Part 26

Professor Airy, however, considers this difficulty to be over-estimated. He observes, that “persons who take great interest in Astronomy appear to regard the determination of measures, like those of the distance of the sun and moon, as mysteries beyond ordinary comprehension, based perhaps upon principles which it is impossible to present to common minds with the smallest probability that they will be understood; if they accept these measures at all, they adopt them only upon loose personal credit; in any case, the impression which the statement makes on the mind is very different from that created by a record of the distance in miles between two towns, or the number of acres in a field.”

Now, the measure of the moon’s distance involves no principle more abstruse than the measure of the distance of a tree on the opposite bank of a river; and the Professor shows that the methods used for measuring astronomical distances are, in some applications, absolutely the same as the methods of ordinary theodolite surveying, and are in other applications equivalent to them; and that, in fact, there is nothing in their principles which will present the smallest difficulty to a person who has attempted the common practice of plotting from angular measures.[125]

The habit of beholding the spectacle of the sun gradually sinking, to disappear after a time below the level of the sea,—this habit, we say, and our astronomical knowledge, have long since familiarised us with the phenomenon which, undoubtedly, would appear inexplicable were we to witness it for the first time, and without being prepared. Who has not in childhood felt this wonder? The ancients were far from being able to account for it: some Greek philosophers regarded the sun as an inflamed mass, which plunged itself every night into the waters of the sea; and they pretended to have heard a hissing noise! We have found the same idea lingering among the credulous peasantry of Sussex. We remember our first nurse, a native of Battle, used to relate that, from the cliffs at Eastbourne, she had seen the comet of 1769 dip its tail into the sea, and that she had distinctly heard the “hissing noise.” Such is the persistence of certain impressions, which, monstrous as they are, can only be explained away by reasoning.[126]

Footnote 125:

See Prof. Airy’s _Six Lectures on Astronomy_.

Footnote 126:

See _Things not Generally Known_, First Series, p. 11.

PHYSIOGNOMY.

Sir David Brewster, in his introductory Address to the University of Edinburgh, 1862-3, remarked that one of the characteristics of the age in which we live was its love of the mysterious and marvellous.

I refer (said Sir David) to the so-called science of physiognomy, but more especially to that morbid expansion of it called the physiognomy of the human form, which has been elaborated in Germany, and is now likely to obtain possession of the English mind. In want of any other arguments, our physiognomists assert that it is simply probable that the outer form would be designed on purpose to represent the mental character, and on this ground they dogmatically declare that the expressions of rage, or grief, or fear have been “divinely designed on purpose that the inner mind may be known to those who watch the outer man.” The persons who use such arguments and have recourse to such assumptions never propose to make any inductive comparison of a certain number of well-measured forms with the well-ascertained mental phases with which they are associated. Were such experiments made, they would yield no result. No two physiognomists, acting separately, would agree in measuring and characterising the forms and indications of the head, the features, the hands, and the feet of the patient; and no two men—neither the sagacious judge on the bench, nor the shrewd counsel at the bar—could determine his real character were they to conjure with all the events of his life. In this new physiognomy, a head large in the mid region indicates a predominance of the feelings over the other faculties; a proneness to superstition and fanaticism is shown by a little increase in the elevation; and a head large behind evinces practical ability; and, as Dr. Carus says, characterises a race which will give birth to great historic names! Small heads, however, are not to be despised. They indicate talent, but not genius; while very small ones belong, he says, to the excitable class, from whom “a great part of the misery of society arises.” In the varying expressions of the human face physiognomists find a better support for their views. That the emotions of the past and the present leave permanent traces on the human countenance is doubtless true, and to this extent we are all physiognomists, often very presumptuous ones, and, excepting accidental coincidences, always in the wrong, when we infer from any external appearance the character and disposition of our neighbour. In every class of society we encounter faces which we instinctively shun, and others to which we as instinctively cling. But how frequently have we found our estimates to be false! The repulsive aspect has proved to be the result of physical suffering, of domestic disquiet, or of ruined fortunes; and under the bland and smiling countenance a heart deceitful and vindictive, and “desperately wicked,” has often been found concealed.

TRADE AND PHILANTHROPY.

