My friend John Common of Roscommon Bay,
middle inlet, third house on the left hand side
going up, where there is good anchorage for a yacht of
several tons burden, propounded the above question one
day, after a yawning stretch over the briny bay in a brisk
breeze, followed by the usual dead calm, when in sight
of home.

“Does Queen Victoria speak English?”

“Surely, John Common of Roscommon, she speaks
her own Queen's English, and that is the purest language
the Court of St. James has heard since the days of Edward
the Confessor.”

John Common of Roscommon lazily puffed his cigar
under the canvass canopy of the summer sail, knocked off
the ashes with the tip of his little finger, drew a fresh
whiff of inspiration from his little brown deity, and said,
in a soft voice of rebuke:

“I know very well that her Majesty is a pure, highminded,
pious, good woman; but my inquiry related not

[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]

to her morals, but to her language; to her vocabulary,
if you will, which is the vocabulary of the realm; the
court language, the language of polite society;—in
fact, that arbitrary style of speaking which is commonly
known as the Queen's English, the mother tongue of
British scholars, statesmen, and of the highly educated
classes of that country; and that is what I meant. I have
a theory of my own upon that subject,” he continued,
“and I merely asked the question of you in order that I
might have an opportunity to answer it myself.”

“A theory! a theory!” cried out several voices from
the cabin of the yacht, where the clinking of ice had been
heard for several minutes, and out came the party. John
Littlejohn, and William Williamson, and Peter Peterson,
and Sandy Sanderson, and several others. They arranged
themselves on the seats under the shadow of the sail,
cigars were handed around; it was a dead calm on the
bay, and so John Common of Roscommon began:

“I have never yet heard an Englishman speak, who
pretended to use the Queen's vernacular, without tracing
in his language a vein of cockney running in it, like a gold
thread through a velvet cloth. And this quite as plain
and distinct among the highly educated, as among the
rest of her Majesty's subjects.

“I maintain that custom does not sanction the misuse
of the eight letter, or as Rare Ben Johnson quotes it,
`the queen mother of consonants,' although it may excuse
it. Certainly, when we consider the matter fairly, we

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must conclude that there is as much impropriety in substituting
for the beautiful Greek female name `Helen' the
modern English name of `Ellen,' as there would be in
calling `Emma' `Hemma,' which the Court of St. James
will very speedily do, unless a stop is put to further innovation.

“In citing the name of `Helen,' for so unquestionably
the Hellenes pronounce it, I had a further object in view,
and that was to follow up the stream of cockneyism to its
classical fountain. The Greeks were probably the original
cockneys—at least we can trace the spiritus asper and the
spiritus lenis to them. There might have been still earlier
cockneys, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that
in the confusion of tongues at the destruction of the Tower
of Babel, that the family of H's might have first adopted
the unsettled and wandering mode of life which they have
led elsewhere, and are now leading in the English language;
but so far as that is concerned, it is mere conjecture,
and, therefore, very likely to mislead us in our
course of inquiry after truth.”

Then he continued:

“It is quite easy to follow the current down after striking
the parent spring. In the time of Romulus and Remus,
no doubt the original Latin was a pure sonorous language,
a little barbarous, to be sure, but stuck as full of H's as
the cloves in old-fashioned boiled ham (and a rich dish that
would be now, with the present tax on spices); but as the
Romans waxed opulent, gave up wars and patriotism, and

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began to cultivate arts and lassitude, the introduction of
schools prepared the way for the Greek accent; it became
the rage to imitate the style of Athens, as well in its oratory
as in its sculpture and in its architecture; and when
Cicero spoke in the affected and voluptuous diction of
Alcibiades, and Cæsar fell at the foot of a marble image,
then the decadence of Empire began.

“The languages, of which the Latin was the primitive
stem, such as the Italian, the Spanish, the Portuguese
and the French, easily adopted the accent of Rome when
Rome was in its decay. These modern languages cast
off their H's, and to this day the French Academy, the
Spanish Academy, the Universities of Padua and of
Parma have never been able to recall them. In the language
of a Spanish lexicographer, `H is not properly
considered as a letter, but as a mere aspiration.' The
Spanish Academy has also banished the hard sound of the
h in chimico, chimera, chamelote, etc., by writing instead,
quimico, quimera, camelote. So that the eighth letter is
torn up root and branch, in the Kingdom of Isabella the
Catholic, and the consequence is that they have a revolution
in Spain every six years. In a short time Cuba will
be on a detached service. It is significant that the natives
of the Siempre Fiel pronounce `Habana' with enough
ejaculation of breath upon the first letter to blow a Spanish
fleet from its anchorage.

“But to return to the Queen's English. Before the
Norman Conquest England had a language of its own—

[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]

not Saxon altogether, but English! that great, pithy,
thoughtful, bold, full-fraughted, mother tongue, which
even now constitutes the substance and strength of the
highest powers of intellectual expression; not to be excelled
in any language. I might almost say not to be
matched by any foreign idiom.

“I am speaking now of the pure English, that is
spoken only by educated people in New York city and
its immediate vicinity.

“No person who wishes to attain a lofty style can safely
depart from the good old English idiom. It is to glowing
eloquence and sparkling rhetoric, what a blacksmith's
bellows is to a forge.

“This language, notwithstanding it was so splendidly
celebrated by old Thomas Churchyard, (Tempus Henry
VII), had unfortunately been corrupted long before his
time by the Normans. William Conqueror introduced a
court cockney dialect, which had descended from the
Greek cockneys to the Roman cockneys, from the Roman
cockneys to every branch of the Latin family, and from
the derivatory Norman French it spread through to Whitechapel
and Threadneedle streets, through Windsor and
Buckingham Palaces, and from thence to the hearts and
homes of an imitative people. Thus it was that the family
of H's were banished from their own indigenous soil.

“That is the history of it, or chronicle, or what you
will. All that I wish to say is, that we can trace the
Greek taint down to the present time.

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“Now, then, for examples. There is old Geoffrey
Chaucer, (commonly known among the wooden spoons
of Boston as Daniel Chaucer), he is full of defiled English.
In the Nonnes' Priest's Tale, we have `habundant'
for abundant;* and for hexameter he uses this outrageous
substitute:


`And they ben versified commonly
Of six feet, which men clepen `exametron.'‡
For Dante's `Ugolino' he substitutes `Hugelin.'‡ He
even clips the French itself by striking an h off a French
clock, and naming Horloge, `orloge,'‡ and so through all
his works. Can subserviency to the ruling powers farther
go?

“But every innovation has its reaction. The common
people of England, in those early days, seeing that their
beloved H's were being knocked off the household words,
like the noses from the Elgin marbles, revenged themselves
by clapping an H in front of every naked and exposed
vowel. The consequence is that we have such words as
`hedge' for edge, `hall' for all, `hogshead' for oxhead,
and the like. It would be too much of a task to cite all
the corruptions of a similar nature in the language. The
mere mention of these will suggest swarms of others,
familiar to every reader of ordinary books, to say nothing
of philologists.

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

“Take the word `hedge' for example. Originally it
meant something. It meant an edge, a boundary of
shrubs, indicating the limit of the field or of the estate.
We have it yet in `box edgings,' which are partitions of
garden beds, and meaning the same thing precisely.
Shakspeare says, `Upon the edge of yonder coppice,'
etc., (Loves Labor Lost, IV, I). Now it has lost its significance
in becoming a h'edge.

“So with the word `hear.' We speak of hearing an
argument. That would be considered as proper Queen's
English, would it not? But suppose any one should say
that he had een `h'eying' a street fight? Would that
not be a painful sound to ears polite? And yet both
words are derived from their original substantives, the
ear and the eye, and the verb to `hear' is as plain a cockneyism
as the verb to heye, when we come to think of it.
You say an `ear-witness' as well as an `eye-witness,' do
you not? If anybody should say an `hear-witness,'
what would you think of that? And yet it is no greater
an impropriety than `hear' is in the mouths of polite
people. No one can for a moment doubt that according
to the mechanism of the language, `to ear' a person is
quite as proper a form of expression as `to eye a person,'
and that the H in `hear' is an insupportable cockneyism.
So with the superfluous `H' in `hall.' In old mansions
in England, the main apartments, the great audience
chamber, the dining-room, the vast conservatory where
the noble guests sat above the salt, where the pilgrim

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warmed his rain-drenched, threadbare garments by the
fire; where the minstrel tuned his wretched harp, and
every condition of life was represented, in this vast vaulted
chamber, the `aula,' the atrium, the all in all of the
manorial and baronial residence, what right had an H to
strike out the significance of the original word? There
is no doubt in this case at all. For the `Manor All,' the
`Town All,' and so on in all the grand old English words,
must be replaced. If you have a little, narrow strait between
your parlor and your side wall, call it an entry, if
you will, but do not call it a h'all

“So with the bird of wisdom, the owl. Everybody
has heard her note who has lived in the country. It is
`how, how, how, how, howl!' From this we get the name
of this fowl of Minerva. The bird of night, in the newborn
nakedness of early English, was undoubtedly the
`Howl.' We find it still in its diminutives, such as
`Howlet.'

`And keep her place as `Howlet' does her tower.'

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“But it is needless to multiply examples. Some
vacancy should be left in the mind of the listener, which
he can fill up himself at leisure. Let me say here, however.
that, save Chaucer, there are few writers of our
earlier English who so Frenchify the mother tongue as
he does. In Piers Ploughman* we have hem for them,
and hire for their. In Robert of Gloster† we find `hit'
used for `it,' as it is in the Lord's Prayer of Richard the
Hermit, and so it is used to this day by some of the English,
even in writing. But generally the language of these
old authors was pure, as indeed it was from the time of
Chaucer to the Restoration. After King Charles II came
in, we had the French affectation introduced, as lively
as it was in the days of William the Conqueror.

“Now a few words more: there is the word `hatchet,'
the diminutive of axe, the original of which is eax, Saxon,
(or ascia, Latin). It should of course be atchet. So we
have hatchment, a corruption of the heraldric word
`achievement,' meaning an armorial escutcheon; then
there is the word ability, which, in the dictionaries of a
century old, is spelled properly, `hability,' or able—
hable,' from the French; arquebus, we say, instead of
harquebus, and artichoke instead of hartichoke, and the
like.

“Then, again, consider the number of words from
which the H is omitted in pronunciation: 'onorable,

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

'um-ble, 'umor, 'eir, 'ome, sweet 'ome, 'ow, 'onest, and the
like. Then, again, such words as 'ostler for hostler, (from
host or hostel), 'arbor for harbor, (a shelter), Oboe for
haut bois, and so on, where the abuse is sanctioned by
the dictionary makers.

“You will commonly find, too, that well-educated
Englishmen (and women) say 'oo, for who, 'andiron for
hand'iron, 'ow for how, and 'anging for hanging. They
deny it, of course, and will, if they think they are watched,
pronounce these words properly, but they are sure to
relapse as soon as they are left to themselves. If you
were to ask Lord John Russell, who is esteemed to be as
deep in erudition as he is in diplomacy, how to spell the
letter H, he would, no doubt, spell it a-i-t-c-h, when in
truth it should be h-a-i-t-c-h, with a strong aspiration on
the first letter.”

CHAPTER II. “Does Queen Victoria Speak English?”

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“To continue,” said John Common of Roscommon.
“To leave this class of impediments
of speech behind, and go further, we find many defects in
modern English, derived from the same parentage. For
example—there is no W in the French alphabet. If you
were to ask a Frenchman to pronounce the name of the
first President of the United States, he would say “Vashington,”
or he might, by a strong mental effort, get as
near to it as Guashington. Just as if you were to ask him
the name of the second President, he would be obliged to
reply “Hadams,” and so forth. Now there is not one
single word in the English language beginning with the
letter V that is not derived from the French, the Spanish,
the Italian, or some of the coguate branches of the Latin
family of words. There is no V in the Anglo-Saxon
alphabet, none in the Mæso-Gothic, from which two
tongues we derive our mother tongue, none in the earlier
editions of English authors; take, for example, Grafton's
or Hollinghead's Chronicles, or any other work of that

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period. Hence it is that we find such expression in the
modern British classics as: “Now, Shiny Villiam, give
the gen'lem'n the ribbons,”* “vell vot of it,” † or “vot's
the use of giving vay so long as you're 'appy;” of which
forms of expression numbers could be produced if one
could give his mind, his time, and his attention to it. I
do not mean to say that the substitution of the V for the
W is common to the upper classes of Great Britain. Far
from it; but I do mean to say that this innovation is
creeping up, and will, by and by, beget a class of words
foreign to the genius of the English tongue, just as the
dropping of the H has produced such words as ostler and
arbor.

In confirmation of this, let me state that a distinguished
traveler and philosopher, Mr. George Gibbs, of Long
Island, after a residence of a quarter of a century on the
Northwest coast of this continent, has written a dictionary
of the Chinook jargon, or Trade Language of Oregon, prepared
for the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D. C.,‡
in which he shows conclusively that the Chinook, the
Nootkan, the Yakama, the Cathlasco, (which is a corrupted
form of the Watlala or Upper Chinook), the
Toquat (which he spells Tokwaht), and the Nittinak languages
have been corrupted by the mis-pronunciation of
the English of the Hudson's Bay Company. The consequence
is, that there is scarcely an H in its proper place

[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]

in any of the dialects of the Northwestern tribes of the
Pacific, and W's are substituted for V's to such an extent,
that in his dictionary not one word beginning with the
latter consonant can be discovered. It is, however, a
consolation to know that these are the most prominent
innovations in those rich and beautiful occidental
tongues. After complaining that the Spanish and French
voyageurs have left traces of their languages in the earlier
Chinook, he says:

“It might have been expected, from the number of
Sandwich Islanders introduced by the Hudson's Bay
Company, that the Kanaka element would have found its
way into the language, but their utterance is so foreign to
an Indian car, that not a word has been adopted.”*

If this be so, we can imagine what a highly respectable
tone prevails in Kanaka society of Queen Emma.

