Kitabı oku: «Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851.», sayfa 18

THE WASTE OF WAR

 
Give me the gold that war has cost,
Before this peace-expanding day;
The wasted skill, the labor lost —
The mental treasure thrown away;
And I will buy each rood of soil
In every yet discovered land;
Where hunters roam, where peasants toil,
Where many-peopled cities stand.
 
 
I'll clothe each shivering wretch on earth.
In needful; nay, in brave attire;
Vesture befitting banquet mirth,
Which kings might envy and admire.
In every vale, on every plain,
A school shall glad the gazer's sight;
Where every poor man's child may gain
Pure knowledge, free as air and light.
 
 
I'll build asylums for the poor,
By age or ailment made forlorn:
And none shall thrust them from the door,
Or sting with looks and words of scorn.
I'll link each alien hemisphere;
Help honest men to conquer wrong;
Art, Science, Labor, nerve and cheer;
Reward the Poet for his song.
 
 
In every crowded town shall rise
Halls Academic, amply graced;
Where Ignorance may soon be wise,
And Coarseness learn both art and taste
To every province shall belong
Collegiate structures, and not few —
Fill'd with a truth-exploring throng,
And teachers of the good and true.
 
 
In every free and peopled clime
A vast Walhalla hall shall stand;
A marble edifice sublime,
For the illustrious of the land;
A Pantheon for the truly great,
The wise, beneficent, and just;
A place of wide and lofty state
To honor or to hold their dust.
 
 
A temple to attract and teach
Shall lift its spire on every hill,
Where pious men shall feel and preach
Peace, mercy, tolerance, good-will;
Music of bells on Sabbath days,
Round the whole earth shall gladly rise;
And one great Christian song of praise
Stream sweetly upward to the skies!
 

A NIGHT WITH AN EARTHQUAKE.⁶

The sound had not quite died away, when the feet I stood on seemed suddenly seized with the cramp. Cup and coffee-pot dropped as dead from Don Marzio's hand as the ball from St. Francis's palm. There was a rush as if of many waters, and for about ten seconds my head was overwhelmed by awful dizziness, which numbed and paralyzed all sensation. Don Marzio, in form an athlete, in heart a lion, but a man of sudden, sanguine temperament, bustled up and darted out of the room with the ease of a man never burdened with a wife, with kith or kin. Donna Betta, a portly matron, also rose instinctively; but I – I never could account for the odd freak – laid hold of her arm, bidding her stay. The roar of eight hundred houses – or how many more can there be in Aquila? – all reeling and quaking, the yells of ten thousand voices in sudden agony, had wholly subsided ere I allowed the poor woman calmly and majestically to waddle up to her good man in the garden. That, I suppose, was my notion of an orderly retreat. Rosalbina had flown from a window into the lawn, like a bird. Thank God, we found ourselves all in the open air under the broad canopy of heaven. We began to count heads. Yes, there we all stood – cook, laundry-maid, dairy-maids, stable-boys, all as obedient to the awful summons as the best disciplined troops at the first roll of the drum.

It was February, as I have twice observed; and we were in the heart of the highest Apennines. The day was rather fine, but pinching cold; and when the fever of the first terror abated, the lady and young lady began to shiver in every limb. No one dared to break silence; but Don Marzio's eye wandered significantly enough from one to another countenance in that awe-stricken group. There was no mistaking his appeal. Yet, one after another, his menials and laborers returned his gaze with well-acted perplexity. No one so dull of apprehension as those who will not understand. My good friends, I was three-and-twenty. I had had my trials, and could boast of pretty narrow escapes. I may have been reckless, perhaps, in my day. I smiled dimly, nodded to the old gentleman, clapped my hands cheerily, and the next moment was once more where no man in Aquila would at that moment have liked to be for the world – under a roof. I made a huge armful of cloaks and blankets, snapped up every rag with all the haste of a marauding party, and moved toward the door, tottering under the encumbrance. But now the dreadful crisis was at hand.

