CHAPTER XVII.

The most part of ready cash, whatever the sum may have been, which Tom had received at the bank, having been, as he called it, "swallowed up by them cormorants, the attorneys," he had, after all, but a trifling balance in his pocket. He was determined, therefore, to live quietly for some time at his aunt's upon "the lashins and lavins," taking her advice, and arranging with her his plan of operations upon his return to Rathcashmore. And his aunt's advice, in a prudent and worldly point of view, was not to be controverted, if anything could tend toward the attainment of his object; that was the question.

It was impossible, however, that Tom could rest altogether satisfied with the company of his aunt and her husband, and three or four children between ten and seventeen years of age; particularly as the eldest of his cousins was a long-necked boy with big, stuck-out ears, who worked in his father's shop, instead of a graceful girl with dark hair and fine eyes, whose domestic duties must keep her in the house as her mother's assistant, or perhaps enable her, when she could be spared, to guide him through the principal parts of the town, of which he would have feigned the most profound ignorance. But the eldest child just past seventeen, as we have seen. {209} happened to be a boy, not a girl, and Tom did not consider this the best arrangement that could be wished. In consequence, he sometimes spent an evening from home, with one or other, or perhaps with all the congenial spirits with whom, as a _delegate_--for the truth may be confessed--from another county, he could claim brotherhood. On this occasion, however, he was not on official business in Armagh; and whatever intercourse took place between them was of a purely social nature.

Tom was not altogether such a _mauvais sujet_ as perhaps the reader has set him down in his own mind to be, from the inuendos which have been thrown out respecting him, as well as the actual portions of his character which have made themselves manifest. It must be confessed--nay, I believe it has been admitted not many lines above--that he was a Ribbonman; and although that includes all that is murderous and wicked, when a necessity arises, yet in the absence of such necessity a Ribbonman may not be altogether void of certain good points in his character. It is the frightful _obligation_ which he _labors_ under that makes a villain of him, should circumstances require the aid of his iniquity. Apart from this, and from what is termed an agrarian grievance, a Ribbonman may not be a bad family-man, although the training he undergoes in "The Lodge" is ill calculated to nourish his domestic sympathies.

Tom had now been upward of a month enjoying the hospitality of his aunt; and notwithstanding that she had done all in her power to entertain him, and "make much" of him, he was beginning to tire of the eternal smoke and flags, and stacks of chimneys, which were always the same to the eye: no bright "blast of sun," no sudden dark cloud, made any difference in them; there they were, always the same dark color, no matter what light shone upon them. No wonder, then, Tom Murdock began once more to long for the fresh breeze that blew about the wild hills of Rathcashmore, the green fields of his father's farm, and the purple heather of Slieve-dhu, with the white rocks of Slieve-bawn by her side.

Absence too had done more really to touch Tom's heart with respect to Winny Cavana than to wean him from the "saucy slut," as he had called her in pique on his departure. He had "come across,"--this is the Irish mode of expressing, "had been introduced,"--through his aunt's assistance, several of what she called illigant fine girls, nieces of her husband's and others, and his heart confessed that none of them "were a patch" upon Winny Cavana, after all. He thus became fidgety, and began to speak of returning home. Of course the aunt opposed her hospitality to such a step, for the present at least: "Just as we were beginning to enjoy you, Tom avic," said she; and of course her husband made a show of joining her, although he knew there had been more beer drunk in the house in the last month than in the six preceding ones; neither did the cold meat turn out to half the account. He knew this by his pocket, not by his knowledge of the cookery. Tom, however, made no promise of further sojourn than "to put the following Sunday over him," and it was now Thursday. But the next morning's post hurried matters. It brought him a letter from his father, which prevented his aunt from pressing his stay beyond the following day, when it was finally settled by Tom that he would start for home. "It ran thus," as is the common mode of introducing a letter in a novel or story:

"DEAR TOM,--This comes to you hoppin' to find you in good health, which I am sorry to say it does not lave me at present; but thank God for all his mercies. I was very lonesum entirely afther you left me; an the more, dear Tom, as I had not my ould neighbor Ned Cavana to spake to, as used to be the case afore that {210} young chisel of a daughter of his cam round him to brake wid us. She's there still, seemingly as proud as ever; but she'll be taken down a peg wan of these days, mark my words. I have wan piece of good news for you, Tom avic; an' that is, that young Lennon never darkened their doore since you went; and more be token, she never spoke a word to him on Sunda's after mass, but went straight home with her father from the chapel. This I seen myself; for although I have been very daunny since you left me, I med bowld wid myself not to lose prayers any Sunda' wet or dhry, for no other purpose but to watch herself an' that chap. So, dear Tom, you needn't be afeared of him. I think, indeed; I seen him going down the road the three Sunda's wid Kate Mulvey; so I think Winny tould the truth to her father about him. Dear Tom, I have not been well at all at all for the last three weeks, an' I am not able to be out all day as I used to be, an' I hardly know how matthers are goin' on upon the farm. I see old Ned a'most every day from the doore or the garden, where I sometimes go out when it's fine; I see him wandherin' about his farm as brisk an' as hard as ever. I think nothin' would give that man a brash. Dear Tom, I did not like writin' to you to say I was lonesum or unwell until you had taken a turn out of yourself at your aunt's; but I am not gettin' betther, an' I think the sight iv you would do me good. Tell your aunt to let you cum home to me now. Indeed, dear Tom, I'm too long alone; an' havin' no wan to spake to makes me fret, though I wouldn't interfere wid you for a while afther you went. If ould Ned Cavana was the man I tuck him to be, he wouldn't let the few words that cum betune us keep him away from me all this time, an' I not well; but he never put to me, nor from me, since you left, nor I to him. Dear Tom, cum back to me as soon as you can, an' maybe we'll get the betther of him an' Winny, afther all. Hopin' your aunt, an' the childer, an' Bill himself, is all in good health, I remain your father till death, "Michael Murdock."

