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From Good Words. SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF CARLYLE'S

TALK.

I.

In a somewhat shabbily furnished room (but on the walls there was a large copy of the Berlin picture of Frederick the Great dressed as a drum

mer-boy; and on the table a number of Frederick's snuff-boxes were strewn about) in a dingy little street in Chelsea, an old man, worn, and tired, and bent, with deeply lined, ascetic features, a firm under-jaw, tufted grey hair and tufted grey and white beard, and sunken and unutterably sorrowful eyes, returned from the fireplace, where with trembling fingers he had been lighting his long clay pipe, and resumed his seat in front of the reading-desk.

"I do not think," he was saying, in an absent kind of way, "that I shall see Scotland again. To me it has become a sad and strange and solemn country; now that all my kinsfolk and friends are gone. And then there is the fatigue of the long journey; and the noise and the sleeplessness make travelling almost impossible for me. As it is, I suffer a great deal of physical misery, and also of mental gloom."

But presently he had resumed in a lighter strain:

"I well remember my first voyage to Glasgow. I was early up on deck; and I found that all around me was no atmosphere, nothing that could be called an atmosphere, but just a vast immensity of smoke and yellow vapor; and through the yellow vapor there pulsated an extraordinary light-a red glare that flashed up and across the skies, as if the whole world were in conflagration. I turned, and asked the man at the wheel what it meant. 'Dixon's Ironworks,' said he. This Dixon family were of enormous wealth, according to popular repute; and yet there was a wild story of one of them, supposed to be worth nine millions, being suddenly confronted with the question whether he was worth nine pence. A story that gave rise to much talk and foolish wonder at the time. Doubtless he has

...

long ere now gone down to Erebus and Nox. . . . The Glasgow merchants seemed to me a shrewd, well-to-do, plain, kindly, and hospitable folk; but their wives-I cannot recollect having ever taken notice of women's dress before-but I thought when I saw them in the streets that their gowns were just a little extravagant-a little marked and extravagant. . . . Glasgow is the 'west country' to the Edinburgh people; and I got to know something of the westcountry, chiefly through the long excursions that Edward Irving and I used to make through the Trossachs, and round by Loch Katrine, and Wordsworth's Inversnaid. Well I mind those walks; almost the individual trees down by the side of the water, the brown burns, the blue hills over Loch Lomond way. We had much to talk of in those days."

The pipe is laid aside; an afternoon stroll is proposed; and the old man suggests that the window should be opened, to let in the fresh air and let out the tobacco-smoke. His visitor would fain perform this little office for him; but no. With a gentle, old-fashioned courtesy one seldom encounters nowadays, the offer is declined; though the trembling hands find difficulty with the sash. But eventually the window is raised. Then he goes off to exchange his grey woollen dressing-gown for the cloak and slouched hat familiar to Chelsea thoroughfares; and in a few minutes the house in Cheyne Row is left behind.

II.

Now, in endeavoring to place on paper a few of Carlyle's obiter dicta, it is impossible to convey to the reader how immeasurably they lose in the process. Carlyle did not talk Scotch-not any dialect of it;1 but he spoke with a strong South-of-Scotland insistence of em

I have frequently seen put into Carlyle's mouth, as his native dialect, that strange and fearsome speech that for centuries has done duty among English humorists as the Scotch language. Shakespeare was an early offender. His Captain Jamy says: "It sall be vary gud, gud feith, gud captains bath; and I sall quit you with gud leve," etc. It is needless to observe that gibberish of this kind bears no relation whatever to any speech spoken anywhere outside the Zoological Gardens;

phasis; then he had a fine abundance of known-though it sounds incredible picturesque phraseology; and, above all, he liked to wind up a sentence with something-a wild exaggeration, it might be, or a sardonic paradox, or a scornful taunt but, anyhow, with something that sounded like the crack of a whip. It was rather startling to be asked, as a preliminary inquiry as to what was afoot in the literary world. "Is that young man still going about vomiting forth blasphemy and the fires of Tophet?"

One was happy to be able to assure him that the young man was not doing anything of the kind; that, on the contrary, he was fast winning his way to a proud and honored position in the very front rank of English poets.

