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

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Nor, lastly, can any elevation of aim, any thirst for the divine
springs of knowledge, enable a man to dispense with the sober habits
of observation and the positive acquirements that must give him the
stamina to attempt the higher flights of thought. The eagle's wings
are nothing without his pectoral muscles. It is not Swedenborg and
his disciples that legislate for the scientific world; they may
suggest truth, but they rarely prove it, and never bring it into
such systematic forms as narrow-minded Nature will insist on laying
down.

That all these qualities which go to make up our ideal should exist
in absolute perfection in any single man of mortal birth is not to
be expected. But there are names in the history of Science which
recall so imposing a combination of these several gifts, that,
comparing the men who bore them with the civilization of their time,
we can hardly conceive that uninspired intellect should come nearer
the imaginary standard. Such a man was Aristotle. The slender and
close-shaven fop, with the showy mantle on his ungraceful person and
the costly rings on his fingers, who hung on the lips of Plato for
twenty years, and trained the boy of Macedon to whatever wisdom he
possessed,--whose life was set by destiny between the greatest of
thinkers and the greatest of conquerors,--seems to have borrowed the
intellect of the one and the universal aspirations of the other. But
because he invaded every realm of knowledge, it must not be thought
he dealt with Nature at second-hand. He was a collector and a
dissector. He could display the anatomical structure of a fish as
well as write a treatise on the universe or on rhetoric, or
government or logic, or music or mathematics. Dethroned we call him;
and yet Mr. Agassiz quotes his descriptions with respect, and
confesses that the systematic classification of animals makes but
one stride from Aristotle to Linnaeus.

Cuvier was such a man. Alone, and unapproached in his own spheres of
knowledge, his "Report on the Progress of the Natural Sciences" is
only an index to the wide range of his intellect. In one point,
however, we must own that he seems slow of apprehension or limited
by preconceived opinions,--in his reception of the homologies pointed
out by Oken and the Physiophilosophical observers.

In the same range of intellects we should reckon Linnaeus and
Humboldt, and should have reckoned Goethe, had he given himself to
science.

We do not assume to say where in the category of fully equipped
intelligences Mr. Agassiz belongs. But if the union of the most
extraordinary observing powers with an almost poetic perception of
analogies, with a wide compass of thought, the classifying instinct
and habit, large knowledge of books, and personal intimacy with the
leaders in various departments of knowledge, and with this the
upward-looking aspect of mind and heart, which is the crowning gift
of all,--if the union of these qualities can give to the man of
science a claim to the nobler name of wisdom, it is not flattery,
but justice, to award this distinction to Mr. Agassiz.

To him, then, we listen, when, after having sounded every note in
the wide gamut of Nature, after reading the story of life as it
stands written in the long series of records reaching from Cambrian
fossils to ovarian germs, after tracing the divine principle of
order from the starlike flower at his feet to the flower-like circle
of planets which spreads its fiery corolla, in obedience to the same
simple law that disposes the leaves of the growing plant,--as our
eminent mathematician tells us,--he relates in simple and
reverential accents the highest truths he has learned in traversing
God's mighty universe. For him, and such as him,--for us, too, if we
read wisely,--the toiling slaves of science, often working with
little consciousness of the full proportions of the edifice they are
helping to construct, have spent their busy lives. All knowledge
asserts its true dignity when once brought into relation with the
grand end of knowledge,--a wider and deeper view of the significance
of conscious and unconscious created being, and the character of its
Creator.

