Chambers' Edinburgh Journal by Various
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Various >> Chambers\' Edinburgh Journal
'_Ellesmere._ I suppose all of us have, at one time or other, had a
huge longing after friendship. If one could get it, it would be much
safer than that other thing.
'_Milverton._ Well, I wonder whether love--for I imagine you mean
love--was ever so described before, "that other thing!"
'_Elles._ When the world was younger, perhaps there was more of this
friendship. David and Jonathan!--How does their friendship begin? I
know it is very beautiful; but I have forgotten the words. Dunsford
will tell us.
'_Dunsford._ "And Saul said to him, Whose son art thou, thou young
man? And David answered, I am the son of thy servant Jesse the
Bethlehemite. And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking
unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David,
and Jonathan loved him as his own soul."
'_Elles._ Now that men are more complex, they would require so much.
For instance, if I were to have a friend, he must be an
uncommunicative man: that limits me to about thirteen or fourteen
people in the world. It is only with a man of perfect reticence that
you can speak completely without reserve. We talk together far more
openly than most people; but there is a skilful fencing even in our
talk. We are not inclined to say the whole of what we think.
'_Mil._. What I should need in a friend would be a certain breadth of
nature: I have no sympathy with people who can disturb themselves
about small things; who crave the world's good opinion; are anxious to
prove themselves always in the right; can be immersed in personal talk
or devoted to self-advancement; who seem to have grown up entirely
from the _earth_, whereas even the plants draw most of their
sustenance from the air of heaven.
'_Elles._ That is a high flight. I am not prepared to say all that. I
do not object to a little earthiness. What I should fear in friendship
is the comment, and interference, and talebearing, I often see
connected with it.
'_Mil._ That does not particularly belong to friendship, but comes
under the general head of injudicious comment on the part of those who
live with us. Divines often remind us, that in forming our ideas of
the government of Providence, we should recollect that we see only a
fragment. The same observation, in its degree, is true too as regards
human conduct. We see a little bit here and there, and assume the
nature of the whole. Even a very silly man's actions are often more to
the purpose than his friend's comments upon them.
'_Elles._ True! Then I should not like to have a man for a friend who
would bind me down to be consistent, who would form a minute theory of
me which was not to be contradicted.
'_Mil._ If he loved you as his own soul, and his soul were knit with
yours--to use the words of Scripture--he would not demand this
consistency, because each man must know and feel his own immeasurable
vacillation and inconsistency; and if he had complete sympathy with
another, he would not be greatly surprised or vexed at that other's
inconsistencies.
'_Duns._ There always seems to me a want of tenderness in what are
called friendships in the present day. Now, for instance, I don't
understand a man ridiculing his friend. The joking of intimates often
appears to me coarse and harsh. You will laugh at this in me, and
think it rather effeminate, I am afraid.
'_Mil._ No; I do not. I think a great deal of jocose raillery may pass
between intimates without the requisite tenderness being infringed
upon. If any friend had been in a painful and ludicrous position (such
as when Cardinal Balue in full dress is run away with on horseback,
which Scott comments upon as one of a class of situations combining
"pain, peril, and absurdity"), I would not remind him of it. Why
should I bring back a disagreeable impression to his mind? Besides, it
would be more painful than ludicrous to me. I should enter into his
feelings rather than into those of the ordinary spectator.
'_Duns._ I am glad we are of the same mind in this.
'_Mil._ I have also a notion that, even in the common friendships of
the world, we should be very stanch defenders of our absent friends.
Supposing that our friend's character or conduct is justly attacked in
our hearing upon some point, we should be careful to let the light and
worth of the rest of his character in upon the company, so that they
should go away with something of the impression that we have of him;
instead of suffering them to dwell only upon this fault or foible that
was commented upon, which was as nothing against him in our
hearts--mere fringe to the character, which we were accustomed to, and
rather liked than otherwise, if the truth must be told.
'_Elles._ I declare we have made out amongst us an essay on
friendship, without the fuss of writing one. I always told you our
talk was better than your writing, Milverton. Now, we only want a
beginning and ending to this peripatetic essay. What would you say to
this as a beginning?--it is to be a stately, pompous plunge into the
subject, after the Milverton fashion:--"Friendship and the Phoenix,
taking into due account the fire-office of that name, have been found
upon the earth in not unsimilar abundance." I flatter myself that "not
unsimilar abundance" is eminently Milvertonian.
