Page images
PDF
EPUB

-

rain. Comte (something) Roget is there; has been speaking of Abbés, Abbé Gondy, &c., is getting himself delicately quizzed, I perceive. "Jeunesse dorée jeunesse argenté, des bottes," - in fine M. le Comte, who is a very weak brother, hastens to take himself away, feeling not at ease here. Dinner (bad mutton-chop, useless wretched "cookery" all along, to my poor experience), then half dress a little, a dinner is to be here at 7. Thiers and the two inevitables (Mérimée and Laborde); I decided to vanish to Browning's in the interim. At Browning's vague talk, kind enough; take leave, and home soon after 9. Prints, I had been surveying two large batches of Bookseller's Prints, "on approb"; marking the defects, &c. Did not go up to the three strangers all at once; duly by degrees shook hands with the two inevitables (who staid late, clatterclattering); Thiers, in about half an hour, glided out without any speech with me. I am told that he is jealous that I respect him insufficiently! Poor little soul, I have no pique at him whatsoever; and of the three, or indeed of known Frenchmen (Guizot included) consider him much the best man. A healthy human animal, with due braverism (high and low), due bulkinism, or more than due; in fine a healthy creature, and without any "conscience,' good or bad. Whereas, Guizot - I find him a solemn intriguant, an InquisitorTartuffe, gaunt, hollow, resting on the everlasting No, with a haggard conscious

a while; then out to see Champ de Mars | no Hippodrome. Rain begins in the again; Hôtel des Invalides by the way; Champs Elysées; call on Lady Sandwich; curious hawker (in good clothes, like a home to dinner, by the arcades, in decided kind of gentleman) selling steel pens on Pont Royal: he wrote like a Butterworth, -poor soul, no better trade! Invalides and barracks in front near by very striking. Multitudes of blind old soldiers. Promenade des Aveugles; place nothing like so clean as Chelsea; cannons round it, chimney tops, &c., shaped (I thought) like a kind of fantastic helmet; figure of Napoleon in inner court:- very well. Through dull streets, with some trees, to Ecole Militaire and grand review in Champ de Mars. Poor Champ de Mars, in a very dilapidated, unswept, and indeed quite ugly condition! Federation "30 feet" of mound is sunk to eight or ten (as I said above), is torn through in many places, is untrimmed, sordid, everywhere, - the place (perhaps 100 acres or more) is altogether dusty, disorderly, waste and ugly. If Federation slope were to be completed, trimmed, and kept green with the trees on it; if any order or care were shown. But there is none of that kind, there or anywhere. What strikes you in all public places first is the dirt, the litter of dust, fallen leaves or whatever there may be. Review going on, worth little: finer men than common about the streets, with these strange bellows-shaped red trousers (tight over the hips, tight at ancles; intermediately wide as petticoats), with their straight, pinched blue coats and ridiculous flower-pot caps; good middlesized, well-grown men many of them; they were marching, going on in detail, some resting, not many together any-ness that it ought to be the everlasting where: hardly worth above a glance or two. Passy and Chaillot looked very beautiful across the river. Troops now began to take up position and fire, burn the Republic's gunpowder. I went my way; inquired of an oldish soldier (not Invalid) about the populous heights to westwards: it was "Sèvres"; St. Cloud not quite visible here; this is the Pont de Féna (old soldier, very civil and talkative). I cross by Pont Jéna; ascend through dirty little tea-garden groves into Passy, sit down there among wilderness of stones (new unused mason stones), and smoke, looking over a pleasant view of some wing of Paris, the noise from Champ de Mars growing louder and louder to the waste of the Republic powder. Passy, Chaillot, suburban village street; very quiet, in spite of an omnibus or two; exotic of aspect, worth walking alone. Arc de l'Etoile again; still enough to-day when there is

Yea: to me an extremely detestable kind of man. So I figure him,-from his books and aspect, and avoided to speak with him while he was last here. Heaven forgive me if I do the poor man a wrong; practically I have only to avoid him, that is all. To poor Thiers I have sent compliments (if such be due at all) since my return; part with him in peace.

