Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 by Various

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The toasts now began in the customary order, attended with speeches
neither more nor less witty and ingenious than the specimens of
table-eloquence which had heretofore delighted me. As preparatory to
each new display, the herald, or whatever he was, behind the chair of
state, gave awful notice that the Right Honorable the Lord-Mayor was
about to propose a toast. His Lordship being happily delivered thereof,
together with some accompanying remarks, the band played an appropriate
tune, and the herald again issued proclamation to the effect that such
or such a nobleman, or gentleman, general, dignified clergyman, or what
not, was going to respond to the Right Honorable the Lord-Mayor's toast;
then, if I mistake not, there was another prodigious flourish of
trumpets and twanging of stringed instruments; and finally the doomed
individual, waiting all this while to be decapitated, got up and
proceeded to make a fool of himself. A bashful young earl tried his
maiden oratory on the good citizens of London, and having evidently got
every word by heart, (even including, however he managed it, the most
seemingly casual improvisations of the moment,) he really spoke like a
book, and made incomparably the smoothest speech I ever heard in
England.

The weight and gravity of the speakers, not only on this occasion, but
all similar ones, was what impressed me as most extraordinary, not to
say absurd. Why should people eat a good dinner, and put their spirits
into festive trim with Champagne, and afterwards mellow themselves into
a most enjoyable state of quietude with copious libations of Sherry and
old Port, and then disturb the whole excellent result by listening to
speeches as heavy as an after-dinner nap, and in no degree so
refreshing? If the Champagne had thrown its sparkle over the surface of
these effusions, or if the generous Port had shone through their
substance with a ruddy glow of the old English humor, I might have seen
a reason for honest gentlemen prattling in their cups, and should
undoubtedly have been glad to be a listener. But there was no attempt
nor impulse of the kind on the part of the orators, nor apparent
expectation of such a phenomenon on that of the audience. In fact, I
imagine that the latter were best pleased when the speaker embodied his
ideas in the figurative language of arithmetic, or struck upon any hard
matter of business or statistics, as a heavy-laden bark bumps upon a
rock in mid-ocean. The sad severity, the too earnest utilitarianism, of
modern life, have wrought a radical and lamentable change, I am afraid,
in this ancient and goodly institution of civic banquets. People used to
come to them, a few hundred years ago, for the sake of being jolly; they
come now with an odd notion of pouring sober wisdom into their wine by
way of wormwood-bitters, and thus make such a mess of it that the wine
and wisdom reciprocally spoil one another.

Possibly, the foregoing sentiments have taken a spice of acridity from a
circumstance that happened about this stage of the feast, and very much
interrupted my own further enjoyment of it. Up to this time, my
condition had been exceedingly felicitous, both on account of the
brilliancy of the scene, and because I was in close proximity with three
very pleasant English friends. One of them was a lady, whose honored
name my readers would recognize as a household word, if I dared write
it; another, a gentleman, likewise well known to them, whose fine taste,
kind heart, and genial cultivation are qualities seldom mixed in such
happy proportion as in him. The third was the man to whom I owed most in
England, the warm benignity of whose nature was never weary of doing me
good, who led me to many scenes of life, in town, camp, and country,
which I never could have found out for myself, who knew precisely the
kind of help a stranger needs, and gave it as freely as if he had not
had a thousand more important things to live for. Thus I never felt
safer or cozier at anybody's fireside, even my own, than at the
dinner-table of the Lord-Mayor.

Out of this serene sky came a thunderbolt. His Lordship got up and
proceeded to make some very eulogistic remarks upon "the literary and
commercial"--I question whether those two adjectives were ever before
married by a copulative conjunction, and they certainly would not live
together in illicit intercourse, of their own accord--"the literary and
commercial attainments of an eminent gentleman there present," and then
went on to speak of the relations of blood and interest between Great
Britain and the aforesaid eminent gentleman's native country. Those
bonds were more intimate than had ever before existed between two great
nations, throughout all history, and his Lordship felt assured that that
whole honorable company would join him in the expression of a fervent
wish that they might be held inviolably sacred, on both sides of the
Atlantic, now and forever. Then came the same wearisome old toast, dry
and hard to chew upon as a musty sea-biscuit, which had been the text of
nearly all the oratory of my public career. The herald sonorously
announced that Mr. So-and-so would now respond to his Right Honorable
Lordship's toast and speech, the trumpets sounded the customary flourish
for the onset, there was a thunderous rumble of anticipatory applause,
and finally a deep silence sank upon the festive hall.

