Chapter 13

The other great types of the Animal Kingdom are very fully represented in the Tertiaries, and in their general appearance they approach much more closely those of the present creation than of any previous epochs. Professor Heer has collected and described the Tertiary Insects in great number and variety; and the Butterflies, Bugs, Flies, Grasshoppers, Dragon-Flies, Beetles, etc., described in his volumes, would hardly be distinguished from our own, except by a practised entomologist. Among Crustacea, the Shrimp-like forms of the earlier geological epochs have become much less conspicuous, while Crabs and Lobsters are now the prominent representatives of the class. Among Mollusks, the Chambered Shells, hitherto so numerous, have become, as they now are, very few in comparison with the naked Cephalopods. The Nautili, however, resemble those now living in the Pacific Ocean; and some fragments of the Paper-Nautilus have been found, showing that this delicate shell was already in existence. There is one very peculiar type of this class, belonging to the Tertiaries, which should not be passed by unnoticed. It partakes of the character both of the Cretaceous Belemnites and of the living Cuttle-Fish, and is known as the Spirulirostra. Another very characteristic group among the Tertiary Shells is that of the Nummulites, formerly placed by naturalists in immediate proximity with the Ammonites, on account of their internal partitions. This is now admitted to have been an error; their position is not yet fully determined, but they certainly stand very low in the scale, and have no affinity whatever with the Cephalopods. The subjoined wood-cut represents one of these Shells, so numerous in the Tertiaries that large masses of rock consist of their remains. The Univalve Shells or Gasteropods of the Tertiaries embraced all the families now living, including land and fresh-water Shells as well as the marine representatives of the type. Some of the latter, as, for instance, the Cerithium, are accumulated in vast numbers. The limestone quarries out of which Paris is chiefly built consist wholly of these Shells. The fresh-water basins were filled with Helices, one of which is represented in the following wood-cut, with Planorbis, Limnæus and other Shells resembling those now so common in all our lakes and rivers, and differing from the living ones only by slight specific characters. The Bivalves also have the same resemblance to the present ones, including fresh-water Mussels as well as the marine Clams and Oysters. Among Radiates, the higher Echini (Sea-Urchins) have become numerous, while the other Echinoderms of all families abound. Corals include, for the first time, the more highly organized Madrepores.

In the Tertiaries we see the dawn of the present condition of things, not only in the character of the animals and plants, but in the height of the mountains and in the distribution of land and sea.

Let us give a glance at the continents whose growth we have been following, and see what these more recent geological epochs have done for their completion. In Europe they have filled the basin in Central France, and converted all that region into dry land: they have filled also the channel between France and Spain; they have united Central Russia with the rest of Europe by the completion of Poland, and have greatly enlarged Austria and Turkey; they have completed the promontories of Italy and Greece, and have converted the inland sea at the foot of the Jura into the plain of Switzerland. But this fruitful period in the progress of the world, when the character of organic life was higher and the physical features of the earth more varied than ever before, was not without its storms and convulsions. The Pyrenees, the Apennines, the Alps, and with them the whole range of the Caucasus and Himalayas, were raised either immediately after the Cretaceous epoch, or in the course of the Tertiaries. Indeed, with this most significant passage in her history, Europe acquired all her essential characters. There remained, it is true, much to be done in what is called by geologists "modern times." The work of the artist is not yet finished when his statue is blocked out and the grand outline of his conception stands complete; and there still remained, after the earth was rescued from the water, after her framework of mountains was erected, after her soil was clothed with field and forest, processes by which her valleys were to be made more fruitful, her gulfs to be filled with the rich detritus poured into them by the rivers, her whole surface to be rendered more habitable for the higher races who were to possess it.