But to return. The substitution of the French “V”
for the English “W” led to the retaliatory process, by
which every free born Englishman makes all things
hequal. Just in proportion to the cockneyism of the
upper classes in the middle ages arose the defiant attitude
of the cockneyism of the lower classes. The doubleyous
began to crowd into the lower ten million vocabulary.
“Weal pie” took the place of the other word:

“Even the tailors 'gan to brag,

And embroidered on their flag,

“Aut Wincere Aut Mori.”'†

[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]

There was a stout battle between the starveling French
V and the broad bottomed English W, and to this day it
has continued. There is not a member of any English
legation in any part of the world, at this present time,
who dares to spell “Vaterloo” with a V. And this is in
obedience to the dictates of the lower, and, I might
almost say, the illiterate classes; for after all, a mob has
a great deal to do with fixing the expression as well as
the meaning of words.

Since I am so far committed to this subject, I must
continue a little longer; but let me say here, that if I tax
the old nation from which we are derived, with speaking
a very impure language, let me at least have the credit
of doing so in a friendly spirit. Let us with one hand
soothe the American Lexicographical Eagle, while with
the other we smooth the bristling mane of the British
Polyglot.

In further confirmation of what I have already advanced,
permit me to recall to every mind another phrase of the
language of the realm, in order to prove that the queen
speaks broken French. I do not mean to say that she
does so intentionally, for surely no one can have a higher
regard for that good lady than I have. In fact, we are
both of an age; both born on the same day of the same
month in the same year, perhaps in the same hour, if
degrees of longitude could be computed with accuracy,
(of different parentage, I admit). What I mean to say
is, that she speaks imperfect English, both of herself and

[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]

through her ministers, through her parliaments, through
her lords and her lord mayors, through her ladies and her
laundresses, through her British museum, and her Billingsgate
market. After all this explanation, which might lead
to a digression, let me return to the point that I intended
to make when I said that the queen speaks broken
French.

Nothing is more striking to an American when he first
visits London than the constant misuse of the French
“A” pronounced aw by the high school of cockneys.
The lower classes of her majesty's subjects use the plain
old fashioned English “A” as an expletive, as well as an
offset to the other (a fashion, by the way, derived from
the Greeks, for their language is full of expletives), in
this manner—I was “a-going,” or, I was “a-thinking,”
or, I was “a-'oping,” or, I was “a-hironing,” and so on
through the whole family of verbs. Now this misuse of
the vowel is so common to the common people, that to
hear it from the lips of any person is sufficient to suggest
that his education has been quite imperfect. This being
so, is it quite fair that we should acquit Lord Brobdignag
of a similar charge, when we hear him read from a master
of style, thus: “They say-aw that it was aw-Liston's firm
belief, that he-aw was aw-great and neglected tragic actaw.
They say-aw that ev-aw-ry one of us believes, in
his heart, or would like-aw to have others believe, that
he-aw is something which he is aw-not!”

It is very true, as Dr. Samuel Johnson says in his little

[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]

article on Orpiment, that “talk is elastic.” But even talk
he mis-spells, (for he means “talc,” a mineral), nevertheless
we will accept the mistake as being truer than his
definition in every way. Talk is elastic! but what shall
be said of the petrifiers of the living words of our language?
What shall we say, for example, of the abuses
of Webster's Dictionary? When an elastic language
becomes a concretion of fossils—when its life has gone
out, and lexicographers have left nothing of it but its
organic remains—what should be done with them? To
compel them to speak plain English would be impossible,
for that they do not comprehend. What should be done
with them? Surely the Cadmus teeth they sow should
rise up and reap them.

I suppose, in time, that the good old English word
“Beef-eater,” as applied to those broad-backed warders
of the Tower of London, will degenerate into “Buffetier”
(French), as now a revolution is being effected in a similar
word—and “cur,” which some writers claim as a
Hindoo word, “Ischur.”* Blackstone, (a famous law
writer of the last century), has endeavored to elevate the
tone of the British bar by changing the honest old name
of “bum-bailey” in this wise: He says “that the special
bailiffs are usually bound in a bond for the due execution
of their office, and thence are called `bound-bailiffs,'

[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]

which the common people have corrupted into a much
more homely appellation,!”*

I cannot here avoid expressing my regret that a very
creditable weekly paper in the British booksellers' interest
in London should have its classical name corrupted into
“a much more homely appellation.” I mention this the
more cheerfully from the fact that it has always abused
American authors, and, therefore, when I say that I regret
it, you will understand that it is an act of generosity on
my part. I allude to the Athenœum, which has never
recovered from the punishment that Bulwer inflicted
upon it when he called it the “Ass-i-neum,” a name by
which it has been known to cultivated people in all parts
of the world, from the days of Paul Clifford down to this
time.

But these corruptions of the language we must frown
down. Let us take a bold stand against other cockneyisms
creeping into public use, such as “cab” for cabriolet,
“pants” for pantaloons, “canter” from the Canterbury
pilgrimages at the good old-fashioned ambling pace, and
the like; for, if we do not, the age of progress will make
the word “gentleman” a dead language, and only its
cockney substitute, the “gent,” will be known in dictionaries
and newspapers.

A few more words and I shall wind up my squid.

There is a slang phrase of Parisian-French, which I

[figure description] Page 098.[end figure description]

cannot recall at this moment, that expresses a peculiar
way of shortening words, and running one into another,
in use among the fashionable people of the continental
metropolis, so that it is very difficult for a novice to understand
their aristocratic argot.

This shrinkage, this corrugation, this wrinkling up of
words, so that a good long sentence which should be
sonorous and expressive, becomes as shrivelled as a washerwoman's
thumb, is beautifully implanted in the modern
English. Go to the House of Lords and hear the debate
between Lord Brobdignag and the Marquis of Lilliput!
Only by the skill of the practised reporter can that tongued
and grooved dialect be interpreted. I shall not give you
a sentence by way of example, but only a few specimen
bricks of this modern Babel.

It is well known that in the glorious old English
tongue every word carries a meaning with it; a little
history in its womb, such as those beautiful phrases
“belly-timber,” as applied to food, and “bread-basket,”
as applied to its receptacle. So the lord of thousands of
broad acres in Merrie England—

“Lovely in England's fadeless green.”—

[figure description] Page 099.[end figure description]

history of that royal and ragged refugee, in Boscobell, so
a vast number of words in English once represented ideas.
They were words with poetry and history locked up within
them, like flies, in perpetual amber. The river “Alne”
in Cumberland, the stream celebrated in many a border
foray, has upon its banks the ancient town of Alnecester,
and the “home of the Percy's high-born race,” Alnwick
Castle. Should you inquire for either place, there is not
a man in England who would understand you. But just
ask for Anster and Annick, and there is not a red-coated
boot-brushing boy in the neighborhood of Temple Bar
that cannot tell you where to find the train that will carry
you to the residence of the Lord's of Northumberland. I
remember once that I hired a post and pair to go down to
Stratford-upon-Avon. A jaunty postilion in spotless, white
dimity knee breeches, white top boots, silver-rimmed hatband,
and a whole carillon of bell buttons on his jacket,
touched his hat as I stepped into the “shay.” “Drive me
round,” said I, “by the way of Charlecote Hall!” for I
wished to see the place where Shakspeare was tried for
deer-stealing. That was a puzzler. The friendly landlord
of the “Warwick Arms,” the aged Pensioner of the Bear
and Ragged Staff; the obsequious waiter; the radical
tailor, who made red riding coats for fox-hunting squires
and d—d them in the bitterness of his sartorial soul;
the small boy that always followed a stranger as the mitefly
follows a cheese; the parochial Beadle with his bell;
the blue eyes of the chambermaid, from an upper story

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of the Warwick Arms; all, in dire suspense, in that dewy
morning, waited to hear the reply of the post-boy. There
was no reply. Presently an underhostler, who had been
hovering around the horses like a spiritual gad-fly, whose
wings were horse-brush, and curry-comb, spoke out in a
foggy voice: “P'raps the gemman means Chawcut?”
Shade of Shakspeare! And chawcut it was, as everybody
understood it there. So it is that in this puckered-up
English,—Warwick, itself a splendidly significant name,
becomes Waric. The Beauchamp Chapel is Beecham.
Charlesbury has lost its ancient significance in Chawbree.
Cholmondely is Chumlee. Berwick of old renown,
“royal Berwick's beach of sand,” is now Berric; Candlewick
Street in London, is Cannick; Gloucester is Gloster,
Smithfield is Smiffld, and Worcester—Wooster! So, too,
that word dear to every domestic tie, “housewife,” is
“hussif,” subtle is “suttle,” and High Holburn, I-oburn.

Can anybody doubt that the corruption of these good
old expressive English words into bastard French is not
undermining the Queen's English?

And the mis-spelling of these and many other words
will soon follow the mis-pronunciation, as, indeed, some
do now—witness “Gloster!” I once hired an English
hackman to take me from a once-celebrated hotel in New
York to a once-celebrated Hudson river steamboat. It
chanced that when we reached the wharf the boat was
casting off, and the driver called out to me, “You 'ad
better 'urry up, sir, or she'll be h'off, and you can pay me

[figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]

the fare when you get 'ome agin.” So when I did get
back again, and asked for my little account, he referred
to his pocket remembrancer—“Mr. C., June 14th, 1842.
m. o. to e. u.” “What does that mean?” “'Merican'
Otel to 'Endrick 'Udson, sir!”

“And what,” said little Tweedle, “are we to do. If
we go to England, are we to fly in the face of every man
there? are we to insist upon our own pronunciation, and
endeavor to find out famous localities by naming them in
the language used in the Saxon Heptarchy?”

“Certainly,” said John Common of Roscommon, “I
would advise you to agitate this subject; to call things by
their right names in that benighted kingdom; to inquire
for places that nobody can tell you anything about, so
that you can teach the ignorant natives what should be the
names of their choicest, their dearest, their most cherished
localities. You can do this thing, for you have a genius
for disturbing the old herring-bone foundations of ancient
edifices. And I will give you all the glory of being the
pioneer, if you choose to take this matter of reform of
the tongue upon your own shoulders. I may adopt it
also. But I shall not trumpet forth my claims upon the
world until I find that you have succeeded. I think I
feel a fresh breeze creeping up. Haul away on the jib
halyards! Let us see if we can't work up the creek.
The champagne has been in the cooler over there for five
hours now and the meats only go to the brander upon
signal. So haul up the dinner signal! Ah, here comes
the breeze! Up sails, and now to dinner.”

p528-119 XIV. The Noses of Eminent Men.

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Of all the quadrupeds, the elephant is, unquestionably,
the most sagacious. And, although some
have fondly imagined that his sagacity is wholly owing
to his great bulk—just as we are apt to think wisdom is
peculiar to the fat, or judgment to the thickset—yet, in
justice to the elephant, we must not allow the world to
repose upon so absurd and preposterous an error. If
mere bulk were wisdom, what shall be said of the hippopotamus;
of coroners, and aldermen; of justices to the
peace, the rhinoceros, and the commissioners of the Patentoffice;
of prize-medal pigs, and Gen.—? We see, at
once, the fallacy of the popular belief, when we consider
the very opposite relations existing between bulk and wisdom,
in the above examples. It is needless here to enter
into an elaborate detail of the sympathetic attachments
of the brain and the nose, extending through an infinite
ramification of nerves, arteries, ganglions, and tissues,
nor of the power of the organ itself to express emotion;
to scorn, to sneer, to snivel, to affirm, or deny; to put itself
intrusively where it is not wanted; to be arrogant, haughty,
conceited: to suffer indignities; to be a sleeping-trumpet,

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and a moral, psalm-singing instrument in the conventicle.
The relations between the brain and this organ, are, therefore,
nearly equivalent to those between a ship and its
rudder—with the trifling difference, that we are guided by
one, and led by the other. These facts being established,
all that is required to be known further, is, whether the
dimensions of a nose being given, it is possible to arrive
at a fair estimate of the subsidiary mental power, if not,
indeed, at a regular scale, such as Kepler has laid down
with regard to the planetary system. To this we answer
in the affirmative. Let us take the wisest of brutes as an
instance. The height of the tallest elephant in the jungles
of Africa is ten feet and a half, and the length of his
proboscis, from the lower suture of the coronal bone (os frontis), to the tip, is exactly seven feet and an inch.
Now, if we add to the height of the elephant his weight
and circumference, we find the proportion of the organ
to the sum total to be exactly 19 11-60 per centum. If
we take, as an offset to this, the commonest and most
familiar zoological example, viz., the proportions existing
between the weight, height, and bulk of the hippopotamus,
and the length of his nose, we find them expressed
in round numbers by the fractions 132-33900.
And it is a curious scientific fact, that the mental capacities
of the two animals—I mean the power of mind—the
“think” that is in them, when carefully measured, exhibit
nearly the same figures. If, then, guided by these astonishing
results, we take up any plethoric body of men—
say the United States Congress, or the State Legislature,

