Chambers\'s Edinburgh Journal, No. 439
V >> Various >> Chambers\'s Edinburgh Journal, No. 439CHAMBERS' EDINBURGH JOURNAL
CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'S
INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.
No. 439. NEW SERIES. SATURDAY, MAY 29, 1852. PRICE 1-1/2_d._
THEREFORE AND BECAUSE.
A distinguished general-officer being appointed to a command in which
he would be called on to discharge judicial as well as military
duties, expressed to Lord Mansfield his apprehensions, that he would
execute his office but ill in the former respect, and that his
inexperience and ignorance of technical jurisprudence would prove a
serious impediment to his efficient administration of justice. 'Make
your mind perfectly easy,' said the great judge; 'trust to your native
good sense in forming your opinions, but beware of attempting to state
the grounds of your judgments. The judgment will probably be
right--the argument infallibly wrong.'
This is a common case, especially with practical men, who rarely have
either leisure or inclination to recall the workings of their own
minds, or observe the intellectual process by which they have been
conducted to any conclusion. By what they are prone to consider as a
kind of instinct--if by chance they are philosophers, and delight in
what old Wilson, the essayist, calls 'inkhorn terms,' they designate
it 'intuition'--they arrive at a truth, but have no recollection
whatever of the road they travelled to reach it, and are able neither
to retrace their own steps nor indicate to another the way they came.
The poet, in describing and contrasting the intellectual
characteristics of the two sexes, attributes to the softer something
of this instinct as a distinguishing mental peculiarity, and seems to
consider it as somewhat analogous in its constitution to those animal
senses by means of which the mind becomes cognisant of external
objects, of their existence, their qualities, and their relations. In
his view, the reasoning process is vitally and essentially distinct,
as it is exercised by men and by women--
'Her rapid mind decides while his debates;
She _feels_ a truth which he but calculates.'
And certainly this is a very pretty, very poetical, and very
convenient way of accounting for a phenomenon that, if examined with
common care, suggests a solution more accurate and complete, if not
exactly so complimentary. In sober truth, a positive incapacity
clearly to point out the precise manner in which a conviction has been
formed, is one of the commonest of logical deficiencies, and no more
to be ascribed exclusively to the softer sex, than it is an attribute
of intellectual excellency in either.
When, in Euripides's beautiful play, the untranslatable _Hippolylus_,
Phaedra's nurse is made to conclude that certain men she refers to
cannot be otherwise than lax in their morals, _because_ they have
finished the roofs of their houses in a very imperfect manner, her
reasoning is inconsequential enough; but not more so than that of the
renowned French chancellor, Michael L'Hopital, who, when employed in
negotiating a treaty between Charles IX. and our Elizabeth, insisted
on the well-known line of the Latin poet--
'Et penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos,'
as a _reason_ that Calais should not be returned to the English. The
connection between the premises and the conclusion was not more real
in one case than in the other. A learned member of the medical
profession, in an elaborate work on the climate and the people of
Malta, enjoins on the invalid a participation in the amusements of
cheerful society; and the propriety of his injunction few will be
disposed to dispute: they may well, however, marvel at the _reason_ he
assigns for such sensible advice--that, so far as invalids are
concerned, society has a direct tendency to promote cutaneous
perspiration!
Cardinal de Retz severely reprehends the historians of his time for
their pedantic affectation of explaining and accounting for every
event they record--the motives that actuated this statesman, the
reasons which prompted that policy, the wherefore it was this
enterprise miscarried, or that undertaking brought to a successful
issue. It would not be difficult to furnish a lengthy catalogue of the
blunders historical writers have perpetrated through their overweening
addiction to this folly. Let two instances here suffice: When the
Roman Church, about the middle of the eleventh century, was
endeavouring to insure the celibacy of its priesthood, the married
clergy, who braved its censures and contemned its authority, became
known as _Nicolaites_; which name, grave writers assure us, was given
them in consequence of the active share Pope Nicholas II. had taken in
punishing their contumacy and effecting their suppression. The notion
that any sect or class of religionists should have borrowed its name
from that of its most zealous opponent and indefatigable persecutor,
is worthy only of those critics, so severely reprehended by
Quintilian, who professed to discover the etymon of the Latin word
_lucus_, a grove, in the substantive _lux_, light; and vindicated the
derivation on the ground, that in groves darkness usually prevailed.
The familiar expression of _lucus a non lucendo_, owes its birth to
this striking manifestation of critical sagacity.