We left America at the close of the Carboniferous epoch. A glance at the geological map will show the reader that during the Permian, Triassic, and Jurassic epochs little was added to the United States, though here and there deposits belonging to each of them crop out. In the Cretaceous epoch, however, large tracts of land were accumulated, chiefly in the South and West; and during the Tertiaries the continent was very nearly completed, leaving only a narrow gulf running up to the neighborhood of St. Louis to be filled by modern detritus, and the peninsula of Florida to be built by the industrious Coral-Workers of our own period. The age of the Alleghany chain is not yet positively determined, but it was probably raised at the close of the Carboniferous epoch. Up to that time, only the Laurentian Hills, the northern side of that mountainous triangle which now makes the skeleton, as it were, of the United States, existed. The upheaval of the Alleghanies added its eastern side, raising the central part of the continent so as to form a long slope from the base of the Alleghanies to the Pacific Ocean; but it was not until the Tertiary Age that the upheaval of the great chain at the West completed the triangle, and transformed that wide westerly slope into the Mississippi Valley, bounded on one side by the Alleghanies, and on the other by the Rocky Mountains.

It is my belief, founded upon the tropical character of the Fauna, that a much milder climate then prevailed over the whole northern hemisphere than is now known to it. Some naturalists have supposed that the presence of the tropical Mammalia in the Northern Temperate Zone might be otherwise accounted for,--that they might have been endowed with warmer covering, with thicker hair or fur. But I think the simpler and more natural reason for their existence throughout the North is to be found in the difference of climate; and I am the more inclined to this opinion because the Tertiary animals generally, the Fishes, Shells, etc., in the same regions, are more closely allied in character to those now living in the Tropics than to those of the Temperate Zones. The Tertiary age may be called the geological summer; we shall see, hereafter, how abruptly it was brought to a close.

One word more as to the relation of the Tertiary Mammalia to the creation which preceded them. I can only repeat here the argument used before: the huge quadrupeds characteristic of these epochs make their appearance suddenly, and the deposits containing them follow as immediately upon those of the Cretaceous epoch, in which no trace of them occurs, as do those of the Cretaceous upon those of the Jurassic epoch. I would remind the reader that in the central basin of France, in which Cuvier found his first Palæotherium, and which afterwards proved to have been thickly settled by the early Mammalia, the deposits of the Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Tertiary epochs follow each other in immediate, direct, uninterrupted succession; that the same is true of other localities, in Germany, in Southern Europe, in England, where the most complete collections have been made from all these deposits; and there has never been brought to light a single fact leading us to suppose that any intermediate forms have ever existed through which more recent types have been developed out of older ones. For thirty years Geology has been gradually establishing, by evidence the fulness and accuracy of which are truly amazing, the regularity in the sequence of the geological formations, and distinguishing, with ever-increasing precision, the specific differences of the animals and plants contained in these accumulations of past ages. These results bear living testimony to the wonderful progress of the kindred sciences of Geology and Palæontology in the last half-century; and the development-theory has but an insecure foundation so long as it attempts to strengthen itself by belittling the geological record, the assumed imperfection of which, in default of positive facts, has now become the favorite argument of its upholders.

THE NEW SANGREAL.

"Show me the Sangreal, Lord! Show me Thy blood! Thy body and Thy blood! Give me the Quest! Lord, I am faint and tired; my soul is sick Of all the falseness, all the little aims, The weary vanities, the gasping joys, The slow procession of this satiate world! Dear Lord, I burn for Thee! Give me Thy Quest! Down through the old reverberating time, I see Thy knights in wonderful array Go out to victory, like the solemn stars Fighting in courses, with their conquering swords, Their sad, fixed lips of purity and strength, Their living glory, their majestic death. Give me Thy Quest! Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"

He lay upon a mountain's rocky crest, So high, that all the glittering, misty world, All summer's splendid tempests, lay below, And sudden lightnings quivered at his feet; So still, not any sound of silentness Expressed the silence, nor the pallid sun Burned on his eyelids; all alone and still, Save for the prayer that struggled from his lips, Broken with eager stress. Then he arose. But always, down the hoary mountain-side, Through whispering forests, by soft-rippled streams, In clattering streets, or the great city's roar, Still from his never sated soul went up, "Give me Thy Quest! Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"