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for instance—it is very easy to determine precisely their
intellectual value, in a psychological point of view. The
average of a board of aldermen, reduced to the scale of
half an inch to the foot, exhibits so near an approxima-tion
to the proportions of the lesser animal, that we might
call them the “city hippopotami”, and be accurate enough
for ordinary purposes. On the other hand, if we attend
a meeting of strong-minded women, we find a prodigious
development of this feature. Strong-minded women have
immense noses, with some flat hats and a variety of spectacles.
Jews, also, are singularly gifted; but we make allowance
of at least one-third for organs of this pattern, on
account of the natural hook, from the eyebrows to the tip.
We once had the honor of being intimate with one of the
most profound scholars and thinkers in Holland, who was
so long-nosed and near-sighted that he wiped out with his
nose half of what he wrote with his pen—thereby show-ing
a memorable instance of wisdom. The average
length of a fully-developed, intellectual, male nose, is
precisely two inches and a half from the indention between
the eyes to the extreme end of the cartilage.
Washington's nose was 2 5-8 inches; but the presidential
average has, so far, been what we have stated above—
Jefferson, for example, representing the longs, and Fill-more
the shorts. Wellington and Napoleon differ only
the sixteenth of an inch, both being above the average;
Lord Brougham, who is an encyclopœdia of general information,
follows a feature three inches in length! the
average nose of the Century Club is 2 9-16; Thackeray's

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nose is 2 5-8—precisely the length of the nose of the
“Father of his country;” President Johnson's is 2 9-16;
Irving's, 2 7-12; Bryant's, 2 6-11; Dickens's, 2 3-8; Durand's,
2 7-13; Gen. Scott's, 2 5-10; Longfellow's, 2 6-11;
Gen. Sherman's 2 1-2; Macaulay's, 2 5-9; Farragut's,
2 3-4; Commodore Wise's, 1 7-12; Tennyson's, 2 4-7;
Hoffman's, 2 7-13; the average magazine nose of this
city is 1 5-8; in Philadelphia, 1 7-8; McClellan's is 2 8-12;
Verplancks', 2 5-8; Bayard Taylor's, 2 6-11; we shall
have Fredrika Bremer's by next steamer; the nose of the
Academy of Design, 2 5-9; Browning's, 2 5-9; Miss
Mulock has a very respectable feature for a woman, being
2 1-4; Jean Ingelow, 2 1-8; Bonner's, 2 1-2; Seward's,
nearly 3 inches, and our own a snub.

In making our measurements, we have had the greatest
difficulties to encounter, by reason of the foolish desire
of many to be represented as measuring more than they are
entitled to. But, as we know by experience how often
scientific data are put aside as worthy of no credit, because
of a few trifling defects or errors, we have been
guided only by our instruments. We know it is very
hard to refuse a sixteenth of an inch, when it is asked by
a friend, as a particular favor, but, nevertheless, our “reflections”
must be accurate and reliable, or else they will be
justly condemned. In pursuance of our theory, we have
engaged Mr. Pike, the eminent mathematical instrument
maker, to construct for us a noseometer, of the greatest
capacity, and will, from time to time, furnish our readers
with the results of the observations taken there with.

XIV. (From the Bunkum Flagstaff and Independent Echo. ) Bunkum Museum.

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Just opened, with 100,000 Curiosities, and performance
in Lecter Room; among which may be found

TWO LIVE BOAR CONSTRICTERS,
Mail and Femail.
ALSO!!
A STRIPED ALGEBRA, STUFT.

BESIDES!!

A PAIR OF SHUTTLE COCKS
AND ONE SHUTTLE HEN—alive
THE!

SWORD WHICH GEN. WELLINGTON FIT WITH
AT THE BATTEL OF WATERLOO! whom is
six feet long and broad in proportion.
WITH!!!

A ENORMOUS RATTLETAIL SNAKE—a regular
whopper!

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AND!
THE TUSHES OF A HIPPOTENUSE!
Together with!
A FINGAL TIGER: AND A SPOTTED LEPROSY!

Besides
THE GREAT MORAL SPECTACLE OF
“MOUNT VESUVIUS.”

PART ONE.

Seen opens. Distant Moon. View of Bey of Napels.
A thin smoke rises. It is the Beginning of the Eruction!
The Napels folks begin to travel. Yaller fire, follered by
silent thunder. Awful consternation. Suthin rumbles!
It is the Mounting preparin' to Expectorate! They call
upon the Fire Department. It's no use! Flight of stool-pidgeons.
A cloud of impenetrable smoke hang over the
fated city, through witch the Naplers are seen makin'
tracks. Awful explosion of bulbs, kurbs, torniquets, pin
weels, serpentiles, and terrapins! The Moulting Laver
begins to squash out!

End of Part One.

COMIC SONG.

The Parochial Beedle

Mr. Mullet.

LIVE INJUN ON THE SLACK WIRE.

Live Injun

Mr. Mullet.

OBLIGATIONS ON THE CORNUCOPIA, BY

SIGNOR VERMICELLI.

Signor Vermicelli

Mr. Mullet.

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In the course of the evening will be an exhibishun of
Exileratin' Gas! upon a Laffin Highena!

Laffin Highena

Mr. Mullet.

PART TWO.

Bey of Napels voluminated by Gondola Lites. The lava
gushes down. Through the smoke is seen the city in a
state of conflagration. The last family! “Whar is our
parents?” A red hot stone of eleving tuns weight falls
onto 'em. The bearheaded father falls scentless before
the statoo of the Virgin! Denumong!!

The hole to conclude with a
GRAND SHAKSPEARING PYROLIGNEOUS
DISPLAY OF FIREWURX!!

Maroon Bulbs, changing to a spiral weel, witch changes
to the Star of our Union: after, to butiful p'ints of red
lites; to finish with busting into

A BRILLIANT PERSPIRATION!

During the performance a No. of Popular Airs will be
performed on the Scotch Fiddle and Bag-pipes, by a real
Highlander.

Real Highlander

Mr. Mullet

Any boy making a muss, will be injected to once't.

As the Museum is Temperance, no drinkin' aloud, but
anyone will find the best of lickers in the Sloon below.

p528-126 XV. Up the Rhine.

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A LEAF FROM A NEW BOOK.

“THE clouds now began to break away—once
more we see the distant peaks of the Siebengebirge
and the castled crag of Drachenfels—a flush
of warm sunlight illuminates the wet deck of the Sehnelfahrt;
the passengers peep out of the companion-way,
and finally emerge boldly, to inhale the fresh air and inspect
the beauties of the Rhine. As for the Miller of
Zurich, he had taken the shower as kindly as a duck,
shaking the drops from his grey woolly coat, as they fell,
and tossing off green glass after green glass of Liebfraunmilch,
or Assmanshauser, from either bottle. Betimes his
pretty wife joined us, and walked on tip-toe over the wet
spots; the sun came out, hotter and hotter; the deck,
the little tables, the wooden seats, began to smoke; overcoats
came off, shawls were laid aside; plates oiled up with

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sweet grapes and monstrous pears, green glasses, and tall
flasks of Rhine wine, were handed around to the ladies,
and distributed on the tables; and the red-cheeked German
boy whose imitations of English had so amused us,
shouted the captain's orders to the engineer below, in a
more cheery voice—`Slore! backor! forror!'”

I had had an indistinct vision of a pair of whiskers at
the far end of the breakfast table, brushed out dl' Ang
laise in parallel lines, as thin as a gilder's camel's hair
brush. These whiskers now came up on deck, attached
to a very insignificant countenance, a check cap, and a
woollen suit of purplish cloth, such as travellers from
Angleterre enjoy scenery in. Across the right breast of
this person, a narrow black strap of patent leather wound
its way until it found a green leather satchel, just across
his left hip; while over his left breast, a similar strap
again wound around him, and finally attached itself to a
gigantic opera glass in a black leather case. All these
implements of travel, with little else to note, paced
solemnly up and down the now dry deck of the Schnelfahrt.

In the meantime, my glass, map, guide book, were all
in action, castle following castle, Rolandseck, Rheineck,
Andernach, and all the glorious panorama, rolling in view
with every turn of the steamer. And chiefly I enjoyed
the conversation of my Miller of Zurich, whose plump
forefinger anticipated the distant towers and battlements
which he had seen so often, for so many times, in yearly

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trips upon the river. Nor was I alone, for from every
stand-point of the deck were fingers pointed, and glasses
raised, at the glories of the castellated Rhine.

But in the midst of this excitement and enthusiasm,
that purple traveller, with whiskers and straps, satchel
and opera glass, walked up and down, unobservant of
the scenery, miserable and melancholic, without a glance
at the vineyards, or the mountains, or the castles. Then
I knew that he was an Englishman, doing the Rhine.

He walked up to our table, where old Zurich and his
pretty wife were seated before the grapes and the wine,
where my shawl and satchel were flung—map spread,
and guide-book open—and said, in that peculiar English
voice which always suggests catarrh—

“Going up the Rhine, sir?”

“Rather,” said I, drily, (for I hate bores).

“Aw!”—now the reader must translate for himself—
“Forst time ye' beene h'yar?”

“Yes,” I answered, “is it your first visit also?”

“Aw—no! 'beene hea-r pu'foh; sev-wal taimes. How
fawr 'goin, sawr?” (Don't talk of Yankee inquisitiveness).

“To Mayence, and no further this evening.” (Opera
glass levelled directly at Ehrenbreitstein).

“Gaw'ng to Hydl'bug?”

“I think so.”

“Hydl'bug's 'good bisness, do it up in 'couple of
awhrs.”

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Here old Zurich makes a remark, and says:

“Military engineers build, that other military engineers
may destroy.”

Myself.—“Are those yellow lines against the hill
masonry?—parapets?”

Old Zurich.—“Fortified from top to bottom.”

“Gaw'ng to Italy?” chimes in the camel's hair
whiskers.

“No,” (decidedly no).

“Gaw'ng to Sowth 'f Fwance?”

“Probably.”

“Wal, if 'r not gaw'n t' Italy, and you'r gaw'n to
South 'f Dwance—gaw'n to Nim?”

“To Nismes? what for?”

“'F yawr not gaw'n to Rhawm, it's good bisness to go
to Nim—they've got a ring thar.”

“A ring?”

“Yas, 'ont ye knaw?”

“A ring?”

“Yas—saim's they got at Rhaome; good bisness that—
do it up in tow hawrs; early Christians, y' knaw, and
wild beasts!”

“Oh, you mean the Roman amphitheatre at Nismes—
a sort of miniature Coliseum.”

“Yaas, Col's'm.”

“No, sir, I am not going to Nismes”—another look at
Ehrenbreitstein and its shattered wall.

“Never be'n up th' Rhine before,” quoth whiskers.

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“No,”—we are approaching the banks of the “Blue
Moselle.”

“Eh'nbreitstine's good bisness, and that sort o'thing—
do't in about two hawrs!”

“I do not intend to stop at Ehrenbreitstein, and,
therefore, intend to make the best use of my time to see
the general features of the fortress from the river.”

“Aw—then y'd better stop at Coblanz, and go t' Wisbad'n,
by th' rail.”

“What for?”

“Why, the Rhine, you know, 's a tiresome bisness,
and by goin' to Wisbawd'n from Coblanz, by land, you
escape all that sort aw-thing.”

“But I do not wish to escape all this sort of thing—
I want to see the Rhine.”

“Aw!”—with some expression of surprise. “Going
to Switz'land?”

“Yes.”

“Y' got Moy for Switz'land?”

“Moy? I beg your pardon.”

“Yes, Moy—Moy; got Moy for Switz'land?”

“Moy—do you mean money? I hope so.”

“Ged Gad, sir, no! I say Moy.”

“Upon my word, I do not comprehend you.”

“Moy, sir, Moy!” rapping vehemently on the red
cover of my guide book that lay upon the table. “I say
Moy for Switz'land.”

“Oh, you mean Murray.”

“Certainly, sir, didn't I say Moy?”

p528-131 XVI. The First Oyster=Eater.