'_Mil._ Now observe, Dunsford, you were speaking sometime ago about
the joking of intimates being frequently unkind. This is just an
instance to the contrary. Ellesmere, who is not a bad fellow--at least
not so bad as he seems--knows that he can say anything he pleases
about my style of writing without much annoying me. I am not very
vulnerable on these points; but all the while there is a titillating
pleasure to him in being all but impertinent and vexatious to a
friend. And he enjoys that. So do I.'
This certainly reads like free and natural conversation, besides being
noteworthy for the suggestions it contains.
Mr Helps is strictly an original writer, in the sense of thinking for
himself; but at the same time, one of his excellences consists in an
adroit and novel use of commonplaces. There is, indeed, as much
originality in putting a new face upon old verities, as in producing
new ones from the mint of one's invention. As Emerson has remarked,
valuable originality does not consist in mere novelty or unlikeness to
other men, but in range and extent of grasp and insight. This is a
fact, too, which Mr Helps has noted. 'A suggestion,' says he, 'may be
ever so old; but it is not exhausted until it is acted upon, or
rejected on sufficient reason.' He has, therefore, no fastidious dread
of saying anything which has been said before, but readily welcomes
wise thoughts from all directions, often reproducing them with such
felicity of expression, as to give them new effect. Thus, in all the
elements of a profitable originality, he is rich and generous; and
from few books of modern times could so large a store of aphorisms,
fine sayings, and admirable observations be selected. We have marked a
great many more than can be incorporated in the present paper; but
some few may be, nevertheless, presented. Here, for instance, is a
fine remark on time--next to love, the most hackneyed subject in the
world:--'Men seldom feel as if they were bounded as to time: they
think they can afford to throw away a great deal of that commodity;
_thus shewing unconsciously in their trifling the sense that they have
of their immortality_.' On another familiar topic--human progress--he
writes thus:--'The progress of mankind is like the incoming of the
tide, which, from any given moment, is almost as much of a retreat as
an advance, but still the tide moves on.' Emerson has used the same
figure, but in a passage which ought not to be regarded as impairing
our author's originality.
On the vexed and perplexing question of _Evil_, Mr Helps has said many
acute and consolatory things, from among which we have culled the
following sentences:--'The man who is satisfied with any given state
of things that we are likely to see on earth, must have a creeping
imagination: on the other hand, he who is oppressed by the evils
around him so as to stand gaping at them in horror, has a feeble will
and a want of practical power, and allows his fancy to come in, like
too much wavering light upon his work, so that he does not see to go
on with it. A man of sagacity, while he apprehends a great deal of the
evil around him, resolves what part of it he will be blind to for the
present, in order to deal best with what he has in hand; and as to men
of any genius, they are not imprisoned or rendered partial even by
their own experience of evil, much less are their attacks upon it
paralysed by their full consciousness of its large presence.'
Here, in the next place, is an aphorism worth pondering and
remembrance:--'Vague injurious reports are no men's lies, but all
men's carelessness.' And by the side of it we may place a pleasant
sarcasm attributed to Ellesmere, and apparently intended as a reminder
for stump-orators: 'How exactly proportioned to a man's ignorance of
the subject is the noise he makes about it at a public meeting.' Not
altogether out of connection here may be this brief sentence:--'Next
to the folly of doing a bad thing, is that of fearing to undo it.' In
the following, we have a brief sufficient argument against the
indulgence of unavailing sorrow or anxiety:--'It has always appeared
to me, that there is so much to be done in this world, that all
self-inflicted suffering which cannot be turned to good account for
others, is a loss--a loss, if you may so express it, to the spiritual
world.' There is plain truth, too, in the next, though it is not
likely to be much remembered by those who are most in need of it:--'An
ill-tempered man often has everything his own way, and seems very
triumphant; but the demon he cherishes, tears him as well as awes
other people.' In another place, and from another point of view, he
indicates the admirable benefits of human, sympathy. 'Often,' says he,
'all that a man wants in order to accomplish something that is good
for him to do, is the encouragement of another man's sympathy. What
Bacon says the voice of the man is to the dog--the encouragement of a
higher nature--each man can in a lesser degree afford his neighbour;
for a man receives the suggestions of another mind with somewhat of
the respect and courtesy with which he would greet a higher nature.'
