Chambers\'s Edinburgh Journal, No. 442
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Various >> Chambers\'s Edinburgh Journal, No. 442
When these facts were first mentioned to us, we looked with some
curiosity at the machine from which we had just stepped out; and there
we found an illustration of them not highly flattering to our
self-esteem. Knees, hips, shoulders, ears, all were so ill-assorted,
that it seemed as if Nature had been actually trying her 'prentice
hand upon our peculiar self. It was in vain to bethink ourselves of
the physical eccentricities of the distinguished men of other times:
'Ammon's great son one shoulder had too high;
Such Ovid's nose, and, sir, you have an eye!'--
we might have gone through tho whole inventory of the figure, and
concluded the quotation:
'Go on, obliging creatures, make me see
All that disgraced my betters met in me.
Say, for my comfort, languishing in bed,
Just so immortal Maro held his head;
And when I die, be sure you let me know--
Great Homer died three thousand years ago!'
What we had seen, however, was only the length of the figure; but we
were informed by our philosophic tailor, that the limbs, &c., are
likewise irregularly placed as regards breadth. The trunk of the body
is of various shapes, which he distinguishes as the oval, the
circular, and the flat. The first has the arms placed in the middle;
in the second, they are more towards the back, and relatively long;
and in the third, more towards the front, and relatively short. The
length of the forearm should be the length of the lower part of the
leg, and if either longer or shorter, the difference appears in the
walk. If shorter, the walk is a kind of waddle, the elbows inclining
outwards; if longer, it is distinguished by a swinging motion, as if
the person carried weights in his hands. If the circumference of the
body, measured with an inch-tape just below the shoulders, be smaller
than the circumference of the hips, the person will rock in walking,
and plant his feet heavily upon the ground. If greater, so that the
chief weight is above the limbs, the step will be light, as is
familiarly seen in corpulent men, whose delicate mode of walking we
witness with ever-recurring surprise. If the shoulders slope
downwards, with the spine bending inwards, the individual 'cannot
throw a stone, or handle firearms with dexterity.' When inclined
forwards, and well relieved from the body, he may be a proficient in
these exercises. A peculiarity in walking is given by the size of the
head and neck being out of proportion; and an instance is mentioned of
a man being discharged from the army, on account of his conformation
rendering it impossible for him to keep his head steady.
All these are curious and suggestive particulars. It is customary to
refer awkwardness of manner to bad habit, and such diseases as
consumption either to imprudence or hereditary taint; but it may be
doubted whether taints are not mainly the result of original
conformation. Habit and imprudence may doubtless aggravate the evil,
just as exercise may enlarge a member of the body; but it is nature
which sows the seeds of decay in her own productions. Physically, the
child is a copy of the parents, even to their peculiarities of gait;
and these peculiarities would seem to depend on the correct or
incorrect balance of the members of the body. When the conformation is
of a kind which interferes with the play of the lungs, the same
transmission of course takes place, and consumption may be the fatal
inheritance. If the arrangement of the parts were perfect, it may be
doubted--for symmetry is the basis of health as well as
beauty--whether we should ever hear of such a thing as 'taint in the
blood.' If this theory were to gain ground, it would simplify much the
practice of medicine; for the disease would stand in visible and
tangible presence before the eyes, and the employment of inventions,
to counteract and finally conquer the eccentricities of nature, would
be governed by science, and thus relieved from the suspicion of
quackery, which at present more or less attaches to it. To pursue
these speculations, however, would lead us too far; and before
concluding, we must find room for a few more of our practical
philosopher's observations.
All good mechanics, it seems, have large hands and thick and short
fingers; which is pretty nearly the conclusion arrived at by
D'Arpentigny in _La Chirognomonie_, although the captain adds, that
the hands must be _en spatule_--that is to say, with the end of the
fingers enlarged in the form of a spatula. The hand is generally the
same breadth as the foot: a fact recognised by the country people,
who, when buying their shoes at fairs--which were the usual
mart--might have been seen thrusting in their hand to try the breadth,
when they had ascertained that the length was suitable. A short foot
gives a mincing walk, while a long one requires the person to bring
his body aplomb with the foot before taking the step, which thus
resembles a stride. Good dancers have the limbs short as compared with
the body, which has thus the necessary power over them; but if too
short, there is a deficiency of dexterity in the management of the
feet.
In conclusion, it will be seen, we think, that there is much to be
learned even in the business of the shears. There is no trade whatever
which will not afford materials for thought to an intelligent man, and
thus enlarge the mind and elevate the character.