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THE impenetrable veil of antiquity hangs over the
antediluvian oyster, but the geological finger-post
points to the testifying fossil. We might, in pursuing
this subject, sail upon the broad pinions of conjecture
into the remote, or flutter with lighter wings in the
regions of fable, but it is unnecessary: the mysterious
pages of Nature are ever opening freshly around us, and
in her stony volumes, amid the calcareous strata, we behold
the precious mollusc—the primeval bivalve,

Yet, of its early history we know nothing. Etymology
throws but little light upon the matter. In vain have
we carried our researches into the vernacular of the
maritime Phœnicians, or sought it amid the fragments of
Chaldean and Assyrian lore. To no purpose have we
analyzed the roots of the comprehensive Hebrew, or lost
ourselves in the baffling labyrinths of the oriental Sanscrit.
The history of the ancient oyster is written in no
language, except in the universal idiom of the secondary

[figure description] Page 115.[end figure description]

strata! Nor is this surprising in a philosophical point of
view. Setting aside the pre-Adamites, and taking Adam
as the first name-giver, when we reflect that Adam lived
IN-land, and therefore never saw the succulent periphery
in its native mud, we may deduce this reasonable conclusion:
viz., that as he never saw it, he probably never
NAMED it—never!—not even to his most intimate friends.
Such being the case, we must seek for information in a
later and more enlightened age. And here let me take
occasion to remark, that oysters and intelligence are
nearer allied than many persons imagine. The relations
between Physiology and Psychology are beginning to be
better understood. A man might be scintillant with
facetiousness over a plump “Shrewsbery,” who would
make a very sorry figure over a bowl of water-gruel.
The gentle, indolent Brahmin, the illiterate Laplander,
the ferocious Libyan, the mercurial Frenchman, and the
stolid (I beg your pardon), the stalwart Englishman, are not
more various in their mental capacities than in their table
æsthetics. And even in this century, we see that wit
and oysters come in together with September, and wit
and oysters go out together in May—a circumstance not
without its weight, and peculiarly pertinent to the subjectmatter.
With this brief but not irrelevant digression, I
will proceed. We have “Ostrcum” from the Latins,
“Oester” from the Saxons, “Auster” from the Teutons,
“Ostra” from the Spaniards, and “Huitre” from the
French—words evidently of common origin—threads spun

[figure description] Page 116.[end figure description]

from the same distaff! And here our archæology narrows
to a point, and this point is the pearl we are in search of:
viz., the genesis of this most excellent fish.

“Words evidently derived from a common origin.”
What origin? Let us examine the venerable page of history.
Where is the first mention made of oysters? Hudibras
says:

This is the first mention in the classics of oysters; and
we now approach the cynosure of our inquiry. From this
we infer that oysters came originally from Britain. The
word is unquestionably primitive. The broad open
vowelly sound is, beyond a doubt, the primal, spontaneous
thought that found utterance when the soft,
seductive mollusc first exposed its white bosom in its
pearly shell to the enraptured gaze of aboriginal man!
Is there a question about it? Does not every one know,

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when he sees an oyster, that that is its name? And
hence we reason that it originated in Britain, was
latinized by the Romans, replevined by the Saxons,
corrupted by the Teutons, and finally barbecued by
the French. Oh, philological ladder by which we mount
upward, until we emerge beneath the clear vertical light
of Truth!! Methinks I see the First Oyster-Eater!
A brawny, naked savage, with his wild hair matted over
his wild eyes, a zodiac of fiery stars tattooed across his
muscular breast—unclad, unsandalled, hirsute and hungry—
he breaks through the underwoods that margin the
beach, and stands alone upon the sea-shore, with nothing
in one hand but his unsuccessful boar-spear, and nothing
in the other but his fist. There he beholds a splendid
panorama! The west all aglow; the conscious waves
blushing as the warm sun sinks to their embraces; the
blue sea on his left; the interminable forest on his right;
and the creamy sea-sand curving in delicate tracery between.
A Picture and a Child of Nature! Delightedly
he plunges in the foam, and swims to the bald crown
of a rock that uplifts itself above the waves. Seating
himself he gazes upon the calm expanse beyond, and
swings his legs against the moss that spins its filmy tendrils
in the brine. Suddenly he utters a cry; springs up;
the blood streams from his foot. With barbarous fury
he tears up masses of sea moss, and with it clustering
families of testacea. Dashing them down upon the rock,
he perceives a liquor exuding from the fragments; he

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sees the white pulpy delicate morsel half hidden in the
cracked shell, and instinctively reaching upward, his
hand finds his mouth, and amidst a savage, triumphant
deglutition, he murmurs—Oyster!! Champing in his
uncouth fashion bits of shell and sea-weed, with uncontrollable
pleasure he masters this mystery of a new sensation,
and not until the gray veil of night is drawn over
the distant waters, does he leave the rock, covered with
the trophies of his victory.

We date from this epoch the maritime history of
England. Ere long, the reedy cabins of her aborigines
clustered upon the banks of beautiful inlets, and overspread
her long lines of level beaches; or penciled with
delicate wreaths of smoke the savage aspect of her rocky
coasts. The sword was beaten into the oyster-knife, and
the spear into oyster rakes. Commerce spread her white
wings along the shores of happy Albion, and man
emerged at once into civilization from a nomadic state.
From this people arose the mighty nation of Ostrogoths;
from the Ostraphagi of Ancient Britain came the custom
of Ostracism—that is, sending political delinquents to
that place where they can get no more oysters.

There is a strange fatality attending all discoverers.
Our Briton saw a mighty change come over his country—
a change beyond the reach of memory or speculation.—
Neighboring tribes, formerly hostile, were now linked
together in bonds of amity. A sylvan, warlike people
had become a peaceful, piscivorous community; and he

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himself, once the lowest of his race, was now elevated
above the dreams of his ambition. He stood alone upon
the sea-shore, looking toward the rock, which, years ago,
had been his stepping-stone to power, and a desire to
revisit it came over him. He stands now upon it. The
season, the hour, the westerly sky, remind him of former
times. He sits and meditates. Suddenly a flush of
pleasure overspreads his countenance; for there just
below the flood, he sees a gigantic bivalve—alone—with
mouth agape, as if yawning with very weariness at the
solitude in which it found itself. What I am about to
describe may be untrue. But I believe it. I have heard
of the waggish propensities of oysters. I have known
them, from mere humor, to clap suddenly upon a rat's
tail at night; and, what with the squeaking and the clatter,
we verily thought the devil had broken loose in the
cellar. Moreover, I am told upon another occasion,
when a demijohn of brandy had burst, a large “Bluepointer”
was found, lying in a little pool of liquor, just
drunk enough to be careless of consequences—opening
and shutting his shells with a “devil-may-care” air, as
if he didn't value anybody a brass farthing, but was going
to be as noisy as he possibly could.

But to return. When our Briton saw the oyster in
this defenseless attitude, he knelt down, and gradually
reaching his arm toward it, he suddenly thrust his fingers
in the aperture, and the oyster closed upon them with a
spasmodic snap! In vain the Briton tugged and roared;

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he might as well have tried to uproot the solid rock as to
move that oyster! In vain he called upon his heathen
gods—Gog and Magog—elder than Woden and Thor;
and with huge, uncouth, druidical oaths consigned all
shell-fish to Nidhogg, Hela, and the submarines. Bivalve
held on with “a will.” It was nuts for him certainly.
Here was a great, lubberly, chuckle-headed fellow, the
destroyer of his tribe, with his fingers in chancery, and
the tide rising! A fellow who had thought, like ancient
Pistol, to make the world his oyster, and here was the
oyster making a world of him. Strange mutation! The
poor Briton raised his eyes: there were the huts of his
people; he could even distinguish his own, with its
slender spiral of smoke; they were probably preparing a
roast for him; how he detested a roast! Then a thought
of his wife, his little ones awaiting him, tugged at his
heart. The waters rose around him. He struggled,
screamed in his anguish; but the remorseless winds dispersed
the sounds, and ere the evening moon arose and
flung her white radiance upon the placid waves, the last
billow had rolled over the First Oyster-Eater!

I purpose at some future time to show the relation existing
between wit and oysters. It is true that Chaucer
(a poet of considerable promise in the Fourteenth Century)
has alluded to the oyster in rather a disrespectful
manner; and the learned Du Bartas (following the elder
Pliny) hath accused this modest bivalve of “being incontinent,”
a charge wholly without foundation, for there is

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not a more chaste and innocent fish in the world. But
the rest of our poets have redeemed it from foul aspersions
in numberless passages, among which we find Shakspeare's
happy allusion to

“Rich honesty dwelling in a POOR house.”

And no one now, I presume, will pretend to deny, that
it hath been always held

“Great in mouths of wisest censure!”

In addition to a chapter on wit and oysters, I also may
make a short digression touching cockles and lobsters.

p528-139 XVII. A Literary Curiosity. *

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MACAULAY in the Exordium to his History, proposed
to bring his narrative down “to a period within
the memory of men still living.” The phrase was doubtless
chosen for its ambiguity; so as to include or to ex
clude some notice of our Revolution. If the following
extracts be genuine (and for their authenticity I do not
vouch), they favor the former hypothesis. They purport
to be sketches for a future volume: stone, rough hewn,
for an edifice which, alas! the master did not live to complete.

Historicus.

Character of Washington.

“The post of Commander-in-Chief of the insurgent
armies was of vital importance. Yet, the man who, of
all men, was fitted to fill such a post adequately was at
hand. The Congress knew it; and with a unanimity
that rarely marked their proceedings, selected George
Washington—a delegate from Virginia. The reader will
naturally pause at the mention of a name which is regarded
with fond idolatry by a federation of great commonwealths;
which History has admitted into the company
of founders of empire with Romulus and Gustavus,

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and into the roll of great captains with Hannibal and
Frederic: and which is pronounced with equal veneration
on the banks of the Thames and on the banks of the
Ganges. Both the circumstances of his birth and the
circumstances of his education had fitted him for the part
he was called on to play. In his blood, of English origin,
there was blended something of the flery valor of the
cavaliers of Rupert, with something of the resolute energy
of the soldiers of Oliver. His form, in its matchless union
of vigor and grace, had foiled the pencil of Stuart and the
chisel of Chantry. He had known the salutary discipline
of early toil. With his stipend of a guinea a day as a
surveyor, he had acquired, in youth, the art of controlling
himself. In manhood, by the exercise of patriarchal
dominion over thousands of acres and hundreds of slaves,
he had acquired the art of controlling others. Equally
fortunate had been his public career. He had served in
the armies of the Crown, and against the natives of the
wilderness. He had thus learned something, both of desultory
and of disciplined warfare. At a later day, and
on a wider theatre, his knowledge of the one enabled him
to surprise the Hessians at Trenton; and his knowledge
of the other to entangle Cornwallis in the toils of Yorktown.

“His courage was of the truest temper. Stoic savages
told with wonder how he alone was calm when the soldiers
of Braddock were slaughtered like sheep; and Continental
veterans loved to narrate how his face shone with

[figure description] Page 124.[end figure description]

heroic fire as he rallied the broken battalions at Monmouth.
His intellect was solid and comprehensive. The
natural ardor of his temperament was subdued by a judgment
of singular accuracy and prudence. His unaffected
piety showed itself alike on public and on private occasions:
when he drew his sword at Cambridge: when he
sheathed it at Annapolis: when he knelt alone in the
snowy solitudes of Valley Forge.

“And, indeed, all the strength of his intellect, and all
the resources of his character, were needed for the task
he had undertaken. For he had undertaken to confront
the finest infantry of Europe with an army of tradesmen
and farmers—half clad, half fed, and wholly undisciplined.
In the ranks, the spirit of patriotic ardor was but too
often allied with the spirit of turbulent freedom. At the
council board, there were officers to whom the precedence
of a colleague was more galling than the tyranny of the
common oppressor. He had to deal with deliberative
bodies that acted when they should have debated, and
with executive bodies that debated when they should
have acted; with an army that murmured at his activity,
and with a government that blamed his inaction; and he
was forced to exhibit, to both government and army, at
one time the reckless courage of Charles XII, and at
another time the serene patience of Marlborough.

“Nor must his claims to civic wisdom be passed unnoticed.
His style, founded, it is true, on the turgid masterpieces
of that period, was accurate and comprehensive.

[figure description] Page 125.[end figure description]

His talent for abstract speculation was not contemptible.
He presided with commanding wisdom over that assemblage
of wise and ingenious statesmen, who framed a
system of government in imitation of a great system, in
which the centrifugal force of the separate Commonwealths
and the centripetal force of the Federal authority
were balanced with consummate skill. Nor did he
exhibit less wisdom when called on to put in motion
the machine which he had helped to frame. He resisted
the unjust rule of many men, as he had resisted the
unjust rule of one man; and saw with prophetic eye the
issues of that insane freedom that ended in the `carmagnole'
and the `guillotine.' Nor was the calm splendor of
his setting unworthy of the long day of glory. He beat
his spear into a pruning hook; and planted choice trees,
and reared rare breeds of animals with the same conscientions
energy, with which he had ruled armies and
governed cabinets.

“And yet, the truth is that characters of such perfection
excite neither the just sympathy nor the just admiration
of the great mass of mankind. The very foibles of
irregular greatness are a bond of sympathy and a source
of interest. Most readers will turn away from a ruler
who was never unjust, and from a general who never
swore, to follow the amiable amours of Henry IV, or
the picturesque passion of Hildebrand. So, also, do the
defects of imperfect natures serve to render, by the force
of contrast, their merits more striking. The eloquence

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of Tully stands out in flaming characters against the
dark background of that timorous nature; and the glance
of Bacon, the philosopher, seems more comprehensive when
we compare it with the glance of Bacon, the venal judge,
lowered obliquely on a bride. The mental eye is misled,
as the physical eye is misled by the ruins of Palmyra or
the Cathedral of Cologne. The imagination outstrips the
reality, and bestows an unmerited grandeur on the restored
temple and the completed church. But the harmonious
adjustment of the mental and moral faculties of Washington,
prevent us, at the first glance, from duly estimating
the extent of those faculties. We are like the
traveller who stands for the first time in that splendid
structure which the genius of Michael Angelo has reared
for the Catholic hierarchy. He cannot at once justly estimate
the length of that endless nave, or the expanse of
that awful dome. And not until he discovers, by repeated
observation, that the baldaquin which covers the
altar is as lofty as a palace, and that the cupids that flit
about the door are as big as giants, will he feel assured
that he treads the floor of the largest building on the
earth.”