We shall close this article with some remarks upon the great
doctrines that dominate all the manifold subordinate thoughts which
fill these crowded pages. The plan of creation, Mr. Agassiz maintains,
"has not grown out of the necessary action of physical laws, but was
the free conception of the Almighty Intellect, matured in his
thought before it was manifested in tangible, external forms."
Before Mr. Agassiz, before Linnaeus, before Aristotle, before Plato,
Timaeus the Locrian spake; the original, together with the version
we cite, is given with the Plato of Ficinus:--"Duas esse rerum
omnium causas: mentem quidem, earum quae ratione quadam nascuntur, et
necessitatem, earum quae existunt vi quadam, secundum corporum
potentias et faculitates. Harrum rerum, id est, Natunae bonorum,
optimum esse quoddam rerum optimarum principium, et Deum vocari....
Esse praeterea in hac Naturae universitate quiddam quod maneat et
intelligible sit, rerum genitarum, quae quidem in perpetuo quodam
mutationum fluxu versantur, exemplar, Ideam dici et mente comprehendi....
Permanet igitur mundus constanter talis qualis est creatus a Deo ...
proponente sibi non exemplaria quaedam manuum opificio edita, sed
illam Ideam intelligibilemque essentiam."--So taught the
half-inspired pagan philosopher whom Plato took as his guide in his
contemplations of Nature.

We trace the thought again in Dante, amidst the various fragments of
ancient wisdom which he has embodied in the "Divina Commedia":

Cio che non muore e cio che puo morire
Non e se non splendor cli quella idea
Che partorisco, amando, il nosfro Sire.
----_Paradiso_, XIII. 52-54.

Two thousand years after the old Greek had written, the Christian
philosopher, Sir Thomas Browne, repeats the same doctrine in a new
phraseology:--"_Before Abraham was, I am_, is the saying of Christ;
yet it is true in some sense, if I say it of myself; for I was not
only before myself, but _Adam_, that is, in the idea of God, and the
decree of that Synod held from all eternity. And in this sense, I say,
the World was before the Creation, and at an end before it had a
beginning; and thus was I dead before I was alive; though my grave be
_England_, my dying place was Paradise; and Eve miscarried of me
before she conceived of Cain."

The slender reed through which Philosophy breathed her first musical
whisperings is laid by, and the sacred lyre of Theology is silent or
little heeded. But the mighty organ of Modern Science with its
hundred stops, each answering to some voice of Nature, takes up the
pausing strain, and as we listen we recognize through all its
mingling harmonies the simple, sublime, eternal melody that came
from the lips of Timaeus the Locrian! The same doctrine reappears in
various forms: in the popular works of Derham and Paloy and the
Bridgewater Treatises; in the learned and thoughtful pages of Burdach,
and in the mystical rhapsodies of Oken. But never, we believe, was
it before enforced and illustrated by so imperial a survey of the
whole domain of Natural Science as in the volumes before us.

We are not disposed to discuss at any length the opinion maintained
by Mr. Agassiz, that life has not grown out of the necessary action
of the physical laws. If we accept the customary definitions of the
physical laws, we accede most cordially to his proposition. As
opposed to the fancies of Epicurus and his poet, Lucretius, or to
modern atheistic doctrines of similar character, we have no
qualification or condition to suggest which might change its force
or significance. When we remember that the genius of such a man as
Laplace shared the farthest flight of star-eyed science only to
"waft us back the tidings of despair," we are thankful that so
profound a student of Nature as Mr. Agassiz has tracked the warm
foot-prints of Divinity throughout all the vestiges of creation.

There is danger, however, that, in accepting this doctrine as a truth,
we may be led into an inexact conception of the so-called physical
laws, unless we closely examine the sense in which we use the
expression. The forces which act according to these laws, and the
various forms of the so-called _matter_, or concrete forces, are
often spoken of as if they were blind agencies and existences, acting
by an inherent fate-like power of their own. But if everything
outside of our consciousness resolves itself, in the last analysis,
into force, or something capable of producing change, and if force
existing by the will of an omniscient and omnipresent Being, to whom
time has no absolute significance, is simply God himself in action,
then we shall find it impossible to limit the causal agency of the
physical forces. All we can say is, that commonly they appear to
move in certain rectilinear paths, in which they manifest a degree
of uniformity and precision so amazing that we are lost in the
infinite intelligence they display,--unless we become perfectly
stupid to it, and think, as in the old fable, there is no music in
it because we are made deaf by its continued harmony. No single leaf
ever made a mistake in falling, though in so doing it solved more
problems than were ever held in all the libraries that have changed
or are changing into dust or ashes.