Speaking with reference to the pursuits of men of literary and
artistic genius, it is written: 'Almost any worldly state in which a
man can be placed is a hinderance to him, if he have other than mere
worldly things to do. Poverty, wealth, many duties, or many affairs,
distract and confuse him.' One sentence more is all that can be added
here; and if it seems to be suggested by an aphorism of Bacon, it is
equal to it in pith and penetration:--'Every _felicity_, as well as
wife and children, is a hostage to fortune.'
These sentences have been gathered chiefly from _Friends in Council_,
though a few of them are taken from _Companions of my Solitude_. The
two books are informed with the same spirit; and to a meditative
person, one could not recommend a choicer store of reading. Those,
however, to whom the works are as yet unknown, may wish to see some
longer and more connected extract. It is difficult to decide upon what
ought to be presented, where almost everything is exquisite; yet as a
choice must be made, we will take some sentences from an essay on
'Despair,' wherein the writer offers a few remedial suggestions
against the burden of remorse:--
'To have erred in one branch of our duties, does not unfit us for the
performance of all the rest, unless we suffer the dark spot to spread
over our whole nature, which may happen almost unobserved in the
torpor of despair. This kind of despair is chiefly grounded on a
foolish belief that individual words or actions constitute the whole
life of man; whereas they are often not fair representatives of
portions even of that life. The fragments of rock in a mountain stream
may tell much of its history, are, in fact, results of its doings, but
they are not the stream. They were brought down when it was turbid; it
may now be clear: they are as much the result of other circumstances
as of the action of the stream: their history is fitful: they give us
no sure intelligence of the future course of the stream, or of the
nature of its waters; and may scarcely shew more than that it has not
been always as it is. The actions of men are often but little better
indications of the men themselves....
'There is frequently much selfishness about remorse. Put what has been
done at the worst. Let a man see his own evil word or deed in full
light, and own it to be black as hell itself. He is still here. He
cannot be isolated. There still remain for him cares and duties; and
therefore hopes. Let him not in imagination link all creation to his
fate. Let him yet live in the welfare of others, and, if it may be so,
work out his own in this way; if not, be content with theirs. The
saddest cause of remorseful despair is when a man does something
expressly contrary to his character--when an honourable man, for
instance, slides into some dishonourable action; or a tender-hearted
man falls into cruelty from carelessness; or, as often happens, a
sensitive nature continues to give the greatest pain to others' from
temper, feeling all the time perhaps more deeply than the persons
aggrieved. All these cases may be summed up in the words, "That which
I would not, that I do"--the saddest of all human confessions, made
by one of the greatest men. However, the evil cannot be mended by
despair. Hope and humility are the only supports under this burden.'
As our space presses, the passages we give must necessarily be short.
The beauty of the few sentences following will not be disputed. They
are taken from a 'Chapter of Consolations' in _Companions of my
Solitude_, and will serve to exhibit our author's style under one of
its more animated aspects:--
'Lastly, there is to be said of all suffering--that it is experience.
I have forgotten in whose life it is to be found, but there is some
man who went out of his way to provide himself with every form of
human misery which he could get at. I do not myself see any occasion
for any man's going out of the way to provide misfortune for himself.
Like an eminent physician, he might stay at home, and find almost
every form of human misery knocking at his door. But still I
understand what this chivalrous inquirer meant, who sought to taste
all suffering for the sake of the experience it would give him.
'There is this admirable commonplace, too, which, from long habit of
being introduced in such discourses, wishes to come in before I
conclude--namely, that infelicities of various kinds belong to the
state here below. Who are we that we should not take our share? See
the slight amount of personal happiness requisite to go on with. In
noisome dungeons, subject to studied tortures, in abject and shifty
poverty, after consummate shame, upon tremendous change of fortune, in
the profoundest desolation of mind and soul, in forced companionship
with all that is unlovely and uncongenial--men, persevering nobly,
live on, and live through all. The mind, like water, passes through
all states, till it shall be united to what it is ever seeking. The
very loneliness of man here is the greatest proof, to my mind, of a
God.'
