Part 10
As often as I had reflected upon Rome and her seven hills, on arriving there the hills seemed to be a new revelation to me, and the rapid driving of the Italians up and down the steep and narrow streets bewildered me not a little. I found myself on the way from the depot, constantly asking, can this be Rome? Everything looks so new. The houses are light sandstone, like the buildings in Paris. I was informed that this portion of Rome was calculated to mislead me, and that I would find our hotel quite like Paris and New York houses. The next morning, instead of making a pilgrimage to the Roman forum, the Colosseum, and the palace of the Cæsars, we drove to St. Peter’s, which kept me still quite in the notion that Rome had been whitewashed, or something done to destroy her ancient classic aspect. We spent four hours in the great church wandering around and witnessing a procession of priests, monks, and gorgeous cardinals. There is no gewgaw, no tinsel in St. Peter’s as one sees in so many other Catholic churches; although gold is used in profusion, yet it is kept in subjection to the tone of the walls. The bronze altar over St. Peter’s tomb is wonderfully effective in the way of concentrating color and attention. It is almost necessary to find a niche in the base of some pillar and sit there awhile before plunging into the immensity of this great building, just as a bird gets ready before darting into space. But after all, the feeling of immensity which St. Peter’s gives is not so grateful to the religious sense as the Gothic style of architecture, with its stained window, and deep recesses,
“Its long drawn aisles and fretted vaults.”
There is little solemnity in St. Peter’s, little shade and no music, only from side chapels; but there are grand proportions, perfect simplicity, and the pure light of heaven sending a beam upon a golden dove above St. Peter’s tomb, which radiates in a thousand streams of light over the marble pavement.
Nothing impressed me so much in Rome or suggested the ancient glory so much as the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla. The magnificence of this building must have been unparalleled. It accommodated sixteen hundred bathers at once, and some of its walls are so thick one fears to estimate the depth. What would the old Romans have thought of the buildings of the present generation, which fall down or burn up without much warning. Here is solid masonry standing since the year 212.
The different arches and columns of Rome constitute one of the most attractive features to almost every traveller. Let those who enjoy them climb their steps or strain their eyes to decipher in a scorching Italian sun the dates, the seven golden candlesticks, the shew bread, and Aaron’s rod, on Titus’s arch for example. I shall wander off while they are so occupied into the old capitol—into the room where Rienzi stood and exhorted the people to recover their ancient rights and into the basement below where St. Paul was imprisoned.
The present king had just been crowned at that time. I saw the king and queen in a procession where they were driving to gratify the people, and again we saw him unattended driving with his brother through the grounds of the Borghese Villa. The carnival was forbidden that year in Rome on account of the death of the King and Pope, but there were out-croppings of it on the streets. The tinseled finery and humbug of it seem so incongruous in ancient classic Rome. I was glad to escape it.
The old Pantheon is too important in its history for any one to write of it, but I have always liked the following paragraph from James Freeman Clarke concerning it: “The Romans in this church, or temple, worshiped their own gods, while they allowed the Jews, when in Rome, to worship their Jewish god, and the Egyptians to worship the gods of Egypt, and when they admitted the people of a conquered state to become citizens of Rome their gods were admitted with them; but in both cases the new citizens occupied a subordinate position to the old settlers. The old worship of Rome was free from idolatry. Jupiter, Juno, and the others were not represented by idols. But there was an impassable gulf between the old Roman religion and modern Roman thought, and Christianity came to the Roman world not as a new theory but as a new life, and now her churches stand by the side of the ruins of the Temple of Vesta and the old empty Pantheon.”
ELECTRICITY.
What is it? and what some of its manifestations? The name was given to an occult, but everywhere present, property of material things. First discovered by the ancients in amber (Gr. _electron_) and brought into evidence by friction. It is generally spoken of as a highly elastic, imponderable fluid, or fluids, with which all matter is supposed to be in a greater or less degree charged. Though such fluids have never been discovered as entities, and their existence may be but imaginary, it was asserted to account for facts that otherwise seemed inexplicable.
Definitions of electricity are at hand, and could be easily given; but they do not define or accurately point out that which they designate. All that can be said, with confidence, is that certain phenomena which come within our observation suggest the presence of such fluids, and are not otherwise explained. The answer to the question, “What is it?” must be the honest confession, we do not know. But, if ignorant of what it is, we may yet intelligently study its manifestations. The phenomena are not less capable of satisfactory discussion because the efficient agent producing them is unknown.
The theory of two imponderable fluids or electricities having strong attractive and repellant forces, is adopted because probable, and it helps make the discussion intelligible.