Tom, as I have hinted, was not without his good points, and, as he read over the above letter from his poor lonely father, his heart smote him for having been so long away, and where, to tell the truth to himself, he had no great fun or pleasure. His conscience, moreover, accused him of one glaring act of ingratitude and villany, he might call it, toward the poor old man. There was something tender and self-sacrificing in the letter, yet it was not without a complaining tone all through, that brought all Tom's better feelings uppermost in his heart; and he resolved to start for home early the next morning. He now felt that he had business at home, which at one time he had never contemplated taking the smallest trouble about, beside keeping his poor old father better company than he had hitherto done. Yet, with all this softening of his disposition, he was never more determined to carry out his object with respect to Winny Cavana, by fair means---or by _foul!_

What his father had said about young Lennon gave him hopes that, in the end, a scheme which he had planned for the latter might not be _necessary_.

Tom knew there could be no use in writing to his father to say he would so soon be home with him. The nearest post-town was seven miles from Rathcashmore; and although any person "going in had orders" to call at the post-office, and bring out all letters for the neighbors of both the Rathcashes, yet were he to write now, his letter was sure to lie there for some days, and he would undoubtedly be home before its receipt. Thus he argued, and therefore endeavored to content himself with the resolution he had formed to make no delay; and whatever "his traps" may have been, they were got together and locked in his box at once.

{211}

He had engaged to meet a _particular friend_ on the following evening, Friday, partly on _business_ previous to returning to _his own part_ the country. But he would now anticipate this visit by going there at once, so as to enable him to leave for home early next morning. He hoped to find his father better than his letter might lead him to suppose; and he had no doubt his presence and society, which he was determined should be more constant and sympathizing than heretofore, would serve to cheer him.

Nothing, then, which his aunt could say, and certainly nothing which her husband had added to what she did say, had any effect toward altering Tom's resolution to start for home on the following morning. By this means he hoped to reach his father on the evening of the second day,--railways had not been then established in any part of Ireland, not even the Dublin and Kingstown line,--and he would save the poor old man from the lonesome necessity of going to church on Sunday, "be it wet or dry."

He carried out his determination without check or hindrance, and arrived at the end of the lane leading up to Rathcashmore house soon after dusk in the evening of Saturday. He travelled by car from C--k; and the horse being neither too spirited, nor too _fresh_, after his journey, stood quietly on the road, with his head down, and his off fore-leg in the "first position," until the driver returned, having left Tom Murdock's box above at the house.

The meeting between old Mick and his son was as tender and affectionate on the old man's part as could well be, and as much so on Tom's as could well be expected. Old Mick had some secret anticipations--presentiment, perhaps, I should have called it--that they would never part again in this world, until they parted for the last time. Daily he felt an increasing weakness of limb, weariness of mind, which whispered to his heart that that parting was not far distant. His son's arrival, however, had the effect which he had promised to himself. He seemed to improve both in spirits and in health. If he had not thrown away the stick,--which the reader was forewarned he would adopt,--he made more use of it cutting at the _kippeens_, and whatever else came in his way, than as a help to his progress.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

From The St. James' Magazine.

THE INVENTOR OF THE STEAM-ENGINE.

In 1828 the learned Arago, a Frenchman, published a remarkable work on the history of the steam-engine. It contains much information that had hitherto been little known on the scientific labor and discoveries of Salomon de Caus. He cites the work of the latter, entitled "_Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes_," which was first published at Frankfort in 1615, and reprinted at Paris in 1624; and M. Arago draws from it the conclusion that Salomon de Caus was the original inventor of the steam-engine.

Six years after this notice of the life and labor of the French engineer, there appeared in "_Le Musée des Familles_" a letter from Marion Delorme, supposed to have been written on the 3d of February, 1641, to her lover Cinq-Mars, in which she tells him that she is doing the honors of Paris to an English lord, the Marquis of Worcester, and showing him all {212} the curiosities of that city. She goes on to say that among other institutions she had taken milord to Bicêtre, where a madman was confined for insisting on a wonderful discovery he had made on the application of steam from boiling water; that the superintendent of the asylum had shown a book to the marquis written on the subject by this lunatic; and that after reading a few pages the English nobleman begged for an interview with Salomon de Caus, from which he returned in a grave and pensive mood, declaring that this man was one of the greatest geniuses of his age.