THE NIGHTINGALE:
A MUSICAL QUESTION.
Is the song of the nightingale mirthful or melancholy? is a question
that has been discussed so often, that anything new on the subject
might be considered superfluous, were it not that the very fact of the
discussion is in itself a curiosity worthy of attention. The note in
dispute was heard with equal distinctness by Homer and Wordsworth; and
indeed there are few poets of any age or country who have not, at one
time or other in their lives, had the testimony of their own ears as
to its character. Whence, then, this difference of opinion? Listen to
Thomson's unqualified assertion, given with the seriousness of an
affidavit:
----'all abandoned to despair, she sings
Her sorrows through the night, and on the bough
Sole sitting still at every dying fall
Takes up again her lamentable strain
Of winding wo; till wide around the woods
Sigh to her song and with her wail resound.'
Then Homer in the _Odyssey_, through Pope's paraphrase:
'Sad Philomel, in bowery shades unseen,
To vernal airs attunes her varied strains.'
Virgil, as rendered by Dryden:
----'she supplies the night with mournful strains
And melancholy music fills the plains.'
Milton, too:
----'Philomel will deign a song
In her sweetest, saddest plight,
Smoothing the rugged brow of night,
While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke
Gently o'er the accustom'd oak:
Sweet bird, that shun'st the noise of folly--
Most musical, most melancholy.'
And again in _Comus_:
----'the love-lorn nightingale
Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well.'
And Shakspeare makes his poor banished Valentine congratulate himself,
that in the forest he can
----'to the nightingale's complaining note
Tune his distresses and record his wo.
We might go on much longer in this strain. We might give, likewise,
the mythological cause assigned for the imputed melancholy, and add
that some, not content with this, represent the bird as leaning its
breast against a thorn--
'To aggravate the inward grief,
Which makes its music so forlorn.'
But we would rather pause to admit candidly, that two of the above
witnesses might be challenged--Virgil and Thomson; who indeed should
be counted but as one, for the author of the _Seasons_, in the lines
quoted, has translated, though not so closely as Dryden, from the
_Georgics_ of the Latin poet. If you will read the passage--it matters
not whether in Virgil, Dryden, or Thomson--you will perceive that it
is a special occurrence that is spoken of: no statement whatever is
made as to the character of the nightingale's ordinary song. Thomson,
in the course of his humane and touching protest against the barbarous
art: 'through which birds are
---- by tyrant man
Inhuman caught, and in the narrow cage
From liberty confined, and boundless air,'
represents the nightingale's misery when thus bereaved. This portion
of the lines shall stand entire; none, we are sure, would wish us
further to mangle the passage:
'But chief, let not the nightingale lament
Her ruined care, too delicately framed
To brook the harsh confinement of the cage.
Oft, when returning with her loaded bill,
The astonished mother finds a vacant nest,
By the rude hands of unrelenting clowns
Robbed: to the ground the vain provision falls.
Her pinions ruffle, and low drooping, scarce
Can bear the mourner to the poplar shade;
Where all abandoned to despair, she sings
Her sorrows through the night.'
It will at once be seen that this description relates to an
exceptional condition, and we have yet to seek what character Virgil
and Thomson would give to the ordinary song of this paradoxical
musician. For the Roman, we do not know that any passage exists in his
works which can help us to a conclusion; but Thomson's testimony must
undoubtedly be ranged on the contra side, as appears from the
following lines in his _Agamemnon_:
'Ah, far unlike the nightingale! she sings
Unceasing through the balmy nights of May--
She sings from love and joy.'
In the passage from his Spring, which we have given, we cannot but
fancy that the poet endeavoured--if we may so say--to effect a
compromise between the opinion which, through the influence of
classical poetry, generally prevailed as to the character of the
bird's music, and the opposing convictions which his own senses had
forced upon him. It was desirable to describe its strains according to
the popular fancy, and therefore he borrowed from Virgil such a
description of the bird's sorrow as under the assumed circumstances
did no violence to his own judgment.
Thomson is not the only poet in whom we fancy we detect some such
attempt at compromise. It appears to us that Villega, the Anacreon of
Spain, in the following little poem, which we give in Mr Wiffen's
translation, adopted, with a similar object, this idea of the
nightingale robbed of her young. The truthful and somewhat minute
description in the song, however, represents the bird's ordinary
performance, and but ill suits the circumstances under which it is
supposed to be uttered. The failure on the part of the poet may be
ascribed to his secret conviction, that the nightingale's was a
cheerful melody; and his labouring against that conviction to the
necessity he felt himself under of following his classical masters.