One of the things that strikes us most in these essays, is the
author's wise moderation of statement, his habit of looking at all
phases of a question, and of saying something appropriate on each. We
believe he makes Ellesmere observe somewhere, that moral essays
commonly require another essay from the opposite point of view to
temper and qualify their meaning. This requirement has been closely
kept in mind. There is no undue vehemence, no straining of favourite
points, no clap-trap rhetoric or elaborate phrase-makings; but
everything is clear, judicious, well considered, and conscientiously
set forth. The man does not write for the sake of writing, but because
his soul is full of thoughts, and his remembrances charged with the
wholesome lessons of experience. The thoughts generally are less
remarkable for their depth than for their _breadth_--a free and
unembarrassed all-sidedness, which is, perhaps, one of the most
difficult of all attainments in the way of writing. There is a mild
meditative wisdom in his utterances which can have been derived only
through a large acquaintance with life and society; with the manifold
diversities of motive and aspiration by which men are actuated; with
everything, in short, that interests, degrades, or elevates humanity.
Only from an extensive quarry of experience could this strong and
graceful pillar of wit, sagacity, and judgment, have been built up.
From this, too, has been acquired that broad liberality of opinion
which must be welcome to every candid mind--the enlarged tolerance,
and generous appreciation of all degrees of difference in men's ways
of thinking and of acting, which is one of the most pleasing and most
distinctive characteristics of these writings. Often, in reading, we
are inclined to say, here is one of the best-balanced souls in
England--a finely-gifted and highly-cultivated man, to whom the pains
and difficulties, the joys, the sorrows, the ambitions, and
shortcomings of his race, are all familiar; who has felt them all,
seen the good and evil of them all, and, with a calm deliberation, can
testify at last, that the great Power of the Universe has so
constrained and ordered the uncertainties and perils of our lot, as
not only to reconcile all its apparent contradictions with the ends of
moral discipline and benefit, but to make even the darkness of
calamity flash rays of brightness and of hope. Thus, along with an
enlarged knowledge of men and things, he gives us the wisest counsel
about our conduct and proceedings in the world, and also the most
encouraging conclusions with regard to our final destiny and
prospects.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] 1. _Friends in Council: a Series of Headings and Discourse
thereon_. New Edition. Two vols. 2. _Companions of my Solitude_.
Pickering. London: 1851.
JELLY-FISHES.
We inscribe at the head of this paper the popular name of a class of
beings, which, though simple in their organisation, are full of
interest to the zoologist, and attractive to the common observer from
the singularity or beauty of their forms, and, in many cases, the
brilliancy of their colouring. The ocean, throughout its wide extent,
swarms with myriads of gelatinous creatures--some microscopic, some of
large dimensions--which deck it with the gayest colours by day, and at
night light up its dreary waste with 'mimic fires,' and make it glow
and sparkle as if, like the heavens, it had its galaxies and
constellations. These are the jelly-fishes, or sea-nettles
(_Acalephae_), as they are often called, from the stinging properties
with which some of them are endowed. The commoner forms are well
known, for the beach is often strewn with the carcasses of the larger
species. On fine days in summer and autumn, whole fleets of these
strange voyagers appear off our coasts. Their umbrella-shaped,
transparent disks float gracefully through the calm water, and their
long fishing-lines trail after them as they move onward. At times,
multitudes, almost invisible to the naked eye, tenant every wave, and
give it by night a crest of flame; while other kinds measure as much
as a yard in diameter. The _Acalephae_ present the greatest variety of
form and colour, as well as of size, but they are all of the most
delicate structure, frail, gelatinous, transparent. Some are so
perfectly colourless, that their presence can with difficulty be
detected in the water.