All this was a horrid piece of treachery on the Lord-Mayor's part, after
beguiling me within his lines on a pledge of safe-conduct; and it seemed
very strange that he could not let an unobtrusive individual eat his
dinner in peace, drink a small sample of the Mansion-House wine, and go
away grateful at heart for the old English hospitality. If his Lordship
had sent me an infusion of ratsbane in the loving-cup, I should have
taken it much more kindly at his hands. But I suppose the secret of the
matter to have been somewhat as follows.

All England, just then, was in one of those singular fits of panic
excitement, (not fear, though as sensitive and tremulous as that
emotion,) which, in consequence of the homogeneous character of the
people, their intense patriotism, and their dependence for their ideas
in public affairs on other sources than their own examination and
individual thought, are more sudden, pervasive, and unreasoning than any
similar mood of our own public. In truth, I have never seen the American
public in a state at all similar, and believe that we are incapable of
it. Our excitements are not impulsive, like theirs, but, right or wrong,
are moral and intellectual. For example, the grand rising of the North,
at the commencement of this war, bore the aspect of impulse and passion
only because it was so universal, and necessarily done in a moment, just
as the quiet and simultaneous getting-up of a thousand people out of
their chairs would cause a tumult that might be mistaken for a storm. We
were cool then, and have been cool ever since, and shall remain cool to
the end, which we shall take coolly, whatever it may be. There is
nothing which the English find it so difficult to understand in us as
this characteristic. They imagine us, in our collective capacity, a kind
of wild beast, whose normal condition is savage fury, and are always
looking for the moment when we shall break through the slender barriers
of international law and comity, and compel the reasonable part of the
world, with themselves at the head, to combine for the purpose of
putting us into a stronger cage. At times this apprehension becomes so
powerful, (and when one man feels it, a million do,) that it resembles
the passage of the wind over a broad field of grain, where you see the
whole crop bending and swaying beneath one impulse, and each separate
stalk tossing with the self-same disturbance as its myriad companions.
At such periods all Englishmen talk with a terrible identity of
sentiment and expression. You have the whole country in each man; and
not one of them all, if you put him strictly to the question, can give a
reasonable ground for his alarm. There are but two nations in the
world--our own country and France--that can put England into this
singular state. It is the united sensitiveness of a people extremely
well-to-do, most anxious for the preservation of the cumbrous and
moss-grown prosperity which they have been so long in consolidating, and
incompetent (owing to the national half-sightedness, and their habit of
trusting to a few leading minds for their public opinion) to judge when
that prosperity is really threatened.

If the English were accustomed to look at the foreign side of any
international dispute, they might easily have satisfied themselves that
there was very little danger of a war at that particular crisis, from
the simple circumstance that their own Government had positively not an
inch of honest ground to stand upon, and could not fail to be aware of
the fact. Neither could they have met Parliament with any show of a
justification for incurring war. It was no such perilous juncture as
exists now, when law and right are really controverted on sustainable or
plausible grounds, and a naval commander may at any moment fire off the
first cannon of a terrible contest. If I remember it correctly, it was a
mere diplomatic squabble, which the British ministers, with the politic
generosity which they are in the habit of showing towards their official
subordinates, had tried to browbeat us for the purpose of sustaining an
ambassador in an indefensible proceeding; and the American Government
(for God had not denied us an administration of Statesmen then) had
retaliated with stanch courage and exquisite skill, putting inevitably a
cruel mortification upon their opponents, but indulging them with no
pretence whatever for active resentment.

Now the Lord-Mayor, like any other Englishman, probably fancied that War
was on the western gale, and was glad to lay hold of even so
insignificant an American as myself, who might be made to harp on the
rusty old strings of national sympathies, identity of blood and
interest, and community of language and literature, and whisper peace
where there was no peace, in however weak an utterance. And possibly his
Lordship thought, in his wisdom, that the good feeling which was sure to
be expressed by a company of well-bred Englishmen, at his august and
far-famed dinner-table, might have an appreciable influence on the grand
result. Thus, when the Lord-Mayor invited me to his feast, it was a
piece of strategy. He wanted to induce me to fling myself, like a lesser
Curtius, with a larger object of self-sacrifice, into the chasm of
discord between England and America, and, on my ignominious demur, had
resolved to shove me in with his own right-honorable hands, in the hope
of closing up the horrible pit forever. On the whole, I forgive his
Lordship. He meant well by all parties,--himself, who would share the
glory, and me, who ought to have desired nothing better than such an
heroic opportunity,--his own country, which would continue to get cotton
and breadstuffs, and mine, which would get everything that men work with
and wear.

