peru introduced into Protestant England the Peruvian bark; but being a remedy used by Jesuits, the Protestant English at once rejected the drug as the invention of the devil. Paracelsus introduced antimony as a valuable medicine; he was prosecuted for the innovation, and the French Parliament passed an act making it a penal offense to prescribe it. Dr. Groenvelt first employed cantharides internally, and no sooner did his cures begin to make a noise, than he was at once committed to Newgate by warrant of the President of the College of Physicians. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu first introduced into England the practice of inoculation for the small-pox, by which malady she had lost an only brother and her own fine eye-lashes. She applied the process, after earnest examination, to her only son, five years old; and on her return to England, the experiment was tried, at her suggestion, on five persons under sentence of death. The success of the trial did not prevent the most violent clamors against the innovation. The faculty predicted unknown disastrous consequences, the clergy regarded it as an interference with Divine Providence, and the common people were taught to look upon her as an unnatural mother, who had imperiled the safety of her own child. Although she soon gained influential supporters, the obloquy which she endured was such as to make her sometimes repent her philanthropy. Jenner, who introduced the still greater discovery of vaccination, was treated with ridicule and contempt, and was persecuted, prosecuted, and oppressed by the Royal College of Physicians. After nearly twenty years of patient and sagacious study and experiment, he went to London to communicate the process to the profession, and to endeavor to procure its general adoption. His reception was disheartening in the extreme. Not only did the doctors refuse to make trial of the process, but the discoverer was accused of an attempt to "bestialize" his species by introducing into the system diseased matter from a cow's udder; vaccination was denounced from the pulpit as "diabolical," and the most monstrous statements respecting its effects upon the human system were disseminated and believed. Early in the fourteenth century a law was passed making it a capital offense to burn coal within the precincts of London. In the reign of Edward I. a man was actually executed for the commission of the crime. The prejudice continued to the close of the sixteenth century. Not more than three quarters of a century ago, an ambassador at Paris issued cards for a large party, and found, to his dismay, that only gentlemen attended, the ladies having absented themselves on hearing that his lordship warmed his house by means of English coal. The use of forks was at first much ridiculed in England; in one of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, "your fork-carving traveler" is spoken of very contemptuously; and Ben Jonson has also ridiculed them in one of his comedies. "On the invention of scissors," says Voltaire, "what was not said of those who pared their nails and cut off some of their hair that was hanging down over their noses? They were undoubtedly considered as prodigals and coxcombs, who bought at an extravagant price an instrument just calculated to spoil the work of the Creator. What an enormous sin to pare the horn which God himself made to grow at our fingers' ends! It was absolutely an insult to the Divine Being himself. When shirts and stockings were invented, it was far worse. It is well known with what warmth and indignation the old counselors, who had never worn socks, exclaimed against the youthful magistrates who encouraged so dreadful and fatal a luxury." The fashion of plaiting shirts began in Rabelais' time; and it was said that the gathers were fit for nothing but to harbor lice and fleas. Robespierre's first important cause was a defense of the introduction of Franklin's lightning-rods against the charge of impiety. When threshing-machines were first introduced into England, there was such an opposition to them, and arson became so common in consequence, that such farmers as had them were obliged to surrender them, or expose them broken on the high-road. The fashion of wearing boots with pointed toes was supposed to have been peculiarly offensive to the Almighty, and was believed by many to have been the cause of the black death, which carried off, it is estimated, in six years, twenty-five millions, or a fourth part of the population of Europe. Another opinion, we are informed, gained ground, that the Jews were responsible for the ravages of the plague. It was claimed that the Rabbi of Toledo had sent out a venomous mixture concocted of consecrated wafers and the blood of Christian hearts to the various congregations, with orders to poison the wells. The Pope himself undertook to plead for their innocency, but even papal bulls were powerless to stay the popular madness. In Dekkendorf a church was built in honor of the massacre of the Jews of that town, and the spot thus consecrated has remained a favorite resort of pilgrims down to the present time.

