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 6day—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 significance. The chapter on
" Hedges in Winter " is one of 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 :