תמונות בעמוד
PDF
ePub
[blocks in formation]

Of red robes and white wigs, boggled nor answered "Boh!"

When asked why he, Tom Styles, should not -because Jack Nokes

Had stolen the horse—be hanged: for Judges must have their jokes,

And louts must make allowance-let's say, some blue fly

for

Which punctured a dewy scalp where the frizzles stuck awry

Else Tom had fleered scot-free, so nearly over and done

Was the main of the job. Full-measure, the gentles enjoyed their fun,

As a twenty-five were tried, rank puritans caught at prayer

In a cow-house and laid by the heels,—have at 'em, devil may care!—

And ten were prescribed the whip, and ten a brand on the cheek,

And five a slit of the nose-just leaving enough

to tweak.

Well, things at jolly high-tide, amusement steeped in fire,

While noon smote fierce the roof's red tiles to heart's desire,

The Court a-simmer with smoke, one ferment of oozy flesh,

One spirituous humming musk mount-mounting until its mesh

Entoiled all heads in a fluster, and Serjeant Postlethwayte

-Dashing the wig oblique as he mopped his oily pate

his misdeeds at the Judge's ears with undisguised satisfaction at their thoroughness, and undisguised contempt for the law which could leave them so long undetected whilst exerting itself to dis

cover

whether 'twas Jack or Joan Robbed the hen-roost, pinched the pig, hit the King's arms with a stone.

He means to expiate what he has done; he stifles his oaths before he has quite enjoyed their flavor, and pays a farther tribute to the decencies of the occasion at what appears for him its thirstiest mo

ment

Tab, help and tell! I'm hoarse. A mug! or -no, a prayer!

Dip for one out of the Book! Who wrote it in the Jail

-He plied his pen unhelped by beer, sirs, I'll be bail !

But the retrospective zest with which he enumerates their robbings, murderings, and improprieties of every kind savors far more of commission than of expiation; and his mode of tackling the imaginary Apollyon in his path (supposing himself to be in time for him) exhibits all the activity of an unregenerated flesh.

Soon I had met in the valley and tried my cudgel's strength

On the enemy horned and winged, a-straddle across its length !

Have at his horns, thwick-thwack: they snap, see! Hoof and hoof

Bang, break the fetlock-bones!

sake, keep aloof

For love's

Angels! I'm man and match,—this cudgel for my flail,

To thresh him, hoofs and horns, bat's wing and serpent's tail!

Cried Silence, or I grow grease! No loop- He cannot quite be Christian, but he

hole lets in air?

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

be Faithful. Everything fits. Vanity Fair is Bedford Fair; and St. Peter's Green stands for the Marketplace. They flay him, and flog him, and stab him; they knock him about as if he had nine lives, but

ha, ha, he,

Who holds the highest card!....

A chariot and pair are hiding behind the heaven by the nearest gate-the gibbet crowd-he's in it, up, and away-to will do it for him-swords and knives are not handy, but the gibbet is closeThen hang me, draw and quarter! Tab-do the same by her

He is the most vigorous compound ever

invented of Christian martyr and pugilist dying game.

The request was not likely to be refused. Master Bratts had confessed to many deeds of which no one doubted his commission, and his having eluded their just penalty so long, would not, if he had wished it, have constituted a plea for mercy. The idea that in his zeal he had overstated his case would not occur to the contemporary mind, though it may present itself to the reader of his adventures. The Chief Justice considered it only due to his truthfulness to grant what he adduced such excellent reasons for deserving; so the pair were handed over to the Sheriff and dealt with as they desired; the "two dozen odd" sentences, previously passed, being remitted by his lordship with a view, we may suppose, to the good day's work which had already been done without them.