The inevitables are not interesting; at length they go their ways: and now it palpably turns out, Lord Ashburton is not going to-morrow morning, feels better, and ought to stay for Lady Ashburton! Heavy news for my poor fancy (shuddering at a French journey); but how could I deny that the measure was perfectly reasonable; that, in fact, the poor ailing lady ought to have some escort. I must go myself, then; must part and shave this night, be called to-morrow at 6: " adieu, madame! Lord Ashburton walks with me while I

smoke in Place Vendôme; will see me on | pleasant-looking villages on the higher the morrow (but doesn't); lends me two ground towards the sea; some trees, very gold sovereigns: Good-night! Packing, feeble; broad level railway course, often shaving, fiddling hither and thither: it is straight as a line; not one tunnel from past one o'clock before I get to bed; and Paris. Short battering shower or two, then there are many noises (some strange then again bright weather. Thank Heavenough) to start and again start me: at en, Calais at last. Passport showing; length, in spite of fate, sink into chaotic crowded botheration, steamer overflowing sleep, and lie so till Mason ("groom of (German, Italian, French), in the end we chambers," valet long known) calls me: do get under way, - -have seen nothing of quarter to 7: up, and not a minute lost! Calais but the harbor and some of the steeple-tops is not that a beautiful way of travelling?

Thursday morning (2 Oct. 1851). Swift, swift! The little brown valet has coffee ready; I can eat only a cubic inch of bread, half-drink a small egg; drink nearly all the hot milk: that is my five-minutes' breakfast in the deadly press of hurry; then into a fiacre, laquais de place volunteering to attend me, - and so away! Early French streets; some "Place de Lafayette" (so far as I could read), then Terminus, still in good time, but such a bustle, such a fuss and uproar for half an hour to come! Tickets, dear (some £2 12s.), and difficult extremely, then sliding of your luggage en queue along a lid counter (to be weighed), and quarrels about it; ohone, ohone! laquais and fiacre cost me 3+1=5 francs. Luggage (mistaken, I believe, after all) is I franc+ endless, maddening botheration. At length you are admitted, hardly find a place; and so away! Eight of us inside: two John Bulls (one with toothache and afraid of air); one fat French woman, very sad-look ing; then I, opposite, young John Bull, and snappish old-young English lady; at the extreme right two French exhibitioners have to fight for air, but get it, then hold my peace as much as possible: "Madame, cela finira; cela ne durera pas à tout jamais !" We are quiet to one another, and no incivility occurs. "Auteuil," said my French neighbor on the right, an oldish, common-place, innocent man; then “Montmorenci "; country very beautiful here; grows gradually less so; Pontoise," and still uglier flat, bare country, gradually after which quite flat, bare, ill-tilled, and ugly, and so continues. At " Arras" (you can see nothing of it, or of anything a mere open, barren flat, and a meagre little barrack of a station-house built), get a bun and glass of vin ordinaire, this was all my food till England. "Amiens" (nothing visible); "Lille" (gly waste station-house): on, on, Oh let it end! Country all flat; flax with ditches: haricots in upright bundles with a stick in each; spade husbandry (man digging), careful culture hereabouts;

66

Our passage was of two hours, rather pitching, cold wind, once a violent shower of rain: "Hoahh ohh!" frequent and sordid; couldn't think of smoking; stood mainly. Stewards abundantly humane; one poor German lay half-dead; two hundred of us or more, Dover in the damp, gusty twilight; and at length squeeze out. "Commissioner of Gun Tavern," one can get refreshment along then! Brandy and water and beef-steak, in the dirty coffeeroom of Gun Tavern, - extremely welcome in fine, and beneficial India captain talking as he ate, foolish old Lancashire steam machinist (from Lago Maggiore region) answering loudly, foolishly. Commissioner has done my trunk: "two-franc piece" (what you please), -no likelihood of starting "for an hour yet," so many are we. Get my wetted (not dried) topcoat. Somebody has stolen three good cigars; happily nothing else. Station-house, and place myself; can't see trunk, have to believe it right (and it proves so). Fat Frenchwoman lands beside me again. Young English-Belgian tourists (seemingly), three young men, one ditto woman; silly all, and afraid of air. Off, at last, thank Heaven! By the shore, cliffs, and sea to Folkestone; we have no lamp (so many in train), after Folkestone, thanks to beef-steak and extremity of fatigue, I fall asleep (never the like in a railway before); half-waken twice, to pull down the window (which is always pulled up again straightway); awaken wholly, and it is London Bridge! Admirable silence, method and velocity here. They keep us standing some ten minutes, tickets got, trunks are all laid out in an enclosure under copious light; "Tiens, je vois déjà ma malle!" exclaims Monsieur: as might I, and others. Near midnight, through muddy rains, am home safe, scarce credible!-and have as it were slept ever since. Oh the joy of being home again, home and silent! No Ashburton come yet: weather wet. Finis. 7 Oct., 1851.

