Part 17

The most striking evidence, in my opinion, that at times the whole mass of the glacier actually freezes, is drawn from the fact, already alluded to, that, while the surface of the glacier loses annually from nine to ten feet of its thickness by evaporation and melting, it swells, on the other hand, in the spring, to the amount of about five feet. Such a dilatation can hardly be the result of pressure and the packing of the snow and ice, since the difference in the bulk of the ice brought down, during one year, from a point above to that under observation, would not account for the swelling. It is more readily explained by the freezing of the water of infiltration during spring and early summer, when the infiltration is most copious and the winter cold has been accumulating for the longest time. This view of the case is sustained by Élie de Beaumont, who states his opinion upon this point as follows:--

"Pendant l'hiver, la température de la surface du glacier s'abaisse à un grand nombre de degrés au-dessous de zéro, et cette basse température pénètre, quoique avec un affaiblissement graduel, dans l'interieur de la masse. Le glacier se fendille par l'effet de la contraction résultant de ce refroidissement. Les fentes restent d'abord vides, et concourent an refroidissement des glaciers en favorisant l'introduction de l'air froid extérieur; mais an printemps, lorsque les rayons du soleil échaffent la surface de la neige qui couvre le glacier, ils la remènent d'abord à zéro, et ils produisent ensuite de l'eau à zéro qui tombe dans le glacier refroidi et fendillé. Cette eau s'y congèle à l'instant, en laissant dégager de la chaleur qui tend à ramener le glacier à zéro; et la phénomène se continue jusqu'à ce que la masse entière du glacier refroidi soit ramené à la température de zéro."[H]

But where direct observations are still so scanty, and the interpretations of the facts so conflicting, it is the part of wisdom to be circumspect in forming opinions. This much, however, I believe to be already settled: that any theory which ascribes the very complicated phenomena of the glacier to one cause must be defective and one-sided. It seems to me most probable, that, while pressure has the larger share in producing the onward movement of the glacier, as well as in the transformation of the snow into ice, a careful analysis of all the facts will show that this pressure is owing partly to the weight of the mass itself, partly to the pushing on of the accumulated snow from behind, partly to its sliding along the surface upon which it rests, partly to the weight of water pervading the whole, partly to the softening of the rigid ice by the infiltration of water, and partly, also, to the dilatation of the mass, requiting from the freezing of this water. These causes, of course, modify the ice itself, while they contribute to the motion. Further investigations are required to ascertain in what proportion these different influences contribute to the general result, and at what time and under what circumstances they modify most directly the motion of the glacier.

That a glacier cannot be altogether compared to a river, although there is an unmistakable analogy between the flow of the one and the onward movement of the other, seems to me plain,--since the river, by the combination of its tributaries, goes on increasing in bulk in consequence of the incompressibility of water, while a glacier gradually thins out in consequence of the packing of its mass, however large and numerous may be its accessions. The analogy fails also in one important point, that of the acceleration of speed with the steepness of the slope. The motion of the glacier bears no such direct relation to the inclination of its bed. And though in a glacier, as in a river, the axis of swiftest motion is thrown alternately on one or the other side of the valley, according to its shape and slope, the very nature of ice makes it impossible that eddies should be formed in the glacier, and the impressive feature of whirlpools is altogether wanting in them. What have been called glacier-cascades bear only a remote resemblance to river-cascades, as in the former the surface only is thrown into confusion by breaking, without affecting the primitive structure;[I] and I reiterate my formerly expressed opinion that even the stratification of the upper regions is still recognizable at the lower end of the glacier of the Rhone.

The internal structure of the glacier has already led me beyond the limits I had proposed to myself in the present article. But I trust my readers will not be discouraged by this dry discussion of various theories concerning it, and will meet me again on the glacier, when we will examine together some of its more picturesque features, its crevasses, its rivulets and cascades, its moraines, its boulders, etc., and endeavor also to track its ancient course and boundaries in earlier geological times.

* * * * *

IN AN ATTIC.