We are willing to accept the belief of Mr. Agassiz, "that matter
does not exist as such, but is everywhere and always a specific thing,
as are all finite beings." But we must extend the same idea to the
physical forces, and believe them to be specific agencies, and their
acts specific acts,--in other words, each one of them a Divine
manifestation. Theology is close upon us in these speculations.
"Perhaps," says Mr. Robertson, in the volume of admirable sermons
just republished, "even the Eternal himself is more closely bound to
his works than our philosophical systems have conceived. Perhaps
matter is only a mode of thought." Looking, then, at our recognized
forms of matter and physical force as expressions of a self-limiting
omnipotence, we concede that the uniform lines of action in which
human observation has hitherto traced them do not, and, so far as we
can see, cannot, shape the curves of the simplest organism.

It is time for us to close these volumes, to which we cannot even
hope to have done justice, and leave them to those graver tribunals
that will in due season award their well-weighed decisions. We have
taken the Master's hand, and followed Nature through all her paths of
life. We have trod with him the shores of old oceans that roll no
more, and traced the Providence that orders the creation of to-day
engraved in every stony feature of their obsolete organisms. We have
broken into that mysterious chamber, the chosen studio of the
Infinite Artist, where, beneath its marble or crystalline dome, he
fashions the embryo from its formless fluids. And as we turn
reluctantly away, the accents we have once already heard linger with
us: "In one word, all these facts in their natural connection
proclaim aloud the One God, whom man may know, adore, and love; and
Natural History must, in good time, become the analysis of the
thoughts of the Creator of the Universe, as manifested in the animal
and vegetable kingdoms."

TACKING SHIP OFF SHORE

I.

The weather leech of the topsail shivers,
The bowlines strain and the lee shrouds slacken,
The braces are taut, the lithe boom quivers,
And the waves with the coming squall-cloud blacken.

II.

Open one point on the weather bow
Is the light-house tall on Fire Island head;
There's a shade of doubt on the captain's brow,
And the pilot watches the heaving lead.

III.

I stand at the wheel and with eager eye
To sea and to sky and to shore I gaze,
Till the muttered order of "FULL AND BY!"
Is suddenly changed to "FULL FOR STAYS!"

IV.

The ship bends lower before the breeze,
As her broadside fair to the blast she lays;
And she swifter springs to the rising seas,
As the pilot calls, "STAND BY FOR STAYS!"

V.

It is silence all, as each in his place,
With the gathered coils in his hardened hands,
By tack and bowline, by sheet and brace,
Waiting the watchword impatient stands.

VI.

And the light on Fire Island head draws near,
As, trumpet-winged, the pilot's shout
From his post on the bowsprit's heel I hear,
With the welcome call of "READY! ABOUT!"

VII.

No time to spare! It is touch and go,
And the captain growls, "DOWN HELM! HARD DOWN!"
As my weight on the whirling spokes I throw,
While heaven grows black with the storm-cloud's frown.

VIII.

High o'er the knight-heads flies the spray,
As we meet the shock of the plunging sea;
And my shoulder stiff to the wheel I lay,
As I answer, "AYE, AYE, SIR! HA-A-R-D A-LEE!"

IX.

With the swerving leap of a startled steed
The ship flies fast in the eye of the wind,
The dangerous shoals on the lee recede,
And the headland white we have left behind.

X.

The topsails flutter, the jibs collapse
And belly and tug at the groaning cleats,
The spanker slats, and the mainsail flaps,
And thunders the order, "TACKS AND SHEETS!"

XI.

'Mid the rattle of blocks and the tramp of the crew,
Hisses the rain of the rushing squall;
The sails are aback from clew to clew,
And now is the moment for "MAINSAIL, HAUL!"

XII.

And the heavy yards like a baby's toy
By fifty strong arms are swiftly swung;
She holds her way, and I look with joy
For the first white spray o'er the bulwarks flung.

