The Press. — London, England, 1855-02-17 00:00:00

FEBRUARY 17, 1855. cause of attraction. One imagines an emission of particles; another the undulations of an elastic medium; a third some other imaginary machinery ; the mischief being that the facts are often made a matter of system, and not, as they should be, independent of all systems. But we have already said too much on these results of the great " art de s'egarer avec " methode." We reserve our notice of the second and third sections of the work for a future opportunity, only adding at present that Mr. Ferrier's occasional remarks on other systems are full of highly suggestive matter, and well worthy of a most attentive perusal. The Lands of the Saracen. By Bayard Taylor. London: Sampson Low and Co. Mr. TAYLOR is a great traveller. He has already published a volume of his explora tions in Central Africa; he gives us now these " Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and * 1 Spain," and he promises a third work on India, China, and,the Loo-Choo Islands. Travel ling with him is a very rabies; there is no country too distant, no route too dangerous to daunt him, be it Timbuctoo or the desert of Coll. His present volume is a record of his jour , - neyings through Palestine and Syria, with a sojourn at Constantinople, and a tour in Andalusia. It is written in a plain, business like manner, describing the localities he passed through, with their must striking characteristics, and giving us the impression of a very active, but not very impressible, traveller. He goes over the same ground as De Saulcy and Van de Velde, but he possesses neither the lively imagination of the first, nor the feeling for reality of the second. He is little affected by anything which he sees throughout the whole of Syria and Asia Minor, beyond expressing wonder at the size of the stones at Baalbec. It it but fair, however, to say 'that he acknowledges in his preface that his desire is simply to give correct notices of Oriental life and manners, leaving research and speculation to other travellers. His adventures are neither numerous nor striking, but the account he gives of the effect which an overdose of Hasheesh had upon him is curious. Hasheesh is a preparation from the dried leaves of the Cannabis Indica ; it is a violent excitant, and its effect when taken immoderately is to overstimulate the brain, and produce the most extraordinary illusions. Taken in a mild form, it is simply to the Turk what opium is to the Chinese under similar cir cumstances. Mr. Taylor commenced by taking a spoonful, but finding, after the lapse of an hour, that it had no effect, he took another half-spoonful, and thus relates, with a touch of American rhodomontade, one of the many visions which crowded in tumultuous confu sion upon his brain : The more vividly I recal the scene which followed, the more carefully I restore its different features, and separate the many threads of sensation which it wove into one gorgeous web, the more I despair of representing its ex leeding glory. I was moving over the desert, not upon the rocking dromedary, but seated in a barque made of mother-of-pearl, and studded with jewels of surpassing lustre. The sand was of grains of gold, and my keel slid through them without jar or sound. The air was radiant with excess of light, though no sun was to be seen. I in haled the most delicious perfumes; and harmonies, such •es Beethoven may have heard in dreams, but never wrote, floated around me. The atmosphere itself was light, odour, music; and each and all sublimated beyond any thing the sober senses are capable of receiving. Before ne—for a thousand leagues, as it seemed--stretched a vista of rainbows, whose colours gleamed with the splendour of gems—arches of living amethyst, sapphire, emerald, topaz, and ruby. By thousands and tens of thousands, they flew past me, as my dazzling barge sped down the magnificent arcade ; yet the vista still stretched as far as ever before me. I revelled in a sensuous elysium. which was perfect, because no sense was left ungratified. But beyond all, my mind was filled with a boundless feeling of triumph. My journey was that of a conqueror—not of a conqueror who subdues his race, either by Love or by Will, for I forgot that Man existed—but one victorious over the grandest as well as the subtlest forces of Nature. The spirits of Light, Colour, Odour, Sound, and Motion were my slaves; and, having these, I was master of the universe. One anecdote, picked up during his stay at Constantinople, is amusing, though not very likely to be authentic. The Sultan has a favorite dwarf, a little man about forty years old and three feet high, and some few years ago the little fellow took it into his head that THE PRESS. he wanted a wife, and applied to his master to help him in this difficulty The Sultan gave him permission to go into his harem and take the one whom he could kiss. The dwarf, like all short men, was ambitious to have a long wife. While the Sultan's live hundred women, who knew the terms according to which the dwarf was permitted to choose, were laughing at the amorous mannikin, he went up to one of the tallest and handsomest of them, and