'I have seen a nightingale
On a sprig of thyme bewail,
Seeing the dear nest that was
Hers alone, borne off, alas!
By a labourer: I heard,
For this outrage, the poor bird
Say a thousand mournful things
To the wind, which on its wings
From her to the guardian sky
Bore her melancholy cry--
Bore her tender tears. She spake
As if her fond heart would break.
One while in a sad, sweet note,
Gurgled from her straining throat,
She enforced her piteous tale,
Mournful prayer and plaintive wail;
One while with the shrill dispute,
Quite o'er-wearied, she was mute;
Then afresh, for her dear brood,
Her harmonious shrieks renewed;
Now she winged it round and round,
Now she skimmed along the ground;
Now from bough to bough in haste
The delighted robber chased;
And alighting in his path,
Seemed to say, 'twixt grief and wrath:
"Give me back, fierce rustic rude!
Give me back my pretty brood!"
And I saw the rustic still
Answer: "That I never will!"'
Independently of the untruthfulness of which a naturalist would
complain in this description--for no birds under such circumstances of
distress sing, but merely repeat each its own peculiar piercing cry,
never at any other time heard, and which cannot be mistaken--there is
a palpable effort of ingenuity discoverable in the representation,
which seems to tell us that the writer was making up a story, rather
than uttering his own belief. It may even be doubted whether Virgil
himself, who seems first to have invented this fancy, and behind whose
broad mantle later poets have sheltered themselves, may not have felt
an inclination to depart from the Greek opinion of Philomel's ditty.
Why otherwise did he not simply and at once--as his masters Homer and
Theocritus had done before him--describe her notes as mournful,
instead of casting about for some cause that might excuse him for
giving them that character? But however this may be, we cannot conceal
from ourselves, that some stubborn passages still remain in the poets,
proclaiming that there are men, and those among the greatest and most
tasteful, to whose fancy the voice of the nightingale has sounded full
of wo.
Homer must be counted of this number--unless we think with Fox, in the
preface to his _History of Lord Holland_, that it is only as to her
wakefulness Penelope is compared to the night singing-bird; and so
must Milton (for although Coleridge has satisfactorily dealt with the
passage in _Il Penseroso_, the line of the Lady's song in _Comus_
remains still); and Shakspeare himself, who could scarcely be
influenced, as Milton might very possibly be, by the opinions of the
Grecian poets.
It is a strange contest we are here considering. Which of us would for
a moment doubt our ability to decide in a dispute as to the liveliness
or sadness of any given melody?--yet here we see the greatest poets,
the favoured children of nature, utterly at variance on a point
concerning which we should have expected to find even the most
ordinary minds able to decide.
The question becomes more involved from the fact, that some writers
take _both_ sides; for instance, Chiobrera in _Aleippo_: the
nightingale
'Unwearied still reiterates her lays,
Jocund _or_ sad, delightful to the ear;'
and Hartley Coleridge, in the following beautiful song, which we
transcribe the more readily because it has not long been published,
and may be new to many of our readers:
''Tis sweet to hear the merry lark,
That bids a blithe good-morrow;
But sweeter to hark in the twinkling dark
To the soothing song of sorrow.
Oh, nightingale! what doth she ail?
And is she _sad_ or _jolly_?
For ne'er on earth was sound of mirth
So like to melancholy.
The merry lark he soars on high,
No worldly thought o'ertakes him;
He sings aloud to the clear blue sky,
And the daylight that awakes him.
As sweet a lay, as loud, as gay,
The nightingale is trilling;
With feeling bliss, no less than his
Her little heart is thrilling.
Yet ever and anon a sigh
Peers through her lavish mirth;
For the lark's bold song is of the sky,
And hers is of the earth.
By night and day she tunes her lay,
To drive away all sorrow;
For bliss, alas! to-night may pass,
And wo may come to-morrow.'
We must now cite one or two of the many passages which represent the
nightingale's as an _absolutely_ cheerful song. We fear we cannot
insist so much as Fox is disposed to do, on the evidence of Chaucer,
who continually styles the nightingale's a merry note, because it is
evident that in _his_ day the word had a somewhat different meaning
from that which it at present conveys. For example, the poet calls the
organ 'merry.' Nor dare we lay stress upon the instance which Cary
cites--in a note to his _Purgatory_--of a 'neglected poet,' Vallans,
who in his _Tale of Two Swannes_ ranks the 'merrie nightingale among
the cheerful birds,' because we do not know whether, even at the time
when Vallans wrote--the book was published, it seems, in
1590--'merrie' had come to bear its present signification.