Again: a certain portion of the eastern and southern coast of England
was, in early times, denominated 'the Saxon Shore'--Littus
Saxonicum--and was, during the days of Roman supremacy, under the
government of a military court enjoying the appellative of _Comes
Littoris Saxonici_. Acute historical critics inform us, that this
tract was so denominated in consequence of its being open to the
aggressions of the Saxons; that, in short, it received its name from
its occasional invaders, and not from its permanent inhabitants. The
absurdity of this explanation is the greater, inasmuch as, on the
other side of the Channel, there was a large district bearing
precisely the same name, and settled entirely by adventurers, Saxon in
birth or by descent. This, one would have thought, would have
suggested to our English antiquaries a more probable explanation of
the name than that they adopted. The people of Genoa have, or had, in
speaking, a peculiar way of clipping or cutting short their syllables.
Their Italian has never been considered pure. You must not go to
maritime towns for purity of language, especially to such as have been
long and extensively engaged in commercial pursuits. Labat, however,
gives a special and peculiar reason for the fashion of mutilated
speech in which, he declares, the Genoese indulge, telling us they
call their superb city _Gena_, and not _Genoa_. He refers their
'chopping' pronunciation to their habitual economy--an economy
distinctly traceable to their mercantile habits. 'Telle est leur
economie,' he says, 'ils rognent tout jusqu'aux paroles.'
The old English law-writer, Bracton, desiring to account for the
ancient doctrine of English law, that inheritances shall lineally
descend, and never lineally ascend, finds a reason in the fact, that a
bowl being trundled, runs down a hill and never up a hill; and
Littleton, the first great writer on English real property-law, traces
the origin of the phrase 'hotchpot'--a familiar legal term--to the
archaic denomination of a pudding, in our English tongue. 'It
seemeth,'he says, 'that this word, hotchpot, is in English a pudding;
for in this pudding is not commonly put one thing alone, and
_therefore_ it behoveth, in this case, to put the lands given in
frank-marriage,' &c. Erasmus used to say of lawyers, that of ignorant
people, they were the most learned. Questionless they are not always
sound logicians. When the clown in Hamlet disserts so learnedly on
'crowner's quest-law,' he is only parodying, and that closely, a
scarcely less ludicrous judgment which had actually been pronounced,
not long before, in the Court of Queen's Bench. Dr Clarke, the
traveller, tells an amusing story to the purpose. According to him,
the Turkish lawyers recognise as an offence what they style 'homicide
by an intermediate cause'--an instance of which offence our traveller
details in these words: 'A young man, desperately in love with a girl
of Stanchio--the ancient Cos, the birthplace of Hippocrates
and Apelles, the lovely isle renowned for its lettuces and
turpentine--eagerly sought to marry her. But his proposals were
rejected. In consequence, he destroyed himself by poison. The Turkish
police arrested the father of the obdurate fairy, and tried him for
culpable homicide. "If the accused," they argued, with becoming
gravity, "had not had a daughter, the deceased would not have fallen
in love; consequently, he would not have been disappointed;
consequently, he would not have died: but he (the accused) had a
daughter, and the deceased had fallen in love," &c. &c. Upon all these
counts he was called upon to pay the price of the young man's life;
and this, being eighty piastres, was accordingly exacted.' When the
amiable and gentle John Evelyn was in the Netherlands, a woman was
pointed out to him who had had twenty-five husbands, and was then a
widow; 'yet it could not be proved,' he says, that 'she had made any
of her husbands away, though the suspicion had brought her several
times to trouble.' However, the Dutch logicians made no difficulty of
the matter; and arguing, from the number of the woman's husbands, that
she could not be wholly innocent of their death, prohibited her from
marrying again--which, her addiction to matrimony being considered,
was perhaps, of all the 'troubles' she had undergone, by no means the
least.
The logical faculty, which not only consists with the poetical, but is
invariably and necessarily associated with it, whenever the latter
exists in an advanced stage of development, is in no writer more
conspicuous as an intellectual characteristic than in Schiller. In
this respect he is not excelled even by Wordsworth himself; but Homer
sometimes snoozes, and Schiller's reasoning is not always
consequential: as, for instance, when he denies two compositions of
Ovid--the _Tristia_ and _Ex Ponto_--to be genuine poetry, on the
ground that they were the results not of inspiration, but of
necessity; just as if poetry were not a thing to be judged of by
itself; and as if one could not determine whether it were present or
absent in a composition, without knowing to what influences the author
was subjected at the time the composition was produced!