This is my attic-room. Sit down, my friend; My swallow's-nest is high and hard to gain; The stairs are long and steep, but at the end The rest repays the pain.

For here are peace and freedom; room for speech Or silence, as may suit a changeful mood;-- Society's hard by-laws do not reach This lofty altitude.

You hapless dwellers in the lower rooms See only bricks and sand and windowed walls; But here, above the dust and smoky glooms, Heaven's light unhindered falls.

So early in the street the shadows creep, Your night begins while yet my eyes behold The purpling hills, the wide horizon's sweep, Flooded with sunset gold.

The day comes earlier here. At morn I see Along the roofs the eldest sunbeam peep,-- I live in daylight, limitless and free, While you are lost in sleep.

I catch the rustle of the maple-leaves, I see their breathing branches rise and fall, And hear, from their high perch along the eaves, The bright-necked pigeons call.

Far from the parlors with their garrulous crowds I dwell alone, with little need of words; I have mute friendships with the stars and clouds, And love-trysts with the birds.

So all who walk steep ways, in grief and night, Where every step is full of toil and pain, May see, when they have gained the sharpest height, It has not been in vain:

Since they have left behind the noise and heat,-- And, though their eyes drop tears, their sight is clear; The air is purer, and the breeze is sweet, And the blue heaven more near.

* * * * *

LONGFELLOW.

The preface of "Outre-Mer," Longfellow's first book, is dated 1833. The last poem in his last volume is published in 1863. In those thirty years what wide renown, what literary achievement, what love of friends in many lands, what abounding success and triumph, what profound sorrow, mark the poet's career! The young scholar, returning from that European tour which to the imaginative and educated American is the great romance, sits down in Bowdoin College in Maine, where he is Professor, and writes the "Epistle Dedicatory" to the "worthy and gentle reader." Those two phrases tell the tale. The instinct of genius and literary power stirring in the heart of the young man naturally takes the quaint, dainty expression of an experience fed, thus far, only upon good old books and his own imagination. The frolicking tone of mock humility, deprecating the intrusion upon the time of a busy world, does not conceal the conviction that the welcome so airily asked by the tyro will at last be commanded by the master.

Like the "Sketch-Book" of the other most popular of our authors, Irving, the "Outre-Mer" of Longfellow is a series of tales, reveries, descriptions, reminiscences, and character-pieces, suggested by European travel. But his beat lies in France, Spain, and Italy. It is the romance of the Continent, and not that of England, which inspires him. It is the ruddy light upon the vines and the scraps of old _chansons_ which enliven and decorate his pilgrimage, and through all his literary life they have not lost their fascination. While Irving sketches "Rural Life in England," Longfellow paints "The Village of Auteuil"; Irving gives us "The Boar's Head Tavern," and Longfellow "The Golden Lion Inn" at Rouen; Irving draws "A Royal Poet," Longfellow discusses "The Trouvères," or "The Devotional Poetry of Spain." It is delightful to trace the charming resemblance between the books and the writers, widely different as they are. There is the same geniality, the same tender pathos, the same lambent humor, the same delicate observation of details, the same overpowering instinct of literary art. But Geoffrey Crayon is a humorist, while the Pilgrim beyond the Sea is a poet. The one looks at the broad aspects of English life with the shrewd, twinkling eye of a man of the world; the other haunts the valley of the Loire, the German street, the Spanish inn, with the kindling fancy of the scholar and poet. The moral and emotional elements are quite wanting in Irving; they are characteristic of Longfellow. But the sweetness of soul, the freedom from cynicism or stinging satire, which is most unusual in American, or in any humorous or descriptive literature, is remarkable in both. "I have no wife, nor children, good or bad, to provide for," begins Geoffrey Crayon, quoting from old Burton. But neither had he an enemy against whom to defend himself. It was true of Geoffrey Crayon, down to the soft autumn day on which he died, leaving a people to mourn for him. It is true of the Pilgrim of Outre-Mer, in all the thirty years since first he launched forth "into the uncertain current of public favor."