We shall, however, find a witness among the writers of his period in
Gawain Douglas, who died Bishop of Dunkeld in 1522. He, in a prologue
to one of his _AEneids_, applies not only the word 'merry' to our bird,
but one of less questionable signification--'mirthful.' If we come
down to more modern times, we shall find Wordsworth, who seems above
all others, except Burns, to have had a catholic ear for the whole
multitude of natural sounds, not only refusing the character of
melancholy to the nightingale's song, but placing it below the
stock-dove's, because it is deficient in the pensiveness and
seriousness which mark the note of the latter.
However, of all testimonies which can be brought on this side of the
question, the strongest is that of Coleridge. No other has so
accurately described the song itself; moreover, he alone has entered
the lists avowedly as an antagonist, and confessing in so many words
to the existence of an opinion opposite to his own.
'And hark! the nightingale begins its song,
"Most musical, most melancholy" bird.
A melancholy bird? oh, idle thought![2]
In nature there is nothing melancholy.
But some night-wandering man, whose heart was pierced
With the resemblance of a grievous wrong,
Or slow distemper, or neglected love,
First named these notes a melancholy strain:
And youths and maidens most poetical,
Who lose the deepening twilight of the spring
In ball-rooms and hot theatres, they still,
Full of meek sympathy, must heave their sighs
O'er Philomela's pity-pleading strains.
My friend, and thou, our sister! we have learnt
A different love: we may not thus profane
Nature's sweet voices, always full of love
And joyance! 'Tis the _merry_ nightingale
That crowds and hurries and precipitates
With fast-thick warble his delicious notes,
As he were fearful that an April night
Would be too short for him to utter forth
His love-chant and disburden his full soul
Of all its music!'
Little now remains to be said. We have laid before the reader
specimens of the two contending opinions, as well as of that which is
set up as a golden mean between them; and he has but to put down our
pages, and to walk forth--provided he does not live too far north, or
in some smoke-poisoned town--to judge for himself as to the true
character of the strains. Small risk, we think, would there be in
pronouncing on which side his verdict would be given! Well do we
remember the night when we first heard this sweet bird: how we
listened and refused to believe--for we were young, and our idea had
of course been that his song was a melancholy one--that those madly
hilarious sounds could come from the mournful nightingale. Wordsworth
attempts thus to account for the delusion under which the older poets
laboured on this subject:
'Fancy, who leads the pastimes of the glad,
Full oft is pleased a wayward dart to throw,
Sending sad shadows after things not sad,
Peopling the harmless fields with sighs of wo.
Beneath her sway, a simple forest cry
Becomes an echo of man's misery.
What wonder? at her bidding ancient lays
Steeped in dire grief the voice of Philomel,
And that blithe messenger of summer days,
The swallow, twittered, subject to like spell.'
It is curious that the people who first fixed the stigma of melancholy
upon our bird--the Greeks, or at least the Athenians, and it is of
them we speak--were perhaps the very gayest people that ever danced
upon the earth--absolute Frenchmen. The very sprightliness of their
temper, however, by the universally prevailing law of contrast, may
have induced in them a fondness for sad and doleful legends; and we
confess, for our own part, that while we from our hearts admire the
poetical beauty and elegance of their various fables, we do not a
little disrelish the constant vein of melancholy which pervades them
all. Not the least sad of their fictions is that which relates to the
nightingale; a story that has found its way--and even more universally
the opinion of the bird's music which it implied--amongst all the
nations whom Greece has instructed and civilised.
But we have yet another reply to the question, 'Why do most people
call the nightingale's a melancholy song?' It is heard by night,
'whilst our spirits are attentive,' and the solemn gloom of the hour
influences the judgment of the ear; for another false impression,
which like the monster Error of Spenser, has bred a thousand young
ones as ill-favoured as herself, ascribes melancholy to night. There
is no good reason why we should think thus of the night, still less
that the impression should influence our judgment in other matters;
and we owe no small thanks to those who have endeavoured to reclaim to
their proper uses these misdirected associations, and to teach, that
'In nature there is nothing melancholy;'
but on the contrary,
'Healing her wandering and distempered child,
She pours around her softest influences,
Her sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets,
Her melodies of woods, and winds, and waters,
Till he relent, and can no more endure
To be a jarring and a dissonant thing
Amid the general dance and harmony;
But, bursting into tears, wins back his way,
His angry spirit healed and harmonised
By the benignant touch of love and beauty.'
