The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858

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A Club is the next best thing to this, strung like a harp, with
about a dozen ringing intelligences, each answering to some chord of
the macrocosm. They do well to dine together once in a while. A
dinner-party made up of such elements is the last triumph of
civilization over barbarism. Nature and art combine to charm the
senses; the equatorial zone of the system is soothed by well-studied
artifices; the faculties are off duty, and fall into their natural
attitudes; you see wisdom in slippers and science in a short jacket.

The whole force of conversation depends on how much you can take for
granted. Vulgar chess-players have to play their game out; nothing
short of the brutality of an actual checkmate satisfies their dull
apprehensions. But look at two masters of that noble game! White
stands well enough, so far as you can see; but Red says, Mate in six
moves;--White looks,--nods;--the game is over. Just so in talking
with first-rate men; especially when they are good-natured and
expansive, as they are apt to be at table. That blessed clairvoyance
which sees into things without opening them,--that glorious license,
which, having shut the door and driven the reporter from its key-hole,
calls upon Truth, majestic virgin! to get off from her pedestal and
drop her academic poses, and take a festive garland and the vacant
place on the _medius lectus_,--that carnival-shower of questions and
replies and comments, large axioms bowled over the mahogany like
bomb-shells from professional mortars, and explosive wit dropping
its trains of many-colored fire, and the mischief-making rain of
_bon-bons_ pelting everybody that shows himself,--the picture of a
truly intellectual banquet is one that the old Divinities might well
have attempted to reproduce in their----

----"Oh, oh, oh!" cried the young fellow whom they call John,--
"that is from one of your lectures!"

I know it, I replied,--I concede it, I confess it, I proclaim it.

"The trail of the serpent is over them all!"

All lecturers, all professors, all school-masters, have ruts and
grooves in their minds into which their conversation is perpetually
sliding. Did you never, in riding through the woods of a still June
evening, suddenly feel that you had passed into a warm stratum of air,
and in a minute or two strike the chill layer of atmosphere beyond?
Did you never, in cleaving the green waters of the Back Bay,--where
the Provincial blue-noses are in the habit of beating the "Metropolitan"
boat-clubs,--find yourself in a tepid streak, a narrow, local
gulf-stream, a gratuitous warm-bath a little underdone, through
which your glistening shoulders soon flashed, to bring you back
to the cold realities of full-sea temperature? Just so, in talking
with any of the characters above referred to, one not unfrequently
finds a sudden change in the style of the conversation. The
lack-lustre eye, rayless as a Beacon-Street door-plate in August,
all at once fills with light; the face flings itself wide open like
the church-portals when the bride and bridegroom enter; the little
man grows in stature before your eyes, like the small prisoner with
hair on end, beloved yet dreaded of early childhood; you were
talking with a dwarf and an imbecile,--you have a giant and a
trumpet-tongued angel before you!----Nothing but a streak out of a
fifty-dollar lecture.----As when, at some unlooked-for moment, the
mighty fountain-column springs into the air before the astonished
passer-by,--silver-footed, diamond-crowned, rainbow-scarfed,--from
the bosom of that fair sheet, sacred to the hymns of quiet
batrachians at home, and the epigrams of a less amiable and less
elevated order of _reptilia_ in other latitudes.

----Who was that person that was so abused some time since for
saying that in the conflict of two races our sympathies naturally go
with the higher? No matter who he was. Now look at what is going on
in India,--a white, superior "Caucasian" race, against a dark-skinned,
inferior, but still "Caucasian" race,--and where are English and
American sympathies? We can't stop to settle all the doubtful
questions; all we know is, that the brute nature is sure to come out
most strongly in the lower race, and it is the general law that the
human side of humanity should treat the brutal side as it does the
same nature in the inferior animals,--tame it or crush it. The India
mail brings stories of women and children outraged and murdered; the
royal stronghold is in the hands of the babe-killers. England takes
down the Map of the World, which she has girdled with empire, and
makes a correction thus:

[Strike-out: DELHI]. _Dele_.

The civilized world says, Amen.

----Do not think, because I talk to you of many subjects briefly,
that I should not find it much lazier work to take each one of them
and dilute it down to an essay. Borrow some of my old college themes
and water my remarks to suit yourselves, as the Homeric heroes did
with their _melas oinos_,--that black, sweet, syrupy wine (?) which
they used to alloy with three parts or more of the flowing stream.