In the Memoirs of Bulstrode Whitlocke, the following anecdote is told as illustrative of the erroneous notions formerly entertained as to the Employment of Machinery for purposes of economy. “The advantage of free competition, and the inexhaustible resources of new inventions, contrivances, and appliances were,” it is observed by the editor at that time (1658), “utterly ignored. The Swedish ambassador” (to the court of Oliver Cromwell) “seems to have had a gleam of the truth, a dawning consciousness of how desirable it was to economise human labour by introducing machinery whenever practicable. He told a pleasant story of the Czar and a Dutchman; and how the latter, observing the boats passing upon the Volga to be manned with three hundred men in each boat, who, in a storm and high wind, held the bottom of the sails down with their hands, offered to the former a mode of manning each boat quite as efficiently with thirty men instead of the three hundred, by which the cost of transport would be lessened. But the Emperor called him a knave; and asked him if a boat that now went with three hundred men should be brought to go as well with thirty only, how were the other two hundred and seventy men to get their living?”

Cromwell, it will be remembered, protected by Act of Parliament a sawmill erected in his time, it is imagined, on the site of the Belvidere-road, Lambeth; in which locality at this day there is probably more sawing by machinery than in any other part of England.

World-Knowledge.

MISCELLANEA.

ENERGY and force of character are among the first requisites essential to success in business. A man may possess a high degree of refinement, large stores of knowledge, and even a well-disciplined mind; but if he is destitute of this one principle, which may be termed resolution of soul, he is like a watch without a mainspring—beautiful, but inefficient, and unfit for service.

Never do too much at a time, is a good practical maxim. Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton gives the following history of his literary habits: Many persons, seeing me so much engaged in active life, and as much about the world as if I had never been a student, have said to me, “When do you get time to write all your books? How on earth do you contrive to do so much work?” I shall surprise you by the answer I make. The answer is this: “I contrive to do so much by never doing too much at a time. A man, to get through work well, must not overwork himself; or, if he do too much to-day, the reaction of fatigue will come, and he will be obliged to do too little to-morrow. Now, since I began really and earnestly to study, which was not till I had left college, and was actually in the world, I may perhaps say I have gone through as large a course of general reading as most men of my time. I have travelled much, and I have seen much; I have mixed much in politics, and the various business of life; and, in addition to all this, I have published somewhere about sixty volumes, some upon subjects requiring much research. And what time, do you think, as a general rule, I have devoted to study—to reading and writing? Not more than three hours a day; and when Parliament is sitting, not always that. But then, during those hours, I have given my whole attention to what I was about.”

Sir Benjamin Brodie says that “humility leads to the highest distinction, because it leads to self-improvement.” He adds—and the advice cannot be too often repeated—”study your own characters; endeavour to learn and supply your own deficiencies; never assume to yourself qualities which you do not possess; combine all this with energy and activity, and you cannot predicate of yourselves, nor can others predicate of you, at what point you may arrive at last.”

Among the empiric arts of gaining notoriety, that by engraved portraits has led to some curious results. When the late John Harrison Curtis, the aurist, came to town to seek his fortune, he had his portrait engraved in large handsome style, and offered the same to a printseller to publish. He demurred, as the original was unknown; but recommended Curtis to leave his prints at the different printshops “on sale, or return.” The sudden appearance in the shop-windows of a large portrait of the great unknown led to the question, “Who is _this_ Mr. Curtis?” The repeated inquiries laid the foundation of his fortune, and led to his living in good style for many years in Soho-square, and numbering royalty and nobility among his patients; but he outlived his professional reputation, and died in reduced circumstances.

Silence, says Boyle, discovers Wisdom and conceals Ignorance; and ’tis a property that is so much belonging to Wise Men, that even a Fool, when he holdeth his peace, may pass for one of that sort.

It is one thing to see that a line is crooked, and another thing to be able to draw a straight one. It is not quite so easy to do a good thing as those imagine who never try.

One of Sir Thomas Wyat’s common sayings was, that there were three things which should always be strictly observed: “Never to play with any man’s unhappiness or deformity, for that is inhuman; nor on superiors, for that is saucy and undutiful; nor on holy matters, for that is irreligious.”

A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious, and low.[127]

One very common error misleads the opinion of mankind,—that, universally, authority is pleasant, submission painful. In the general course of human affairs, the very reverse of this is nearer the truth. Command is anxiety; obedience, ease.[128]

Lamartine has well observed: “Travelling is summing up a long life in a few years; it is one of the strongest exercises a man can give his heart and his mind. The philosopher, the politician, the poet, should all have travelled much. Changing the moral horizon is to change thought.”