XIII.

"LET GO AND HAUL!" 'Tis the last command,
And the head-sails fill to the blast once more;
Astern and to leeward lies the land,
With its breakers white on the shingly shore.

XIV.

What matters the reef, or the rain, or the squall?
I steady the helm for the open sea;
The first mate clamors, "BELAY THERE, ALL!"
And the captain's breath once more comes free.

XV.

And so off shore let the good ship fly;
Little care I how the gusts may blow,
In my fo'castle-bunk in a jacket dry,--
Eight bells have struck, and my watch is below.

MAMOUL.

THROUGH THE COSSITOLLAH KALEIDOSCOPE.

Under my window, in the street called Cossitollah, flows all the
motliness of a Calcutta thoroughfare in two counter-setting currents;--
one Chowriagee-ward, in the direction of Nabob magnificence and grace;
the other toward the Cooly squalor and deformity of the Radda Bazaar;--
and as, in the glare of the early forenoon sun, the shadows of the
hither or thither passing throngs fall straight across the way, from
the Parsee's _godown_, over against me, to the gate of the _pucca_
house wherein my look-out is, I watch with interest the frequent
eddies occasioned by the clear-steerings of caste,--Brahmin, Warrior,
and Merchant keeping severely to the Parsee side, so that the foul
shadow of Soodra or Pariah may not pollute their sacred persons. It
is as though my window were a tower of Allahabad, and below me, in
Cossitollah, were the shy meeting of the waters. Thus, looking up or
down, I mark how the limpid Jumna of high caste holds its way in a
common bed, but never mingling with the turbid Ganges of an unclean
rabble.

Reader, should you ever "do" the City of Palaces, permit me to
commend with especial emphasis to your consideration this same
Cossitollah, as a representative street, wherein the European and
Asiatic elements of the Calcutta panorama are mingled in the most
picturesque proportions; for Cossitollah is the link that most
directly joins the pitiful benightedness of the Black Town to the
imposing splendors of Kumpnee Bahadoor,--the short, but stubborn
chain of responsibility, as it were, whereby the ball of helpless
and infatuated stock-and-stone-worship is fastened to the leg of
British enlightenment and accountability.

From the Midaun, or Parade Ground, with its long-drawn arrays of
Sepoy chivalry, its grand reviews before the _Burra Lard Sahib_,
(as in domestic Bengalee we designate the Governor-General,) its
solemn sham battles, and its welkin-rending regimental bands, by
whose brass and sheepskin God saves the Queen twice a day; from
Government House, with its historic pride, pomp, and circumstance,
and its red tape, its aides-de-camp, and its adjutant-birds, its
stirring associations, and its stupid architecture; from the
pensioned aristocracy of Chowringhee the Magnificent; from the
carnival concourse of the Esplanade, with its kaleidoscopic surprises;
from the grim patronage of Fort William, with its in-every-department
well-regulated fee-faw-fum; in fine, from Clive, and Hastings, and
Wellington, and Gough, and Hardinge, and Napier, and Bentinck, and
Ellenborough, and Dalhousie, and all the John Company that has come
of them; from the tremendous and overwhelming SAHIB, to that most
profoundly abject of human objects, the Hindoo PARIAH, (who
approaches thee, O Awful Being! O Benign Protector of the Poor! O
Writer in the Salt-and-Opium Office! on his hands and knees, and
with a wisp of grass in his mouth, to denote that he is thy beast,)--
from all those to this, the shortest cut is through Cossitollah.