The Character of Franklin.

“The new ambassador was Benjamin Franklin, one of
the foremost citizens of the young Republic, and one of
the foremost citizens of the older republic of science. He
was of humble origin. Both in Boston, the place of his

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birth, and in Philadelphia, the place of his adoption,
he had wrought at that art, `preservative of all arts,' of
which the followers, like ships that bear spices and odors
from the East, retain something of the precious cargoes
they are employed to distribute. The clearness of his intellect
was equalled by the clearness of his perceptions.
Under the name of Poor Richard, and through the
humble medium of an `Almanac,' he put forth a system
of homely ethics, in which the virtues of temperance,
probity and industry were explained and commended in
aphorisms of ingenious terseness. Nor did he fail to
practice what he preached. He was speedily honored
with offices of trust, both from the Colonies and the
Crown. And when differences, that sprang partly from
criminal interference and partly from criminal neglect,
arose between the two countries, he exerted himself
strenuously, first to prevent, and then to remove those
differences. The hour for reconciliation passed away:
and he now stood up for war with the same placid courage
with which he had stood out for peace. He was one of
the Committee that drafted the great Declaration. He
was now sent to represent the good cause at the Court of
France, and at the bar of European opinion. An extraordinary
reception awaited him. He was widely and
justly known as an eminent man of science—as the Columbus
of electrical discovery. The French nation is,
beyond all other nations, fond of striking effect and
picturesque contrast. And nothing could be more

[figure description] Page 128.[end figure description]

striking or picturesque than the spectacle now presented. A
Quaker diplomatist was about to appear in the most
artificial of courts: a new Archimedes was to come from
the land of the Natchez and the Mohawk: the legate of
the latest republic was to recall the image of antique
wisdom and of antique virture—of the Grecian Solon and
the Roman Regulus. Haughty courtiers bent in emotion
before him: brilliant beauties struggled for a kiss; sculptors
and painters pursued him with merciless assiduity;
the Academy rang with applause when Turgot's adulatory
Latin described the sage as one `who had wrested the
thunder from heaven and the sceptre from tyrants:' and
upon a ship of war, that was sent on its mission of death
and destruction under the desperate Paul Jones, was
bestowed, with pardonable inconsistency, the name of
`Poor Richard.'

“The chief glory of Franklin lies in this—that he was
the greatest of the pupils of Bacon. And, indeed, he
was such a pupil as Bacon would have delighted to honor.
To both pupil and master, philosophy was not the mystic
goddess of Plato, or the impracticable vixen of the schoolmen.
She was an angel of beneficence and a minister of
merey; an Elizabeth Fry or Florence Nightingale. Her
mission was to relieve human suffering and to advance
man's estate. And, in truth, Franklin's long and successful
career was a triumphant application of these
principles. No sooner had the electric spark glided down
the kite-string than the lightning-rod was invented for its

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innocuous descent. The maxims of Poor Richard were
devised not only for the household of the Quaker
mechanic and the dealings of the Quaker tradesman, but
for the government of States and the intercouse of nations.
Even the barren tactics of chess were made to
furnish lessons for the higher warfare of life. Nor did his
philosophy fail to bear her fruits to the philosopher
himself. The virtues of self-respect and self-reliance that
walked by his side, when he entered Philadelphia with a
loaf of bread under his arm, did not desert him when he
listened, amid the frowns of hostile statesmen, to the
pitiless sarcasm of Weddeburne; nor when he stood, the
centre of universal homage, in the brilliant court of Louis.

“Zealous theologians have attacked the orthodoxy of
his creed; casuists have evailled at the imperfection of
his ethics. But he was doubtless a good man; he was
surely a great man. And he richly deserves the title of
`the most useful of the children of men'—a title which
Franklin himself would have prized beyond all the gifts
of fortune and all the laurels of fame.”

p528-147 XVII. The Race between the Hare and the Hedge- hog, on the little Heath by Buxtehude *

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FROM THE LOW GERMAN OF SCHRODER.

THIS story is a tough one to tell, youngsters, but
true it is for all that! for my grandfather, from
whom I have it, used always to say, when he told it:
“True must it be, my son, otherwise one could not tell it
so at all!” And this is the way the story ran:

'Twas on a plesant Sunday morning, toward harvest
time, just as the buckwheat blossomed. The sun had
gone brightly up into the heaven; the morning wind
swept warm over the stubble; the larks sang in the air;
the bees hummed in the buckwheat; the good folk went in
Sunday gear to church, and all creatures were happy, and
the hedgehog also.

The hedgehog stood before his door with his arms
folded, peeped out into the morning air, and chirruped a
little song to himself, just as good and just as bad as a
hedgehog is wont to sing on a pleasant Sunday morning.
And as he was singing to himself, in a cheery little voice,

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all at once it came into his head he might just as well,
while his wife was washing and dressing the children,
take a little walk into the field to see how his turnips were
standing. Now the turnips were close to his house, and
he used to eat them with his family, so that he looked
upon them as his own. No sooner said than done. The
hedgehod shut the house-door to after him, and took his
way to the field. He had not gone very far from the
house, and was about to turn, just by the thorn bush which
stands there before the field, near the turnip patch, when
he met the hare, who had gone out on a similar business,
namely, to look after his cabbages. When the hedgehog
caught sight of the hare, he bid him a friendly “good
morning!” But the hare, who, in his own way, was a
mighty fine gentleman, and held his head very high,
answered nothing to the hedgehog's greeting, but said to
the hedgehog, putting on thereby a most scornful mien:

“How happens it, then, that thou art strolling about
here in the field so early in the morning?”

“I'm taking a walk,” said the hedgehog.

“Taking a walk?” laughed the hare, “methinks thou
mightest use those legs of thine for better things.”

This answer vexed the hedgehog hugely, for he could
stand almost anything, but his legs he did not like to
have spoken about, because they were crooked by nature.

“Thou thinkest, perhaps,” said the hedgehog to the
hare, “thou could'st do more with thine own legs!”

“That's what I do think,” said the hare.

[figure description] Page 132.[end figure description]

“That depends upon the trial,” quoth the hedgehog.
“I bet that if we run a race together, I beat thee hollow!”

“That's quite laughable, thou with thy crooked legs,”
said the hare, “but I've nothing against it if thou art so
bent upon it. What's the bet?”

“A golden louis d'or and a bottle of brandy!” said the
hedgehog.

“Done,” said the hare, “fall in, and then it may come
off at once.”

“Nay, there's no such hurry,” said the hedgehog, “I'm
still quite hungry; I'll go home and get a bit of breakfast
first; within half an hour I'll be here again on the spot.”

With this the hedgehog went his way, for the hare was
also content.

On the way the hedgehog thought to himself:

“The hare trusts to his long legs, but I'll fetch him
for all that; he's a fine gentleman to be sure, but still
he's only a stupid fellow, and pay he shall!”

Now when the hedgehog came to his house, he said to
his wife: “Wife, dress thyself in my gear, quickly, thou
must go with me to the field.”

“What's all this about?” said his wife.

“I've bet the hare a golden louis d'or and a bottle of
brandy that I beat him in a race, and thou must be by.”

“O my husband!” began the hedgehog's wife to
cry, “art thou foolish? hast thou then quite lost thine
understanding? How canst thou wish to run a race with
the hare?”

[figure description] Page 133.[end figure description]

“Hold thy mouth, wife,” said the hedgehog, “that's
my business; don't meddle with men's affairs. March!
dress thyself in my clothes, and then come along.”

What could the hedgehog's wife do? She had to follow
whether she would or no. When they were on the way
together, the hedgehog said to his wife: “Now listen to
what I have to say. See'st thou, on the long acre
yonder will we run our races. The hare runs in one
furrow and I in another, and we begin to run from up
there. Now thou hast nothing else to do than to take
thy place here in the furrow, and when the hare comes
up on the other side thou must call out to him: “I'm here
already!” With this they had reached the field; the
hedgehog showed his wife her place and went up the
furrow. When he got to the upper end the hare was
already there.

“Can we start?” said the hare.

`Yes, indeed!” said the hedgehog.

“To it then!” and with that each placed himself in his
furrow, and the hare counted one, two, three! and away
he went like a storm wind down the field. But the
hedgehog ran about three steps, and then ducked down
in the furrow and sat still.

When the hare, on the full bound, came to the lower
end of the field, the hedgehog's wife, called out to him.
“I'm here already!” The hare started and wondered
not a little; he thought not otherwise than that it was the
hedgehog himself that ran out to meet him; for, as every

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one knows, the hedgehog's wife looks just like her husband.

But the hare thought: there's something wrong about
all this! Another race! At it again! And away he
went again like a storm wind, so that his ears lay flat on
his head. But the hedgehog's wife staid quietly in her
place. When the hare came to the upper end the hedgehog
called out to him, “I'm here already.” But the
hare, beside himself with rage, cried: “Another race! at
it again!”

“I'm quite willing,” answered the hedgehog, “just as
often as thou likest.”

So the hare ran thee and seventy times, and the hedgehog
held out to the very end with him. Every time the
hare came either below or above, the hedgehog or his wife
said “I'm here already!”

But the four and seventieth time the hare came no
more to the end. In the middle of the field he fell to the
earth and lay dead upon the spot.

So the hedgehog took the louis d'or and the bottle of
brandy he had won, called his wife out of the furrow, and
both went home together: and if they have not died,
they are living still. So happened it that on the Buxtehude
heath the hedgehog ran the hare to death, and since
that time no hare has ever dreamed of running a race
with a Buxtehude hedgehog.

But the moral of this story is, first; that no one, however
high and mighty he may think himself, shall let it

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happen to him to make merry over an humble man, even
if he be a hedgehog; and secondly, that it is advisable,
when one marries, that he take a wife out of his own
condition, and who looks just like himself. He, therefore
that is a hedgehog, must look to it that his wife is also a
hedgehog; and so forth.

p528-153 XVIII. What is the Cause of Thunder?

“First, let me talk with this philosopher. What is the cause of
thunder?”

[figure description] Page 136.[end figure description]

ASERIES of observations, and a single experiment,
would throw some light upon this important question.
Take, for instance, a summer afternoon when the
air is close and sultry, and the atmosphere rarefied, when
respiration is laborious, and no wind stirring among the
leaves. But, on the distant horizon, there are indications
of vapor; not rolling clouds, but thin exhalations from
the earth, drawn up by the heat of the sun. Suddenly
this humid veil is illuminated by flashes, and people call
it heat lightning, summer lightning, sheet lightning. I
wish particularly to direct attention to the fact, that this
exhibition of electricity is not often accompanied with
other phenomena peculiar to thunder storms. No rain
follows the flash, nor is any report heard; and, furthermore,
these illuminated vapors are always much elevated.

It is idle to say that on account of distance from the
earth the report is not audible; for few persons, familiar
with mountain heights, can fail to remember that some

[figure description] Page 137.[end figure description]

time or other they were in the midst of such an atmosphere,
when the lightning appeared to surround them,
apparently within a few feet of them, flashing on every
side, yet without rain or detonation. In this condition
the atmosphere is said to be highly charged with electricity.
But surely we cannot accept this as equivalent to
the same meaning applied to a Leyden jar, fresh from
contact with the knob of the electric machine. Indeed,
is not the contrary very possible? Would not the data
show that, in such a condition the atmosphere, instead
of being highly charged, had not its usual percentage of
electric stimulus? Experiments with the electrometer
might prove this supposition to be correct, and, on the
other hand, it might prove it to be incorrect. But one
thing cannot be disproved nor denied—that air, highly
rarefied by heat, and humid, is air, plus water; and also
that in this condition air is susceptible of being silently
illuminated by electricity. This point being settled, we
will proceed to the next—which is, “What is the cause
of Thunder?”

The learned, down to the latest moment of going to
press, have advanced no further than this, that “thunder
is a noise produced by THE EXPLOSION OF LIGHTNING, or
by the passage of lightning from one cloud to another! or
from a cloud to the ground.” Whoever has read the celebrated
treatise of John Conrad Francis de Hatzfield
upon the subject, will find a far more plausible theory
advanced by that sagacious philosopher, and quite as

[figure description] Page 138.[end figure description]

amusing as the modern idea, that the sound of thunder is
analogous to the snap produced by holding the knuckle
of one's forefinger to the brass bulb of an electrical
machine!—an explanation that has never satisfied any
reasonable mind. Let us see if there be not a rational
solution of the mystery.