In this earliest book of Longfellow's the notable points are not power of invention, or vigorous creation, or profound thought, but a mellowness of observation, instinctively selecting the picturesque and characteristic details, a copious and rich scholarship, and that indefinable grace of the imagination which announces genius. The work, like the "Sketch-Book," was originally issued in parts, and it was hardly possible for any observer thirty years ago not to see that its peculiar character revealed a new strain in our literature. Longfellow's poems as yet were very few, printed in literary journals, and not yet signalizing his genius. It was the day when Percival Halleck, Sprague, Dana, Willis, Bryant, were the undisputed lords of the American Parnassus. But the school reading-books already contained "An April Day" and "Woods in Winter," and all the verses of the young author had a recognition in volumes of elegant extracts and commonplace-books. But the universal popularity of Longfellow was not established until the publication of "Hyperion" in 1839, followed by "The Voices of the Night" in the next year. With these two works his name arose to the highest popularity, both in America and England; and no living author has been more perpetually reproduced in all forms and with every decoration.

If now we care to explain the eager and affectionate welcome which always hails his writings, it is easy to see to what general quality that greeting must be ascribed. As with Walter Scott, or Victor Hugo, or Béranger, or Dickens, or Addison in the "Spectator," or Washington Irving, it is a genial humanity. It is a quality, in all these instances, independent of literary art and of genius, but which is made known to others, and therefore becomes possible to be recognized, only through literary forms. The creative imagination, the airy fancy, the exquisite grace, harmony, and simplicity, the rhetorical brilliancy, the incisive force, all the intellectual powers and charms of style with which that feeling may be expressed, are informed and vitalized by the sympathy itself. But whether a man who writes verses has genius,--whether he be a poet according to arbitrary canons,--whether some of his lines resemble the lines of other writers,--and whether he be original, are questions which may be answered in every way of every poet in history. Who is a poet but he whom the heart of man permanently accepts as a singer of its own hopes, emotions, and thoughts? And what is poetry but that song? If words have a uniform meaning, it is useless to declare that Pope cannot be a poet, if Lord Byron is, or that Moore is counterfeit, if Wordsworth be genuine. For the art of poetry is like all other arts. The casket that Cellini worked is not less genuine and excellent than the dome of Michel Angelo. Is nobody but Shakspeare a poet? Is there no music but Beethoven's? Is there no mountain-peak but Dhawalaghiri? no cataract but Niagara?

Thirty years ago almost every critic in England exploded with laughter over the poetry of Tennyson. Yet his poetry has exactly the same characteristics now that it had then; and Tennyson has gone up to his place among English poets. It is not "Blackwood," nor any quarterly review or monthly magazine, (except, of course, the "North American" and the "Atlantic,") which can decree or deny fame. While the critics are busily proving that an author is a plagiarist or a pretender, the world is crowning him,--as the first ocean-steamer from England brought Dr. Lardner's essay to prove that steamers could not cross the ocean. Literary criticism, indeed, is a lost art, if it ever were an art. For there are no permanent acknowledged canons of literary excellence; and if there were any, there are none who can apply them. What critic shall decide if the song of a new singer be poetry, or the bard himself a poet? Consequently, modern criticism wisely contents itself with pointing out errors of fact or of inference, or the difference between the critic's and the author's philosophic or æsthetic view, and bitterly assaults or foolishly praises him. When Horace Binney Wallace, one of the most accomplished and subtile-minded of our writers, says of General Morris that he is "a great poet," and that "he who can understand Mr. Emerson may value Mr. Bancroft," we can feel only the more profoundly persuaded that fame is not the judgment of individuals, but of the mass of men, and that he whose song men love to hear is a poet.