Rousseau, in one of his moods of bilious cynicism, falls foul of human
reason altogether. No man despised it more in action; no one could
more consistently decry it in speculation. In his opinion, the
exercise of the reasoning powers is absolutely sinful--_l'homme qui
raisonne est l'homme qui peche_. Franklin, on the other hand, in a
familiar tone of playful banter, vindicates its utility, alleging that
it is mightily 'convenient to be a rational animal, who knows how to
find or invent a plausible pretext for whatever it has an inclination
to do.' Examples of this convenience abound. The Barbary Jews were
rich and industrious, and, accordingly, their wealth provoke the
cupidity of the indolent and avaricious Mussulmans. These latter,
whenever a long drought had destroyed vegetation, and the strenuous
prayers offered up in the mosques had proved unavailing for its
removal, were accustomed to argue--and a mighty convenient argument it
was--that it was the foul breath of the Jews that had offended Heaven,
and rendered the pious petitions of the faithful of none effect. The
remedy for the drought, then, who could doubt? The true believers
drove the Jews out of their cities, and quietly confiscated their
goods. Dryden, anxious to congratulate Charles II. on his 'happy
restoration,' amidst a thousand fulsome compliments--all tending to
shew that that prince was the author of blessings, not only to his own
kingdoms, but to universal humanity--declares, that it was to Charles,
and to him only, Spain was indebted for her magnificent colonial
possessions in either hemisphere. Addressing the sovereign, his words
are--
'Spain to your gift _alone_ her Indies owes,
_For what the powerful takes not, he bestows_.'
A convenient fashion of reasoning truly: as convenient every whit as
that of Daniel Burgess, a witty Presbyterian minister, devoted to the
House of Brunswick and the principles of the Revolution, who was wont
to affirm, as the reason the descendants of Jacob were called
Israelites, and did not receive the original name of their progenitor,
that Heaven was unwilling they should bear a name in every way so
odious as that of Jacobites.
Once more: it appears from Dr Tschudi's valuable and interesting work
on South America, that in Peru rice is cheap, and servants both lazy
and dirty. Now, the servants in Lima have a theory about rice. They
consider it possesses certain qualities antagonistic to water, so
that, after eating, to touch water would be seriously injurious to
health; and thus does their frequent consumption of rice supply them
with a most convenient reason or excuse for their habitual abstinence
from an operation they detest--that of washing their hands.
Verily, they are mighty fine and convenient words, THEREFORE and
BECAUSE.
DAVID'S LAST PICTURE.
The whole population of the good city of Brussels was in a state of
excitement. Talma, the great French tragedian, was that evening to
close his engagement by appearing in his favourite character of
Leonidas; and from an early hour in the morning, the doors of the
theatre were beset with waiting crowds, extending to the very end of
the large square in which it stood. It was evident that the building,
spacious as it was, could not contain one-half of the eager expectants
already assembled, and yet every moment brought a fresh accession to
the number destined to be disappointed. The hero of this ovation, and
the object of all this unusual excitement to the worthy and naturally
phlegmatic beer-drinkers of old Brabant, was standing near a window in
the White Cross Hotel, engaged most prosaically in shaving himself;
and, from time to time, casting on the crowd, to which he was the
magnet of attraction, the careless glance of a monarch become from
habit almost insensible to the loyal enthusiasm of his subjects.
'So he will not come?' said the tragedian to an old friend who was
with him. 'He is a cynical old fool; and yet, I assure you, my dear M.
Lesec, that I had _Leonidas_ got up expressly for him, thinking to
tickle his old republican fancies, for to my mind it is as stupid a
play as _Germanicus_, though I contrive to produce an effect with some
of its high-sounding patriotic passages; and I thought the worthy
David would have recognised his own picture vivified. But he will not
come: he positively refused, you tell me. I might have known it. Age,
exile, the memory of the past--all this has cut him up terribly: he is
the David of the Consulate no longer.'
'I am just come from him,' answered Collector Lesec: 'he received me
almost as Hermione receives Orestes in the fourth act of _Andromache_.
To say the least of it, he was somewhat tart. "I never go to the
theatre," he answered abruptly. "Tell my friend Talma, that I thank
him for his kindness; but I always go to bed at nine. I should be very
glad if he would come, before he left Brussels, and have a tankard and
a smoke with me."'