struck her a sudden blow on the stomach. She collapsed with the pain, and before she could recover he caught her by the neck and gave her the dreaded kiss. The Sultan kept his word, and the tall beauty is now the mother of the dwarf's children. The last paragraph in the book contains an observation which, coming from an American citizen, is worthy the attention of those who declaim so loudly against our consular and ambassadorial system : The regulations of the American consular system, which gives the consuls no salary, but permits them, instead, to get their pay out of travellers, is a disgrace to our Govern ment. It amounts, in effect, to a direct tax on travel, and falls heavily on the hundreds of young men of limited means who annually visit Europe for the purpose of com pleting their education. Every American citizen who travels in Italy pays a passport tax of ten dollars. In all the ports of the Mediterranean there is an American vice consul, who does not even get the postage paid on his despatches, and to whom the advent of a traveller is of course a welcome sight. Misled by a false notion of economy, our Government is fast becoming proverbial for its meanness. If those of our own citizens who represent us abroad only worked as they are paid, and if the foreigners who act as vice-consuls without pay did not derive some petty trading advantages from their position, we should be almost without protection. The volume has some merit of the guide-book kind, and may be consulted with advantage for routes and topographical facts. 1. Studies from Nature. By Dr. Hermann Masius. Translated by Charles Boner. London; Chap man and Hall. 2. March Winds and April Showers. By Acheta, Author of 0 Episodes of Insect Life." London : Reeve. THESE volumes may fitly be placed together, as they describe aspects of nature, not obvious in themselves, but most charming when pointed out, in highly picturesque and imaginative style. Dr. Masius is a true votary of nature, as every one will acknowledge who reads his exquisitelygraceful notices of the forest trees of Germany, or his graphic sketches of the habits of the chief of our domestic birds. Most of the trees described are familiar in our own land. A sentence of William von Humboldt, quoted in the notes, draws an ingenious parallel between the life of a tree and that of a man: — There is in trees an expression of longing beyond belief, when they stand so firmly planted, and with so circum scribed a sphere of action, while with their tops they move, as far as they are able, beyond the boundary of their roots. I know nothing in nature so formel to be a symbol of longing. In reality it is the same with man, notwithstand ing his apparent power of locomotion. Let him roam abont as he may, he is, after all, chained to a span of earth. Sometimes he can never leave it—the same narrow spot beholds his cradle and his grave ; or he goes away, but his inclination or necessities attract him always back again ; or he remains entirely away, and his thoughts and wishes are still turned always towards his original dwelling place. Of all trees, the lime, or linden, seems the favourite of the author, as dearest, to love, home-cheerfulness, and song. The birds described are those which live in the farmyard, or by their instincts are attached to our homesteads. The hen is pleasantly pictured : The fowl race represents, as it were, the inferior bourgeoisie; and the hen reared in the confined strict notions of her class never forgets for a moment the limits nor the duties of her station. Her sober mind abhors all innovation and extravagance. She will have nothing to do with those doubtful virtues which we proudly call elegance, refinement, high-breeding, or which we at once sum up in the term " polite education." The fantastical wanderings, the buoyant rocking in mid-air, the art of song and nest• building, which the world admires in other birds, are to her as naught. As her ancestors were befote her, will she remain : and like her dress, so in thought and deed is she plain and citizen-like. " Pray and work ! stay at home and get an honest livelihood !" is what she exclaims to her ' sons and daughters, amidst whom she walks with a high sense of her importance. She tells them of her own peaceful existence, of lwr young and her old days; and, flinging a precept to one and a caress to another, she nods her well-frizzled topknot with discreet gravity. She is like one of those respectable country, cousins of whom we have scarcely any knowledge except from novels, and who with her narrow-mindedness has also preserved the faithful industry, simplicity, and modest contentment of the good old times : a trusty housewife and exemplary mother of a family. Some of the birds noticed here as "followers of man," and from oldest time his " merry comrades and neighbours," are rarely seen among us, and par ticularly the stork. In the rural districts of England this bird is unknown, though we read that in Ger many,— 167 When with the first warm March breeze the stork returns to his village there is a great rejoicing. He is greeted with song and exclamation, as one welcome back, as a faithful, long-missed friend. The old