But while the magnetism of Longfellow's touch lies in the broad humanity of his sympathy, which leads him neither to mysticism nor cynicism, and which commends his poetry to the universal heart, his artistic sense is so exquisite that each of his poems is a valuable literary study. In this he has now reached a perfection quite unrivalled among living poets, except sometimes by Tennyson. His literary career has been contemporary with the sensational school, but he has been entirely untainted by it, and in the present volume, "Tales of a Wayside Inn," his style has a tranquil lucidity which recalls Chaucer. The literary style of an intellectually introverted age or author will always be somewhat obscure, however gorgeous; but Longfellow's mind takes a simple, child-like hold of life, and his style never betrays the inadequate effort to describe thoughts or emotions that are but vaguely perceived, which is the characteristic of the best sensational writing. Indeed, there is little poetry by the eminent contemporary masters which is so ripe and racy as his. He does not make rhetoric stand for passion, nor vagueness for profundity; nor, on the other hand, is he such a voluntary and malicious "Bohemian" as to conceive that either in life or letters a man is released from the plain rules of morality. Indeed, he used to be accused of preaching in his poetry by gentle critics who held that Elysium was to be found in an oyster-cellar, and that intemperance was the royal prerogative of genius.

His literary scholarship, also, his delightful familiarity with the pure literature of all languages and times, must rank Longfellow among the learned poets. Yet he wears this various knowledge like a shining suit of chain-mail, to adorn and strengthen his gait, like Milton, instead of tripping and clumsily stumbling in it, as Ben Jonson sometimes did. He whips out an exquisitely pointed allusion that flashes like a Damascus rapier and strikes nimbly home, or he recounts some weird tradition, or enriches his line with some gorgeous illustration from hidden stores, or merely unrolls, as Milton loved to do, the vast perspective of romantic association by recounting in measured order names which themselves make music in the mind,--names not musical only, but fragrant:--

"Sabean odors from the spicy shore Of Araby the blest."

In the prelude to the "Wayside Inn," with how consummate a skill the poet graces his modern line with the shadowy charm of ancient verse, by the mere mention of the names!

"The chronicles of Charlemagne, Of Merlin and the Mort d'Arthure, Mingled together in his brain With talcs of Flores and Blanchefleur, Sir Launcelot, Sir Morgadour, Sir Guy, Sir Bevis, Sir Gawain."

A most felicitous illustration of this trait is in "The Evening Star," an earlier poem. Chrysaor, in the old mythology, sprang from the blood of Medusa, armed with a golden sword, and married Callirrhoë, one of the Oceanides. The poet, looking at evening upon the sea, muses upon the long-drawn, quivering reflection of the evening star, and sings. How the verses oscillate like the swaying calm of the sea, while the image inevitably floats into the scholar's imagination:--

"Just above yon sandy bar, As the day grows fainter and dimmer, Lonely and lovely a single star Lights the air with a dusky glimmer.

"Into the ocean faint and far Falls the trail of its golden splendor, And the gleam of that single star Is ever refulgent, soft, and tender.

"Chrysaor rising out of the sea Showed tints glorious and thus emulous, Leaving the arms of Callirrhoë, Forever tender, soft, and tremulous.

"Thus o'er the ocean faint and far Trailed the gleam of his falchion brightly: Is it a god, or is it a star, That, entranced, I gaze on nightly?"

The blending of the poetical faculty and scholarly taste is seen, also, in his translations; and would not a translation of Dante's great poem be the crowning work of Longfellow's literary life?

But while we chat along the road, and pause to repeat these simple and musical poems, each so elegant, so finished, as the monk finished his ivory crucifix, or the lapidary his choicest gem, we have reached the Wayside Inn. It is the title of Longfellow's new volume, "Tales of a Wayside Inn." They are New-England "Canterbury Tales." Those of old London town were told at the Tabard at Southwark; these at the Red Horse in Sudbury town. And although it is but the form of the poem, peculiar neither to Chaucer nor to Longfellow, which recalls the earlier work, yet they have a further likeness in the sources of some of the tales, and in the limpid blitheness of the style and the pure objectivity of the poems.