[Could it have been _melasses_, as Webster and his provincials
spell it,--or _Molossa's_, as dear old smattering, chattering,
would-be-College-President, Cotton Mather, has it in the "Magnalia"?
Ponder thereon, ye small antiquaries, who make barn-door-fowl flights
of learning in "Notes and Queries"!--ye Historical Societies, in one
of whose venerable triremes I, too, ascend the stream of time, while
other hands tug at the oars!--ye Amines of parasitical literature,
who pick up your grains of native-grown food with a bodkin, having
gorged upon less honest fare, until, like the great minds Goethe
speaks of, you have "made a Golgotha" of your pages!--ponder thereon!]

----Before you go, this morning, I want to read you a copy of verses.
You will understand by the title that they are written in an
imaginary character. I don't doubt they will fit some family-man
well enough. I send it forth as "Oak Hall" projects a coat, on
_a priori_ grounds of conviction that it will suit somebody. There
is no loftier illustration of faith than this. It believes that a
soul has been clad in flesh; that tender parents have fed and
nurtured it; that its mysterious _compages_ or frame-work has
survived its myriad exposures and reached the stature of maturity;
that the Man, now self-determining, has given in his adhesion to the
traditions and habits of the race in favor of artificial clothing;
that he will, having all the world to choose from, select the very
locality where this audacious generalization has been acted upon. It
builds a garment cut to the pattern of an Idea, and trusts that
Nature will model a material shape to fit it. There is a prophecy in
every seam, and its pockets are full of inspiration.--Now hear the
verses.

THE OLD MAN DREAMS.

O for one hour of youthful joy!
Give back my twentieth spring!
I'd rather laugh a bright-haired boy
Than reign a gray-beard king!

Off with the wrinkled spoils of age!
Away with learning's crown!
Tear out life's wisdom-written page,
And dash its trophies down!

One moment let my life-blood stream
From boyhood's fount of flame!
Give me one giddy, reeling dream
Of life all love and fame!

--My listening angel heard the prayer,
And calmly smiling, said,
"If I but touch thy silvered hair,
Thy hasty wish hath sped."

"But is there nothing in thy track
To bid thee fondly stay,
While the swift seasons hurry back
To find the wished-for day?"

--Ah, truest soul of womankind!
Without thee, what were life?
One bliss I cannot leave behind:
I'll take--my--precious--wife!

--The angel took a sapphire pen
And wrote in rainbow dew,
"The man would be a boy again,
And be a husband too!"

--"And is there nothing yet unsaid
Before the change appears?
Remember, all their gifts have fled
With those dissolving years!"

Why, yes; for memory would recall
My fond paternal joys;
I could not bear to leave them all:
I'll take--my--girl--and--boys!

The smiling angel dropped his pen,--
"Why this will never do;
The man would be a boy again,
And be a father too!"

And so I laughed,--my laughter woke
The household with its noise,--
And wrote my dream, when morning broke,
To please the gray-haired boys.

AGASSIZ'S NATURAL HISTORY.

_Contributions to the Natural History of the United States of
America_. By LOUIS AGASSIZ. Vols. I. and II. Boston: Little,
Brown & Co. London: Truebner & Co. 1857.

The Great Professor has given the first Monograph of his _Magnum Opus_
to the Great Republic and the wider realm of Science. The learned
world resolves itself into committees to consider every important
work; claiming leave to sit for as long a time as they choose,--for
years, or for a whole generation. Every alleged fact is to be
verified or cancelled or qualified, every inference to be measured
over and over again by its premises, every proposition to be tried
by all the tests that can prove its strength or weakness, and the
whole to be marshalled to the place it may claim in the alcoves of
the universal library. No hasty opinion can anticipate this final
and peremptory judgment. Its elements must of necessity be gathered
slowly from many and scattered sources. The accumulated learning of
the great centres of civilization, the patient investigation of
plodding observers, the keen insight of subtile analysts, the
jealous clairvoyance of dissentient theorists, the oblique glances
of suspicious sister-sciences, the random flashes that skepticism
throws from her faithless mirror to dazzle all eyes that seek for
truth; through such a varied and protracted ordeal must every record
that embodies long and profound observation, large and lofty thought,
reach the golden _Imprimatur_ which is its warrant for immortality.