people in the village know him as the contemporary of their youth, and to the children, whose friend he pre-eminently is, he brings the assurance and the pledge that spring, which they have have so impatiently longed, is come. . . It is certain that the battles and migrations, the whimsicalities and rogueries, the affection and gratitude of the stork, offer • rich store of pleasing poetical matter. Patriarch, general, physician, judge, prophet, the stork is all in one. In the notes to this passage we read : According to popular belief, the stork always arrives among us on one and the same 6 day—on the 17th of March; hence the distich— We come here on St. Gertrude's-day, And with fit. James we tiered away. In southern Germany and Switzerland, where the stork appears earlier, the 22nd of February is considered the day of his arrival. Among the Greeks, whoever first announced the return of the stork was paid for the tidings. In many towns of Germany the watchmen of the towers, during the last century, were ordered to announce the coming of spring's harbinger by sound of trumpet, for which service a draught of wiue out of the civio cellars was ac corded him. The editor of this volume should have stated that the stork is rarely seen in England, and some notice, too, of the laws which regulate the movements of migratory birds would have been a welcome accom paniment to the text. The heron, near kinsman of the stork, is, to the great regret of all lovers of orni thology, fast disappearing from cur land, though so intimately associated with the rural life and sports of our olden history. Our respect for the mediaivialites would be greatly increased if, instead of bestowing all their cares on a revival of the lifeless ceremo nies and useless ornamental architecture of the past, they would cherish the forms of animal life native to our country, and save many interesting species of natural history from being utterly extirpated. The pages devoted to the swallow are beautifully written. Of all birds this one seems the most favoured by nature, and hence perhaps the general belief, so poetically expressed here, that the bird is " blessing laden" : The touching love for her young, her confiding nestling against houses, her roving games in the air, her coming and going with the coming and departing joys of summer, all this has awakened tender feelings towards her, has made her sacred. . . . It is on account of these qualities that so many a fond belief is connected with this bird. Where the swallow nestles no lightning will fall; the place she deserts is taken possession of by death; and whoever destroys her nest destroys in doing so his own fortune, while blessings attend the hospitable protector. We are inclined to think that swallows never desert their original home. We are almost sure that the same birds return to their old localities and nests. The young of swallows do not, like the young of other birds, desert their nests as soon as they can fly and shift for themselves. As far as the observa tion of the writer extends, the young birds keep to their nests as to a home until the time for their de parture approaches, and it is amusing to observe the little flock, continually darting in and out of the small entrances to their nests with the speed and certainty of an arrow. That the birds which in our autumn wing their flight to Arabian deserts or to the shores of Senegal should return in the spring to the very cottage eave where they were hatched, is one of the most singular facts in natural history. In quoting from Macbeth the well-known lines — This guest of summer The temple.hsuuting martlet does approve, By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here, /Lc., the word " masonry" is substituted for "mansionry." There cannot be a doubt, we think, that the word masonry is the word Shakspeare wrote, as it presents so perfect an image to the eye of the "loved" labour of the bird. The copies we happen to have at hand all read "mansionry," but the change may unhesi tatingly be made in the text. The volume is prettily produced, very judiciously translated, so as to retain that character of word-painting which distinguishes the original, and is illustrated with some spirited drawings. 2. " March Winds and April Showers " extends over a wider range of nature than the work of Dr. Masius. We like the fanciful parts of this pretty book the least, as they do not well accord with the facts of the descriptive portions. Thus the chapter on "The Flowers of the Sea," narrating and ex plaining the wonders to be met with in a seaside ramble, is rather impaired than set-off by the prelnur nary fable of the Neried and the Triton. Mere senti ment is not favourable to the study of nature or to any kind of truth. In return for real knowledge we must be content to sacrifice some nursery beliefs of old, though still they may remain associated with facts, and give to them poetical s ignificance. The chapter on " Hedges in Winter " is one o f the best, because most exactly descriptive, in the book. The excrescences on bramble branches, noticed in the following extract, must often have been seen , though not understood, by many of our readers :