But it was different when he came to talk of Tennyson; for he had somehow formed the impression that Tennyson was being ousted from his throne by the younger men; and this appeared greatly to concern him. It was a difficult matter to convince him that the "banjo Byrons" had not displaced Tennyson from the affections of the English people; and then, of course, the irrefragable argument - an appeal to Tennyson's publishers could not be mentioned; for in these days, to say of a man that his books are bought by the public, is to convict him (at least the whipper-snappers of criticism appear to think so) of having sinned the unforgivable sin. How this delusion about Tennyson's waning popularity got implanted in Carlyle's mind, it is hard to say; but I venture to make a guess. It is well

bnt it and the various emendations of it that have been handed down, and are now extant-may serve: gud feith, as a specimen of southern wit. 1 It is amusing to notice how the chief of Car. lyle's disciples Ruskin, Froude, Kingsley, to name no others-have been now and again led away by the temptation of this trick of reckless climax. I have before me, as I write, a letter from Mr. Froude, in which he says that Victor Hugo is not worth notice, "except as illustrative of the tendencies of modern productiveness;" and he goes on: "The soil and atmosphere are unfavorable to high genius; and gifted men, for the most part, remain silent, or else go mad." Now, what does this mean? It means nothing at all. It is merely the crack of a whip, lashing the harmless and unresisting air.

enough-that Tennyson was sensitive to newspaper comment - he who ought never to have looked at a line of it; and it is just possible that he may have made complaint to Carlyle of the treatment he was receiving at the hands of some of the obscurities of the press. But that was not the treatment liberally and generously accorded him by the public-the great public of the Englishspeaking peoples; which, after all, to an English author, is the sole important thing.

About certain novelists: "There's that woman they call Miss and there's that other woman who calls herself -; God forbid that I should read their trash; but if what I am told of it be true, then when they go before Rhadamanthus, I should think their sentence would be forty stripes save one."

About Disraeli: "There's that man Disraeli. They tell me he is a good speaker. Perhaps I do not know what a good speaker is. But I read a speech of his that he delivered at Glasgow a year or two ago and it appeared to me the greatest jargon of nonsense that ever got into any poor creature's head!” Nevertheless, he was not always grumbling and growling.

"This Chelsea Embankment now is about the cheerfullest place I know of: the brightness and general liveliness of it; the river flowing and shining; those small eager steamers puffing on their way, and carrying their loads; the open sky; the trees; the people walking up and down, to breathe the fresh air; the nursemaids and the perambulators and the children - the young generation coming on: even those brats o' laddies-"

But at this point one of the brats o' laddies got a swift surprise. He had been twirling himself round the iron rail overlooking the Thames; and threatening every moment to pitch himself into the stream; when, of a sudden, he was gripped by the scruff of the neck, and hauled on to the pavement.

"You young rascal, do ye want to throw yourself into the water?"

That tatterdemalion, if he is alive,

face.

must now be a man of five-and-twenty; that he had never seen Goethe face to one wonders where he is, and whether he knows that in his youth he got a friendly word (and grip) from the greatest man of letters of the nineteenth century.

III.

He appeared to be greatly interested in the Chelsea Pensioners, and in the various gardening occupations and amusements with which the ancient warriors managed to pass the time.

"There are two of them-I do not see them at the moment-who serve as an excellent example of the economy of human force. One of them is a helpless cripple, and cannot get about by himself; the other has lost his eyesight, and cannot get about by himself; so the lame man places himself in a Bath chair, and directs it, while the blind man pushes behind; and together they have their small rambles, doing no harm to any living creature, and each of them profiting by lending to the other what the other lacks." ... "We had fine men for soldiers in those days; look at their stature even now, old and shrunken as they are."

But here the talk wandered away into Germany, partly perhaps Carlyle had been reading a very frivolous little book of mine, the characters in which are supposed to have espoused the side of Germany at a time when Germany was not popular in England. Carlyle's personal experiences of Germany, however, seemed to have been distinctly disappointing; and although he did not expressly say so, one somehow gathered that the chief reason was a conclusion he had formed that the Germans did not properly appreciate Goethe.