'I see,' said Talma with a half-ironical smile, 'he is turned quite
Flemish. Poor fellow! to what has he come?--to smoking tobacco, and
losing all faith in art. Persecution does more harm than the
guillotine,' added the tragedian in a tone of bitterness. 'There is a
living death. David's exile has deprived us of many a _chef-d'oeuvre_.
I can forgive the Restoration for surrounding itself with nobodies,
but it need not banish our men of talent: they are not to be found
now-a-days in every corner. But enough. Another word, and we should be
talking politics.'
Leonidas finished shaving like any other man; and then turned suddenly
to his friend: 'I bet you ten napoleons,' said he, 'that David would
have come to the play had I gone myself to him with the invitation! I
intended it, but I had not time; these rehearsals kill me--I might as
well be a galley-slave. However, I have about three-quarters of an
hour to myself now, and I will go beard the old Roman in his
stronghold. What say you to going with me?'
It would have been difficult to name a place to which M. Lesec would
not have gone, to have the honour of being seen arm-in-arm with the
great Talma; and in another half hour they were on their way across
the Place de la Monnaie into the Rue Pierre Plate.
'Now for a storm!' said Lesec. 'We are in for it: so be prepared. I
leave it all on your shoulders, noble sir, for I must keep clear of
him.'
'Is he, then, so entirely changed?' exclaimed Talma, quickening his
pace. 'Poor exile! unhappy genius! torn from thy native soil, to
languish and die!'
The visitors soon reached the large, though somewhat dilapidated
mansion of the celebrated artist; and after they had been reconnoitred
through a small grating by an old female servant, they were ushered
into a rather gloomy apartment, presenting a singular discrepancy
between its antique decorations and modern furniture.
The illustrious exile came out of an adjoining apartment in his
dressing-gown, and advanced towards them with a quick yet almost
majestic step, though his form was slightly bent, apparently by age.
To Talma's great surprise, David received him most cordially, even
throwing away his usually inseparable companion, a long pipe, to grasp
both his hands. 'Welcome, welcome, my old friend!' he said; 'you could
not have come at a better time. I have not for many a day felt so
happy, and the sight of you is a great addition.' And the old painter
kept rubbing his hands, a token with him of exuberant satisfaction.
Talma looked at Lesec as much as to say: 'The devil is not quite so
black as he is painted;' while the worthy collector only shrugged his
shoulders, and lifted his eyebrows in pantomimic expression of his
inability to comprehend such a sudden change in the atmosphere.
'You must promise to come and dine with me to-morrow,' continued the
painter, accompanying his invitation with a smile, or rather a grin,
for David's face was very much disfigured by a wen on his cheek, which
also, by causing a twitching of the jaw, rendered his articulation
indistinct.
'To my great regret, I am obliged to decline your invitation, my dear
friend,' said Talma. 'This is my last night here, and I must set off
for Paris to-morrow.'
'Set off to-morrow!'
'Positively. Michelet and Dumas have the whole management on their
shoulders, and are pressing my return; and Lemercier is only waiting
for me to read to us a sort of _Richard the Third_.'
'Nevertheless, you dine with me to-morrow. One day longer will not
matter to them, and is a great matter to me. I suspect Lemercier's
_Richard the Third_ is cold enough to keep a little longer. I am to
have my friend Girodet with me; so dine with us you must. It will make
me grow young again, man, and bring back the happy meetings at
Moliker's, near the gate of the Louvre.'
The illustrious exile accompanied this sentence with another of his
grim smiles. The actor was deeply moved by it, for in that bitter
smile he read how the artist pined for his country. 'I will stay with
you, I will stay with you, dear David!' now eagerly cried Talma. 'For
your sake, I will desert my post, and steal a holiday from my Paris
friends; but it can only be on condition that you, too, will make a
little sacrifice for me, and come this evening to see me in Leonidas.'
'Well, I don't care if I do,' answered the painter, whom the sight of
one friend, and the expectation of seeing another, had made quite a
different being from the David of the morning. 'Here goes for
Leonidas; but, remember, I give you fair warning--I shall go to sleep.
I have scarcely ever been in a theatre that I did not take a sound
nap.'
'But when Talma plays, plaudits will keep you awake, M. David,' said
the courtly M. Lesec; and this seasonable compliment obtained for him
a smile, and an invitation for the next day, so flattering to his
vanity that, even at the risk of compromising himself with the Prince
of Orange, he unhesitatingly accepted.