The awakened interest now so widely felt in this branch of natural science is more than just the desire to know what is knowable of the world we live in. At first, and indeed for ages, only the curious studied electricity, and practical men asked “_Cui bono?_” But in the present century it has become an applied science. In no other field have our studies of nature been more fruitful of discoveries practically affecting the multiform industries, and improving the rapidly advancing civilization of the age.
Some of the skillful inventions for controlling and utilizing this power lying all about us will be mentioned hereafter.
It will be well first to state a few facts that are known and mostly established by experimental tests:
(1) The earth, and all bodies on its surface, with the atmosphere surrounding it, are charged with electricity of greater or less potency. This seems their permanent state, though in some cases, its presence is not easily detected.
(2) In quantity or intensity it is very different in different bodies, as also in the same under different conditions. In some portions of vast objects, as the earth and its atmosphere, it accumulates, immense currents being poured into them, while others are perhaps to the same extent drained.
(3) Through some bodies the subtle fluid may pass with but slight obstruction—and they are called _conductors_. In others the hindrance is greater, and we call them _insulators_. But the difference is only of degrees; as the best conductors offer some obstruction, and the most perfect insulators do not completely insulate. The metals, charcoal, water, and most moist substances, as the earth and animal bodies, offer but little resistance. The atmosphere, most kinds of glass, sulphur, india rubber, vulcanite, shellac, and other resins, with dry silk and cotton, are our best insulators. Friction used to secure electrical manifestations is the occasion rather than the cause of the electricity thus developed or set free. That it does not cause it, even in the sense that it causes heat is evident, since the quantity of electricity bears no proportion to the amount of friction used to produce it.
Though, really, there are not several distinct kinds of electricity, as statical, dynamic, magnetic, frictional, and atmospheric, the nomenclature of the science is at least convenient, and will not mislead. It indicates the methods of production, and makes the discussion of the subject more intelligible. And then the electricity developed or set free by the different methods of excitement, though of the same kind, differs much in degree and intensity.
What is called statical electricity is the condition of the subtle force in a state of electrical quiescence; and all electricity in motion, however excited by friction, heat, chemical action, or otherwise, is dynamic.
Perpetual modifications are taking place in electrical condition of all matter, that when made apparent, at first may seem quite inexplicable. The excited currents flow with amazing rapidity. Their actions and re-actions baffle our calculations, and the imagination itself is bewildered by their extent and complexity. Yet by electrical tests and laboratory experiments, carefully employed, the laws of electricity are now as well known as those of any other branch of physical science, and the phenomena, if more startling, are no more mysterious than the manifestations of heat, light and gravitation.
Atmospheric electricity is not different in kind from that brought into evidence by the methods of the experimenter in the laboratory, subject to his control, and much used in the arts and industries of life. The lightning that shineth from the one part under heaven to the other part under heaven, a bright light in the cloud, is the same as the electric spark from the moderately charged receiver, when the positive and negative poles are brought into contact—the same as the less intense spark excited by passing the hand rapidly over the fur on the cat’s back when the electrical conditions are favorable.
The storm cloud is a vast receiver and by induction becomes at times highly charged with electricity. If the cloud is at rest, and the heated air grows moist, that which is known as sheet or heat lightning appears in frequent flashes. The imprisoned electricity leaps forth from the bosom or edge of the cloud, but as instantly gathers itself back to its source, and apparently without tension or force enough to crash through the atmosphere to any distant object. The flashes are unaccompanied by the noise of thunder, and may be but reflections on the cloud from a source far beyond. We watch them without fear of danger, and the subdued impression is that of the beautiful.
Amidst the terrific grandeur of the violent thunder storm another form of lightning is seen; either the vivid flash that seems to envelop us, or zigzag, sometimes forked lines that dash across the cloud earthward, and occasionally, as in a return stroke, from the earth to the cloud.
In about the middle of the eighteenth century the identity of lightning with electricity was fully ascertained, and since then the most sublime and startling phenomena of our thunder storms are better understood. Under certain contingencies they must occur. Since the different clouds or portions of the same cloud are charged with different electricities, positive and negative, when these by the winds are brought near each other, or rolled together, fierce explosions follow, and great electrical changes take place in the clouds. Vast supplies of the imprisoned fiery fluid leap from strata to strata, or, if the distance is not too great, and the earth is at the same time strongly electrified, crash down to it through whatever sufficient conductors are found. If those not sufficient to receive and convey the charge be in the path they are dashed aside; men and beasts are killed by the shock, trees and other less perfect conductors are scattered in fragments.
Usually the more prominent objects as masts of ships, trees, and buildings are struck in the lightning’s course from the cloud, but occasionally those lowest down, near trees, and even in cellars receive the shock. In these cases the current is probably from the earth, whose electric condition is negative with respect to the clouds that pass over it. In either case the opposite electricities that strongly attract each other, and whose concurrence produces the destructive discharge near the earth’s surface are held apart by the stratum of air between them. When the attraction becomes too strong to be resisted by the insulating medium they rush together, in their fiery embrace, the flash and concussion being in proportion to the intensity of the charge.