This ending is not only natural in itself, but an almost necessary fulfilment of the dramatic conditions of the story. The atmosphere is pregnant from the first with something at once horrible and grotesque; and when Ned Bratts and his Tabby have rolled on to the scene and off it for the last time, we feel that that something has assumed its most appropriate form, and no other conclusion would have been legitimate. Yet it finds us only half prepared. The enthusiasm of the convert is so closely identified with the vapors of heat and beer, that it is impossible to judge beforehand how far it will carry him; the more so, that the possibility of a collapse is constantly present to himself. Half his urgency to be hung "out of hand" lies in the knowledge that he may change his mind if he is not. Such qualms have come to him before, but they have not outlived the night. Even now the glories of the chariot which will lift him above the clouds wavers in the prospective brightness of to-morrow's bear-baiting, and the brawl on Turner's Patch by which it will be crowned; and even now the Iron Cage stares him in the face, and the lost man inside, and that last worst state of him who warred against the light; and though such an image might well turn the scale, we receive a decided mental shock in discovering that it was intended to do so, and

that the apparent farce is in fact a tragedy.

We need scarcely say that the self-satire of this conversion implies no denial on Mr. Browning's part of the relative seriousness it might possess. So much is guaranteed to it by the majestic figure of John Bunyan, and by the historic character of the religious challenge which resounded in that year 1672, from the precincts of Bedford jail. Tab Bratts has visited the tinker there; and his spoken words have effected in her a less equivocal reformation than the fiery symbolism of the "Pilgrim's Progress' could produce in her husband. She goes to him with no friendly intent. The blind daughter who carries his laces from house to house has lately avoided hers. These laces are exceptionally strong and invaluable for the unlawful purposes of their trade; and neither she nor Master Bratts is inclined to dispense with them because the profligacy of their manners is likely to offend the bearer. She enters John Bunyan's cell with all the insolence she can command; but the strength which meets her is not of her world, and the attitude of defiance is soon exchanged for one of supplicationDown on my marrow-bones! Then all at once rose he:

His brown hair burst a-spread, his eyes were Through flesh, I reach,

suns to see:

Up went his hands;

I read thy soul !

So may some stricken tree look blasted, bough and bole,

Champed by the fire-tooth, charred without, With dreriment about, within may life be and yet, thrice-bound

found,

A prisoned power to branch and blossom as

before,

Could but the gardener cleave the cloister, reach the core,

Loosen the vital sap: yet where shall help be found?

Who says, 'How save it?'-nor 'Why cumbers it the ground?

Woman, that tree art thou! All sloughed about with scurf,

Thy stag-horns fright the sky, thy snake-roots sting the turf !

Drunkenness, wantonness, theft, murder gnash and gnarl Thine outward, case thy soul with coating like

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

Be your sins scarlet, wool shall they seem like, -although

As crimson red, yet turn white as the driven snow!'"'

She remembers no more but that it was by means of the blind girl's guiding hand that she regained her home; and that the same hand bestowed the book as "father's boon" upon her.

Tray" is an anecdote of canine devotion, for the publishing of which no motive was needed but its possibility; though it raises, and in a manner disposes of, a question of considerable imA dog plunges into the river to rescue a drowning child; then dives for a second time, and after a lengthened disappearance, the water being deep and the current strong, emerges again with her doll. The facts are described with all the force of contrast in the comments of supposed bystanders, who welcome the familiar mystery of "animal instinct” in a deed to all appearance as intelligent as it is heroic; and allow the "good dog" to risk its life in their stead with a quite undisturbed sense of human superiority. The absurdness of this attitude loses nothing in the sarcastic spirit in which it is conceived, and we must protest in the name of "vivisectionism" against the concluding lines, humorous as they are

And so, amid the laughter gay,
Trotted my hero off,-old Tray,-
Till somebody, prerogatived

With reason, reasoned: "Why he dived,
His brain would show us, I should say,
"John, go and catch-or, if needs be,
Purchase that animal for me!
By vivisection, at expense

Of half-an-hour and eighteen pence,
How brain secretes dog's soul, we'll see!"'
We are not aware that any one since
La Mettrie has thus proposed to catch
"thinking in the act.' But Mr. Brown-
ing's readers will not resent some acer-
bity of zeal in his defence of the weaker
but "loving fellow-creature" which Na-
ture and poetry have so deeply conse-
crated to their tenderness; and Tray's
virtues will find abundant sympathy even
among those who hold exploded theories
concerning them.