And so, in the current of its passengers, partaking the
characteristics of its contrasted extremities, fantastically blending
the purple and fine linen of Chowringhee with the breech-cloths of
the Black Town, Cossitollah is, as I have said, preeminently the
type street of Calcutta. Other localities have their peculiar throngs,
and certain classes and castes are proper to certain thoroughfares;--
Sepoys and dogboys to the Midaun; _circars_ or clerks, and
_ chowkeydars_ or private police, to Tank Square; a world of
pampered women, fat civil servants, coachmen, _ayahs_ or nurses,
_durwans_ or doorkeepers, _cha-prasseys_ or messengers, _kitmudgars_
or waiters, to Garden Reach; palanquin-bearers, the smaller fry of
_banyans_ or shopkeepers, and _dandees_ or boatmen, to the Ghauts;
together with no end of coolies, and _bheestees_ or water-carriers,
horse-dealers, and _syces_ or grooms, to Durumtollah; sailors,
British and American, Malay and Lascar, to Flag Street, the quarter
of punch-houses;--but in Cossitollah all castes and vocations are met,
whether their talk be of gold mohurs or cowries; here the Sahib gives
the horrid leper a wide berth, and the Baboo walks carefully round the
shadow of Mehtur, the sweeper. Therefore, reader, Cossitollah is by
all means the street for you to draw profound conclusions from.

Come, let us sit in the window and observe; it is but forty puffs of
a No. 3 cheroot, in a lazy palanquin, from one end of Cossitollah to
the other; and from our window, though not exactly midway, but
nearer the Bazaar, we can see from Flag Street wellnigh to the Midaun.

What is this? A close _palkee_, with a passenger; the bearers, with
elbows sharply crooked, and calves all varicose, trotting to a
monotonous, jerking ditty, which the _sirdar_, or leader, is
impudently improvising, to the refrain of _Putterum_, ("Easy now!")
at the expense of their fare's _amour-propre_.

"Out of the way there!
_Putterum_.
This is a Rajah!
_Putterum_.
Very small Rajah!
_Putterum_.
Sixpenny Rajah!
_Putterum_.
Holes in his elbows!
_Putterum_.
Capitan Slipshod!
_Putterum_.
Son of a sea-cook!
_Putterum_.
Hush! he will beat us!
_Putterum_.
Hush! he will kick us!
_Putterum_.
Kick us and curse us!
_Putterum_.
Not he, the greenhorn!
_Putterum_.
Don't understand us!
_Putterum_.
Don't know the lingo!
_Putterum_.
Let's shake the palkee!
_Putterum_.
Rattle the pig's bones!
_Putterum_.
Set down the palkee!
_Putterum_.
Call him a great lord!
_Putterum_.
Ask him for buksheesh!
_Putterum_."

And the four consummate knaves do set down the palkee, and shift the
pads on their shoulders; while the sirdar slips round to the
sliding-door, and timidly intruding his sweaty phiz, at an opening
sufficiently narrow to guard his nose against assault from within,
but wide enough to give us a glimpse, through an out-bursting cloud
of cheroot-smoke, of a pair of stout legs encased in white duck,
with the neatest of light pumps at the end of them, says:--

"_Buksheesh do, Sahib! buksheesh do_! O favorite slave of the Lord!
O tender shepherd of the poor! O sublime and beautiful Being, upon
whose turban Prosperity dances and Peace makes her bed! Whose mother
is twin-sister to the Sacred Cow, and whose grandmother is the Lotos
of Seven Virtues! _O Khodabund! buksheesh do_! Bestow upon thy
abject and self-despising slave wherewithal to commemorate the
golden hour when, by a blessed dispensation, he was permitted to lay
his trembling forehead against thy victorious feet!"

"_Jou-jehennum, toom sooa_!--Go to Gehenna, you pig! What are you
bothering about, with your 'boxes,' 'boxes,' nothing but 'boxes'?
Insatiable brutes! _Jou_! I tell you,--_jeldie jou_! or by Doorga,
the goddess of awful rows, I'll smash the palkee and outrage all
your religious prejudices! _Jou_!"

Evidently our varicose friends imagine they have caught a Tartar,
and that the white ducks are not so recent an importation as they at
first supposed; for now they catch up the pole of the palkee nimbly,
and _jou jeldie_ (that is, trot up smartly) to quite another song.