Amongst the curiosities of literature is "a narrative extracted from Luther's writings, of the dialogue related by Luther himself to have been carried on between him and the devil, who, Luther declares, was the first who pointed out to him the absurdity and evil of private mass. Of course it is strongly pressed upon the pious reader that even Luther himself confesses that the Father of Lies was the author of the Reformation; and a pretty good story is made out for the Catholics." John Galt, in his Life of Wolsey, says, "Those pious Presbyterians, who inveigh against cards as the devil's books, are little aware that they were an instrument in the great work of the Reformation. The vulgar game about that time was the devil and the priest; and the skill of the players consisted in preserving the priest from the devil; but the devil in the end always got hold of him."

Mighty means indeed trifles have sometimes proved. The foolish ballad of Lilli Burlero, treating the Papists, and chiefly the Irish, in a very ridiculous manner, slight and insignificant as it now seems, had once a more powerful effect than the Philippics of either Demosthenes or Cicero; it contributed not a little toward the great revolution in 1688; the whole army and the people in country and city caught it up, and "sang a deluded prince out of three kingdoms." Percy has preserved the ballad in his Reliques, but who remembers the air? My Uncle Toby, it seems, was about the last to whistle it.

The most popular song ever written in the British Islands, that of Auld Lang Syne, is anonymous, and we know no more of the author of the music than we do of the author of the words. Much of Burns' great fame rests upon this song, in which his share amounts only to a few emendations. The Last Rose of Summer is said to be made up in great part of an old Sicilian air, originating nobody knows when. Old Hundred, they say, was constructed out of fragments as old as music itself--strains that are as immortal as the instinct of music. Home, Sweet Home was written in a garret in the Palais Royal, Paris, when poor Payne was so utterly destitute and friendless that he knew not where the next day's dinner was to come from. It appeared originally in a diminutive opera called Clari, the Maid of Milan. The opera is seldom seen or heard of now, but the song grows nearer and dearer as the years roll away. More than once the unfortunate author, walking the lonely streets of London or Paris amid the storm and darkness, hungry, houseless, and penniless, saw the cheerful light gleaming through the windows of happy homes, and heard the music of his own song drifting out upon the gloomy night to mock the wanderer's heart with visions of comfort and of joy, whose blessed reality was forever denied to him. Home, Sweet Home was written by a homeless man. Lamartine, in his History of the Girondists, has given an account of the origin of the French national air, the Marseillaise. In the garrison of Strasburg was quartered a young artillery officer, named Rouget de l'Isle. He had a great taste for music and poetry, and often entertained his comrades during their long and tedious hours in the garrison. Sought after for his musical and poetical talent, he was a frequent and familiar guest at the house of one Dietrich, an Alsacian patriot, mayor of Strasburg. The winter of 1792 was a period of great scarcity at Strasburg. The house of Dietrich was poor, his table was frugal, but a seat was always open for Rouget de l'Isle. One day there was nothing but bread and some slices of smoked ham on the table. Dietrich, regarding the young officer, said to him with sad serenity, "Abundance fails at our boards; but what matters that, if enthusiasm fails not at our civic fetes, nor courage in the hearts of our soldiers. I have still a last bottle of wine in my cellar. Bring it," said he to one of his daughters, "and let us drink France and Liberty! Strasburg should have its patriotic solemnity. De l'Isle must draw from these last drops one of those hymns which raise the soul of the people." The wine was brought and drank, after which the officer departed. The night was cold. De l'Isle was thoughtful. His heart was moved, his head heated. He returned, staggering, to his solitary room, and slowly sought inspiration, sometimes in the fervor of his citizen soul, and anon on the keys of his instrument, composing now the air before the words, and then the words before the air. He sang all and wrote nothing, and at last, exhausted, fell asleep, with his head resting on his instrument, and woke not till day-break. The music of the night returned to his mind like the impression of a dream. He wrote it, and ran to Dietrich, whom he found in the garden, engaged with his winter lettuces. The wife and daughters of the old man were not up. Dietrich awoke them, and called in some friends, all as passionate as himself for music, and able to execute the composition of De l'Isle. At the first stanza, cheeks grew pale; at the second, tears flowed; and at last, the delirium of enthusiasm burst forth. The wife of Dietrich, his