That evening, between six and seven o'clock, the old French painter,
a Baron of the Empire, entered the theatre in full dress, and with a
new red ribbon in his button-hole; but, as if shrinking from notice,
he took his seat at the back of the stage-box, reserved for him by his
friend Talma, with M. Lesec by his side, prouder, more elated,
more frizzled and befrilled, than if he had been appointed
first-commissioner of finance. But notwithstanding all the care of the
modest artist to preserve his incognito, it was soon whispered through
the theatre that he was one of the audience; and it was not long
before he was pointed out, when instantly the whole house stood up
respectfully, and repeated cheers echoed from pit to vaulted roof. The
prince himself was among the first to offer this tribute to the
illustrious exile, who, confused, agitated, and scarcely able to
restrain his tears, bowed to the audience rather awkwardly, as he
whispered to M. Lesec: 'So, then, I am still remembered. I thought no
one at Brussels cared whether I was dead or alive.'
Soon Talma appeared as Leonidas; and in his turn engrossed every eye,
every thought of that vast assembly. A triple round of applause hailed
every speech uttered by the generous Spartan. The painter of the
Sabines, of Brutus, of the Horatii, of the Coronation, seemed to heed
neither the noisy acclamations nor the deep silence that succeeded
each other. Mute, motionless, transfixed, he heard not the plaudits:
it was not Talma he saw, not Talma he was listening to. He was at
Thermopylae by the side of Leonidas himself; ready to die with him and
his three hundred heroes. Never had he been so deeply moved. He had
talked of sleep, but he was as much alive, as eager, as animated, as
if he were an actual sharer in the heroic devotedness that was the
subject of the drama. For some moments after the curtain fell, he
seemed equally absorbed; it was not till he was out of the theatre,
and in the street, that he recovered sufficiently to speak; and then
it was only to repeat every five minutes: 'What a noble talent it is!
What a power he has had over me!'
A night of tranquil sleep, and dreams of bright happy days, closed an
evening of such agreeable excitement to the poor exile; and so
cheering was its effect upon him, that he was up the next morning
before day, and his old servant, to her surprise, saw her usually
gloomy and taciturn master looking almost gay while charging her to
have breakfast ready, and to be sure that dinner was in every way
befitting the honoured guests he expected.
'And are you going out, sir, and so early?' exclaimed the old woman;
now, for the first time, perceiving that her master had his hat on and
his cane in his hand.
'Yes, Dame Rebecca,' answered David, as he gained the outer gate. 'I
have grown a great boy, and may be trusted to go alone.'
'But it is scarcely daylight yet. None of the shops are open.'
'I do not want to make any purchases.'
'Then, where in the world can you be going, sir, at this hour?'
'_Sacre bleu!_' returned the painter, losing all patience: 'could you
not guess, you old fool, that I am going as far as the Flanders-gate
to meet my old friend Girodet?'
'O that, indeed! But are you sure he will come that way? And did he
tell you the exact time?'
'What matter, you old torment? Suppose I have to wait a few minutes
for him, I can walk up and down, and it will be exercise for me,
which, you know, Dr Fanchet has desired me to take. Go along in, and
don't let the dinner be spoiled.' And the old man went on his way with
an almost elastic step. Once more was he young, gay, happy. Was he not
soon to see the friend dearer to him than all the world? But his
eagerness had made him anticipate by two hours the usual time for the
arrival of the diligence, and he was not made aware of his
miscalculation till after he had been a good while pacing up and down
the suburb leading to the Flanders-gate. The constant companion alike
of his studio and his exile, his pipe, he had left behind him,
forgotten in his hurry; so that he had no resource but to continue his
solitary walk, the current of his happy thoughts flowing on,
meanwhile, uninterrupted, save by an occasional greeting from
labourers going to their work, or the countrywomen hastening, as much
as their Flemish _embonpoint_ would allow, to the city markets. When
sauntering about alone, especially when waiting, we, like children,
make the most of everything that can while away the time, or give even
the semblance of being occupied: a flower-pot in a window, a parrot in
a cage, nay, even an insect flying past, is an absolute gain to us.
David felt it quite a fortunate chance when he suddenly caught sight
of a sign-painter carrying on his work in the open air. Though
evidently more of a whitewasher than a painter, yet, from the top of
his ladder, he was flourishing his brush in a masterly style, and at
times pausing and contemplating his work with as much complacency as
Gros could have done his wonderful cupola of Sainte-Genevieve.