"The most notable man in literature for two hundred years. . . . The one man who has shown us what Christianity might be without the husks and cloaks that have been heaped upon it. . . . But there is no real religion at the present day. And the man or the nation that has no religion will come to no thing."

"Thackeray's recollection of Goethe was vague and inaccurate; Thackeray had a confused memory of Goethe's being a dark man."

And then, as the conversation wandered on to other German authors, and when one was challenged to say which of them one had the greatest affection for, there was nothing possible but an honest answer, though it was easily to be foreseen that it would prove the letting in of waters. And it did. It proved to be the letting in of many waters. For the next quarter of an hour poor Heine had a bad time of it:"That slimy and greasy Jew fit only to eat sausages made of toads."

Thunders and lightnings raged round the head of poor Heinrich, and struck out at all his race as well- "no real fun in the Jews-a cynical grin-no honest laughter."

But at last the dispensation of wrath came to an end.

"After all, let us remember that he wrote the 'Lorelei.' And there was good-humor in his satire of Börne."

This mention of the "Lorelei" in mitigation of punishment was somewhat remarkable. Mr. Allingham-an old friend and frequent companion of Carlyle's-assured me that he, Carlyle, had no sense whatever of the magic of lyrical poetry; while he had unmistakably a magnificent disdain for anything, whether in art or literature, that he could not personally appreciate. He had himself tried verse-making; conspicuously he did not succeed; and ever thereafter he kept repeating, "If you have anything to say, say it; why sing it?" In like manner he tried novelwriting; he failed; and ever thereafter he scoffed at fiction-fiction, which from the time of Homer to the time of Thackeray has been the one beautiful and resplendent feature of the mental world. The same anthropometric tendency is clearly traceable throughout his article on Scott. If Carlyle mistook the agonies of dyspepsia for a myste

It was a matter of keen regret to him rious and imperious call urging a man

IV.

to go out into rocky places and wrestle consider the return to an old home of with the Mystery of Existence; Scott, an animal conveyed by coach or railway, on the other hand, having a perfectly or in a closed box or bag, as an accihappy digestion, found it no part of his dental result of such animal's unduty to wander into dark regions and directed wanderings, or some such comfight imaginary dragons anywhere; bination of circumstances favorable to much good it would have done either such an ultimate result. He is also of the world or him!-none the less the the opinion that the unconscious regisWestminster article had to be written, tration of turns and curves by animals, the one man measuring the other by even in their own normal wanderings, himself; and if there was any hurt done, scarcely seems sufficient to explain the it was not done to Scott. However, sense of direction which they appear with regard to the "Lorelei," it is quite to possess. The process of mentally possible that Carlyle was crediting registering the exact distance between Heine, not with the strange lyrical en- each turn, and the exact length and chantment of these verses, but with curvature of each curve, must be, Mr. merely having written a universally Campbell thinks, exceedingly complex, popular song; for he can have travelled and he suggests a more simple explanabut for a short time in Germany who tion of the phenomenon thus: "I have has not heard German mothers and often lost myself in the woods about their daughters sing the "Lorelei" duet, Hoddesdon. It occurred to me one day when the "Luft ist kühl, und es dunkelt, as I was about entering Boxwood, to try und ruhig fliesset der Rhein." to constantly bear in mind the direction of the spot at which I left the beaten track. I found this at first very difficult, but the occasional practice soon grew into a habit, and I now frequently detect myself noting semi-consciously the relation between a given place and my ever-changing position. I still often make mistakes in taking a 'bee-line,' but my error is rarely so great as to put me to much inconvenience. I cannot, however, remember the 'turns' I have taken, and cannot retrace my steps. It has occurred to me that the 'sense of direction in animals' has been similarly developed. Let us picture to ourselves an animal leaving some place of protection, which we will call its home, and fearful of its enemies. After proceeding a very short distance, it glances wistfully homewards, and as it cautiously moves onwards, it is ever turning towards the shortest line of retreat, apparently fixing only the direction of its home point, and allowing all intermediate impressions of position to pass out of record. It is not too much to suppose that the animal, or its descendants, would soon acquire the practice of bearing in mind the direction in which to run in case of danger, and that in the course of generations this habit would be constantly exercised for other purposes