“Begin at the Beginning” is an excellent maxim. The laborious pursuit of first principles brings its own reward. To begin at the beginning in the sciences, as well as in matters of fact, is the nearest and safest road to the end. Even sensible men are too commonly satisfied with tracing their thoughts a little way backwards, and they are, of course, soon perplexed by a profounder adversary. In this respect, most people’s minds are too like a child’s garden, where the flowers are planted without their roots. It may be said of morals and of literature, as truly as of sculpture and painting, that, to understand the outside of human nature, we should be well acquainted with the inside.

Such is the Waywardness of Fate, that one man sucks an orange, and is choked by a pip; another swallows a penknife, and lives: one runs a thorn into his hand, and no skill can save him (a fact of recent date); another has a shaft of a gig passed completely through his body, and recovers: one is overturned on a smooth common, and breaks his neck; another is tossed out of a gig over Brighton cliff, and survives: one walks on a windy day, and meets death by a brickbat; another is blown up into the air, like Lord Hatton, in Guernsey Castle, and comes down uninjured. The escape of this nobleman was indeed a miracle. An explosion of gunpowder, which killed his mother, wife, some of his children, and many other persons, and blew up the whole fabric of the castle, lodged him and his bed on a wall overhanging a tremendous precipice. Perceiving a mighty disorder (as he might expect), he was going to step out of his bed to know what was the matter, which, if he had done, he would have been irrecoverably lost; but, in the instant of this moving, a flash of lightning came and showed him the precipice, whereupon he lay still till people came and took him down.[129]

There is an almost prophetic meaning in the following passage from Berkeley’s “Essay towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain,” written soon after the affair of the South-Sea Scheme: “All projects for growing rich by sudden extraordinary methods, as they operate violently on the passions of men, and encourage them to despise the slow moderate gains that are to be made by an honest industry, must be ruinous to the public; and even the winners themselves will at length be involved in the public ruin.”

Theodore Hook was one of the most experienced exponents of the Town Life of his day: in habits, a bachelor, notwithstanding his industry as a man of letters, he saw more of the outside world than the majority of idle men. He has left many of these experiences in his novels, which, as pictures of life, are valuable.

Thus, in _Gilbert Gurney_, he gives this admirable bit of club criticism: “People who are conscious of what is due to themselves never display irritability or impetuosity; their manners insure civility—their own civility secures respect: but the blockhead or the coxcomb, fully aware that something more than ordinary is necessary to produce an effect, is sure, whether in clubs or coffee-houses, to be the most fastidious and factious of the community, the most overbearing in his manners towards his inferiors, the most restless and irritable among his equals, the most cringing and subservient before his superiors.” No man could utter such criticism with more complete safety from being answered with a _Tu quoque_.

Footnote 127:

Swift.

Footnote 128:

Paley.

Footnote 129:

_New Monthly Magazine._

PREDICTIONS OF SUCCESS.

A few noteworthy incidents have occurred in the early lives of great men, which have singularly accorded with their success in after-life.

The first notice of Lord Chancellor Somers as a boy is exceedingly curious. In Cooksey’s _Life and Character of Lord Somers_, the following is stated to be well authenticated. It is to the effect that the boy was walking with one of his aunts, under whose care he was placed at the time, when “a beautiful roost-cock flew upon his curly head, and while perched there crowed three times very loudly.” The occurrence was instantly viewed as an omen of his future greatness.

Pope, writing to Lord Orrery, after first witnessing Garrick’s performance of Richard III., said, “That young man never had his equal as an actor, and will never have a rival.” As yet the prophecy is unshaken.

A few weeks before Lord Chatham died, Lord Camden paid him a visit. Chatham’s son, William Pitt, left the room on Lord Camden’s coming in. “You see that young man,” said the old lord; “what I now say, be assured, is not the fond partiality of a parent, but grounded on a very accurate examination. Rely upon it, that young man will be more distinguished in this country than ever his father was.” His prophecy was in part accomplished. At the age of twenty-four he was Chancellor of the Exchequer; and before he had attained his twenty-fifth year, had been offered, and refused, the place of First Minister.

When Horatio Nelson was a weakly child, he gave proofs of that resolute heart and nobleness of mind which, during his whole career of labour and of glory, so eminently distinguished him. When a mere boy, he strayed a bird’s-nesting from his grandmother’s house, in company with a cow-boy; the dinner-hour elapsed, he was absent, and could not be found; the alarm of the family then became very great, for they apprehended that he might have been carried off by gipsies. At length, after search had been made for him in various directions, he was discovered alone, sitting composedly by the side of a brook which he could not get over. “I wonder, child,” said the old lady when she saw him, “that hunger and fear did not drive you home.” “Fear! grandmamma,” replied the future hero; “I never saw fear—what is it?”