In "Halbert and Hob" a fierce son is engaged in a quarrel with a father generally as fierce as himself. He is about to fling him out of the house, and has already dragged him to a certain turn in the stairs, when the old man, who has become passive at the first grip of his hand, tells him that they are repeating step by step a scene in which years ago he and his own father were the actors, and bids him listen to the warning voice by which he was then turned from the completion of his parricidal deed. The

words take their effect. It is Christmas

night. They pass it silently together. Dawn finds the father dead in his chair, and the son terrified into a premature and harmless senility. This episode, which we need hardly say is related in all the rugged impressiveness of which it is capable, strikes us simply as a study of hereditary character, heightened by coincidences of time and circumstance, which seem the more dramatic in proBut Mr. Browning appears to see in it portion as we admit them to be natural. something more. He presents it as an instance of supernatural interference in

the lives and in the hearts of men; and its last lines contain an assertion, for the answer to which we must appeal from him to himself. He says,

"Is there any reason in nature for these hard hearts?" O Lear,

That a reason out of nature must turn them soft, seems clear !

They

But the collective labors of his literary life have negatived the words. all tend to show what infinitely varied products may emerge from the chemistry of the human mind, and how little we can say of any action or reaction of human feeling that it is not natural. To externalize, the mystery of Nature in some intangible manner lies in the very language of poetry, even of the poetry which recognises no personal God; and a genius at once so reverent and so critical as Mr. Browning's is always in danger of building up with one hand a theory which he will knock down with the other. Still, we would rather believe that in the present case he expresses himself dramatically, and that not even the relative meaning of his utterance is to be charged upon him. There are at least not wanting in this very volume lines in which the idea of continued di

vine intervention is merged in a larger view of the capabilities of human existence; to the study of which it remains,

whatever its philosophic outcome, his not least valuable contribution.-Contemporary Review.

A PROBLEM IN HUMAN EVOLUTION.

BY PROFESSOR GRANT ALLEN.

HARDLY any view advanced in this work," says the illustrious author of the Descent of Man, "has met with so much disfavor as the explanation of the loss of hair in mankind through sexual selection." Indeed the friends and foes of Mr. Darwin's great theories have been equally ready, the one party to disclaim and the other party to ridicule the account which the founder of modern philosophic biology has given of the process whereby man, as he supposes, gradually lost the common hairy covering of other mammalia. Mr. Wallace, with all his ability and ingenuity, finds it necessary to call in the aid of a deus ex machina to explain the absence of so useful and desirable an adjunct; for he believes that natural selection could never have produced this result, and he therefore feels compelled to put it off upon some intelligent power," since he denies altogether the existence of sexual selection as a vera causa. Mr. J. J. Murphy in his recently published revision of Habit and Intelligence has taken up the same ground with a more directly hostile intent; and Spengel has also forcibly given expression to his dissent on the plea of inadequate evidence for the supposed preference. It seems highly desirable, therefore, to prop up Mr. Darwin's theory by any external supports which observation or analogy may suggest, and if possible to show some original groundwork in the shape of a natural tendency to hairlessness, upon which sexual selection might afterwards exert itself so as to increase and accelerate the depilatory process when once set up.

The curious facts for which we have to account are something more than the mere general hairlessness of the human species. In man alone, as Mr. Wallace clearly puts the case, "the hairy covering of the body has almost totally disappeared; and, what is very remarkable, it has disappeared more completely from the back than from any other part of the

body. Bearded and beardless races alike have the back smooth, and even when a considerable quantity of hair appears on the limbs and breast, the back, and especially the spinal region, is absolutely free, thus completely reversing the characteristics of all other mammalia." When we consider the comparatively helpless condition to which man has been thus reduced, as well as the almost universal human practice of substituting artificial clothing, derived from the skins or wool of other animals, for the natural apparel which the species has so unaccountably lost, it does not seem surprising that even Mr. Wallace should be staggered by the difficulty, and should fall back upon an essentially supernatural explanation.

The great key to the whole problem lies, it would seem, in the fact thus forced upon our attention, that the back of man forms the specially hairless region. of his body. Hence we must conclude that it is in all probability the first part which became entirely denuded of hair. Is there any analogy elsewhere which will enable us to explain the original loss of covering in this the normally hairiest portion of the typical mammalian body? The erect position of man appears immediately to suggest the required analogy in the most hairless region of other mammals.