Thereafter the talk was of a more private and personal nature; for this man appeared to have the kindliest and humanest interest in the family relationships and circumstances of any one he might chance to be talking to, however unimportant; and more than that, he had frank words of sympathy and encouragement for literary aims and ambitions that must to him, at his age, have seemed trivial enough. "I wish you well," he said, in earnest tones, at the parting of our ways. One could not help lingering for a moment or two, regarding that solitary and pathetic figure as it passed away along the grey pavement. I saw him no more.

WILLIAM BLACK.

From Leisure Hour.

THE "SENSE OF DIRECTION" IN ANIMALS. Some remarkably interesting particulars concerning the sense of direction in animals are given by Mr. F. Maule Campbell, in his clever paper on "Instinct." Mr. Campbell is disposed to

than that of safety. Now, if the 'sense of direction' has been developed in this manner, animals would incline to take the 'bee-line' home, as is stated to be generally the case. If they occasionally retraced their steps, I should not consider their action as due to a sense of direction,' but to its loss, which led them to employ their powers of scent and of remembrance of landmarks observed in the outward journey. It is also manifest that my hypothesis gets rid of the difficulty of the animal estimating the distance which it has travelled, and obviates the necessity for a theory of 'registration of turns and curves.' The animal needs but to recognize perpetually at any given instant its position in relation to its home whether it is 'turning,' or 'curving,' or take a straight course. This it could not do if conveyed in a vehicle, with no means of observing either the rate at which it was carried, or the direction in which it moved. It is obvious that animals which travel far from home have, from their nature and surroundings, much better opportunity of developing the faculty of direction than mankind possess. Their wants are fewer, and they are not diverted from their more simple purposes by the variety of objects that perpetually attract and draw off the attention of human beings. Every one must be conscious how much a habit of reasoning trenches upon the province of observation; yet there are moments of mental abstraction during which some external object is unconsciously chronicled, and is often afterwards recalled and applied. The semi-conscious recognition of the direction of a locality, which, as already stated, I detected in myself, is but a step to its unconscious recognition, such as displayed by the prairie-hunters. Whether or no animals exercise unconsciously this faculty, is a question that does not affect my hypothesis."

Incidentally, I may mention a suggestion made by Professor Mobius, that birds in migrating across wide seas guide themselves by observing the roll of the waves. This is a very ingenious theory, but, unfortunately, in those

regions where migration is most pronounced, the waves are constantly varying in direction with the as frequently changing winds. Migration over wide expanses of water is also the exception, not the rule.

We will now pass to a consideration of the opinions of those naturalists who either refuse to recognize any such faculty as a sense of direction in animals, or by their observations on the subject furnish other and certainly more rational explanations of the phenomenon. Some time ago the question of the sense of direction or homing instinct, in dogs, was discussed very exhaustively in the Field, and Mr. Tegetmeier, who was one of the principal contributors, finally expressed the deliberate opinion that all, or nearly all, these dog stories were greatly exaggerated, if not absolute fictions. Without going so far as that, I, however, thoroughly endorse what my friend Mr. Murdoch has said on the subject-viz., "That ninety per cent, of homing dog stories are either fabulous, or the result of wide-sweeping generalizations from very meagre premises;" whilst every instance coming within my own personal observation has admitted of a perfectly simple and natural explanation.

The "homing instinct" of pigeons is often also selected as an example of almost miraculous mental power. The Belgian homing pigeon is popularly supposed to possess a sense of direction which enables it to return home from great distances with no previous knowledge of the way. Only the other day a Torquay society held a pigeon-flying contest between Belgium and that town. A week previously birds were flown between Doncaster and Torquay, a distance of two hundred and thirtyeight miles, and the fastest birds did the journey at a velocity of twelve hundred and eleven yards per minute, or upwards of forty miles per hour for the whole distance! Now this, to the uninitiated reader may seem a remarkable feat, but the wonder vanishes when the simple facts are told. These birds are carefully trained for the work, taught

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