Such is the substance of the letter of Marion Delorme; and the editor of "_Le Musée des Familles_" adds that the Marquis of Worcester appropriated the discovery to himself, and recorded it in his work entitled "Century of Inventions," thus causing himself to be looked upon by his countrymen as the inventor of the steam-engine.

The anecdote became very popular, and was copied into standard works, represented in engravings, etc., etc. At length some incredulous authors examined more closely into the matter, and found that not only had Salomon de Caus never been confined in a lunatic asylum, but that he had held the appointment of engineer and architect to Louis XIII. up to his death in 1630, while Marion Delorme is asserted to have visited Bicêtre in 1641!

On tracing this mystification to its source, we find that M. Henri Berthoud, a literary man of some repute, and a constant contributor to "_Le Musée des Familles_," confesses that the letter imputed to Marion Delorme was in fact written by himself!

But the most curious part of the story is that the world refused to believe in M. Berthoud's confession, so great a hold had the anecdote taken on the public mind; and a Paris newspaper went so far even as to declare that the original autograph of this letter was to be seen in a library in Normandy, in which province Salomon de Caus was born. M. Berthoud wrote again denying its existence, and offered a million to any one who would produce the letter. From that time the affair was no more spoken of, and Salomon de Caus was allowed to remain in undisputed possession of his fame, as having been the first to point out the use of steam in his work, "_Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes_." He had previously been employed as engineer to Henry, Prince of Wales, son of James I., and he published a volume in folio, in London, "_La perspective avec les Raisons des Ombres et Miroirs_."

In his dedication of another work to the queen of England, 15th of September, 1614, we find some allusion made to the construction of hydraulic machines. On his return to France he, as before said, was appointed engineer to Louis XIII., and was doubtless patronized by Cardinal Richelieu, that great promoter of the arts and letters.

The writings of Salomon de Caus were held in much estimation among learned men during the whole of the seventeenth century. He had, however, been anticipated in the discovery of steam for the propelling of large bodies, for on the 17th of April, 1543, the Spaniard, Don Blasco de Garay, launched a steam-vessel at Barcelona, in presence of the Emperor Charles V. It was an old ship of 200 tons, called the _Santissima Trinidad_, which had been fitted up for the experiment, and which moved at the rate of ten miles an hour.

The inventor of this first steamer was merely looked upon as an enthusiast, whose imagination had run mad; and his only encouragement was a donation of 200,000 maravedis from his sovereign, but the emperor no more dreamt of using the discovery than did Napoleon I., three centuries later, when the ingenious Fulton suggested to him the application of steam to navigation. It is well known that Fulton was not even permitted to make an essay of this new {213} propelling force before the French emperor. So then, we must date the fact of the introduction of steam navigation as far back as 1543; anterior to the discovery of Salomon de Caus in 1615; to the Marquis of Worcester in 1663; to Captain Savary in 1693; to Dr. Papin in 1696; and to Fulton and others, who all lay claim to the original idea.

But perhaps we may be wrong in denying originality to these men, for we have no proof that either of them had any knowledge of the discoveries of his predecessor.

It was only on the 18th of March, 1816, that the first steam-vessel appeared in France, making her entrance into the seaport of Havre; she was the _Eliza_, which had left Newhaven, in England, on the previous day.

From The Fortnightly Review.

THE CLOUDS AND THE POOR.

No one can write upon the clouds without some reference to Mr. Ruskin's labors. Few will forget the four chapters in the first volume of "Modern Painters," dealing first with men's apathy for those forms of beauty which daily flit around us, and ending with the magnificent contrast between Turner and Claude, showing with what difference they had rendered the calm of the mist and the shock of the tempest, the crimson of the dawn and the fire of sunset We are, indeed, all of us too apathetic, and the summer and the winter clouds are alike unheeded by us. And yet our grey English clouds have impressed themselves upon even our language and our daily speech. Our word "sky" has nothing in common with the _ciel_ of the French and the _cielo_ of the Italians, which through the Latin _coelum_ refer to the clear blue chasm of the air. Our "sky" is connected with the Old-English _seua_, and literally means "the place of shadows." Our "welkin" is connected with _wolcen_, "a cloud," and is derived from a root which points to the incessant, rolling, billowy motion of the clouds.