The work of Mr. Agassiz, if we may judge it by the portion now
before us, has a right to challenge such a matured opinion, and to
wait for it. Not the less does a certain duty belong to us as
literary journalists with reference to these stately volumes, which
are in the hands of thousands, learned and unlearned, and of which
there are scores of thousands waiting to hear. Our duty we consider
to be four-fold: first, that of recognition in terms of fitting
courtesy; secondly, of analysis for the general reader; thirdly, of
accentuation, so to speak, of what seems most widely applicable or
interesting; and lastly, of making such comments as so pregnant a
text may suggest.

And first, of recognition. Here are the fruits of ten years of
patient labor, taken out of the heart of life, in the age of vigor,
which is that of ambition,--to use the phrase of another great
observer,--by a man of large endowments and of vast knowledge,
assisted by skilful collaborators, by finished artists, by the
counsels and liberality of the learned few, and the generous
countenance of the intelligent many. Before analysis, before
criticism, there should be uttered a welcome; not grudging, not
envious of an overshadowing reputation, not over-curious in
searching for qualifications to abate its warmth, not carefully
taming down its enthusiasm to tepid formalisms; but full-souled and
free-spoken, such as all noble works and deeds should claim.

The learned men of past centuries have left us an example of this
treatment of authors, in those gratulatory verses with which they
were wont to hail every considerable literary or scientific
performance. They knew human nature well. They knew that the author,
when he quenches the lamp over which he has grown haggard and pale,
and steps from his cell into daylight and the chill outside air,
longs, longs unutterably, for kind words, and the cheering
fellowship of kindred souls; and with instinctive grace they chose
the poetical form of expression, simply because this alone gives
full license to the lips of friendship.

This old folio which stands by us is not precious only because it
contains the quaint wisdom and manifold experience of Ambroise Pare,
mingled with his credulous gossip, and again sweetened by his simple
reverence; not precious alone because it contains the noblest words
ever uttered by one of his profession,--_Ie le pensay et Dieu le
guarit_; but also because PIERRE RONSARD, the "Poet of France," has
left his deathless name thrice inscribed in its earlier pages at the
foot of tributes to its author.

And here in the next century comes Schenck of Grafenberg, staggering
under his monstrous volume of "Casus Rariores,"--ready to fall
fainting by the wayside, when lo! the shining ones meet him too, and
lift him and lighten him with the utterance of these _fifty-one_
distinct poems which we see hung up on so many votive tablets at the
entrance of this miniature Babel of Science.

Even so late as the last century the genial custom survived; for our
worthy Stalpart van der Wiel, whose little pair of volumes was
published in 1727, can boast of twenty-two pages of well-ordered
commendatory verse, much of it in his native Dutch,--a little of
which goes a good way with all except Batavian readers.

But as the "Arundines Cami," musical as they are, have lent no
prelude to these harmonies of science, we must say in a few plain
words of prose our own first thought as to the work the commencement
of which lies before us. We believe, that, if completed according to
its promise, it is to be one of the monumental labors of our century.
Comparisons are not to be lightly instituted, and especially under
circumstances that do not allow a fair survey of the whole field
from which the objects to be compared are to be taken. We suppose,
however, it will be conceded that the sunset continent has never
witnessed anything like the inception of this mighty task in the way
of systematic natural science. And if, since Cuvier, the greatest of
naturalists, as Mr. Agassiz considers him, slept with the fossils to
which he had given life, there has been any other student of Nature
who has attempted a task so immense, with the same union of observing,
reflecting, analyzing, and cooerdinating power, we cannot name him.
Our civilization has a right to be proud of such an accession to its
thinking and laboring constituency; it is also bound to be grateful
for it, and to express its gratitude.

It is just one hundred years since another Swiss, the magnificent
Albert von Haller, gave to the world the first volume of the
"Elementa Physiologiae Corporis Humani." Nine years afterwards, in
1766, the last of the eight volumes appeared; and the vast structure,
which embodied his untiring study of Nature, his world-wide erudition,
his deepest thought, his highest imaginings, his holiest aspirations,
stood, like the Alps whose shadow fell upon its birthplace, the
lovely Lausaune, pride of the Pays de Vaud. The clepsydrae that
measure the centuries as they drop from the dizzy cliffs--the
glaciers, by the descent of which "time is marked out, as by a
shadow on a dial," and which thunder out the high noon of each
revolving year with their frozen tongues, as they crack beneath the
summer's sun--have registered a new centennial circle, and at the
very hour of its completion, Switzerland vindicates her ancient
renown in these fair pages, at once pledge and performance, of
another of her honored children. May the auspicious omen lead to as
happy a conclusion!