Through all the land there poured a trumpet's clang, And when its silvery anger smote the air, Men sprang to arms from every true man's home, And followed to the field. He followed, too,-- All the mad blood of manhood in his veins, All the fierce instincts of a warring race Kindled like flame in every tingling limb, And raging in his soul on fire with war. He heard a thousand voices call him on: Lips hot with anguish, shrieking their despair From swamps and forests and the still bayous That hide the wanderer, nor bewray his lair: From fields and marshes where the tropic sun Scorches a million laborers scourged to work; From homes that are not homes; from mother-hearts Torn from the infants lingering at their breasts; From parted lovers, and from shuddering wives; From men grown mad with whips and tyranny; From all a country groaning in its chains. Nor sleep, nor dream beguiled him any more; He leaped to manhood in one torrid hour, And armed, and sped to battle. Now no more He cried or prayed,--"Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"

So in the front of deadly strife he stood; The glorious thunder of the roaring guns, The restless hurricane of screaming shells, The quick, sharp singing of the rifle-balls, The sudden clash of sabres, and the beat Of rapid horse-hoofs galloping at charge, Made a great chorus to his valorous soul, The dreadful music of a grappling world, That hurried him to fight. He turned the tide, But fell upon its turning. Over him Fluttered the starry flag, and fluttered on, While he lay helpless on the trampled sward, His hot life running scarlet from its source, And all his soul in sudden quiet spent, As still as on the silent mountain-top; So still that from his quick-remembering heart Burst that old cry,--"Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"

Then a bright mist descended over him, And in its central glory stood a shape, Wounded, yet smiling. With His bleeding hands Stretched toward that bleeding side, His eyes divine Like a new dawn, thus softly spake the Lord:-- "The blood poured out for brothers is my blood; The flesh for brothers broken is my flesh; No more in golden chalices I dwell, No longer in a vision, angel-borne: Here is the Sangreal, here the Holy Quest. Thy prayer is heard, thy soul is satisfied: Come, my belovèd! I am come for thee. As first I broke the bread and poured the wine, So have I broken thee and poured thy life, So do I bless thee and give thanks for thee, So do I bear thee in my wounded hands." Smiling, He stooped, and kissed the tortured brow, And over all its anguish stole a smile; The blood-sealed lips unclosed; the dying breath Sighed, like the rain-sound in a summer wind, Sobbing, but sweet,--"I see the Sangreal, Lord!"

THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

In the notice of so memorable a man, even the briefest prelusive flourish seems uncalled for; and so indeed it would be, if by such means it were meant simply to justify the undertaking. In regard to any of the great powers in literature there exists already a prevailing interest, which cannot be presumed to slumber for one moment in any thinking mind.[A] By way of notification, there is no need of prelude. Yet there are occasions, as, for example, the entrances of kings, which absolutely demand the inaugural flourish of arms,--which, like the rosy flood of dawn, require to be ushered in by a train of twilight glories. And there are lives which proceed as by the movements of music,--which, must therefore be heralded by overtures: majestic steppings, heard in the background, compel us, through mere sympathy with their pomp of procession, to sound the note of preparation.

[Footnote A: "_In any thinking mind_." Yet it must be confessed that there _does_ exist a woful ignorance or negligence concerning De Quincey in quarters from which better things might be expected. Misappreciation it cannot be called, where no trouble has been taken to estimate claims that needed only to be weighed to be truly valued. Up to this time, there has never been published in England a single essay on the life or the genius of De Quincey that indicated even a good acquaintance, on the part of the writer, with that author's works; and in such a case, of course, not much could be looked for in the way of just interpretation. Gilfillan did him gross injustice: indeed, from what he condescended to say of the man, it would be difficult to conjecture that a greater than Gilfillan was there. And, will the reader believe it? in Professor Craik's "English Literature"--a work of great excellence--the name of De Quincey is not mentioned! "Sam Johnson," says Craik, "was the last king that sat upon the throne of English prose literature." Let it be that Sam was a proper king; yet it is just as true that De Quincey was legitimately his successor. First, in the matter of time: Sam died in 1784, and De Quincey was born in 1785, just in time to continue the regal line. What was it, again, that entitled Johnson to kingly honors? Was it learning? De Quincey was as erudite. Was it his style? There is no writer in the language who in that matter may look down on De Quincey.