The phenomena of thunder storms are: first, heavy
clouds; then lightning; then the report, and then a
fall of rain! Now, let us trace the consequence to its
source. The rain is produced by two causes, either sudden
condensation of watery vapors or clouds, by colder
temperature, or the formation of water by the action
of the electric fluid. The first explains itself; the latter
is linked with the subject of this paper. Let us, therefore,
confine ourselves to that rain only which follows
the thunder. Rain water is composed of two elements,
oxygen and hydrogen. Hydrogen is a combustible gas,
and oxygen supports combustion. A stream of pure
hydrogen, ejected from a pipe into pure oxygen, burns
brightly in perfect silence. But, mixed with oxygen, it
explodes upon taking fire; just as a young man, having his
own fortune to make, goes quietly to work until he gets
a partner with a tremendous capital. The relative aspects
of silent lightning and noisy lightning may be compared
by a simple apparatus sold at any chemists; it is a tin
lamp filled with inflammatory gas. So long as the gas is
allowed to burn in small quantities it is taciturn, but, exposed
to a larger mixture of oxygen, it goes off with a

[figure description] Page 139.[end figure description]

loud report. This is a lamp that any spark of electricity
can ignite. And then again the product of the flame is
water! The union of hydrogen and oxygen is water.
What meteoric phenomenon is so simple as this, that
thunder is caused by the electric spark uniting with rarefied
air plus oxygen, and rarefied vapor plus hydrogen,
detonating, recompounding, and forming rain!

p528-157 XIX. A French Breakfast. *

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MLE Prince de Talleyrand gave a dejeûner ă la
fourchette at which the illustrious Brillat Savarin
was a guest. This great philosopher gives us the
bill of fare, interspersed with his own reflections and
directions, which I have translated for the edification of
all gourmets.

Yours, P. D.

1st. Guinea hen's eggs fried in quail's fat, spread with
a coulis (gravy) of écrevisse (a species of crawfish), very
warm, each egg being a single morsel, and taken at a
mouthful, after having been well turned in the coulis.

Eat pianissimo.

After each egg drink two fingers of old Madeira. This
wine to be drunk with reflection. (Recueillement).

2d. Lake Trout with Montpelier butter, iced (butter
made with aromatic herbs). Roll each morsel nicely and
perfectly in this high-flavored seasoning.

Eat allegro.

Drink two glasses of fine Sauterne or Latour Blanche.
To be drunk contemplatively.

[figure description] Page 141.[end figure description]

3d. Fillets of the breast of Grouse, with white truffles
of Piemant—raw, in slices.

Place each fillet between two layers of truffles, and let
them soak well in gravy á la périgueux, made of black
truffles served apart.

Eat forte, on account of the white truffles being raw.

Drink two glasses of Château Margaux; the beautiful
flavor of this wine will be most apparent after drinking.

4th. Roasted Rail on a Crust, a lá Sardanapale; the
legs and side-bones to be eaten only; the leg not to be
cut in two; take it between the thumb and fingers; salt
it lightly; put the thigh part between the teeth and chew
it all, meat and bone.

Eat largo and fortissimo, at the same time take a cut
of the hot crust, prepared with a condiment of liver and
brain of woodcock, goose liver of Strasbourg, marrow
of red deer, and pounded anchovies, highly spiced.

Drink two glasses of Clos Vougeot; pour out this wine
with emotion, and drink with a religious sentiment.

5th. Morilles (a species of large and exquisite mushrooms),
with fine herbs and essence of ham; let these
divine cryptogamas melt in the mouth.

Eat pianissimo.

Drink a glass of Côte Rôtie, or a glass of very old
Johannesberger. No recommendation as to the way of
drinking this wine (the Côte Rôtie); it is commanding
and self-imposing; as to the Johannesberger, treat it
like a venerable patriarch.

[figure description] Page 142.[end figure description]

6th. Bouchées la Duchesse, with pine-apple jelly.

Eat amoroso.

Drink two or three glasses of Champagne, Sillery Sec,
Verzeney, non Mousseux (still) iced to snow.

7th. Brie Cheese, or Estanville (near Meaux).

Drink one glass of Port.

Then, if you please, an excellent cigar (demi regalia
de Cabañas), after which one small glass of Curaçao, and
a siesta, during which you will dream of the beauties of
the dinner to come.

Each course of such a breakfast must be served only
at the time the cook is ready; the guest must wait, not
the cook, so that the dishes may be presented in perfect
order.

p528-160 XX. Dainty Hints for Epicurean Smokers. *

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WHOEVER has been in Havana must needs recollect
the little brazier, with its ball of white
ashes, beneath which a live hard-wood coal, called a
“candela,” glows all day for the accommodation of
smokers in every house. This we thought once a dainty
device. But our friend, Master Karl, has given us some
new, delicate and fragrant suggestions:—

“It is an established canon that the purest and most
elevated tastes or flavors are unmixed—simple. I respectfully
submit that in smoking tobacco, this rule by
no means holds good.

And here I might cite the learned Winstruphius
who in his `Epigrammata,' puns so learnedly on Bacchus
and To-Bacco, and their mutual flavoring influence.
This I spare you. Likewise the lucubrations of Schiop
pius Dunderhedius, who in speaking most horrifically,
De odore fetida tobacci, distinctly analyzes it into two
smells—one infernal, the other diabolical. This spared
also, (by request).

[figure description] Page 144.[end figure description]

“But I mean simply to say that a point may be given
to a good cigar by lighting it from wood—not from the
timber of a lucifer match, but from a smoldering, smoking
fragment of a log, either hickory, oak, or even pine.
And note ye, good fellows all, that the earlier in the
season this is done, the more delicate is the goût; yea,
this rule holds so far good, that on the first crisp evenings
in September, no musk-rose or violet that is—nay,
no vitivert—nay, no ess bouquet—nay, no florimel, nay,
no ean de cypre—nay, no hediosmya—nay, no daintily-ambered
aqua coloniœ or any Paradisaical sweets that
be, can surpass the odorat of the first whiff of a wood-lighted
cigar.

“Yea, and more. If you smoke light, and mild, and
dry, preferring Latikéa and Knaster to fine-cut, tumback
and chopped cavendish, there is a class of perfumes—
that I ween, which Piesse places as the third note in the
gamut of good smells—a certain spicy oriental class,
such as cascarrilla, or a faint admixture of santal, which
perfumes the axe which lays it low, which in no wise detracts
from piping joys. And I tell you in all truth,
that Virginia leaf, with these sweet delights, and with
sumach or kinni kinnick therein gently mingled, spreads
around such a pastilled, ecclesiastical cathedral air,
blended with dim souvenirs of the rue Bréda, that he
who smokes thereof is oftentimes in tone to sing the
high song of King Solomon, or the lyrics of the Persian
lànd, wherein love and devotion are so curiously

[figure description] Page 145.[end figure description]

entwined, that no sensation that is, can be compared
thereto, unless it be the kissing of your sweetheart
during sermon-time under the lee of a high-backed old-fashioned
pew.

p528-163 XXI. Was Champagne Known to the Ancients? *

[figure description] Page 146.[end figure description]

New York, July 1st, 1867.

THE author of the following two communications, written
seven years ago, in now revising them, finds melancholy
thoughts taking the place of the gay and festive feelings in which they
were originally composed. In those seven years of civil strife which
brought sorrow to the hearts of thousands, whose loved ones, whose
“beautiful and brave,” fell in the battle-field, death did not spare
some of the best and noblest of those who were sportively mentioned
in these papers.

Dr. Francis has passed away—Dr. Francis the jovial, the kind-hearted,
the man of boundless curiosity and unerring memory, of
large and sound acquirements, the genuine and enthusiastic New
Yorker, who has preserved the choicest memorials of the men of the
last generation in that city to which he himself so long gladdened
and instructed.

President Felton, of Harvard University, is no more. New York,
still mourns the death of one of her most eminent surgeons, Dr. John
Watson.

The memory of all men of professional excellence, however high
it may have been, is proverbially brief.

“Feeble tradition is their memory's guard.”

[figure description] Page 147.[end figure description]

Thus the fame of the distinguished skill of Watson must soon fade
away, like that of Kissam, of Wright, of Post, and even within
a few years that of Mott. But the memory of Dr. Watson will
be preserved by his volume on “The Medical Profession in Ancient
Times,” a book equally agreeable and impressive, very learned, yet
very original. That memory will also be preserved and cherished
among a limited but very select class of students, in law, in medicine
and in intellectual science, by his elaborate, acute and exhaustive
printed opinions as a medical expert; in the great, the genial, the
liberal, the wise, the accomplished scholar, one of whose Homeric
criticisms is specially combated in these papers, who is there described
as a person of the highest scholarship, armed with the authority,
and clothed with the dignity of Jupiter, he, too, was soon suddenly
snatched away from the station he adorned, and the studies which
he loved.

To those honored names must I add that of Thackeray. He was one
well known familiarly in our American cities, and there are still
hundreds who quote his criticisms on our “Big Bursts of Oysters,” as
well as on our old Maderia, so plentiful and so prized but twenty
years ago, while the portraits of Col. Newcome, of Becky Sharpe,
and many more, remain, life-like in the minds of thousands.

But such recollections will touch and sadden only some few of my
older readers. The passages relating to the lamented dead, have been
therefore left unaltered, in the wish to give to such of any younger
generation who may casually look into this book, a passing glance at
the pursuits and opinions of some of the noted literary men among
us in 1860.

— —, August 7, 1866.

My Dear Cozzens:—I had hoped to spend my vacation
in quiet idleness, with a rigorous and religious abstinence

[figure description] Page 148.[end figure description]

from pen and ink. But I cannot refuse to comply with
the request you urge so eloquently, placing your claim to
my assistance not only on the ground of old friendship,
but also as involving important objects, literary and scientific,
as well as social and commercial; all of them (to
repeat your phrase and Bacon's), “coming home to the
business and bosoms of men.”

You desire me to inform you, after careful examination
of all the authorities, “whether the ancient Greeks or
Romans, during the classic ages, were acquainted with
champagne.”

In such an inquiry, at once scientific and classical, it is
all-important that the question should be stated with
logical precision. Bacon himself has taught us that the
judicious statement of the question (prudens interrogatio)
is one half the way to scientific discovery.

Now, I may safely presume that you do not mean to
ask whether the territory of Champagne was known to the
ancients. Any Freshman can tell you that the fair land
on each side of the murmuring Marne, and up the vineclad
sides of the mountains, was part of ancient Gaul,
known and subject to the Romans, and designated as part
of different provinces at different periods of the Roman
sway.

On this point and all relating to it you can get whatever information you desire from Cluverius and D'Anville,
or the Fathers of Trevoux. But this, I take it, you cannot
mean, though it is the literal sense of your request.

[figure description] Page 149.[end figure description]

Nor, in my judgment, can you mean to ask, whether
the Greeks and Romans were acquainted with the wines
of the growth of that part of old Gaul which, under the
ancient regime of France, was called the province of
Champagne. Of course the Roman colonists in Gaul
knew and used the wines therein grown and made; but
from the account given by the elder Pliny, of the wines
there produced, they bore little resemblance to the
present wines of Champagne, whether mousseux crémant,
or still. They are not named with any respect in Pliny's
statement of the one hundred and ninety-five (195!) sorts
of wine which in his day were counted fit for the Roman
market, of which only eighty kinds were admitted to be
“wines of authority for good tables”—“quibus auctoritas
fuerit mensâ,” as he says, unless I misquote him. The
art of wine-making was then in its very infancy in Gaul.
Indeed, it was not until the days of the great and good
Ingulphus, the Seventeenth mitred Abbot of Verzeney,
who was also Dean of Rheims—(I give that great man
the titles by which he was known in the last forty years
of his life, although his most admirable and important
inventions and improvements in the making and management
of wines were made whilst he was still only
curé of Verzy on the mountains, and afterwards Archdeacon
of Ay, in the low country along the Marne)—I
say, that it was not until the days of the aforesaid Ingulphus
(supradicti Reverendissimi Ingulphi as the Rheims
Chronicle styles him), that the wines of Campagne

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attracted the attention of Royalty. Soon after that they
became the constant accompaniments, de rigueur, of
all “good men's feasts.” I write, as you know, out
of reach of my own library, as well as of that of our
university, and must trust altogether to memory. Otherwise
I could not resist the temptation of expatiating further
in the praise of this great benefactor of humanity. I
will only add that the great Ingulphus of whom I speak,
and to whom we all owe such an impayable debt of gratitude,
was the one of the Rohan family, and must not be
confounded with the three other very able and distinguished
men of the Latinized name of Ingulphus, or
Ingulphius, (for the name is spelled both ways), who
figure in public affairs in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries.

The great Ingulphus prosecuted his vinous experiments
and effected his discoveries during the reign
of the famous Philip Augustus; or rather, Philip
Augustus reigned in France during his time, which,
by a very noteworthy coincidence, was the very period
when, according to the best Irish antiquaries their Milesian
forefathers discovered and perfected the manufacture of
whisky, usky, or the water, as it was called in the ancient
tongue of the Emerald Isle; though in the cognate dialect
of the Scotch Gaelic, it was known as uisgee. These
epochs also corresponded with the date when Magna
Charta, the palladium of England's liberty, was wrung by
the English from their reluctant monarch. No sound

[figure description] Page 151.[end figure description]

philosopher can suppose that coincidences like these are
accidental. No, no:

But, to return to your inquiry. Having, by the process
of philosophical elimination, excluded much vagueness
and danger of error, I proceed to reduce your inquiry
to the shape of the prudent interrogation, the logically
exact questioning, of the school of Bacon and Newton.
Your inquiry, then, must be this. Did the ancients, in
the high and palmy days of their eloquence, philosophy
and poetry, either in Greece or Rome, or in both, know
and use (and of course become fond of) any effervescent
wine or wines having the chemical qualities, as carbonic
acid gas, with the tartarous and saccharine constituents,
the physiological and dietetic qualities, aroma, bouquet,
etc., together with those other properties either belonging
to the science of the laboratory or to that of the table,
which have been so beautifully stated by my good friend
Dr. Mülder, Professor of Dietetic Chemistry in the
University of Utrecht, in his “Chemistry of Wines,” as
being essential to the true wines of Champagne, whether
mousseux or demi-mousseux?