But if we have failed to notice the clouds and their beauty, others have not failed. Men, seeing their power, feeling their blessings, have worshipped them. Upon them our Scandinavian ancestors built their creeds, and from them created their gods and goddesses. The beauty and the delicacy of the early Aryan mythology is interwoven with the storm-cloud, which alike inspires the story of the Odyssey and solves the mystery of OEdipus. Mr. Ruskin has already quoted from Aristophanes. We could wish that he had supplemented the Athenian poet, who gives merely the latter sensuous mythological view of the clouds, with passages from the fathers, who so deeply penetrated into both their beauty and their moral aspect. With them the clouds appear no longer puissant goddesses, daughters of Father Ocean, thronging in troops from Maeotis and Mimas, their golden pitchers filled with the waters of the Nile. Their fleecy forms told them of him who "giveth snow like wool, and scattereth the hoar frost like ashes," of him who "maketh the clouds his chariots, and rideth on the wings of the wind." They could not feel the whirlwind's blast without remembering that it had borne Elijah heavenward, nor hear the thunder without remembering the thunder and lightning which clothed God on Sinai, {214} nor watch the evening rack without remembering that the clouds, such perhaps as they were gazing at, had received their Master out of his disciples' sight, and that again from them he should descend at his second coming. In these days of atmospheric laws, of measurements of rainfalls, and weather forecasts, we cannot by the utmost effort of the imagination place ourselves in their position. To them, as to the first Christians, heaven was directly above their heads, divided from the earth only by the screen of clouds. They must have regarded those white ethereal shadows, those dark rolling masses, in much the same way as the early sacred painters,--peopled each flake with cherubs and angels, and heard the air rustle with wings.

Be this as it may. Even if religion inspired them with such thoughts, they certainly were not insensible to the beauty which daily blossoms in the sky. "There is," cries St. Chrysostom, "a meadow on the earth and a meadow, too, in the sky. There are the various flowers of the stars, the rose below, the rainbow above." [Footnote 31] "Look up to heaven," he says, "and see how much more beautiful it is than the roof of palaces. The pavement of the palace above is much more grand than the roof below." [Footnote 32] His writings are full of metaphors drawn from the sky and the clouds. He speaks of "snow-storms of miracles," and "thick-falling showers of cares," and cries, "When God doth comfort, though sorrows come upon thee by thousands like snow-flakes, thou shalt be above them all." He reproaches men for looking down like swine to the earth, and not up to the sky, [Footnote 33] which he declares is the fairest of roofs, guiding them by its beauty to their Maker. [Footnote 34] And filled with that democratic spirit which so burns in all his writings, he cries to the poor man, "Seest thou this heaven here, how beautiful, how vast it is, how it is placed on high? This beauty the rich man enjoyeth not more than thou, nor is it in his power to thrust thee aside, and make it all his own; for as it was made for him, so it was, too, for thee. . . . . . Do not all enjoy it equally--rich and poor? . . . . . Yea, rather, if I must speak somewhat marvellously, we poor enjoy it more than they. . . . . The poor more than any enjoy the luxury of the elements." [Footnote 35]

[Footnote 31: "Homilies on the Statues." The Oxford Translation.]

[Footnote 32: "Homilies on 1 Thessalonians iv. 12." ]

[Footnote 33: "Homilles on St. Matthew." Part II. ]

[Footnote 34: "Homilles on St. John." Part II.]

[Footnote 35: "Homilles on 2 Corinthians." ]

The passage is full of the deepest interest. Mr. Ruskin has shown us with what mixed feelings the Greeks loved the clouds, and how the mediaevalist feared them. It would be well to know how they have been and are still viewed in England by the lower classes. For, as we before said, the upper classes care little about the clouds. The [Greek text] (changeful days) of England pass by unnoticed, except to fill up a gap in a conversation. St. Swithin is our national saint, but we are not enthusiastic devotees. Only when a picnic or a cricket match is involved do we trouble ourselves about the clouds. Then the barometer is studied, and the weathercock becomes an object of interest. In short, only when our pleasures are at stake do we care whether the day is wet or fine. On the other hand, life with the poor, man depends on the weather. Three continuous wet days in London throw no less than twenty thousand people out of employment. Fine weather is the poor man's bread-winner, his comforter, his physician. He may therefore be pardoned if, with Ulysses, he in the first place regards it from an economical point of view. Thus the laborers in the north midland counties speak of showery weather as "rich weather,"--that is, not only enriching the crops, but themselves. On the contrary, as producing a different effect on their calling, the sailors on the north-east {215} coast speak of such weather as "shabby weather," and call rain--useless to them--"dirt." This indeed must be the case. In the lowest as in the earliest stages of society, this utilitarian spirit--not necessarily base, but co-existent with even a passionate love of beauty--must prevail. The laborer whose day's wage depends on the clouds, and the fisherman whose meal rests with the winds, will naturally first think of them as subservient to the needs of life. Badly clothed, and ill-fed, they cannot possibly appreciate Mr. Kingsley's admiration of the east wind. The fisherman only knows it as producing a dearth of fish. To the midland peasant it is his "red wind,"--just as Virgil spoke of _nigerrimus Auster_, and as the Greeks called the north wind "the black wind," still the _bise_ of the Mediterranean. In the east of England the nightingale is not the bird of song, not Ben Jonson's "dear good angel of the spring," but the "barley-bird," because it arrives when the barley is sown. For, on the whole, barley is more important to the peasant than song, and therefore the bird is thus called. Nevertheless the song may be highly prized, but it is still secondary. Thus we stumble upon a curious explanation of the utilitarian spirit observed in Homer and the earliest painters. And the terms of our country-people throw a plain light upon the Homeric epithets "fruitful" ([Greek text]), and "loamy" ([Greek text]), applied to the earth; and the phrases of our fishermen curiously illustrate the terms "barren" ([Greek text]), and "teeming with fish" ([Greek text]), as applied to the sea. Society in the same or parallel stage ever gives the same utterance.