From Temple Bar. INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A

NATURALIST.

BY MRS. ANDREW CROSSE.

ient questions about the keg of French brandy that was usually found after such occurrences, beneath the straw in a corner of the stable.

The traditions of Poole had, besides, a NATURE'S best-loved children, above all, those to whom she reveals her secrets, romantic record of buccaneering exploits; are seldom the favorites of fortune. This and during the Civil Wars the Puritan was the case with Philip Gosse, the natutownsfolk distinguished themselves by ralist, who made his early experiences of defeating Lord Inchiquin and his Irish life under the trials and troubles attendant regiment, and capturing Prince Rupert's upon genteel poverty. The family tradi- treasure, that was being despatched to tion of "better days "could hardly do Weymouth. In the beginning of this cenmore than deepen, by contrast, the diffi- tury, the political Puritanism of earlier culties of his thrifty mother in making times survived in the strong religious dogboth ends meet, in the modest household matism of Nonconformity where the future scientist spent his youth. this spirit that young Philip Gosse assimIn the interesting biography of Mr. ilated, in all its zealous intensity and in its Gosse, lately given to the world by his intellectual limitations. Side by side with son, we are led to see how the untoward spiritual convictions that at times overcircumstances of poverty, and the drudglad's growing devotion to natural history; shadowed his life, it is curious to trace the ery of an uncongenial occupation, were alike surmounted and turned aside by the strong instinct of a powerful mind seeking

and it was

with the instinct strong within him, he sought for teaching in the woods and its true vocation in life. streams, where at the bend of the river the Philip Gosse was born at Worcester in water-lilies grew thickest - or on the wide 1810, but his family removed the follow-heath, where the murmurous hum of ining year to Poole, in Dorsetshire, where sects made a music that he loved. In his father's sister, the mother of Thomas penury and disappointment, in days of Bell, the zoologist, had long been estab- hope and in hours of despair, this genuine love of nature was the safeguard of his youth and the solace of his old age.

lished.

Poole was then in the full tide of its prosperity, owing to the Newfoundland fishing trade, which gave wealth to the Newmans, Slades, and other west country families. This trade declined after the fall of the first Napoleon, and has now become nearly extinct; but the town has found a new industry, in its export of Potter's clay to Seville, Stockholm, and Dordt. In what are called "the good old days," this neighborhood was the centre of extensive smuggling transactions, which had the effect of breeding up a daring and turbulent population. An old doggrel

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

The so-called "free trade" in Dorsetshire was the more difficult to suppress, because it was winked at very considerably by many persons of good position. The writer remembers some old folks who felt a pride in telling how " Squire never troubled if the horses were taken out of the stable on a moonless night, and were found next morning with their fetlocks thick in mud, as if the devil himself had ridden them." Nor was it believed that the said justice of the peace asked any inconven

Ruskin somewhere remarks on the

benefits of a totally neglected education," and we may remember that Sir Humphry Davy attributed the peculiar application of his talents, in fact his success in life, to the circumstance of his being sent to a school where the master neglected his duties, and where he, as a child, was left very other example of the advantages which much to himself. Philip Gosse was ansome natures derive from the best process of education, that of self-teaching; one year at a grammar school at Blandford was all the serious instruction the lad ever received.