If there ever was a writer "damned with faint praise," it was De Quincey. Some stupid writer for the London "Athenæum," for instance, dared to compliment the poor "opium-chewer" after the following style:--"He possessed taste, but _he lacked creative energy_; and his subtle and highly refined intellect was ingenious and acute rather than powerful." This reminds me of a criticism once passed upon Shakspeare by a mere pedagogue, to the effect that the great poet had considerable genius, but very little taste!]

Else I should plunge _in medias res_ upon a sketch of De Quincey's life; were it not a rudeness amounting to downright profanity to omit the important ceremony of prelibation, and that at a banquet to which, implicitly, gods are invited. The reader will assuredly unite with me in all such courtesies,--

"Neu desint epulis rosæ";

particularly as the shade we deal with can be evoked only by peculiar incantations,--only the heralding of certain precise claims will this monarch listen to as the just _inferiæ_, the fitting sacrifice or hecatomb of our homage.

The key-note of preparation, the claim which preëminently should be set forth in advance, is this: that De Quincey was the prince of hierophants, or of pontifical hierarchs, as regards all those profound mysteries which from the beginning have swayed the human heart, sometimes through the light of angelic smiles lifting it upwards to an altitude just beneath the heavens, and sometimes shattering it, with the shock of quaking anguish, down to earth. As it was the function of the hierophant, in the Grecian mysteries, to show the sacred symbols as concrete incarnations of faith, so was it De Quincey's to reveal in open light the everlasting symbols, universally intelligible when once disclosed, which are folded in the involutions of dreams and of those meditations which most resemble dreams; and as to the manner of these revelations, no Roman _pontifex maximus_, were it even Cæsar himself, could have rivalled their magisterial pomp.

The peculiarities of his life all point in the direction here indicated. It was his remarkable experience which furnished him the key to certain secret recesses of human nature hitherto sealed up in darkness. Along that border-line by which the glimmerings of consciousness are, as by the thinnest, yet the most impervious veil, separated from the regions of the unexplored and the undefinable, De Quincey walked familiarly and with privileged eye and ear. Many a nebulous mass of hieroglyphically inscribed meanings did he--this Champollion, defying all human enigmas, this Herschel, or Lord Rosse, forever peering into the obscure chasms and yawning abysses of human astronomy--resolve into orderly constellations, that, once and for all, through his telescopic interpretation and enlargement, were rendered distinct and commensurable amongst men. The conditions of his power in this respect are psychologically inseparable from the remarkable conditions of his life, two of which are especially to be noticed. First, a ruling disposition towards meditation, constituting him, in the highest sense of the word, a poet. Secondly, the peculiar qualities which this singular mental constitution derived from his use of opium,--qualities which, although they did not increase, or even give direction to his meditative power, at least magnified it, both optically, as to its visual capacity, and creatively, as to its constructive faculty. These two conditions, each concurrent with the other in its ruling influence, impart to his life a degree of psychological interest which belongs to no other on record. Nor is this all. The reader knows how often a secondary interest will attach to the mightiest of conquerors or to the wisest of sovereigns, who is not merely in himself, and through his own deeds, magnificent, but whose glory is many times repeated and piled up by numerous reverberations of itself from a contemporary race of Titans. Thus, doubtless, Charles V., although himself King of Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and a portion of Italy, gloried in the sublime empery of the Turkish Solyman, as by some subtile connection of fate sympathetic with his own. A secondary interest of this nature belongs to the life of De Quincey,--a life which inclosed, as an island, a whole period of English literature, one, too, which in activity and originality is unsurpassed by any other, including the names of Scott and Dickens, of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, and Southey, of Moore, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. His connection with very many of these was not simply that of coëxistence, but also of familiar intercourse.

Between De Quincey's life and his writings it is impossible that there should be any distraction of interest, so intimately are the two interwoven: in this case more so than in that of any known author. Particularly is this true of his more impassioned writings, which are a faithful rescript of his all-impassioned life. Hierophant we have called him,--the prince of hierophants,--having reference to the matter of his revelations; but in his _manner_, in his style of composition, he is something more than this: here he stands the _monarch_ amongst rhapsodists. In these writings are displayed the main peculiarities of his life and genius.