The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1866-02-15
A CAPITAL CRITIQUE.
FORM-SICKNESS.
BY JOHN nusKn, ?. R. 8. A., ETC.

foreign conscripts are said TO suffer. They call il
nostalgia OF le NAL du pdys-in palmer English,
home.sic We have all read how the band
masters of the Swiss regiments in the French
service were forbidden to play the Rdnz des
Vdches, lest the melancholy children of the
mountains, inspired by the national melody,
should run home too quickly to their cows-that
is to say desert. That dogs will pine and fret
to death for love of the masters they have lost
is an ascertained fact; and have been told that
the intelligent aad graceful animal, the South
American llama, ii you beat, or overload, or even
insult him, will, after one glance of fearful re-
proach from his fine eyes, and one meek wall OF
expostulation, literally lie himselfdown and die.
Hence, the legend that the batmen, ere they
load a llama, cover his head with poncho, or a
gregg, or other drapery, in order that his sus
capabilities may not be wounded by sight of
the burden he is to endure; pretty conceit
vlely transposed into Engllsn in story about
cab-horse whose eyes were bandaged BY his
diver, lest he should be ashamed OF the shabbi-
ness OF the fare who paid but sixpence ior under
miles dIlve l was never south OF the lsthnus,
and never saw n llama, save in connection with
an oyercoat in a cheap tailor's showcard; but
am given to understand that what have related
is strictly true.
Ii the lower ANIMALS, ten, be subject to nos
talgia and If they be as easily killed by moral as
by physical ailments, why should humanity be
made OF steTner stuH? After all, there NAV be
such things as broken hearts. With regard TO
home-sckness, however, hold that as rule
that malady is caused less by absence from home
than by the deprivatons of the comforts and
enjoyments which home affords Scotchmen and
Irishmen are to be found all over the world and
get on pretty well wherever they are; but
Scot without porridse to sup, or an Irishman
without buttermilk to drink at breakfast is
always more or less miserable. The English
man. accustomed to command, to compel,
and to trample difficulties under his ieet,
carries his home-diylnlties with him, and
has no sooner set up his tent in KedT
than he establishes one supplementary booth for
making up prescrpt ons IN accordance with
the ritual Of the London Pharmacopmia, another
fol, the sale of pickles, pale ale, and green tea,
and third Tor the circulation OF tracts intended
to convert the foreigners among whom he is to
abide. He suffers less, perhaps, from home
sickness than any other wanderer on the face of
the earth; for he slernly refuses to look upon
his absence from his own country as anythng
but temporary exile; he demands incessant
postal communication with home or he will fill
the English newspapers with the most vehement
complaints; he will oten-through these same
newspapers-carfy on controversies, political or
religious, with adversaries ten thousand miles
away; and after an absence from England of
twenty years he will suddenly turn up at a
railway meeting, or in the chair at a public
dinner; bully the board; move the previous
question; or in proposing the toast of the
evening" quote the statistics OF the Cow-cross
1nfirmary for Calves, as though he had never
been out OF MiddleseX. In short, he no more
actually eXpatriates himself than does an attache
to an English embassy abroad, who packs up
PailMa in his portmanteau, parts his hair down
the middle, and carries a slender umbrella
never under any circumstances unturled-lu the
streets of Teheran.
But are you aware that there is another form
OF nostalgia which aftllcts only Europeans, and,
so far as / know, is felt only in one part of the
world Its symptoms have not hitherto been
described, and may chrIsten it Formsickness.
/ should wish to have Mr. Ruskin, Mr.. Stirling,
and Mr.. Beresford Hope, on the medical board
to whom submitted my views on this disease;
for it is one architecturally and @sthetically
occult. This form sickness begins to attack you
after you have resided some time-say couple
OF months-in the United States OF America. It's
attacks are more keenly felt in the North than
in The South; for in the last-named parts of the
Union there are fig and orange trees, and wild
jungles, and cane-brakes some of the elements
OF form, in fact. 1t is the monotOny OF form,
and its deficiencies in certain conditions; that is
10 say, curvature, irregularity, and light and
shade, that make you sick in the North. be-
lieve that half the discomfort and the uneas-
ness which most educated Engllshmen expe-
rence from protrated residence in the
States, springs from the outrage offered
to their eye in the shape OF per
petual fiat surfaces, straight perspectives
and violent contrasts of color. There are no
middle tints in an American landscape. In
winter 1t is white and blue; in spring blue and
green; in summer blue and brown; in autumn
all the colors OF the rainbow, but without a
single neutral tint. The magnificent October
hues of the foliage on the Hudson and IN Ver-
mont simply dazzle and confound you. You
would give the world for an instant of repose-
for grey tower, a broken wall morsel of
dun thatch. The immensely OF the views is
too much for a single spectator. Don't you re-
member how Banvard's gigantic panorama OF the
Mississippi used TO make us drst wonder and then
yawn? Banvard Is everywhere in the States
and so enormous is the scale of the scenery in
the colossal theatre, that the sparse drdmdtis
persona are all but invisible. An English land
scape painter would scarcely dream Of producing
picture, even of cabinet size, without q group
OF peasants, or children, OF a COW or two, or a
horse, or AZ least 1ock OF geese, in some part
of the work. You shall hardly look half a
dozen times out of the window of carriage OF
an express train in ENGLAND, without seeing
something that is alive. IN America the desc.
latio1 OF emptiness pervades even the longest
settled and the most thickly populated States.
How should 1t be otherwise? How should
you wonder at 1t when, as in score OF in
stances, not more people than inhabit Hertord
shire are scattered over q territory as large as
FranceY One OF the first things that struck me
when saw the admirable works OF the AmeI.
can landscape panteIs-of such men as Church
and Kensett, Blerstadt and Cropley and Hart
was the absence OF animal life from theiI
scenes. They seemed to have been making
sketches OF the earth before the birth of Adam
This vacuous vastness is one OF the proVoca
t1ves of Form-sckness. To the European, and
especially to the Englishman, country without
plenty OF people, pigs, poultry, haystacks, barns
and cottages, is as intolerable as the stage o
the grand opera would be If 1t remained
whole evening with a sumptuously set scene
displayed but not single actor New England
is the State in which, perhaps, the accessories o
life are most closely concentrates; but even il
New England You traverse walks into which i
appears TO you that the whole of Old England
might be dropped with no more chance of being
found again than has a needle in a potte of hay
But it is when you come to dwell in towns tina
Form-sickness gets its iTnest grip of you Ii