The reality, too, of the elements, as Lear and Jacques would say, touches the poor to the quick. Hence in the north they simply call rain "waters," just in the same way as the Greeks used [Greek text] whilst in the midland counties they nearly as often say "it is wetting" as "it is raining." Their proverbs, too, smack of the fierceness of men who have struggled with the storm. So the Anglian countryman sings of the first three days of March,

"First comes David, then comes Chad. Then comes Winnol blowing like mad."

Their vocabulary, too, teems with words expressive of every shade and variety of weather. Our skies and clouds have entered far more into the composition of popular phrases than we are commonly aware. Such trivial expressions as "being under a cloud," "laying up for a rainy day," unconsciously reflect the character of our weather. Its power overshadows even the altar and the grave in the common rhyme:

"Happy the bride whom the sun shines on. Happy the dead whom the rain rains on."

And the rhyme at one time really exercised a spell. You find it used by lovers amongst our Elizabethan dramatists, who so faithfully reflected the spirit of the day. Thus, in Webster's _Duchess of Malfy_, Ferdinand cries to the duchess about her lover:

"Let not the sun Shine on him till he's dead." _Act iii. Sc._ 2

But the poor possess an abundance of such expressions. And as life is real to them, so their sayings are quickened with reality. Thus, "to be born in a frost" is in Yorkshire an euphemism for being foolish. In the same county, "to obtain anything under the wind" means to obtain it secretly. In Norfolk the ploughman says "there is a good steward when the wind-frost blows." Just consider, too, the richness of their vocabulary of weather-terms, and the observation which it implies. Take Yorkshire alone, and there we shall find "dag," "douk," "pell," "pelse," "rouk," "rag," "sops," all standing for different kinds and degrees of rain and showers. There the white winter-mist is the "hag" the hoar-frost the "rind," the snow-flakes "clarts of snow," and the summer heat-mist the "gossamer," as Wedgwood {216} notices, the _Marien fäden_ of Germany. Go into the eastern counties, and the dialect is as rich. The sea-mist is the "sea-fret" and the "sea-roke." The heavy rain, which soaks into the earth, is the "ground-rain." The light rain is the "smur" in Suffolk, the "brange" in Essex, and the "dag" in Norfolk, from which last word the various corruptions "water-dogs" and "sun-dogs" are formed.

Passing, however, from words, let us note a few of the weather-rhymes and weather-proverbs which show what accurate observers necessity has made our peasants. There is not a village where the local phenomena of mists and clouds are not preserved in some rhyme. From Cumberland to Devonshire the land echoes with these weather-saws. In the former county we have--

"If Skiddaw hath a cap, Criffel wots full well of that."

In the latter, the rhyme--this time really a rhyme--runs:

"When Haldon wears a hat, Let Kenton beware of a skat."

The Warwickshire and Worcestershire peasants in the Vale of Evesham repeat a similar couplet about their own Bredon, and the Leicestershire and Lincolnshire churls about their Belvoir. Weather-rhymes lie treasured up throughout the midland counties about

"The green-blue mackerel sky, Never holds three days dry;"

in the northern counties about "mony haws, mony snaws," and in the eastern of the "near bur, rain fur."' In England we, too, can rhyme about _la journée du pèlerin_. For centuries the village poet has sung of "mare's tails" and "hen-scrattins," and the great "Noah's Ark cloud," and the "weather-head," of the changes of the moon, how

"Saturday change, and Sunday full, Never did good, nor never wull."

For the peasant in his rude fashion is a meteorologist and has studied the ways of the clouds, "water wagons," as in some counties he calls them. From him Aratus might have filled another _Diosemeia_, and Virgil improved his first Greorgic. Our Elizabethan dramatists have borrowed some of their most life-like touches from the peasant's weather-lore. Thus Cunningham, in Beaumont and Fletcher's _Wit at Several Weapons_, says of wrangling:

"It never comes but, like a storm of hail, 'Tis sure to bring fine weather in the tail on't." _Act. iii., Sc._ 1.

And Webster, borrowing from the sailor, makes Silvio say of the cardinal that he

"Lifts up hit nose like a fool porpoise before storm." _Duchess of Malfy, Act, iii., Sc. 3._

Shakespeare borrows from both peasant and sailor. His finest descriptions of cloud scenery, as we shall show, are based upon popular phrases. Two of his most beautiful similes illustrate the villager's weather lore. Thus Lucrece is described:

"And round about her tear-distrained eye. Blue circles streamed like rainbows in the sky. Those water-galls in her dim element, Foretell new storms to those already spent."