Earthquakes, it is well known, proceed by action and re-action. The second shock, I was aware, must be imminent. I had just touched the threshold, and stood under the porch, when that curious spasmodic sensation once more stiffened every muscle in my limbs. Presently I felt myself lifted up from the ground. I was now under the portico, and was hurled against the pillar on my right; the rebound again drove me to the post on the opposite side; and after being thus repeatedly tossed and buffeted from right to left like a shuttlecock, I was thrust down, outward, on the ground on my head, with all that bundle of rags, having tumbled head-long the whole range of the four marble steps of entrance. The harm, however, was not so great as the fright; and, thanks to my gallant devotion, the whole party were wrapped and blanketed, till they looked like a party of wild Indians; we stood now on comparatively firm ground, and had leisure to look about us. Don Marzio's garden was open and spacious, being bounded on three sides by the half-crumbling wall of the town. On the fourth side was the house – a good, substantial fabric, but now miserably shaky and rickety. Close by the house was the chapel of the Ursuline convent, and above that its slender spire rose chaste and stainless, "pointing the way to heaven." Any rational being might have deemed himself sufficiently removed from brick and mortar, and, in so far, out of harm's way. Not so Don Marzio. He pointed to the shadow of that spire, which, in the pale wintry sunset, stretched all the way across his garden, and by a strange perversion of judgment, he contended that so far as the shadow extended, there might also the body that cast it reach in its fall, for fall it obviously must; and as the danger was pressing, he deemed it unwise to discuss which of the four cardinal points the tower might feel a leaning toward, whenever, under the impulse of the subterranean scourge, it would "look around and choose its ground." Don Marzio was gifted with animal courage, and even nerve, proportionate to the might of his stalwart frame. But then his was merely a combative spirit. Thews and sinews were of no avail in the case. The garden was no breathing ground for him, and he resolved upon prompt emigration.

The people of Aquila, as indeed you may well know, of most towns in Southern Italy, have the habit of – consequently a peculiar talent for – earthquakes. They know how to deal with them, and are seldom caught unprepared. Two hundred yards outside the town gate, there is half a square mile of table-land on the summit of a hill – a market-place in days of ease, a harbor of refuge in the urgency of peril. From the first dropping of the earth-ball from the hand of their guardian saint, the most far-sighted among the inhabitants had been busy pitching their tents. The whole population – those, that is, who had escaped unscathed by flying tiles and chimney-pots – were now swarming there, pulling, pushing, hauling, and hammering away for very life: with women fainting, children screeching, Capuchins preaching. It was like a little rehearsal of doomsday. Don Marzio, a prudent housekeeper, had the latch-key of a private door at the back of the garden. He threw it open – not without a misgiving at the moss-grown wall overhead. That night the very stars did not seem to him sufficiently firm-nailed to the firmament! His family and dependents trooped after him, eager to follow. Rosalbina looked back – at one who was left behind. Don Marzio felt he owed me at least one word of leave-taking. He hemmed twice, came back two steps, and gave me a feverish shake of the hand.

"I am heartily sorry for you, my boy," he cried. "A fuoruscito, as I may say, a bird-in-the-bush – you dare not show your nose outside the door. You would not compromise yourself alone, you know, but all of us and our friends; we must leave you – safe enough here, I dare say," with a stolen glance at the Ursuline spire, "but – you see – imperative duties – head of a family – take care of the females – and so, God bless you!"

With this he left me there, under the deadly shade of the steeple – deadlier to him than the upas-tree; ordered his little household band out, and away they filed, one by one, the head of the family manfully closing the rear…

I was alone – alone with the earthquake… There was a wood-cellar in one of the out-houses, access to which was easy and safe. One of my host's domestics had slipped flint and steel into my hands. In less than half-an-hour's time, a cheerful fire was crackling before me. I drew forth an old lumbering arm-chair from the wood-cellar, together with my provision of fuel. I shrouded myself in the ample folds of one of Don Marzio's riding-cloaks; I sat with folded arms, my eyes riveted on the rising blaze, summoning all my spirits round my heart, and bidding it to bear up. The sun had long set, and the last gleam of a sickly twilight rapidly faded. A keen, damp, north-east wind swept over the earth; thin, black, ragged clouds flitted before it, like uneasy ghosts. A stray star twinkled here and there in the firmament, and the sickle-shaped moon hung in the west. But the light of those pale luminaries was wan and fitful. They seemed to be aware of the hopelessness of their struggle, and to mourn in anticipation of the moment when they should faint in fight, and unrelieved darkness should lord it over the fields of the heavens.

The town of Aquila, or the Eagle, as the natives name it, is perched, eagle-like, on the brow of an abrupt cliff in the bosom of the loftiest Apennines. Monte Reale, Monte Velino, and the giant of the whole chain, the "Gran Sasso d'Italia," look down upon it from their exalted thrones. Within the shelter of that massive armor, the town might well seem invulnerable to time and man. But now, as I gazed despondingly round, the very hills everlasting seemed rocking from their foundation, and their crests nodding to destruction. Which of those mighty peaks was to open the fire of hell's artillery upon us? Was not Etna once as still and dark as yonder great rock? and yet it now glares by night with its ominous beacon, and cities and kingdoms have been swept away at its base.