"_Jeldie jou, jeldie_!"
_Putterum_.
Carry him softly!
_Putterum_.
Swiftly and smoothly!
_Putterum_.
He is a Rajah!
_Putterum_.
Rich little Rajah!
_Putterum_.
Fierce little Rajah!
_Putterum_.
See how his eyes flash!
_Putterum_.
Hear how his voice roars!
_Putterum_.
He is a Tippoo!
_Putterum_.
Capitan Tippoo!
_Putterum_.
Tremble before him!
_Putterum_.
Serve him and please him!
_Putterum_.
Please him and serve him!
_Putterum_.
He will reward us!
_Putterum_.
He will protect us!
_Putterum_.
He will enrich us!
_Putterum_.
Charity Lord Sa'b!
_Putterum._
Out of the way there!
_Putterum_.
Way for the great ...
_Putterum_.
Rajah of ten crores!
_Putter_....
.... Ten crores!..
_Putter_....
Rajah.... ....
_Put...._
.... Lard.... ..
_Putter...._
.... ... Sa'b!
_.... rum_.

And so they have turned down Flag Street.

But what now? Here is something more imposing,--a chariot-and-four,--
four spanking Arabs in gold-mounted trappings,--a fat and elaborate
coachman, very solemn,--two tall _hurkarus_, or avant-couriers,
supporting the box, one on either side, with studied symmetry, like
Siva and Vishnu upholding the throne of Brahma,--four _syces_ running
at the horses' heads, each with his _chowree_, or fly-flapper, made
from the tail of the Thibet cow,--a fifth before, to clear the way,--
a basket of _Simpkin_, which is as though one should say Champagne,
behind, and our own _banyan_, our man of contracts and ready lakhs,
that shrewd broker and substantial banker, the Baboo Kalidas Ramaya
Mullick, on the back seat.

"_Hi! Cliattak-wallah! Bheestee!--Hi! hi_!--You chap with the
umbrella, you fellow with the water, clear the way! This Baboo comes,
this Baboo rides,--he stops not, he stays not,--he is rich, he is
honored. Shall a pig impede him? Shall a pig delay him? Jump,
_sooa_. Jump!"

And thus, amid much vociferation, and unceremonious dispersing of the
common herd, who dodge with practised agility right and left, the
fat and elaborate coachman pulls up the spanking Arabs at our
_godown_ gate, and the Baboo alights with the air of a gentleman
of thirty lachs, to the manner born; to him all this outcry is but
_Mamoul_,--usage, custom,--and _Mamoul_ is to him as air.

As the Baboo steps through the wide swinging gate and enters the
place that owns him master, let us mark his reception. The _durwan_
first,--our grenadier doorkeeper, the man of proud port and
commanding presence, to whom that portal is a post of honor,--our
Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, in one, of courage, strength, and
address enlisted with fidelity. The loyalty of Ramee Durwan is
threefold, in this order: first, to his caste, next, to his beard,
and then to his post; only for the two first would he abandon the
last; his life he holds of less account than either.

As the Baboo passes, Ramee Durwan, you think, will be ready with
profound and obsequious salaam. Not so; he draws himself up to the
very last of his extraordinary inches, and touches his forehead
lightly with the fingers of his right hand, only slightly inclining
his head,--a not more than affable salute,--almost with a quality
of concession,--gracious as well as graceful; he would do as much
for any puppy of a cadet who might drop in on the Sahib. On the
other hand, lowly louteth the Baboo, with eyes downcast and palm
applied reverentially to his sleek forehead.

How now? This Baboo is a banyan of solid substance, and the Mullicks
all are citizens of credit and renown; while Ramee Durwan gets five
rupees a month, and makes his bed at the gate. Last year, they say,
when little Dwarkanath Mullick, the Baboo's adopted son, nine years
old, was married to the tender child Vinda, old Lulla Seal's darling,
on her fifth birthday, the Baboo Kalidas Raniaya Mullick made the
occasion famous by liberating fifty prisoners-for-debt, of the
Soodra sort, with as many flourishes of his illustrious signature.
Ramee Durwan has not a change of turbans.

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