At fifteen, he began to make his own living as a junior clerk in a counting-house at Poole. Two years later, in 1827, young Gosse was drafted off, much against his own inclination, to a commercial house in Newfoundland. On the voyage out he quickly developed his rare faculty of observation nothing escaped him; and he set himself the task of keeping an illustrated natural history journal. Whales spouting, petrels, boatswain birds, and the visits of the gorgeous Portuguese men-o'war (physiala) were all carefully noted down by the pencil of the eager observer, who made himself, in course of time, a most finished and accurate draughtsman.

He had a hereditary right to this talent, for his father was a miniature painter. Arriving at Carbonear, Philip Gosse settled down at once to his uncongenial office work, which only a strong sense of duty made endurable, through the weary eight years that he was destined to spend in Newfoundland. His love of animals, great and small, especially for anything curious, soon became known, and the good-tempered sailors, with whom he was acquainted, would bring him from time to time specimens of oddities that they met with in their voyages. He interested himself about the habits of the seal and other animals. Among his notes, there is a curious account of a regular game of play which the otters in this high latitude carry on amongst themselves.

It chanced, during a foot journey that Gosse made, that an old trapper, who was acting as his guide, pointed out to him "the otter slides on the steep slope of a bank.

These slides were as smooth and slippery as glass, caused by the otters sliding on them in play in the following manner: Several of these amusing creatures combine to select a suitable spot. Then each in succession lying flat on his belly, from the top of the bank slides swiftly down over the snow and plunges into the water. The others follow while he crawls up the bank at some distance, and running round to the sliding-place takes his turn again to perform the same evolution as before. The wet running from their bodies freezes on the surface of the slide, and so the snow becomes a smooth gutter of ice. This sport the old trapper had frequently seen continued with the utmost eagerness and with every demonstration of delight, for hours together.

his turn, repeatedly round and round the mystic circle. The game ended, and both birds flew off together to the neighboring trees.

During the earlier years of Philip Gosse's residence in Newfoundland, he had no settled plan in his natural history studies; he loved all things, both great and small, that appertained to the inferior creation, and a mere accident at length determined the nature of his researches. He chanced to be at an auction, where he had the opportunity of purchasing for ten shillings Adam's "Essay on the Microscope.' The possession of this volume formed an epoch in his life; it had the effect of concentrating his interest on entomology, and finally leading him to microscopic zoology, the field of his most original and permanent contributions to science.

Newfoundland yielded but a poor harvest of butterflies, moths, and beetles still there were some to be found, and with

these he began his collection. Fortunately, about this time, after an absence of some years, he was enabled to take a summer holiday, returning for a few weeks to his home in dear old Dorsetshire. In describing a walk round the familiar haunts the day after his arrival, he says:

I was brimful of happiness. The beautiful and luxuriant hedgerows; the mossy gnarled oaks; the fields; the flowers; the pretty warbling birds; the blue sky and bright sun; the dancing butterflies it seemed to my enchanted senses, just come from dreary New foundland, that I was in Paradise. How I love to recall every little incident connected with that first morning's excursion! - the poor brown crane-fly, which was the first English insect I caught; the little grey moth under the oaks, at the end of the last field; the meadow where the Satyrida were sporting on the sunny bank; the heavy fat Musca in Hechfordfield hedge, which I in my ignorance called a Bombylius, and the consequent display of entomological lore manifested all that day by the family, who frequently repeated the sounding words—“Bombylius bee-fly."

In reference to the idea that set games are played by animals the writer may mention a curious incident, witnessed by the late Andrew Crosse, at his residence on the Quantock hills. Looking one day from his laboratory window into a court. yard that was remote from any disturbance, he there saw a robin, dragging the apparently dead body of another robin, round and round in a circle, on the paved court. This bright glimpse of England, and After continuing this strange proceeding the collecting possibilities, in hedgerows several times, the mimic Achilles, with teeming with insect life, was to be of the the corpse of the feathered Hector at his briefest. The poor clerk had to return to heels, stopped suddenly in his circuit his office work, and to the still more disround the fancied walls of Troy, and as tasteful duty of counting the seal pelts, as suddenly threw himself on his back as if the cargoes were discharged. In the stark dead, with half-distended wings and midst of all this, Gosse kept up his pracrigid, up-turned legs. Meanwhile the tice of recording every fact connected with other robin, the seeming victim of a cruel natural history; this included a meteorotriumph, woke up to full life, and seiz-logical journal. In 1833, he began to fill ing upon his companion, dragged him, in a volume with drawings of extreme accu

racy, illustrating the entomology of the country. As some of the figures were magnified, he needed a microscope. He had brought back from Poole two lenses, which he contrived to mount in bone; this lens, neatly set in putty, was the only microscope he was able to procure for many years.