The following description, by Professor E. Forbes, applies to a large
proportion of the species:--'They are active in their habits, graceful
in their motions, gay in their colouring, delicate as the finest
membrane, transparent as the purest crystal.' The poet Crabbe has
characterised them well in the following passage:--
'Those living jellies which the flesh inflame,
Fierce as a nettle, and from that the name;
Some in huge masses, some that you might bring
In the small compass of a lady's ring;
Figured by hand divine--there's not a gem
Wrought by man's art to be compared to them;
Soft, brilliant, tender, through the wave they glow,
And make the moonbeam brighter where they flow.'
The first thing that arrests our attention in these creatures is the
extreme delicacy and tenuity of their substance. The jelly-fish is
chiefly made up of fluid. A quantity of water and a thin membranaceous
film, these are its chief component parts. Professor Owen has
ascertained that a large individual, weighing two pounds, when removed
from the sea, will be represented, when the fluid which it contains is
drained off, 'by a thin film of membrane not exceeding thirty grams in
weight.' Naturalists have commonly described the jelly-fish as being
little more than 'coagulated water' and the description is correct.
And yet these masses of film and fluid, floating at the mercy of wind
and wave, possess powers which we should hardly associate with so
simple a structure, and can accomplish works of which we should little
suspect them. Delicate and defenceless as they appear, they can
capture fishes of large size, and digest them with ease and rapidity.
Some of them are in truth formidable monsters. Professor E. Forbes
gives the following humorous description of the destructive
propensities of some medusae which he had captured in the Zetland
seas:--'Being kept,' he says, 'in a jar of salt-water with small
crustacea, they devoured these animals, so much more highly organised
than themselves, voraciously; apparently enjoying the destruction of
the unfortunate members of the upper classes with a truly democratic
relish. One of them even attacked and commenced the swallowing of a
_Lizzia octopunctata_, quite as good a medusa as itself. An animal
which can pout out its mouth twice the length of its body, and stretch
its stomach to corresponding dimensions, must indeed be "a triton
among the minnows;" and a very terrific one too. Yet is this ferocious
creature one of the most delicate and graceful of the inhabitants of
the ocean--a very model of tenderness and elegance.'
The jelly-fishes are all, in their adult state, locomotive beings.
They float freely and incessantly through the ocean, either impelled
by their own efforts, or driven by storm and billow. They for the most
part frequent the open seas, and shun the shore, their delicate frames
being endangered by the perennial strife between land and water. Being
designed for constant motion, for the navigation of the great waters,
their entire organisation is adapted to such a mode of life. We find
amongst those ocean-floaters the greatest perfection and variety of
locomotive apparatus; and they have been divided into sections,
according to the modifications of this portion of structure which they
exhibit. We shall endeavour to give a popular account of the leading
peculiarities of each, and note the most interesting points in the
history of the tribe.
In the first section, the animals are furnished with a disk or
umbrella of varying shape, which serves as a float, beneath which hang
certain processes connected with the functions of prehension and
digestion. In this division are included some of the best-known forms.
The creature, in this case, propels itself by the alternate
contraction and expansion of its disk, thus striking the water, and
driving itself forward. These movements take place at regular
intervals, and serve a double purpose. They not only propel, but at
the same time drive the water over the lower surface of the disk. Here
is situated a complicated net-work of vessels, and the fluids of the
body are thus exposed to the influence of oxygen, and receive the
needed aeration. The stroke of the disk, therefore, is not only a
locomotive, but also a respiratory act. The jelly-fishes of this
section move as they breathe, and breathe as they move. Hence the name
which has been given them--_Pulmonigrades_. We find the same admirable
economy of resources amongst the lower animalcules. The cilia which
propel them secure the aeration of the system.
It is evident that the motive apparatus in this section of the
_Acalephae_ is but a feeble one. It only avails in calm weather. When
the sea is agitated, the jelly-fish is driven helplessly along. It
cannot choose its path. As its food, however, is everywhere abundant
around it, and it has no business that should lead it in one direction
more than another, there is no great hardship in this.
In this section are included some of the most beautiful, as well as
common of the tribe. The forms of the umbrella are often most lovely,
and present an astonishing variety. As an example of the beauty which
they sometimes display, we may refer to a species which resembles an
exquisitely formed glass-shade, ornamented with a waved and tinted
fringe. The most perfect grace of form, the transparency of the
crystal, and colour as delicate as that of the flower, combine to
render this frail being one of the loveliest of living things.