Do lightning rods protect? Yes; but not perfectly. If properly constructed, and of sufficient conducting capacity, they are a source of safety, and to discard them as useless is not wise.
The instances in which buildings provided with rods have been struck do not prove them useless; or, as some say, that the rods do harm by attracting the lightning that they are unable to conduct to the earth without injury to the building. The point does not attract, but only catches the electricity that sweeps over it. When violent shocks or explosions occur the rod may be of little service. Its office is to prevent these by silently conducting the excess of electricity from the air. The rod, rightly placed, conducts to the earth all it can, lessening the evil it does not entirely prevent. But all danger is not removed. The position of the opposite poles in the immense battery may be such as to give the stroke a horizontal direction, and far below the point of the rod; such currents have been known to pass long distances through atmosphere and smite with destructive violence objects lying in their path. Against these lateral attacks rods above our roofs are probably little or no protection. Still the more good conductors there are in any locality the less danger, as they prevent the accumulation of electricity.
POACHERS IN ENGLAND.
By JAMES TURVES.
It is somewhat surprising that none of our present-day novelists, like Charles Reade or Thomas Hardy, who are always on the outlook for romantic realism, whether it be in incident or in fact, have had their eyes directed to the rural poachers who abound in every shire. Poachers, though neither quite respectable members of the church nor of society, are more interesting characters than burglars or ticket-of-leave men, who figure frequently in the novelist’s pages. And, very strange to say, it has been left to a lady to write the first accounts of poaching episodes, episodes remarkable for their masculine touches and their wonderful grip of open-air reality; Harriet Martineau, in her “Forest and Game Law Tales,” astonishes us by her graphic realism and her delicacy of treatment; Charles Kingsley wrote one or two of his pathetic ballads on the subject of a poacher and his wife; Norman Macleod made a Highland poacher the subject of a character sketch; and in our own times Mr. Richard Jefferies, a writer who finds pleasure in minute description and vivid realism, has in his own style of exact word-painting given us a pleasant book about his own experiences as an amateur poacher. But the real poacher, the rural vagabond, the parish character, the ne’er-do-weel, whose life is a living protest against the game-laws, is of more lasting interest than any amateur can ever be.
Viewed from the serene vantage-ground of the philosophy of life, poaching is mean and ignoble, and demoralizing sport to you or me, and is not worth the powder and shot, while the fines and punishments are out of all proportion to the joys; yet there are not wanting apologists for it in this apologetic century. “Poaching! Man, there’s no sin in catching a rabbit or snaring a hare. They belong to naebody. Bless you! it’s a gentleman’s trick, shooting.” This is the opinion of any Northern lowland ploughman’s wife, as she looks from her red-tiled cottage-door out upon the face of the corn-growing mother earth, which has given her sweet memories and a host of country neighbors and friends.
Sixty years ago peasants could use their guns without let or hindrance, and it was then a common thing for a farm-laborer to go out and have a shot when no sportsman was in the way. Taking an odd shot now and then was never, and is not even now, looked upon by them as poaching. But a noted poacher, nicknamed the Otter, tells me, with a sigh, “Poaching is not what it once was!” And it is true. Not so very long ago it was a very profitable occupation, and comparatively respectable, before railways and telegraph wires and penny newspapers stereotyped metropolitan ideas into all and sundry. An old farmer is pointed out as having made all his money by systematic poaching, and an influential city official is said to have laid his early nest-egg by no other means than being a good shot where he had no invitation to be. To-day even rural society would look down upon a young farmer engaged in poaching. It is no longer sport to gentlemen, says the Otter, and is left to moral vagabonds, the waifs and strays, the parish loafers. The great strides of agriculture, the game-laws, and the artificial breeding of game have driven it into sneaking ways, and robbed it of its robust picturesque adventures. To excel in it a man must give up his nights and days to it—in short, he must become a specialist, and even then it hardly pays.