FOOTNOTES:
[2] _Note by Coleridge._--'The passage in Milton possesses an
excellence far superior to that of mere description. It is spoken in
the character of the Melancholy Man, and has, therefore, a dramatic
propriety. The author makes this remark, to rescue himself from the
charge of having alluded with levity to a line of Milton's.'
THE TEA-COUNTRIES OF CHINA.
About four years ago, Mr Fortune, author of _Three Years' Wanderings
in the Northern Provinces of China_, was deputed by the East India
Company to proceed to China for the purpose of obtaining the finest
varieties of the tea-plant, as well as native manufacturers and
implements, for the government tea-plantations in the Himalaya. Being
acquainted with the Chinese language, and adopting the Chinese
costume, he penetrated into districts unvisited before by
Europeans--excepting, perhaps, the Catholic missionaries--exciting no
further curiosity as to his person or pedigree, than what was due to a
stranger from one of the provinces beyond the great wall. His
principal journeys were to Sung-lo, the great green-tea district, and
to the Bohea Mountains, the great black-tea district; besides a flying
visit to Kingtang, or Silver Island, in the Chusan archipelago. The
narrative, which he has since published,[3] manifests a good faculty
for observation; but travelling as privately as possible, he saw
little but the exterior aspects of the country, the appearance of
which he describes very graphically. As a botanist, he had a keen eye
for everything which promised to enlarge our knowledge of the Chinese
flora, and discovered many useful and ornamental trees and shrubs,
some of which, such as the funereal cypress, will one day produce a
striking and beautiful effect in our English landscape, and in our
cemeteries. Of social and political information relative to the
Celestial Empire, the book is quite barren; and we do not know that
there is anything in it which will be so acceptable to the reader, as
fresh and reliable information about his favourite beverage. To this,
therefore, our attention will be confined.
The plant in cultivation about Canton, from which the Canton teas are
made, is known to botanists as the _Thea bohea_; while the more
northern variety, found in the green-tea country, has been called
_Thea viridis_. The first appears to have been named upon the
supposition, that all the black teas of the Bohea Mountains were
obtained from this species; and the second was called _viridis_,
because it furnished the green teas of commerce. These names seem to
have misled the public; and hence many persons, until a few years ago,
firmly believed that black tea could be made only from _Thea bohea_,
and green tea only from _Thea viridis_. In his _Wanderings in China_,
published in 1846, Mr Fortune had stated that both teas could be made
from either plant, and that the difference in their appearance
depended upon manipulation, and upon that only. But the objection was
made, that although he had been in many of the tea-districts near the
coast, he had not seen those greater ones inland which furnish the
teas of commerce. Since that time, however, he has visited them,
without seeing reason to alter his statements. The two kinds of tea,
indeed, are rarely made in the same district; but this is a matter of
convenience. Districts which formerly were famous for black teas, now
produce nothing but green. At Canton, green and black teas are made
from the _Thea bohea_ at the pleasure of the manufacturer, and
according to demand. When the plants arrive from the farms fresh and
cool, they dry of a bright-green colour; but if they are delayed in
their transit, or remain in a confined state for too long a period,
they become heated, from a species of spontaneous fermentation; and
when loosened and spread open, emit vapours, and are sensibly warm to
the hand. When such plants are dried, the whole of the green colour is
found to have been destroyed, and a red-brown, and sometimes a
blackish-brown result is obtained. 'I had also noticed,' says Mr
Warrington, in a paper read by him before the Chemical Society, 'that
a clear infusion of such leaves, evaporated carefully to dryness, was
not all undissolved by water, but left a quantity of brown oxidised
extractive matter, to which the denomination _apothem_ has been
applied by some chemists; a similar result is obtained by the
evaporation of an infusion of black tea. The same action takes place
by the exposure of the infusions of many vegetable substances to the
oxidising influence of the atmosphere; they become darkened on the
surface, and this gradually spreads through the solution, and on
evaporation, the same oxidised extractive matter will remain insoluble
in water. Again, I had found that the green teas, when wetted and
redried, with exposure to the air, were nearly as dark in colour as
the ordinary black teas. From these observations, therefore, I was
induced to believe, that the peculiar characters and chemical
differences which distinguish black tea from green, were to be
attributed to a species of heating or fermentation, accompanied with
oxidation by exposure to the air, and not to its being submitted to a
higher temperature in the process of drying, as had been generally
concluded. My opinion was partly confirmed by ascertaining from
parties conversant with the Chinese manufacture, that the leaves for
the black teas were always allowed to remain exposed to the air in
mass for some time before they were roasted.'