Almost all animals except man habitually lie upon the under surface of the body. Hence arises a conspicuous difference between the back and the lower side.. This difference is seen even in lizards, crocodiles, and other reptiles, amongst which, as a rule, the tegumentary modifications of the under surface are much less extended and less highly differentiated than those of the upper. It is seen amongst birds, which usually have the plumage far less copious on the breast than on the back. But it is most especially noticeable in mammals, which have frequently the under side almost

entirely bare of hair, while the back is
covered with a copious crop. Now, it
would seem as though this scantiness of
natural clothing on the under side were
due to long-continued pressure against
the ground, causing the hair to be worn
away, and being hereditarily transmitted
in its effects to descendants.
We are,
therefore, led to inquire whether all parts
of the mammalian body which come into
frequent contact with other objects are
specially liable to lose their hair.

66

of progression of the animal is on all fours and resting on the knuckles." The ornithorhyncus has a flat tail, on which it leans for support, and this, says Mr. Waterhouse, is short, depressed, and very broad, and covered with coarse hairs; these, however, are generally worn off on the under side of the tail in adult or aged individuals, probably by the friction of the ground.' The toes of the very large forefeet, used in burrowing, are also naked, as are the similar organs in the mole and many other creatures of like habit. The beaver likewise uses his tail as a support, flaps it much in the water, and is said, perhaps not quite erroneously, to employ it as a trowel in constructing his dams; and this tail is entirely devoid of hair, being covered instead with a coat of scales. We can hardly avoid being struck in this instance, as in that of some seals' and sea-lions' flappers, with the analogy of the penguin's wings, which are employed like fins in diving, and have undergone a similar transformation of their feathers into a scale-like form. In the ground-kangaroos, which use the tail as

The answer seems to be an easy one. The soles of the feet in all mammals are quite hairless where they touch the ground. The palms of the hands in the quadrumana present the same phenomenon. The knees of those species which frequently kneel, such as camels and other ruminants, are apt to become bare and hard-skinned. The callosities of the old-world monkeys, which sit upon their haunches, are other cases in point; but they do not occur among the more strictly arboreal quadrumana of the American continent, nor among the lemurs, for the habits of these two classes in this respect are more similar to those of ordinary mammals. On the a support trailing behind them on the other hand, the new-world monkeys pos- ground, that organ is again only slightly sess a prehensile tail, with which they covered with coarse hairs, almost entirefrequently swing from bough to bough or ly wanting on the extremity of the under lower themselves to the ground, and in surface; but in the tree-kangaroos, these creatures, says Cuvier, "la partie which carry the tail partly erect, it asprenante de la queue est nue en dessous." sumes a bushy and ornamental appearWherever we find a similar organ, no ance. Like differences occur between matter how widely different may be the the rats and mice on the one hand and structure and genealogy of the animals the squirrels on the other. In those which possess it, we always find the pre- monkeys which, like Macacus brunneus, hensile portion free from hair. This is sit upon their tails, that organ is also the case with the marsupial tarsipes, with bare. To multiply further instances many rodents, and above all with the would only prove tedious. opossum, which uses its tail quite as much as any monkey uses its hands. Accordingly its surface is quite bare from end to end, and in some species scaly a fact which is rendered more comprehensible when we remember that the young opossums are carried on their mother's back, and hold themselves in that position by curling their tails around hers.

A few more special facts help to bear out the same generalisation. In the gorilla, according to Du Chaillu, "the skin on the back of the fingers, near the middle phalanx, is callous and very thick, which shows that the most usual mode

Again, when we look at the only mammals besides man which have denuded themselves of their hairy covering, we find that a great majority of them are water-frequenters. The most completely aquatic mammals, like the whales, porpoises, dugongs, and manatees, though differing widely in structure, are alike in the almost total absence of hair, while the hippopotamus is likewise a smoothskinned animal. Now, the friction of water is of course far stronger than that of air, and it would seem to have resulted in the total depilation of these very aquatic species. aquatic species. Other less confirmed water-haunters, such as seals and otters,

« הקודםהמשך »