daughters, himself, and the young officer threw themselves, crying, into each other's arms. The hymn of the country was found. Executed some days afterward in Strasburg, the new song flew from city to city, and was played by all the popular orchestras. Marseilles adopted it to be sung at the commencement of the sittings of the clubs, and the Marseillaise spread it through France, singing it along the public roads. From this came the name of Marseillaise. It was the song for excited men under the fiery impulse of liberty. Those melodies for little children, just as immortal, owe their existence to circumstances just as accidental. We mean the melodies of Mother Goose. The story of this Iliad of the nursery is told as follows: The mother-in-law of Thomas Fleet, the editor, in 1731, of the Boston Weekly Rehearsal, was the original Mother Goose--the Mother Goose of the world-famous melodies. Mother Goose belonged to a wealthy family in Boston, where her eldest daughter, Elizabeth Goose, was married by Cotton Mather, in 1715, to Fleet, and in due time gave birth to a son. Like most mothers-in-law in our own day, the importance of Mrs. Goose increased with the appearance of her grandchild, and poor Mr. Fleet, half distracted with her endless nursery ditties, finding all other means fail, tried what ridicule could effect, and actually printed a book, with the title "Songs for the Nursery, or Mother Goose's Melodies for Children, printed by T. Fleet, at his printing house, Pudding Lane, Boston. Price, ten coppers." Mother Goose was the mother of nineteen children, and hence we may easily trace the origin of that famous classic, "There was an old woman who lived in a shoe; she had so many children she didn't know what to do."

As to the plays of the stage, we all know how some of them have gradually, in the long years, grown to be there, from additions by actors and managers, so wholly different from what they are in literature, that in important parts they would hardly be recognized as the same. Sheridan's Critic, with the numerous "gags" by Jack Bannister, King, Miss Pope, Richard Jones, Liston, Mrs. Gibbs, Charles Mathews, and other great actors, is a famous instance of the kind. And as to playing, Mathews says it is possible for a man, absurd as it may seem, to obtain favor with the public by merely attending to the mechanical portion of the profession, without any exertion of his intellect beyond committing his words to memory, and speaking to his "cues" at the right moment and with the proper emphasis. He gives a remarkable illustration of this strange possibility. When Douglas Jerrold's play of the Bubbles of the Day was produced at Covent Garden Theatre, there was a long-experienced actor, standing exceedingly well with the public, and an undoubted favorite, who played one of the parts so admirably that he met with unqualified success with the audience, and was a prominent feature in the piece, highly praised by the press, and complimented by the author himself, as having perfectly embodied his conception. After the play had run for some ten or fifteen nights, he one day came to Mathews and asked him as a favor that he would let him have the manuscript of the piece for a short time. Certainly, said Mathews; but what do you want it for? Why, said he, I was unfortunately absent from the reading; and I have not the slightest idea what it is about, or who and what I am in it. He had literally, according to Mathews, played his part admirably for many nights to the gratification of the public, the press, and the author; and he had never even had the curiosity to inquire in what way he was mixed up with the plot. He had seized the instructions given him by Jerrold during the rehearsals, and adopted his suggestions so correctly that he was able to fulfill all the requirements of the character assigned to him without the least idea of what he was doing, or of the person whom he represented. So it would seem that ignorance is not always a hinderance to success; on the contrary, it is sometimes the very foundation of what passes for knowledge. Take the wise doctor's remedies. They are adopted for the number that recover who use them, not for the numbers that die, who used them also. "The sun gives light to their success, and the earth covers their failures." "If your physician," says Montaigne, "does not think it good for you to sleep, to drink wine, or to eat such and such meats, never trouble yourself; I will find you another that shall not be of his opinion." Heine, during the eight years he lay bed-ridden with a kind of paralysis, read all the medical books which treated of his complaint. "But," said he to some one who found him thus engaged, "what good this reading is to do me I don't know, except that it will qualify me to give lectures in heaven on the ignorance of doctors on earth about diseases of the spinal marrow." What is often accepted as high moral truth is only a small part of what the philosopher has thought--the result less of faith than of skepticism; the two being in about the proportion of Falstaff's bread to his sack.