In this statement of the question, you see, I purposely exclude
the vin non-mousseux, or what is less philosophically
expressed in English by the name of “still Champagne.”
This I do because in the vulgar and popular use, such wines

[figure description] Page 152.[end figure description]

are not included under the term Champagne, although
grown and made in that District, and some of them, as
Sillery, of the very highest merit, gastronomic and dietetic,
convivial, social, and moral, and especially in those
qualities which the physiology of the table designates as
Oxyporian.

Thus, I think that the preliminary question is clearly
settled with an Aristotelian precision, such as the learned
gentlemen who discuss questions of Contagion and Infection
in academies and conventions would do well to
imitate. I then proceed to the investigation itself. This
I am not ashamed to affirm that I do with perfect confidence
in the successful result; for I do it, not like my
learned friends just mentioned.

“Cæca regens filo vestigia.”

The conclusion to which I come is simply that the
Greek and Roman gentlemen and scholars, in the high
and palmy state of their literature and art, had used and
enjoyed wines similar to the effervescent, foaming, sparkling,
or creaming wines of Champagne.

[figure description] Page 153.[end figure description]

I have stated the precise question, and the conclusion
to which my mind has logically arrived.

It would be descending not a little from the dignity of
learning to recapitulate any of the steps by which that
conclusion was attained, and the various authorities on
which it rests.

It is a wise general rule never to give such reasons for
your opinions. Let those who ask your opinion be satisfied
when they have got it. Yet, considering the great
importance of the present inquiry, and the intense interest
which it must excite, I will deviate from my ordinary
practice.

Before stating this evidence, it must be observed, once
for all, that though I hold that a sparkling wine similar
to our best Champagne was known to the ancients, it is
quite as clear that such was not a common characteristic
of their wines. The resemblance was only of some of
their choice vintages to those of our Champagnes. Otherwise,
their wines were commonly still, strong, and often
thick, like our “Essence Tokay.” I do not care to
trouble you with any learning on this head. It would be
too large a dose for the present.

On all similar questions as to Grecian habits and Greek
learning, the best and most universal anthority is Athenæus.
He is the most delightful and instructive author on matters
of the table in any language, being to Greek literature
a Dr. Kitchener of a higher order, or rather his work is
what Brillat-Savarin's “Physiologie du Goût is in French;

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but it is of far more value than Savarin's, because, with
equal sprightliness and familiar knowledge of the subject
that he handles, his book is filled, crammed, stuffed,
spiced, larded with choice extracts from numerous Greek
poets and dramatists, whose other writings are all lost.

I always make Athenæus my summer travelling companion—
in the original, of course; and I prefer reading
him in Schweighauser's last edition, partly because it is
the best, but chiefly because old Schweighauser was exceedingly
kind to me at Strasbourg, more years ago than
I care to tell. But as I know that your Greek is exceedingly
rusty, you may consult Athenæus with profit and
pleasure in Bohn's edition of Yonge's literal translation.
I looked into it not long ago, and found that I could
understand it nearly or quite as well as the original, which
is more than I can say for most of the translations which
our college lads use for “ponies.”

Amongst an infinite number of delicious excerpts from
Greek poets as popular in their day as Beranger is in our
own, but of whom nothing remains to posterity but exquisite
fragments, he quotes a long passage from Critias,
who thus begins a poem which, by the way, is palpably
the model of the well-known lines of Goethe, and of Byron
who is thought to have borrowed from him. Yet as
Byron knew much more Greek than he did German, I have
no doubt that both he and Goethe copied directly from
the old Greek. Byron has it thus:

“Know you the land of the cypress and myrtle?”

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Critias, addressing his native land of Sicily, says:


“Hail to the land of the dim Proserpine!
There sparkles and foams the mirth-boding wine,
With its froth, its fun and noise,
Its folly, its wisdom, its joys—
The folly of sages, the wisdom of boys.”
Does not the “sparkling and foaming,” etc., clearly refer
to some everffescent, frothing wine?

Again, Athenæus quotes various passages from Alexis,
who seems to have been a Lesbian Tom Moore, for he
luxuriates over “the rich and rosy wine” of the island
of Lesbos, and thus addresses Bacchus on this wine:


“Hail vine-crowued Bacchus, chief divine,
Who from his sea-girt Lesbian lair
Erst floated out the demon Care
With sparkling, ruby wine.”
Can there be any reasonable doubt that the “sparkling
ruby wine,” with its proper concomitant, “the floating
out of old Care” from the place where he had long
nestled in gloomy security, all allude to a choice, effervescing,
red wine, precisely of the quality of an excellent
vin rosé mousseux de Champagne?

Then gushes forth a torrent of quotations out of the
inexhaustable memory of this philosopher of good suppers,
from the poet Hermippus, who seems a cosmopolitan sort
of a bard, and writes as if he were at home over all the
known world. Complimenting other wines, for which
he had unquestionably a right liberal and Catholic faith,

[figure description] Page 156.[end figure description]

the poet after praising the “Thasian's mild perfume,”
bursts into admiration of

In every one of these beautiful fragments you perceive
the mantling, pettilant character of our best Champagne
mousseux or demi-mousseux, and there are clear indications
(in the original, at least) of the golden color of some of
these sparkling vintages, and the roseate tinge of others.

By the way, there is another ancient usage of which
Athenæus has preserved the memory together with that,
dozens of authers where very names would have been
swept into oblivion with their poems, their songs, ballads,
their comedies which were once the charm of the civilized
world had it not been for the inexhaustible memory
of this most catholic of quoters. The fact may not be
conclusive, but it is at least corroborative of the opinion
I maintain.

It is that the Greeks were accustomed to cool their
wines even by snow, as they were not blest with our ice
houses. What is this but an anticipation of the Vin de
Champagne Frappe of our modern tables.

I must content myself with only one more authority
from this source. Athenæus himself, in his sober, prose
speculations, says (Lib. 1, § 59) of a certain wine; “This
kind is a wine which has a tendency to mount upward.”

Now, with all deference to my old friend Schweighauser
(who quite overlooks the point), how can any of the above

[figure description] Page 157.[end figure description]

passages be explained without understanding them to
refer to wines resembling our sparkling Champagne?

If I thought that you could read Greek with any sort
of facility, I should not have troubled you with the above
imperfect but not unfaithful versions of these precious
fragments. They are more faithful than those of Bohn's
translation, if not more poetical: yet, like his, they are
far from expressing the force and truth of the original.
In reading aloud these exquisite fragments in their native
Greek, I hear the whizzing burst of the exploded cork, I
see the foaming froth of the goblet, I scent the flowery
perfume of its delicate bouquet.

These and other authorities in Athenæus and the bright
dramatists and poets whose gems the philosopher has preserved
in his sober prose, like pearls in amber, are quite
sufficient for my argument as to the Greek. When I
get home among my books, I am sure that I can fortify
these authorities by many passages to the same effect,
from Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemæus, Hippocrates and St.
Chrysostom.

Yet there is one other authority not to be omitted in
such a discussion. It is even that of old Homer himself.
In some thirty or more passages he paints his gods or
heroes gazing upon the angry sea, to which he gives the
epithet ο&sbiacgr;νοψ, literally “wine-faced.” The translators
and commentators tell us that the compound word means
“dark,” or “ruddy,” like the wine of that age. What
stupidity! Is it not clear that it refers to the

[figure description] Page 158.[end figure description]

foamcovered deep—that it paints the angry main with its
whole surface instinct with life, and mantling and foaming
like the best foaming wine of the times—probably like
that “Chian wine,” that the poetic fragments in
Athenæus tells us was Homer's favorite brand. In brief,
the only translation which can convey the force of the
epithet to a modern is the “Champagne-like deep” It
is possible to describe more happily the “foam-faced
sea,” the ο&sbigr;νοπα ποντον on which Achilles gazes, and calls
forth his sea-born mother, in the beginning of the Epic
story. How admirably does this harmonize with the
wild spirit of the hero, and the stormy tale of his wrath
and his glory. It becomes nearly as flat as the leavings
of yesterday's uncorked Champagne, if this glowing
epithet is reduced to “dark,” or “ruddy,” or even to
“claret-colored,”—which last would be at least more
poetical, though not more acurate.

Next, then, for the Romans. That a delicate vin
mousseux petillant, a foaming and sparkling wine, was
familiar to the tastes of the refined gentlemen of Rome in
the time of Mæcenas and his little senate of poets, and
soldiers, and philosophers, we need no better proof than
the testimony of Virgil himself, who graphically represents
the drinking of just such a wine as that with which
you oblige your friends at various prices, and under sundry
brands but all choice and dear. I take first the literal meaning
of Virgil's melodious verses, though I have long thought
that those contained a deeper secondary and recondite

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sense, referring to the recherché repasts of Virgil's great
friend and patron, Mæcenas. It is in the close of the first
book of the æneid, in the recital of Dido's royal bonquet
to the Trojan chief. Toward the end of the feast, Dido
is described as ordering, and receiving, and filling with
wine, the hereditary massive goblet of gold and gems,
used by her progenitor Belus, and the long line of her
ancestors,


“Hic Regina gravem gremmis auroque poposcit,
Implevitque mero, pateram, quam Belus et omnes
A Belo soliti”—
Then, after a pause of silence, she invokes Jove, the God
of hospitable laws, to make that day auspicious alike to
the wanderes of Troy and her own subjects exiles from
Tyre. After inviting the favorable presence of Bacchus,
the giver of mirth, and of the gracious Juno, next she
pours on the table the liquid honors of libation (laticum
libavit honorem); and after touching the bowl with her
lip, passes it on with gay chiding at his slowness, to her
next neighbor Bitias. Wherenpon,

For the sake of being very accurate, I have given you
an exact prose version of the preceding lines, instead of
my own resounding translation; still, as I have already
informed you, in the press of Ticknor & Fields. I
proceed in the same way as to those last quoted. “He

[figure description] Page 160.[end figure description]

(Bitias), no slouch at his glass—(none of the translators
in any tongue, have given the sense of impiger with
such precision), drained off the foaming cup, and bathed
himself in the overflowing gold.” Here, again, so far as
I can remember, no one of the translators or commentators—
I have examined all of them in my time, though
not very lately—has given the full force of the “pleno se
proluit auro,” for though it implies that this inexpert
drinker drenched himself with the choice liquor contained
in the golden goblet, it also unquestionably means that
he bathed his face in that vinous spray with which frothing
Champagne often moistens or even bathes the face of the
hasty and ill-mannered drinker. Good Abbé De Lille,
better accustomed to the pleasures of Champagne than
the port-drinking English translators and the beer-loving
German commentators, comes much nearer in his

“S'abreuvant à longs traits du nectar écumant.”

Here, then, I may triumphantly rest my argument.
Yet I cannot refrain from adding what is probably
known to very few scholars out of Italy. It is this; Cardinal
Mai, whose services to learning have entitled him
to the lasting gratitude of all scholars, discovered,
eighteen months ago, among the hitherto unexplored
treasures of the Vatican library, a manuscript, as yet

[figure description] Page 161.[end figure description]

unprinted, containing the æneid with the notes of an
anonymous old commentator or scholiast, evidently
nearly contemporary with the poet, or at least of the
very next generation to him, full of curious criticism and
still more curious facts. This old scholiast, in his note
on the very passage just under consideration, confirms a
conjecture of my own, which I communicated in a paper
of mine to the “London Classical Journal” some twelve
years ago or more. He expressly says that this passage
was meant to be understood in its literal sense by ordinary
readers and by posterity, but that it also referred,
in its interior or esoteric sense, to the habifs of Mæcenas
at his festive board, where Horace, Pollio, Varrus and
Virgil were in the habit of dining with him twice every
week, not including his birthday parties and other high
festivities. On these occasions those favorite guests were
always treated with a certain foaming wine of the
“Dido brand”—“vino effervescent, spumanteque, amp
horis notâ Didonis signatis.”

He adds, also, that this wine was always supplied for
the table of Mæcenas from the wine-vaults of Sulpicius,
“Sulpicianis horreis,” the same eminent wine-merchant
whose stock is mentioned with great reverence by Horace
in one of his odes.

As far as I can make out the topography of old Rome,
Sulpicius had his chief commercial establishment in
Curtius street, nearly opposite to the first city station of
the great Appian Way, the Hudson River Railroad of

[figure description] Page 162.[end figure description]

old Rome, a locatity not very unlike yours in your own
city.

I trust that you are now quite satisfied that the gentlemen
of Greece and Rome were accustomed to quaff a
generous and pure vin mousseaux, quite like, and in no
way inferior to the best Champagne of our times. I
trust, also, that you will have ambition and patriotism
enough to make the resemblance between old imperial
Rome and your commercial Rome still more perfect by
arranging with your correspondents at Rheims or at Cincinnati
to supply you with a DIDO brand of the very
choicest quality. Recollect that it must not be non mous
seux or still, or even merely crêmaut, but resembling as
near as may be the Dido wine of antiquity, spumans,
petillant, mousseux, sparkling, foaming, fragrant, and
with the more important qualities of a delicate aroma
and an unimpeachable boquet.