As soon as the Lord-Mayor began to speak, I rapped upon my mind, and it
gave forth a hollow sound, being absolutely empty of appropriate ideas.
I never thought of listening to the speech, because I knew it all
beforehand in twenty repetitions from other lips, and was aware that it
would not offer a single suggestive point. In this dilemma, I turned to
one of my three friends, a gentleman whom I knew to possess an enviable
flow of silver speech, and obtested him, by whatever he deemed holiest,
to give me at least an available thought or two to start with, and, once
afloat, I would trust to my guardian-angel for enabling me to flounder
ashore again, He advised me to begin with some remarks complimentary to
the Lord-Mayor, and expressive of the hereditary reverence in which his
office was held--at least, my friend thought that there would be no harm
in giving his Lordship this little sugar-plum, whether quite the fact or
no--was held by the descendants of the Puritan forefathers. Thence, if I
liked, getting flexible with the oil of my own eloquence, I might easily
slide off into the momentous subject of the relations between England
and America, to which his Lordship had made such weighty allusion.

Seizing this handful of straw with a death-grip, and bidding my three
friends bury me honorably, I got upon my legs to save both countries, or
perish in the attempt. The tables roared and thundered at me, and
suddenly were silent again. But, as I have never happened to stand in a
position of greater dignity and peril, I deem it a stratagem of sage
policy here to close the sketch, leaving myself still erect in so heroic
an attitude.

* * * * *

THE GEOLOGICAL MIDDLE AGE.

I shall pass lightly over the Permian and Triassic epochs, as being more
nearly related in their organic forms to the Carboniferous epoch, with
which we are already somewhat familiar, while in those next in
succession, the Jurassic and Cretaceous epochs, the later conditions of
animal life begin to be already foreshadowed. But though less
significant for us in the present stage of our discussion, it must not
be supposed that the Permian and Triassic epochs were unimportant in the
physical and organic history of Europe. A glance at any geological map
of Europe will show the reader how the Belgian island stretched
gradually in a southwesterly direction during the Permian epoch,
approaching the coast of France by slowly increasing accumulations, and
thus filling the Burgundian channel; a wide border of Permian deposits
around the coal-field of Great Britain marks the increase of this region
also during the same time, and a very extensive tract of a like
character is to be seen in Russia. The latter is, however, still under
doubt and discussion among geologists, and more recent investigations
tend to show that this Russian region, supposed at first to be
exclusively Permian, is at least in part Triassic.

With the coming in of the Triassic epoch began the great deposits of Red
Sandstone, Muschel-Kalk, and Keuper, in Central Europe. They united the
Belgian island to the region of the Vosges and the Black Forest, while
they also filled to a great extent the channel between Belgium and the
Bohemian island. Thus the land slowly gained upon the Triassic ocean,
shutting it within ever-narrowing limits, and preparing the large inland
seas so characteristic of the later Secondary times. The character of
the organic world still retained a general resemblance to that of the
Carboniferous epoch. Among Radiates, the Corals were more nearly allied
to those of the earlier ages than to those of modern times, and Crinoids
abounded still, though some of the higher Echinoderm types were already
introduced. Among Mollusks, the lower Bivalves, that is, the Brachiopods
and Bryozoa, still prevailed, while Ammonites continued to be very
numerous, differing from the earlier ones chiefly in the ever-increasing
complications of their inner partitions, which become so deeply
involuted and cut upon their margins, before the type disappears, as to
make an intricate tracery of very various patterns on the surface of
these shells. The most conspicuous type of Articulates continues as
before to be that of Crustacea; but Trilobites have finished their
career, and the Lobster-like Crustacea make their appearance for the
first time. It does not seem that the class of Insects has greatly
increased since the Carboniferous epoch; and Worms are still as
difficult to trace as ever, being chiefly known by the cases in which
they sheltered themselves. Among Vertebrates, the Fishes still resemble
those of the Carboniferous epoch, belonging principally to the
Selachians and Ganoids. They have, however, approached somewhat toward a
modern pattern, the lobes of the tail being more evenly cut, and their
general outline more like that of common fishes. The gigantic marsh
Reptiles have become far more numerous and various. They continue
through several epochs, but may be said to reach their culminating point
in the Jurassic and Cretaceous deposits.