And again, in _All's Well that Ends Well_, the countess says to Helena:

"What's the matter That this distempered messenger of wet, The many-colored Iris, rounds thine eye?" _Act. i., Sc. 3._

And the peasant's rhymes and sayings undoubtedly contain some germs of truth, or they could never have so long held their ground. Admiral Fitzroy, in his "Weather Book," has rightly given a collection of such saws, though it might with advantage be greatly enlarged. Science has before now been forestalled by some bold guess of the vulgar. And often has some happy intuition outstripped the slow labor of the inductive process.

But with the English peasant a sense of the beautiful accompanies that of the useful. Living ever out of doors, he names his clouds after natural objects. He thus gives a {217} reality to them which is unknown to scientific nomenclature. The "lamb storms" of Derbyshire, and the "pewit storms" in Yorkskire, significantly mark the time of year when the lambs are yeaned in the cloughs, and the pewits return to the moors to breed. His symbolism is always true. The peasant in the eastern counties talks of "bulfinch skies" to express the lovely warm vermilion tints of sunset clouds. Tennyson's "daffodil sky" is not truer, nor Homer's [Greek text] more poetical. In Devonshire the peasan has his "lamb's-wool sky" the _tenuia lanae vellera_ of Virgil. In parts of the midland counties he has his "sheep clouds" the _schäffchen am himmel_ of the German, the same clouds which the Norfolk peasant boy has described with so perfect a touch:

"Detached in ranges through the air, Spotless as snow, and countless as they're fair. Scattered immensely wide from east to west, The beauteous semblance of a flock at rest."

The Derbyshire countryman knows the hard stratified masses of cloud (_cumulo-strati_) by the happy name of "rock clouds" and the great white rolling avalanches (_cumuli_) as "snow packs" and "wool packs" the former being rounder than the latter, which lie in folds pressed and packed upon one another. Further living amongst hills and mountains, watching them, as Wordsworth says, "grow" at night, enlarging with the darkness, he finely calls the great hill at the entrance to Dovedale, Thorpe Cloud. He had seen it apparently shift and move with the changes of light and atmosphere, and he could only liken it to a cloud. Perhaps, even at times, some faint glimmering might flit across his mind of the instability of the hills, and the rack to him thus became a symbol of the world's unsubstantial pageant.

The midland counties peasant, too, employs such old-world phrases as the sun is "wading" when it is straggling through a heavy scud, and the sun is "sitting" when her dark side is turned toward the earth. The poets themselves may be in vain searched for a finer expression than the first. The beginning of Sidney's sonnet, which Wordsworth has adopted,

"With how sad steps, O moon, thou climb'st the sky,"

and Milton's description,

"As if her head she bow'd Stooping through a fleecy cloud,"

are somewhat parallel. But the peasant's expression is equally fine. Most readers of "Modern Painters" will remember Mr. Ruskin's vivid description of what he so well calls the "helmet cloud," which rests on the peaks of mountains. But long before Mr. Ruskin wrote, the Westmoreland and Cumberland dalesman named the cloud that at times floats round the tor of Cross Fell by the still better names "helm cloud" and "helm bar."

We could indeed wish that Mr. Ruskin had more deeply studied peasant life and peasant habits. The meaning of the clouds in Turner^s "Salisbury" and "Stonehenge" would have then been more thoroughly appreciated. Fine and poetical as is Mr. Ruskin's interpretation, yet we venture to think that he misses the truth when, in this case, he refers Turner's inspiration to Greek sources. To those who have lived near the Plain, and have mixed with the shepherds, the meaning and the symbolism come far nearer home, and more closely touch the heart. Turner was here no Greek, except as all men who love beauty are Greeks. Here he was, at all events, intensely English. Sprung like so many great poets and painters from the lower class, he could sympathize with the shepherds of the Plain. To them, as to the shepherd in the "Iliad," standing on the hill-top facing the sea, shepherding their flocks, far away from any village, on the vast treeless down, the clouds become a constant source of fear or joy. Their hearts gladden as the light white clouds roll up from the English Channel, and then, as they say, "purl round" and retreat. {218} In spring and summer they joyfully hail the "water dogs," the "gossamer" of the Yorkshire peasant, which herald the fine weather. They, above all other English peasants, solitary on that wide plain, watch with fear the "sun-galls," Shakespeare's "water-galls," as the broken bits and patches of rainbows are called, hanging glorious, but wrathful, in the far horizon. They mark with dread "the messengers" and "water streamers," and at night, too, anxiously note the amber "wheel-cloud" round the moon.

With all this, like a true poet, Turner sympathized. He entered into the reality of shepherd life upon the Plain; its joys and its dangers. In one picture, therefore, he has given us the rain-clouds showering their blessings upon man, and in the other revealed the dread fatalistic power that ever darkens the background of life.

But we must leave the peasant, and turn to the fisherman. More even than the peasant, he naturally regards the weather in its effects upon his calling. The rain with him--we are speaking more especially now of the North Country fisherman--is "dirt," and a rainy sky a "dirty sky." The "water-galls" of the Salisbury shepherd, from which Shakespeare took those most exquisite similes, have with him lost their beauty, and are changed into "sea-devils," evil prophets of tempest. The flying clouds, that herald the storm, are with him "the flying devil and his imps." He realizes the danger, and therefore christens the clouds with rough names.