A genuine poacher has great force of character; he has a genius for field and woodcraft. He is the eldest survivor of rustic romance. His wild life is tinged with the love of adventure, the love of moon and stars, the knowledge of the seasons, the haunts and habits of game, and the power of trapping rabbits in dark woodland glades. No man knows more intimately the night-side of Nature between the chilly hours of midnight and sunrise. In this cold-blooded age there are always some Quixotic individuals, born in the outwardly sleepy villages and lifeless farmsteads, with the love of midnight adventure, who wage long warfare against the game-laws, and who only knuckle under to the law’s severity when their health gives way or an enemy turns informer. “Rheumatics plays the mischief with poaching!” exclaims the Otter, referring to the long night-watches in wet ditches and beside hedges for hares on the lea fields. Irrespective of all thought of gain, there is an infatuation to eager spirits in this midnight sport. It appeals to strong, healthy, brave men. Charles Kingsley, in “The Bad Squire,” with its strong sympathy and feeling, and its cry of “blood” on all the squire owned, from the foreign shrub to the game he sold, gives us the poacher’s wife view, a view we are too apt to ignore or forget, with the weary eyes and heavy heart, that grow light only with weeping, and go wandering into the night. We forget too often that in the hearts of common folk there is the glamor of poetic romance about poaching, and a bitter hatred toward the game-laws. Like Rizpah’s son, many a lad has had no other incentive than that “The farmer dared us to do it,” and that he found it sweetened by the secret sympathy of the people. Too often, I fear, the game-laws dare a brave rustic into poaching: he has only this one way left to satisfy the insatiable British thirst for field sport. It is gravely whispered that some of the most striking men have tasted its romance; and if all stories be true, the master of the English drama owes to an unlucky deer-poaching incident the lucky turn in his career which sent him to London and to writing plays, and poachers may reasonably claim Shakspere as their patron saint.
When the strong, sweet ale warms his heart, the poacher boasts of dreadful adventures in the night, of leaping broad mill-dams when chased, of giving fight in the dark, and discomfiting gamekeepers by clever tricks. He paints his exploits in such heroical glory, that the seat next the fire in the ale-house is given him by admiring and fearing rustics. Honesty he ascribes to practicedness in the world’s ways, and he looks upon keeping out of jail as the greatest victory that man can achieve. He is the type of man that makes our best soldiers, or, as he phrases it, is paid to stop the gun-shots. He requires no almanac to tell him when the moon is to rise to-morrow, and he could give the gamekeepers lessons. He is to be envied for his quick feeling of life and his sympathy for field and forest sport, and that wild exuberance of spirits which he seems to catch with his hares. It is this rural vagabond—and not Mr. Commonplace Respectability—who rivets young folks’ attention; his energy anywhere would achieve success; and he is free from that unpardonable fault, dulness. In the rustic drama of life he is the character that takes hold of us in our best impulses—and is not that the best world of the ideal? He disdains to shoot starlings or black-birds; he is too much a sportsman to pay attention to such small game. He can put his hands to various ways of living; he can collect bird’s eggs, shoot wild rock-pigeons for a farmers’ club, gather blackberries, or, as they say in Scotland, “brambles,” pull young ash-saplings in plantations, and sell them to grooms in the livery stables in town.—_The Contemporary Review._
EIGHT CENTURIES WITH WALTER SCOTT.
By WALLACE BRUCE.
“The burning sun of Syria had not yet attained its highest point in the horizon, when a knight of the Red Cross, who had left his distant northern home, and joined the host of the Crusaders in Palestine, was pacing slowly along the sandy deserts which lie in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, or as it is called, the Lake Asphalites, where the waves of the Jordan pour themselves into an inland sea, from which there is no discharge of waters.”
This is the graphic opening of “The Talisman.” The steel clad pilgrim was entering upon that great plain, once watered even as the Garden of the Lord, now an arid and sterile wilderness, sloping away to the Dead Sea, which hides beneath its sluggish waves the once proud cities of Sodom and Gomorrah;—a dark mass of water “Which holds no living fish in its bosom, bears no skiff on its surface, and sends no tribute to the ocean.” It was a scene of desolation still testifying to the just wrath of the Almighty. As in the days of Moses, “The whole land was brimstone and salt; it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth thereon.” The first sentence of the chapter revealed the descriptive and artistic power of the novelist, for the desolation is made more desolate by the introduction of the solitary horseman, journeying slowly through the flitting sand, under the noontide splendor of the eastern sun.
Almost a century has passed since the triumph of the first crusade. The Latin Kingdom, founded by its leaders, had lasted only eighty-eight years. Jerusalem is again in the hands of the Saracens. The crescent gleams on the Mosque of St. Omar. The cross has been torn from her temples, her shrines profaned, and the worshipers of the Holy Sepulcher murdered or exiled. The second crusade had been a failure, and its history a series of disasters. Thousands perished in the long march across Asia Minor. Those who reached Palestine undertook the siege of Damascus, but the attempt was disastrous. In 1187 a powerful leader of the East appeared in the high-souled and chivalrous Saladin. By wise counsel he united the factions of the Mohammedans, which had been at variance for two hundred years; and on the arrival of the third crusade, with which event we are now dealing, he was enabled to present a solid front of warriors “like unto the sand of the desert in multitude.”