Arthur Wellesley, when at school at Chelsea, was a boy of indolent and careless manner, and rather than join in the amusements of the playground delighted to lean against a large tree, observing his schoolfellows when playing around him. If any boy played unfairly, Arthur quickly apprised those engaged in the game: on the delinquent being turned out, it was generally wished that he should supply his place; but nothing could induce him to do so: when beset by a party of five or six, he would fight with the utmost courage and determination until he freed himself from their grasp; he would then retire again to his tree, and look about him, as observant as before. Such was the love of fair play in the boy who became the great Duke of Wellington.

An incident in the life of Parry, the intrepid Arctic navigator, may also be related here. He left Bath, accompanied by an old and faithful servant of the family, with whom he travelled to Plymouth, and who did not leave him till he saw him finally settled in the _Ville de Paris_ man-of-war. To Parry all was new. He had never before beheld the sea, and his experience of naval matters had been confined to the small craft on the river Avon. He seemed almost struck dumb with astonishment at his first sight of the ocean and of a line-of-battle ship; but, after a while recovering himself, he began eagerly to examine every thing around him, and to ask numberless questions of all who were inclined to listen. While so engaged, he saw one of the sailors descending the rigging from aloft; and in a moment, before the astonished servant knew what Parry was about, he sprang forward, and, with his wonted agility, clambered up to the mast-head, from which giddy elevation he waved his cap in triumph to those whom he had left below. When he regained the deck, the sailors, who had witnessed the feat, gathered round him and commended his spirit, telling him he was “a fine fellow, and a true sailor every inch of him.” We can well imagine with what gratification the various members of his family would receive the account of this and every other incident connected with his first entry on his new career, and how eagerly they would hail his conduct on this occasion as a happy omen of future success.[130]

Footnote 130:

_Memoirs of Sir E. W. Parry._

Conclusion.

EASE OF MIND.

IN order to enjoy Ease of Mind in our intercourse with the world, we should introduce into our habits of business punctuality, decision, the practice of being beforehand, despatch, and exactness; in our pleasures, harmlessness and moderation; and in all our dealings, perfect integrity and love of truth. Without these observances we are never secure of ease, nor indeed taste it in its highest state. As in most other things, so here, people in general do not aim at more than mediocrity of attainment, and of course usually fall below their standard; whilst many are so busy in running after what should procure them ease, that they totally overlook the thing itself.

Ease of mind has the most beneficial effect upon the body, and it is only during its existence that the complicated physical functions are performed with the accuracy and facility which nature designed. It is, consequently, a great preventive of disease, and one of the secret means of effecting a cure when disease has occurred; without it, in many cases, no cure can take place. By ease of mind many people have survived serious accidents, from which nothing else could have saved them, and in every instance is much retarded by the absence of it. Its effect upon the appearance is no less remarkable. It prevents and repairs the ravages of time in a singular degree, and is the best preservative of strength and beauty. It often depends greatly upon health, but health always depends greatly upon it. The torments of a mind ill at ease seem to be less endurable than those of the body; for it scarcely ever happens that suicide is committed from bodily suffering. As far as the countenance is an index, “the vultures of the mind” appear to turn it more mercilessly than any physical pain; and no doubt there have been many who would willingly have exchanged their mental agony for the most wretched existence that penury could produce. From remorse there is no escape. In aggravated cases probably there is no instant, sleeping or waking, in which its influence is totally unfelt. Remorse is the extreme one way; the opposite is that cleanliness of mind which has never been recommended any where to the same extent that it is by the precepts of the Christian religion, and which alone constitutes “perfect freedom.” It would be curious if we could see what effect such purity would have upon the appearance and actions of a human being—a being who lived, as Pope expresses it, in the “eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.” Goldsmith has beautifully said:

How small of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! Still to ourselves in every place consign’d, Our own felicity we make or find.

Shakspeare observes: “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”[131]

Charles James Fox, who was, from infancy, a spoiled child, would spend night after night in gambling, and wasting his sweet nature in the orgies of Bacchus. Then he would flee away to the delightful scenery and refreshing air of St. Anne’s Hill, and there betake himself to gardening, in a blue apron; or to the learned leisure of his study, in the bosom of conjugal felicity and friendship.

Footnote 131:

_The Original._ By Thomas Walker, M.A.

THE LIFE OF MAN.