He too, like the peasant, is learned in weather-lore, and keeps an almanac of weather-rhymes in his memory. In such fishing villages as Staithes and Runswick, on the north-east Yorkshire coast, a large collection might easily be formed. They partake of the roughness and the truthfulness of the inhabitants. Such jingles as:

"When wind comes before rain Then let your topsails remain: But if the wind follows rain. Then you may close reef again,"

are certainly more accurate in sense than rhythm. Again, the couplet:

"When the sun crosses line, and wind's in the east. It will hand (hold) that way meast, first quarter at least,"

contains a warning not always to be despised. The riddle of the "brough," that amber halo of clouds seen sometimes round the moon, which the shepherds of Salisbury Plain call "the wheel," and the midland peasants "the burr," is solved by the rhyming adage:

"A far off brough Means a near hand rough."

But we must not be too critical, and demand both sense and rhythm. It is something if in poetry we obtain truth. At all events, the Yorkshire fishermen's rhymes are quite as good as a great many of those in which Apollo formerly conveyed his prophecies to mankind. And we think that Admiral Fitzroy might have profitably added some of them to his collection.

Many a time have we seen at some little fishing village the fishermen all detained by some "breeder," or "flyer," whose meaning their eyes alone could read. If the threatened storm has not visited the coast, yet the heavy sea tumbling in without a breath of air has shown that the gale has broken not far distant. Still mistakes arise. Life is constantly sacrificed. But the glory and the pride of science is, that, whilst serving the sublimest ends, it still helps the humblest. We may be unable to control the elements. But we shall triumph over the law by obeying the law. The day will come when the notion of chance will be altogether eliminated, and the law by which the clouds are governed recognized. And in the blessings of science all men are partakers. Alike shall the fisherman steer his craft with a firmer faith in the essential goodness of all things, and the hand of the artist gain strength and his eye see a {219} deeper beauty when each knows that the clouds are as regular in their movements as the stars.

Of course men living by the sea, daily watching the clouds, life itself hanging upon a knowledge, however uncertain, of the meaning of their color and their shapes, have naturally named them in a rude fashion. Landsmen, who only now and then gaze at the clouds, are apt to regard them as ever changing. But not "a wisp" flies in the highest air, not "a creeper" rises out of the sea, whose shapes are not moulded by a definite law. Day by day the same forms repeat themselves with unceasing regularity. The clouds might be mapped out like the land and sea over which they fly. More than half a century has passed since Howard first gave them names. After him Forster wrote, and like him illustrated his theory with diagrams of the principal cloud-forms. And now Admiral Fitzroy has so improved upon their nomenclature, that there is not a cloud that cannot be scientifically named and defined. But our sailors and fishermen have long ago known these facts. Not a stray waif of film flecks the heavens which they have not christened. They know all kinds and shapes, from the "crow-nests," those tiny white spots (_cirriti_) dotting the sky, up to the glorious "Queen Anne's feather," waving far away into the horizon its soft downy plume, rippled and barred by the wind.

Thus to take a few examples. The North Yorkshire fisherman has his "dyer's neif," a small dark purple cloud, so called from its supposed resemblance to the black grained fist (neif) of a dyer. Some three thousand years ago, Elijah's servant, on Mount Carmel, cried that he saw a little cloud rising out of the sea like a man's hand. And still on the Yorkshire coast the fisherman utters the same language, and knows that cloud still as the forerunner of storm and rain. Quite as striking, too, is the way in which his names of clouds throw a light upon Shakespeare. All readers will remember the passage between Hamlet and Polonins, ending with "Very like a whale;" a phrase which has passed into a proverb for anything very improbable. And no actor can utter it on the stage without producing a peal of laughter. Yet the proverb and the laughter are equally inappropriate. The names of the clouds in the passage are all real names. The "dromedary cloud," or, as Shakespeare calls it, "the camel cloud," is well known to sailors. It is a species of cumulus, a white, packed, humped cloud, and when seen in the southern hemisphere is said to foretell heat; but, in the northern, cold. It is also called the "hunchback cloud." "See, there's the hunchback; look at its pads," North Country fishermen will say. The "weasel-cloud" also is known, though not so well, and is more often called "the hog-cloud" and the "wind-bog," from its being the forerunner of wind. But the "whale-cloud" is as well known to sailors, especially those employed in the Greenland trade, as the "bridge-cloud," or "feather-cloud," or any other well recognized form. "We shall hae a bit o' a puff, lads. See that sea-devil; and yonder's a regular finner to the norrard," have we heard North Sea captains say. A "finner," it should be explained, is a small whale. If ever there was a realist, Shakespeare was. He drew direct from nature. But, like a true artist, he knew how to mould and shape mere barren naturalism by the vitalizing power of the imagination. In its white heat he fused all things. And so, noting the common names of clouds as daily used in conversation by sailors and fishermen and seafaring folk, he could rise from the satire of Hamlet to the high pathetic pitch of Antony's speech:

"Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish; A vapor, sometime, like a bear or lion, A towered citadel, a pendent rock, A forked mountain, or blue promontory. With trees upon't, that nod into the world, And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast these signs; They are black vesper's pageants.