The melodious, picturesque simplicity of the opening, in which the place and the persons are introduced, is inexpressibly graceful and masterly:--

"One autumn night in Sudbury town, Across the meadows bare and brown, The windows of the wayside inn Gleamed red with fire-light through the leaves Of woodbine hanging from the eaves, Their crimson curtains rent and thin. As ancient is this hostelry As any in the land may be, Built in the old colonial day, When men lived in a grander way, With ampler hospitality: A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall, Now somewhat fallen to decay, With weather-stains upon the wall, And stairways worn, and crazy doors, And creaking and uneven floors, And chimneys huge, and tiled, and tall."

The autumn wind moans without, and dashes in gusts against the windows; but there is a pleasant murmur from the parlor, with the music of a violin. In this comfortable tavern-parlor, ruddy with the fire-light, a rapt musician stands erect before the chimney and bends his ear to his instrument,--

"And seemed to listen, till he caught Confessions of its secret thought,"

--a figure and a picture, as he is afterward painted,--

"Fair-haired, blue-eyed, his aspect blithe, His figure tall and straight and lithe,"--

which recall the Norwegian magician, Ole Bull. He plays to the listening group of friends. Of these there is the landlord,--a youth of quiet ways, "a student of old books and days,"--a young Sicilian,--"a Spanish Jew from Alieant,"--

"A theologian, from the school Of Cambridge on the Charles,"--

then a poet, whose portrait, exquisitely sketched and meant for quite another, will yet be prized by the reader, as the spectator prizes, in the Uffizi at Florence, the portraits of the painters by themselves:--

"A poet, too, was there, whose verse Was tender, musical, and terse: The inspiration, the delight, The gleam, the glory, the swift flight Of thoughts so sudden that they seem The revelations of a dream, All these were his: but with them came No envy of another's fame; He did not find his sleep less sweet For music in some neighboring street, Nor rustling hear in every breeze The laurels of Miltiades. Honor and blessings on his head While living, good report when dead, Who, not too eager for renown, Accepts, but does not clutch, the crown."

The musician completes the group.

When he stops playing, they call upon the landlord for his tale, which he, "although a bashful man," begins. It is "Paul Revere's Ride," already known to many readers as a ballad of the famous incident in the Revolution which has, in American hearts, immortalized a name which this war has but the more closely endeared to them. It is one of the most stirring, ringing, and graphic ballads in the language,--a proper pendant to Browning's "How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix."

The poet, listening with eager delight, seizes the sword of the landlord's ancestor which was drawn at Concord fight, and tells him that his grandfather was a grander shape than any old Sir William,

"Clinking about in foreign lands, With iron gauntlets on his hands, And on his head an iron pot."

All laughed but the landlord,--

"For those who had been longest dead Were always greatest in his eyes."

Did honest and dull "Conservatism" have ever a happier description? But lest the immortal foes of Conservatism and Progress should come to loggerheads in the conversation, the student opens his lips and breathes Italy upon the New-England autumn night. He tells the tale of "The Falcon of Sir Federigo," from the "Decameron." It is an exquisite poem. So charming is the manner, that the "Decameron," so rendered into English, would acquire a new renown, and the public of to-day would understand the fame of Boccaccio.

But the theologian hears with other ears, and declares that the old Italian tales

"Are either trifling, dull, or lewd."

The student will not argue. He says only,--

"Nor were it grateful to forget That from these reservoirs and tanks Even imperial Shakespeare drew His Moor of Venice and the Jew, And Romeo and Juliet, And many a famous comedy."

After a longer pause, the Spanish Jew from Alieant begins "a story in the Talmud old," "The Legend of Rabbi Ben Levi." This is followed after the interlude by the Sicilian's tale, "King Robert of Sicily," a noble legend of the Church, whose moral is humility. It is told in a broad, stately measure, and with consummate simplicity and skill. The attention is not distracted for a moment from the story, which monks might tell in the still cloisters of a Sicilian convent, and every American child hear with interest and delight.

"And then the blue-eyed Norseman told. A Saga of the days of old."