This interesting biography affords a curious picture of Newfoundland as it was socially half a century ago. Philip Gosse had known from the time of his first settling there, that the Irish element was a thorn in the side of the law-abiding and loyal section of the colonists. But in the winter of 1833, the same year in which the naturalist had been adding three hundred and eighty-eight species of insects to his collection, party spirit ran higher than it had ever done before. Protestants went in mortal fear, for the Irish everywhere vastly outnumbered them, and were striving to gain a monopoly of political power. The editor of the Public Ledger, a Protestant paper, had been advocating the colonial cause with much courage and ability, and for this he was greatly hated by the Irish, who revenged themselves in the following characteristic manner.

Mr. Henry Winton, the editor in question, was a young man of great spirit, and generally liked; and was, moreover, a friend of Gosse's, sharing in many of his religious views. Careless of danger, Winton was returning one night alone from Carbonear to Harbor Grace, after transacting business at the former place when,

as Gosse describes :

[ocr errors]

per

He was suddenly seized in a lonely spot by a set of fellows, who pinioned him, while one of their party cut off both his ears. This outrage created an immense sensation, and caused a sort of terror among the loyalists. A functory inquiry was made, but the Irish influence prevented it from being carried far. It was soon known that the mutilation was the act of a Dr. Molley, a surgeon, of Carbonear, but he escaped all punishment.

The increasing ill-feeling of the Irish towards their fellow-colonists made life more and more unpleasant for the English in Newfoundland. This fact, together with the growing conviction felt by Gosse that the commercial house with which he was connected was in itself less prosperous, and offered him no future, decided him to leave the colony and seek his fortune elsewhere. In the end he determined to throw in his chance with some friends, whose religious views were the same as bis own, and who were going to try farming in Canada - so thither he went. It

"on

was summer, and at first he was delighted with the place where they settled, account of the profusion of butterflies." It has been said that the geology of a district is indicated by its entomology, but it is to be feared that Gosse thought little enough of the subsoil. He and his friend Mr. Jacques brought a surprising amount of ignorance to the work they had in hand. For three years they toiled and struggled against adverse circumstances, but the only success was the butterflies. In the intellectual isolation of this period of his life, Gosse was thrown more and more on the companionship of nature. What had been a pastime became now the main resource and consolation of his mental activity. Nor were these years so barren of result as they seemed; the work of close observation, of unflagging industry in the pursuit of zoology, formed the basis of the laborer's future renown and achievement. The harvest of those years of apparent failure was reaped in 1840, when Gosse's first published volume, "The Canadian Naturalist," made its appearance. But even when his present outlook was depressing in the extreme, there were moments of enjoyment. If he sighed as a farmer, he rejoiced as a naturalist in the vivid life both of fauna and flora in the uncleared forests of Canada. In his home letters he describes the country as charming in the summer. With a touch of humor he says:

You asked me if I had shot any turkeys or deer; you know not how good a shot I am. I have shot at a squirrel three times successively without doing him any "bodily harm"

without even the satisfaction of the Irish sportsman who made the bird-"lave that, any way"- for the squirrel would not leave the tree, but continued chattering and scolding me all the time.

By the spring of 1838, Gosse had so impoverished himself by farming, that in despair he sold off everything. Of course he realized far less than he expected, in fact the result was deplorable. "He was now twenty-eight years of age, and he was not possessed, when all his property was sold, of so many pounds." He now resolved to go to Alabama; he had the idea of setting up there as a schoolmaster; anyhow, he would have the chance of looking upon the richer life and more varied vegetation of the sunny south. It was a wholly nebulous conception practically considered, but the instinct of the naturalist drew him thither, and he went.

Though sad of heart and empty in pocket, the world was full of interest to

« PreviousContinue »