_Eros._ Ay, my lord.

_Antony_. That which is now a horse, even with a thought The rack dislimns; and makes it indistinct As water is in water.

_Eros._ It does, my lord.

_Antony_. My good knave, Eros, now thy captain is Even such a body."

_Anthony and Cleopatra, Act iv, Sc._ 12.

{220}

Here the whole scene is colored by the imagination and ennobled by human pathos, such as no other man ever possessed. But the basis of the thought is the simplest naturalism, such as other men had seen and observed a thousand times before. The Flying Dragon is mentioned as far back as the latter part of the sixteenth century by Hyll in his "Contemplation of Mysteries," where the first rude ideas of weather forecasts may be found. The "pendent rock" and "forked mountain" are nothing more than the "rock-clouds" of the Derbyshire peasant, concerning which a local rhyme runs:

"When clouds appear like rocks and towers, The earth's refreshed by fragrant showers."

We must not, however, lose sight of our North Country fisherman. If to him the sky is at times black with terror, yet it is also splendid with beauty. In fine weather it is his garden, the heavenly "meadow," as St. Chrysostom would say, blossomed over with flakes and garlands of cloud-bloom, white and peach-colored. He has his names for them, his "crow buds," and his "cherry flowers," and the great "tree cloud" with its purple branches. It is, too, his fairyland full of loveliest shapes flying and wandering here and there, "pigeons," as he calls those white detached winged "flyers," "flying fish," "streamers," and pencilled "plumes."

Thus far of the peasant and the sailor. They certainly more than any one else recognize the terror and the beauty of cloud scenery. The well-to-do man knows the clouds only as they affect his pleasures. Life is not dependent upon them, and he therefore misses that true enjoyment which springs from reality. On the whole, he thinks with the Epicurean that rain ought to fall by night, whilst his wife sighs for Italy and blue skies. But let us, on the contrary, love the grey cloud, and rather hold with that fine old skipper, who, after enduring six months of unbroken weather in the Bay of Naples, cried out on seeing a cloud, "Turn out, boys, turn out; here's weather as is weather; none of your everlasting blue sky." Let us rather love the storm-rack that beats against our island. This it is that gives the color to the cheeks of our maidens; this that has moulded our features, and deepened the lines of our faces, and hardened the national character.

Let us be thankful, with Mr. Raskin, that nowhere can the swiftness of the rain-cloud be seen as in England, nowhere in such perfection as among the Derbyshire hills; nowhere the keenness of the storm be felt as on a Yorkshire wold. [Footnote 36] But in these days even the power of the elements is threatened. We have seen in Derbyshire, when the west wind blows, the cloughs filled, not with troops of clouds dashing slantwise up the valleys, but choked with dull rolling Lancashire smoke; seen, under this canopy of fog, the snow on the Edges turn yellow and brown. One by one, too, the blast furnaces are burning up the Yorkshire moors. And instead of white wreaths of clouds crowning the wolds, a pillar of fire lights them up by night, and a cloud of smoke darkens them by day.

[Footnote 36: "Modern Painter," vol v., part vii., chap. iv., § 14.]

Luckily the sea-coast still remains unpolluted. And if any one really wishes to study the clouds, let him go to the North Yorkshire and Northumberland coasts in winter. Then will he understand something of their majesty and power; then will he see the true purple wind-tints, see the sky a wilderness full of strange weird creatures--"wild hogs," those purple hump-backed clouds running one after another in a line, and the "Flying Devil and his imps" marshalling the storm, which is banking up out of the German ocean; see, too, the "Norway bishop" rise--a man's figure clothed {221} in white, with outstretched arms, under whose ban many a fisherman from Staithes and Runswick has sunk; see the figure melt and disappear in a mist of sleet and snow and hail; and then, last of all, see "the weather-gleam," when all objects loom against the one pale rift of sky, as ships loom in an east wind.

These sights have never been painted, and never can. Even Turner cannot give them. For who can give that which is the greatest pleasure in watching the clouds, the feeling of change? Yon cannot paint the movement of the rack, as the vapor shifts from form to form, now a mountain, now a dragon, now a fish, each change answering to the changes of the spirit. Only the poets can paint the clouds and their lessons--only Shelley and Shakespeare. But put away even Shakespeare himself. Love them, study them from nature. And, as St. Chrysostom says, the poor man, more than any one else, enjoys "the luxury of the elements." The lawyer may hold _cujus solum ejus ad coelum_; but he who most enjoys the clouds, as with all things else, is their real possessor. And the artist and the poor man, though they may not have a rood of ground to call their own, here reign over an empire.

Translated from the German.

MALINES AND WÜRZBURG.

A SKETCH OF THE CATHOLIC CONGRESSES HELD AT MALINES AND WÜRZBURG.

BY ANDREW NIEDERMASSER.