I cannot pass over the Triassic epoch without some allusion to the
so-called bird-tracks, so generally believed to mark the introduction of
Birds at this time. It is true that in the deposits of the Trias there
have been found many traces of footsteps, indicating a vast number of
animals which, except for these footprints, remain unknown to us. In the
sandstone of the Connecticut Valley they are found in extraordinary
numbers, as if these animals, whatever they were, had been in the habit
of frequenting that shore. They appear to have been very diversified;
for some of the tracks are very large, others quite small, while some
would seem, from the way in which the footsteps follow each other, to
have been quadrupedal, and others bipedal. We can even measure the
length of their strides, following the impressions which, from their
succession in a continuous line, mark the walk of a single animal.[10]
The fact that we find these footprints without any bones or other
remains to indicate the animals by which they were made is accounted for
by the mode of deposition of the sandstone. It is very unfavorable for
the preservation of bones; but, being composed of minute sand mixed with
mud, it affords an admirable substance for the reception of these
impressions, which have been thus cast in a mould, as it were, and
preserved through ages. These animals must have been large, when
full-grown, for we find strides measuring six feet between, evidently
belonging to the same animal. In the quadrupedal tracks, the front feet
seem to have been smaller than the hind ones. Some of the tracks show
four toes all turned forward, while in others three toes are turned
forward and one backward. It happened that the first tracks found
belonged to the latter class; and they very naturally gave rise to the
idea that these impressions were made by birds, on account of this
formation of the foot. This, however, is a mere inference; and since the
inductive method is the only true one in science, it seems to me that we
should turn to the facts we have in our possession for the explanation
of these mysterious footprints, rather than endeavor to supply by
assumption those which we have not. As there are no bones found in
connection with these tracks, the only way to arrive at their true
character, in the present state of our knowledge, is by comparing them
with bones found in other localities in the deposits of the same period
in the world's history. Now there have never been found in the Trias any
remains of Birds, while it contains innumerable bones of Reptiles; and
therefore I think that it is in the latter class that we shall
eventually find the solution of this mystery.

[Footnote 10: For all details respecting these tracks see Hitchcock's
_Ichnology of New England_. Boston, 1858. 4to.]

It is true that the bones of the Triassic Reptiles are scattered and
disconnected; no complete skeleton has yet been discovered, nor has any
foot been found; so that no direct comparison can be made with the
steps. It is, however, my belief, from all we know of the character of
the Animal Kingdom in those days, that these animals were reptilian, but
combined, like so many of the early types, characters of their own class
with those of higher animals yet to come. It seems to me probable, that,
in those tracks where one toe is turned backward, the impression is made
not by a toe, but by a heel, or by a long sole projecting backward; for
it is not pointed, like those of the front toes, but is blunt. It is
true that there is a division of joints in the toes, which seems in
favor of the idea that they were those of Birds; for when the three toes
are turned forward, there are two joints on the inner one, three on the
middle, and four on the outer one, as in Birds. But this feature is not
peculiar to Birds; it is found in Turtles also. The correspondence of
these footprints with each other leaves no doubt that they were all by
one kind of animal; for both the bipedal and the quadrupedal tracks have
the same character. The only quadrupedal animals now known to us which
walk on two legs are the Kangaroos. They raise themselves on their hind
legs, using the front ones to bring their food to their mouth. They leap
with the hind legs, sometimes bringing down their front feet to steady
themselves after the spring, and making use also of their tails, to
balance the body after leaping. In these tracks we find traces of a tail
between the feet. I do not bring this forward as any evidence that these
animals were allied to Kangaroos, since I believe that nothing is more
injurious in science than assumptions which do not rest on a broad basis
of facts; but I wish only to show that these tracks recall other animals
besides Birds, with which they have been universally associated. And
seeing, as we do, that so many of the early types prophesy future forms,
it seems not improbable that they may have belonged to animals which
combined with reptilian characters some birdlike features, and also some
features of the earliest and lowest group of Mammalia, the Marsupials.
To sum up my opinion respecting these footmarks, I believe that they
were made by animals of a prophetic type, belonging to the class of
Reptiles, and exhibiting many synthetic characters.