Lovingly, then, we lay open the generous quarto and look upon its
broad, bright title-page. It tells us that we have here the first of
a series of "Contributions to the Natural History of the United
States of America." We see that one of its three parts embraces the
largest generalities of Natural Science, under the head of an
"Essay on Classification." We see that the other two parts are
devoted to the description and delineation of a single order of
Reptilia,--the Testudinata, or "Turtles."

If Mr. Agassiz had intentionally chosen the simplest way of proving
that he had naturalized himself in New England, he could not have
selected more fortunately than he has done by adopting our word
_Turtle_ to cover all the Testudinates. To an Englishman a turtle
is a sea-monster, that for a brief space lies on his back and fights
the air with his useless paddles in the bow-window of a
provision-shop, bound eventually to Guildhall, there to feed Gog and
Magog, or his worshippers, known as aldermen. For him a
land-testudinate is a _tortoise_. When his poets and romancers speak
of turtles, again, they commonly mean turtle-_doves_.

"Not half so swift the sailing falcon flies
That drives a turtle through the liquid skies."

The only flight of a testudinate which we remember is that downward
one of the unfortunate tortoise that cracked the bald crown of
Aeschylus. But turtle, as embracing all chelonians, or, as liberal
shepherds call it, "turkle," is unquestionably Cisatlantic. The
distinguished naturalist has made himself an American citizen by
adopting our own expression, and should have the freedom of all our
cities presented to him in the shell of a box-TURTLE.

It is singular to recall the honors which have been bestowed on the
testudinates from all antiquity. It was the sun-dried and
sinew-strung shell of a tortoise that suggested the lyre to Mercury,
as he walked by the shore of Nilus. It was on the back of a tortoise
that the Indian sage placed his elephant which upheld the world.
Under the _testudo_ the Roman legions swarmed into the walled cities
of the _orbis terrarum_. And in that wise old fable which childhood
learns, and age too often remembers, sorrowing, it was the tortoise
that won the race against the swiftest of the smaller tribes, his
competitor.

And here once more we have his shell strung with vibrating thoughts
that repeat the harmonies of nature. Once more his broad back stoops
to the weighty problems which the planet proposes to its children.
Once more the great cities are stormed--by science--beneath his coat
of mail. Once more he has run the race, not against the hare only,
but the whole animal kingdom, and won it, and with it the new fame
which awaits him, as he leads in the long array of his fellows that
are to come up, one by one, in these enduring records. And so we
turn the leaf, and come to the DEDICATION.

The Dedication of a work like this, destined to preserve all the
names it enrols in the sculpture-like immortality of science,
naturally delays us for a moment. Of the foreign teacher and friend
to whom the author owes some of his earliest lessons, and of that
group of our own citizens, most of them still living, who lent their
united efforts to the enterprise of publication after it was
commenced, we need not speak individually. But we cannot pass over
the name of FRANCIS CALLEY GRAY without a word of grateful
remembrance for one who was the friend and adviser of the author
in planning the publication of the work before us. We who remember
his varied culture, his large and fluent discourse, with its
formidable accuracy of knowledge and gracious suavity of utterance,
his taste in literature and art, which made his home a suite of
princely cabinets, his generous and elegant hospitality, which
scholars and artists knew so well,--counting him as the peer, and in
many points the more than peer of such as the wide world of letters
is proud to claim,--are pleased to see that his cherished name will
be read by the students of unborn generations on the first leaf of
this noble record of the science of our own.