To get away from the ideal to the physical, what can at first blush be so absurd as the climatic changes believed by some to be produced by railroads? The desert of Western America has been transformed into a fertile plain: the railroad, they say, has brought rain. No element, we are told, was wanting in the earth itself, nor was aught in excess to enforce sterility, but everywhere there was drought. In the hot dust nothing grew but stunted hardy grass and sage brush. All seemed desolation and utter hopelessness. Wherever irrigation was tried, its success exceeded expectation in developing an almost miraculous productiveness in the soil. No enthusiast dared, however, to dream of the possibility of artificial irrigation over all that enormous expanse. Rivers entering there would soon have been drunk up by the thirsty earth and sky. Yet man's work, it would seem, has irrigated that whole desert by unexpected means. The railroad brought rain. Year by year, since the Union Pacific Railroad has been operated through, the rain-fall had steadily increased until the summer of 1873, when it became, to the operators of the road, a positive nuisance. Icicles, paradoxical as it may seem, are formed, science tells us, by the process of freezing in sunshine hot enough to melt snow, blister the human skin, and even, when concentrated, to burn up the human body itself. They result from the fact that air is all but completely transparent to the heat rays emitted by the sun--that is, such rays pass through the air without warming it. Only the scanty fraction of rays to which air is not transparent expend their force in raising its temperature. In the Alps, Tyndall tells us, when the liquefaction is copious and the cold intense, icicles grow to an enormous size. Over the edges (mostly the southern edges) of the chasms hangs a coping of snow, and from this depend, like stalactites, rows of transparent icicles, ten, twenty, thirty feet long, constituting one of the most beautiful features of the higher crevasses. An icicle would be incomprehensible if we did not know that the solar beams may pass through the air, and still leave it at an icy temperature. One of the contradictions of ice is, that, formed at a temperature of twenty-five to thirty degrees Fahrenheit, it is as different from that which is formed when the temperature has ranged for some time between ten degrees and one degree, as chalk is from granite. The ice at the lower temperature is dense and hard as flint. It strikes fire at the prick of a skate. In St. Petersburg, in 1740, when masses of it were turned and bored for cannon, though but four inches thick, they were loaded with iron cannon-balls and a charge of a quarter of a pound of powder, and fired without explosion.

The warm-blooded, fur-covered cat is just as contradictory--in one peculiarity at least. Gilbert White says, "There is a propensity belonging to common house-cats that is very remarkable; that is, their violent fondness for fish, which appears to be their most favorite food: and yet nature in this instance seems to have planted in them an appetite that, unassisted, they know not how to gratify; for of all quadrupeds cats are the least disposed toward water; and will not, when they can avoid it, deign to wet a foot, much less to plunge into that element." And there is quite as curious a fact pertaining to the rat. Naturalists say that his propensity to gnaw must not be attributed altogether to a reckless determination to overcome impediments. The never-ceasing action of his teeth is not a pastime, but a necessity of his existence. The ceaseless working of his incisors against some hard substance is necessary to keep them down, and if he did not gnaw for his subsistence he would be compelled to gnaw to prevent his jaw being gradually locked by their rapid development. And there is the tortoise. The same delightful naturalist we have quoted had a pet one, of whose habits he made many curious notes. He says no part of its behavior ever struck him more than the extreme timidity it always expressed with regard to rain; for though it had a shell that would secure it against the wheel of a loaded cart, yet did it discover as much solicitude about rain as a lady dressed in all her best attire, shuffling away on the first sprinklings, and running its head up in a corner.