The more closely we study past creations, the more impressive and
significant do the synthetic types, presenting features of the higher
classes under the guise of the lower ones, become. They hold the promise
of the future. As the opening overture of an opera contains all the
musical elements to be therein developed, so this living prelude of the
Creative work comprises all the organic elements to be successively
developed in the course of time. When Cuvier first saw the teeth of a
Wealden Reptile, he pronounced them to be those of a Rhinoceros, so
mammalian were they in their character. So, when Sommering first saw the
remains of a Jurassic Pterodactyl, he pronounced them to be those of a
Bird. These mistakes were not due to a superficial judgment in men who
knew Nature so well, but to this prophetic character in the early types
themselves, in which features were united never known to exist together
in our days.

* * * * *

The Jurassic epoch, next in succession, was a very important one in the
history of Europe. It completed the junction of several of the larger
islands, filling the channel between the central plateau of France and
the Belgian island, as well as that between the former and the island of
Bretagne, so that France was now a sort of crescent of land holding a
Jurassic sea in its centre, Bretagne and Belgium forming the two horns.
This Jurassic basin or inland sea united England and France, and it may
not be amiss to say a word here of its subsequent transformations.
During the long succession of Jurassic periods, the deposits of that
epoch, chiefly limestone and clays, with here and there a bed of sand,
were accumulated at its bottom. Upon these followed the chalk deposits
of the Cretaceous epoch, until the basin was gradually filled, and
partially, at least, turned to dry land. But at the close of the
Cretaceous epoch a fissure was formed, allowing the entrance of the sea
at the western end, so that the constant washing of the tides and storms
wore away the lower, softer deposits, leaving the overhanging chalk
cliffs unsupported. These latter, as their support were undermined,
crumbled down, thus widening the channel gradually. This process must,
of course, have gone on more rapidly at the western end, where the sea
rushed on with most force, till the channel was worn through to the
German Ocean on the other side, and the sea then began to act with like
power at both ends of the channel. This explains its form, wider at the
western end, narrower between Dover and Calais, and widening again at
the eastern extremity. This ancient basin, extending from the centre of
France into England, is rich in the remains of a number of successive
epochs. Around its margin we find the Jurassic deposits, showing that
there must have been some changes of level which raised the shores and
prevented later accumulations from covering them, while in the centre
the Jurassic deposits are concealed by those of the Cretaceous epoch
above them, these being also partially hidden under the later Tertiary
beds. Let us see, then, what this inland sea has to tell us of the
organic world in the Jurassic epoch.

At that time the region where Lyme-Regis is now situated in modern
England was an estuary on the shore of that ancient sea. About forty
years ago a discovery of large and curious bones, belonging to some
animal unknown to the scientific world, turned the attention of
naturalists to this locality, and since then such a quantity and variety
of such remains have been found in the neighborhood as to show that the
Sharks, Whales, Porpoises, etc., of the present ocean are not more
numerous and diversified than were the inhabitants of this old bay or
inlet. Among these animals, the Ichthyosauri (Fish-Lizards) form one of
the best-known and most prominent groups. They are chiefly found in the
Lias, the lowest set of beds of the Jurassic deposits, and seem to have
come in with the close of the Triassic epoch. It is greatly to be
regretted that all that is known of the Triassic Reptiles antecedent to
the Ichthyosauri still remains in the form of original papers, and is
not yet embodied in text-books. They are quite as interesting, as
curious, and as diversified as those of the Jurassic epoch, which are,
however, much more extensively known, on account of the large
collections of these animals belonging to the British Museum. It will be
more easy to understand the structural relations of the latter, and
their true position in the Animal Kingdom, when those which preceded
them are better understood. One of the most remarkable and numerous of
these Triassic Reptiles seems to have been an animal resembling, in the
form of the head, and in the two articulating surfaces at the juncture
of the head with the backbone, the Frogs and Salamanders, though its
teeth are like those of a Crocodile. As yet nothing has been found of
these animals except the head,--neither the backbone nor the limbs; so
that little is known of their general structure.

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