The PREFACE which follows the Dedication is full of grateful
acknowledgments to the many friends of science, in all parts of the
country, who came forward to lend their aid in various forms,
especially in collecting and transmitting specimens from the
most widely remote sections of the continent. The pious zeal of
Mr. Winthrop Sargent, who brought a cargo of living turtles more
than a thousand miles to the head-quarters of testudinous learning
at Cambridge, is only paralleled by the memorable act of the Pisans
in transporting ship-loads of holy soil from Palestine to fill their
Campo Santo. Genius is marked by nothing more distinctly than that
it makes the world its tributary. He from whose lips it speaks has
but to look calmly into the eyes of dull routine, of jaded toil, of
fickle childhood, and utter the words, "Follow me." Custom-house
officials close their books, tired fishermen leave their nets,
riotous boys forsake their play, to do the master's bidding. Is he
making collections for some great purpose of study? Piece by piece
the fragmentary spoils flow in upon him, of all sizes, shapes, and
hues; a chaos of confused riches, perhaps only a wealth of rubbish,
as they lie at his feet. One by one they fall into harmonious
relations, until the meaningless heap has become a vast mosaic,
where nothing is too minute to fill some interstice, nothing too
angular to fit some corner, nothing so dull or brilliant of tint
that it will not furnish its fraction of light or shadow. Such has
been the history of those years of labor the results of which these
volumes present to us. Whatever may have been said of the devotion
of our countrymen to material interests, the wise and winning lips
had only to speak, and such a currency of _plastrons_ and _carapaces_
was set in circulation, that the contemplative stranger who saw the
mighty coinage of Chelonia flowing in upon Cambridge might well have
thought that the national idea was not the Almighty Dollar, but the
Almighty Turtle.

Mr. Agassiz places a high estimate on the intelligence as well as
the kind spirit of his adopted countrymen. "There is not a class of
learned men here," he says, "distinct from the other cultivated
members of the community. On the contrary, so general is the desire
for knowledge, that I expect to see my book read by operatives, by
fishermen, by farmers, quite as extensively as by the students of
our colleges, or by the learned professions; and it is but proper
that I should endeavor to make myself understood by all."

The deficiencies of our scientific libraries, and the want of a
class of elementary works upon Natural History, such as are widely
circulated in Europe, are adverted to and alleged as a reason for
entering into details which the professional naturalist might think
misplaced.

We quote one paragraph entire from the Preface, as not susceptible
of being abridged, and as briefly stating those general facts with
regard to the work which all our readers must desire to know.

"I have a few words more to say respecting the two first volumes,
now ready for publication. Considering the uncertainty of human life,
I have wished to bring out at once a work that would exemplify the
nature of the investigations I have been tracing during the last ten
years, and show what is likely to be the character of the whole
series. I have aimed, therefore, in preparing these two volumes, to
combine them in such a manner as that they should form a whole. The
First Part contains an exposition of the general views I have
arrived at thus far, in my studies of Natural History. The Second
Part shows how I have attempted to apply these results to the
special study of Zoology, taking the order of Testudinata as an
example. I believe, that, in America, where turtles are everywhere
common, and greatly diversified, a student could not make a better
beginning than by a careful perusal of this part, specimens in hand,
with constant reference to the second chapter of the First Part. The
Third Part exemplifies the bearing of Embryology upon these general
questions, while it contains the fullest illustration of the
embryonic growth of the Testudinata."

The Preface closes with honorable mention of the gentlemen who have
furnished direct assistance in the preparation of the work, and
especially of Mr. Clark in microscopic observation and illustration,
and of Mr. Sonrel in drawing the zoological figures.

The LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS is not without its special meaning and
interest. If, as has been said, the grade of civilization in any
community can be estimated by the amount of sulphuric acid it
consumes, the extent to which a work like this has been called for
in different sections of the country may to some extent be
considered an index of its intellectual aspirations, if not of its
actual progress. This is especially true of those remoter regions
where personal motives would exercise least influence. But without
instituting any comparisons, we may well be proud of this ample list
of twenty-five hundred subscribers, most of them citizens of the
republic,--"a support such as was never before offered to any
scientific man for purely scientific ends, without any reference to
government objects or direct practical aims."

Our analysis must confine itself mainly to the first of the three
parts into which these two volumes are divided. This first part it
is that contains those large results which every thinker must desire
to learn from one whose life has been devoted to the searching and
contemplative study of Nature. It is in the realm of thought here
explored, that Natural Science, whose figure we are wont to look
down upon, crouching to her task, like him of the muck-rake, as he
painfully gathers together his sticks and straws, rises erect, and
lifts her forehead into the upper atmosphere of philosophy, where
the clouds are indeed thickest, but the stars are nearest. The
second and third parts belong more exclusively to the professed
students of Natural History in its different special departments.
Our notice of these divisions of the work must therefore be
comparatively brief.

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