[figure description] Page 163.[end figure description]

By the way, why does not the doctor, in his capacity
of the Herodotus of your local history, amongst the fossil
remains of the last century which he has dishumed, make
out to dig up some choice reminiscences (there must have
been much material for such) of the long residence of
Brileat-Savarin in New York between sixty and seventy
years ago. I was exceedingly interested with the account
of him related by Mr.—in my visit to the Century
Club, with you the last time I was in your city. That
the immortal author of the great work on Transcendental
Gastronomy should have lived for some years in New
York, by scraping the violin in the humble and
unscientific orchestra of the John street and Park
Theatres, under the rule of Dunlap or Price, and then
emerged in Paris the most successful of authors, the
gayest and of table philosophers, and, moreover, a
Judge of the Court of Cassation, the highest tribunal of
France, promoted to that high station by the discriminating
Napoleon, and continued by the Bourbons, is as
whimsical and as surprising a vicissitude of fortune as
any of the incidents in the life of Louis Philippe or of
Louis Napoleon. I must unquestionably have seen him
more than once in former days, at the Court of Cassation,
seated by the side of his venerable chief, the Legitimist
Premier President De Seze, and there affirming or reversing
the decisions of the courts below, involving
millions of francs and the most thorny points of the Code.
But I never could dream that amongst these dignified

[figure description] Page 164.[end figure description]

sages of the law, in their grave customary robes and judicial
caps á mortier, I saw the sprightly author of the
“Physiology of Taste,” who had erst for two or more
years been first violin of the only theatre in village-like
New York during the play-going days of your grandfather.

p528-182 XXII. German Wines, and a Wine Cellar. *

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UP the Rhine in the leafy month of June, one might
go further and fare worse, especially with regard
to wine. The fact is, it is a noble thing to find some
good in one's surroundings. To pass serenely and quietly
from Claret, Burgundy and Champagne to Schiedam
Schnapps and thence to Johannesberger, Marcobrunner,
Rüdesheimer, and even Piesporter, without a groan.
To take a glass of Completer at Coire or allay thirst by
Vin de Glacier, Yvorne, or St. Georges, through the
land of snow-capped mountains and yodles; thence descending
to d'Asti, Barbera, Campidano di Lombardi,
Canonao del Sardegna, Monte Fiascone, Orvietto and
Lagrima Christi; drinking Aguardiente, Sherry and Val
de Peñas in Spain, coming down to Bouza in Cairo or
Mahayah in Morocco, pitching into Vodke or Kisslyschtxhy
in Russia. Behold, QUO DUCIT GULA!

Perhaps, for euphony, it is the best way to sum up
German wines under the headings Rhine wine, Moselle
wine or the popular hock; for what Anglo-Saxon head

[figure description] Page 166.[end figure description]

can always recall even a few names like Augenscheimer,
Assmannhaüster, Affenthaler, Bacharach, Brauneberger,
Bischeimer, Bessingheimer, Bodenheimer, Bechebacher,
Berncasther, Deidesheimer, Epsteiner, Euchariusberger,
Geissenheimer, Graacher, Grüenhauser, Hochheimer,
Hinterhaus, Johannesberger, Liebfrauenmilch, Laubenheimer,
Liestener, Mittelheimer, Marcobrunner, Niersteiner,
Oppenheimer, Pitcher, Rüdesheimer, Rauenthaler,
Schamet, Steinberger, Steinwein, Schiersteiner,
Thiergartner, Walporger and Zeltingener?

It is a popular fallacy to suppose good German wines
are acid; they are dry, fine flavored, and keep better
than the five hundred year immortality of an oil painting.
As for the alcohol in them, by a careful analysis,
Hochheimer showed only 14.37 per cent, of pure alcohol,
while a very old sample, only marked 8.8, a lower figure
than almost any of the French wines.

Johannesberger from the Schloss, is the king of German
wines; twenty-five years ago, Mumm and Giesler
of Cologne and Johannesberg, held the vintage of 1822
at the rate of $10 per gallon; at compound interest it
would now be worth about $60 per gallon! This wine
with Steinberger, Geissenheimer and Hochheimer, have
the most delicate flavor and aroma of all German wines.
The warmest seasons insure the best vintages, so those
of 1748, 1766, 1779, 1783, 1800, 1802 and 1811 were
celebrated among the past generation as we now look to
1834, 1839, 1842 and 1846. Pure air and plenty of

[figure description] Page 167.[end figure description]

sunlight are the best guardians for vines, and those erowning
the high lands yield wine of the best body, while those
in the low lands are poorer, and the wine requires years
to attain a really fine flavor. Next to Johannesberger
comes Steinberger of the Duke of Nassan, the iron hand
in a velvet glove, delicate as a zephyr, it has the strength
of a hurricane; kiss the beauty, but don't arouse the
virago. Hercules viraginem vicit, but every one is not a
“Dutchman!”

There is something very attractive in Liebfrauenmilch;
the best comes from Worms, it has a good body and
should be drunk reflectively, this milk for babes. While
Marcobrunner, Rudesheimer and Niersteiner are for arms
and the sword song of Körner.

Brauneberger ranks first among Moselle wines, and
according to young Germany, there is not a headache in
a hogshead of it; certainly after two bottles of it, there
was no kazenjammer next morning. The old story that
Bacchus, when he lived in the Father-land, having
invited Jupiter down stairs to make a night of it on
Brauneberger, so pleased the latter with this tipple, that
he at once ordered all he could buy, on credit, for
Olympus, to take the place of nectar, for a change; may
be true. When you go to Heidelburg, stop at the Black
Eagle Hotel, and ask Herr Lehr, the landlord, for a bottle
of Sparkling White Moselle; drink it in the courtyard
under the vine leaves, and to the sound of that
fountain where the large trouts swim!

[figure description] Page 168.[end figure description]

To look forward for ten years to seeing a cellar and
then have it turn out a “sell,” is one of the agonies of
travel. Possibly under other circumstances, Auerbach's
cellar in Leipsic would have worn less the air of a shows
shop, or less like Julius Cæsar in peg-tops and a stove-pipe
hat than I found it, but not even a bottle of Hochheimer—
those paintings on the wall representing Faust's
appearance and disappearance, and the old admonition
of 1525:

“Vive, bibe, obregare, memor,” etc.

On the steamer from Coblentz, I formed the acquaintance
of an officer, a lieutenant, who was just off duty
from Ehrenbreitstein, and was on his way to Frankfort.
Arriving after sunset, we determined to stay that night
at Mayence, and go on next morning by railroad to
Frankfort. After dinner at the hotel, we strolled out to
look around town, and finally, as we crossed a narrow
street, he proposed a bottle of Brauneberger in a cellar
on the opposite side of the way, a quiet old nest, he

[figure description] Page 169.[end figure description]

said, where only old-fashioned and well-to-do Mayenzers
were to be found. Down we went, and passing through
an anteroom, where a fine specimen of a broad-shouldered
middle-aged German was talking with a spectacled old
gentleman with the air of a Professor, in a land where
Professors are something; we were passing on to the
next cellar, when the broad-shouldered landlord, bowing
with great respect, saluted my companion with a string
of titles as long as a roll of sausages. Upon which the
Herr Professor, for such he was, lifted his hat politely
to us, and, salutations over, we entered the next cellar
attended by the landlord.

“Altmayer,” said the officer, turning to him, “a bottle
of that Brauneberger.” And duly and deliberately the
portly wirth departed, soon returning with the Moselle
Nectar and glasses. If Hasenclever has not visited that
cellar, he has sketched its match in some quaint old
German city, for there it was, an interior worth crossing
three oceans to sit in and drink Moselle or Rhine wine.
The low ceiling was spanned with groined arches, dusky
with age, not dark, as the olla color of Murillo, but a
light-brown coffee-color, with a dash of light, borrowed
from the lamp that hung in the centre of the cellar, and
whose light just penetrated to the great butts lining the
walls. The round table at which we were seated was of
oak, dark with age, and anything more beautiful in the
way of the light that shone through our brimming
glasses of Brauneberger, and was reflected on that dark

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oak, I have never seen. The wirth having returned to
the ante-room, my companion, evidently pleased with the
interest I took in the surroundings of the cellar, judiciously
kept silence until I had thoroughly viewed it all,
sipping slowly the delicate wine, and wondering how all
the sunlight got into the cellar at night. There was
positively a thin golden cloud all around us, and such
serene repose as a traveller who has been through a
dozen galleries of paintings, innumerable churches, etc.,
all in one day, believes to be the height of pleasure, i. e.,
Kheyf!

“I am very glad we came here,” said the lieutenant,
“for I see you can appreciate what I have always
thought one of the most picturesque wine cellars in this
part of Germany. Have you noticed the grotesque
carving on that door leading to the further cellar?”
Turning my head in the direction indicated, I noticed a
pointed arch doorway, surrounded with the most beautiful
gothic tracery leaves, birds, monkeys, grapes, curious
grinning heads, all cut in stone, while the oak panels of
the door were rich in carved flowers and leaves.

“The oak door,” said the lieutenant, “is a modern
addition of the wirth's, but the rest runs back to the
16th century.” While I was still looking at the curious
carving round the door, three or four middle-aged gentlemen,
together with the spectacled Professor, entered
the cellar, and after polite salutations, drew up to the
table, and the wirth soon appeared with bottles and

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glasses for the different private guests, for in such light
they all appeared and acted. Having a cigar case well
stocked with a supply of Partagas primeras, it went the
rounds, and the cigars were accepted after much urging
on my part, for the idea is not German; I had the satisfaction
of reaping an amount of gratified expressions
from each smoker that paid me for the sacrifice; for I had
nursed the few I brought with me from the States with
great care. Conversation flowed on easily, and the
second bottle of Brauneberger went the way of the first;
it was even better nectar than its leader. The light in
the cellar appeared brighter and brighter, the golden
cloud seemed filled with bees-wings humming, the great
butts looming out of the mellow light looked like brown
Franciscans making merry over a bottle of sambuca.
The spectacled Professor told a right good story two feet
broad, the other elderly gentlemen kept it up! The
lieutenant ordered a third bottle of Brauneberger, which
was better than its predecessors.

Then there came in a wandering violin-player, blind
as a bat, and a very pretty girl with a guitar, who was
not blind, as her bright eyes, shining on the handsome
lieutenant, plainly told, and when she sung that pretty
song of “Frau Nachtigal,” it appeared to me, after the
wine, that she accented those lines—

“Wer du bist, der bin auch ich,

: Drum lass nach—zu lieben mich”:

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and regarded the lieutenant in the adoring style, permitting,
at some future time, any amount of poussiring, as
the Germans have it. Then we ordered just one more
bottle of Brauneberger, and the lieutenant, taking the
guitar from the pretty girl, sung in a fine, baritone voice,
“Soldatenleben”—

“Kein besser Leben,

Ist ouf dieser Welt zu denken”—

Several glasses of wine were bestowed on the blind
violinist, a collection made for the pretty girl, who
assured the lieutenant her name was Aennchen von
Tharau, which he doubted, insisting on it that Aennchen
died in 1659, and lived in Himmel Strasse! But she
gave us a parting song, prettily sung, and floated off into
that golden cloud and hum of bees, and the old Franciscans
smiled away from the big butts, and the spectacled
Professor bore us backward in his discourse to the days
when men passed whole lives as we were now passing
hours, and believed they were doing right, the illiterate
heathen.

“The Herr Professor will have us in Egyptian bondage
directly, unless we hurry away,” said the lieutenant
to me in a low voice; so we arose, as arise men who
bear away many bottles; and kindly greetings and

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adieux bore us off to the wirth, who hoped to see us
soon again, and bestowed all the titles on my companion
that he had inherited and won; and we sailed out into
the moonlit streets of Mayence, and down to the hotel
by the arrowy Rhine, and slept the sleep of men who
have drank good Brauneberger in a grand old cellar
surrounded by refined and genial companions.

Vale!

p528-191 XXIII. A Christmas Piece

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of garnered rhyme, from hidden stores of olden time, that
since the language did begin, have welcomed merry
Christmas in, and made the winter nights so long, fleet
by on wings of wine and song; for when the snow is on
the roof, the house within is sorrow proof, if yule clog
blazes on the hearth, and cups and hearts o'er-brim with
mirth. Then bring the wassail to the board, with nuts
and fruit—the winter's hoard; and bid the children take
off shoe, to hang their stockings by the flue; and let the
clear and frosty sky, set out its brightest jewelry, to show
old Santa Claus the road, so he may ease his gimcrack
load. And with the coming of these times, we'll add
some old and lusty rhymes, that suit the festive season
well, and sound as sweet as Christmas bell. And here's a
stave from rare old Ben, who wrote with most melodious
pen:

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And here's from that Bricklayer's pate, a stave that's
most appropriate; for when the Christmas chimes begin,
to eat and drink we count no sin; as sexton at the rope
doth pull, it cries, “Oh, bell! bell! bell-y-full!”

Now just bethink of castle gate, where humble midnight
mummers wait, to try if voices, one and all, can
rouse the tipsy seneschal, to give them bread and beer
and brawn, for tidings of the Christmas morn; or bid each
yelper clear his throat, with water of the castle moat; for
thus they used, by snow and torch, to rear their voices
at the porch:

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And here's a Christmas carol meant for children, and
most excellent, and though the monk that wrote it was
hung, yet still his verses may be sung.

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