Two hours passed away in gloomy meditation. The whole town was a desert. The camp meeting of the unhoused Aquilani was held somewhere in the distance: its confused murmur reached me not. Only my neighbors, the Ursuline nuns, were up and awake. With shrinking delicacy, dreading the look and touch of the profane even more than the walls of their prison-house, they had stood their ground with the heroism of true faith, and reared their temporary asylum under their vine-canopied bowers, within the shade of the cloisters. A high garden-wall alone separated me from the holy virgins. They were watching and kneeling. Every note from their silver voices sank deep in my heart, and impressed me with something of that pious confidence, of that imploring fervor, with which they addressed their guardian angels and saints. Two hours had passed. The awfulness of prevailing tranquillity, the genial warmth of my fire, and the sweet monotony of that low, mournful chanting, were by degrees gliding into my troubled senses, and lulling them into a treacherous security. "Just so," I reasoned, "shock and countershock. The terrible scourge has by this time exhausted its strength. It was only a farce, after all. Much ado about nothing. The people of this town have become so familiar with the earthquake that they make a carnival of it. By this time they are perhaps feasting and rioting under their booths. Ho! am I the only craven here? And had I not my desire? Am I not now on speaking terms with an earthquake?"

Again my words conjured up the waking enemy. A low, hollow, rumbling noise, as if from many hundred miles' distance, was heard coming rapidly onward along the whole line of the Apennines. It reached us, it seemed to stop underneath our feet, and suddenly changing its horizontal for a vertical direction, it burst upward. The whole earth heaved with a sudden pang; it then gave a backward bound, even as a vessel shipping a sea. The motion then became undulatory, and spread far and wide as the report of a cannon, awakening every echo in the mountain. There was a rattle and clatter in the town, as if of a thousand wagons shooting down paving stones. The Ursuline steeple waved in the air like a reed vexed by the blast. The chair I stood on was all but capsized, and the fire at my feet was overthrown. The very vault of heaven swung to and fro, ebbing and heaving with the general convulsion. The doleful psalmody in the neighboring ground broke abruptly. The chorus of many feminine voices sent forth but one rending shriek. The clamor of thousands of the town-folk from their encampment gave its wakeful response. Then the dead silence of consternation ensued. I picked up every stick and brand that had been scattered about, steadied myself in my chair, and hung down my head. "These black hounds," I mused, "hunt in couples. Now for the repercussion."

I had not many minutes to wait. Again the iron-hoofed steeds and heavy wheels of the state chariot of the prince of darkness were heard tramping and rattling in their course. Once more the subterranean avalanche gathered and burst. Once more the ground beneath throbbed and heaved as if with rending travail. Once more heaven and earth seemed to yearn to each other; and the embers of my watch-fire were cast upward and strewn asunder. It was an awful long winter night. The same sable clouds rioting in the sky, the same cruel wind moaning angrily through the chinks and crevices of many a shattered edifice. Solitude, the chillness of night, and the vagueness, even more than the inevitableness, of the danger, wrought fearfully on my exhausted frame. Stupor and lethargy soon followed these brief moments of speechless excitement. Bewildered imagination peopled the air with vague, unutterable terrors. Legions of phantoms sported on those misshapen clouds. The clash of a thousand swords was borne on the wind. Tongues of living flame danced and quivered in every direction. The firmament seemed all burning with them. I saw myself alone, helpless, hopeless, the miserable butt of all the rage of warring elements. It was an uncomfortable night. Ten and twelve times was the dreadful visitation reproduced between sunset and sunrise, and every shock found me more utterly unnerved; and the sullen, silent resignation with which I recomposed and trimmed my fire had something in it consummately abject, by the side of the doleful accents with which the poor half-hoarse nuns, my neighbors, called on their blessed Virgin for protection.

The breaking morn found me utterly prostrated; and when Don Marzio's servants had so far recovered from their panic as to intrude upon my solitude, and offer their services for the erection of my tent in the garden, I had hardly breath enough left to welcome them. Under that tent I passed days and nights during all the remainder of February. The shocks, though diminished in strength, almost nightly roused us from our rest. But the people of Aquila soon learned to despise them. By one, by two, by three they sought the threshold of their dismantled homes. Last of all, Don Marzio folded his tent. His fears having, finally, so far given way, as to allow him to think of something beside himself, he exerted himself to free me from confinement. He furnished me with faithful guides, by whose aid I reached the sea-coast. Here a Maltese vessel was waiting to waft me to a land of freedom and security. I can tell you, my friends, that from that time I was cured forever of all curiosity about earthquakes.

A PLEA FOR BRITISH REPTILES

What the flourishing tradesman writes with pride over his shop, we might in most cases write over our storehouse of antipathies – established in 1720, or 1751. For what good reason we, in 1851, should shudder at the contact of a spider, or loathe toads, it would be hard to say. Our forefathers in their ignorance did certainly traduce the characters of many innocent and interesting animals, and many of us now believe some portions of their scandal. To be a reptile, for example, is perhaps the greatest disgrace that can attach to any animal in our eyes. Reptile passes for about the worst name you can call a man. This is unjust – at any rate, in England. We have no thought of patting crocodiles under the chin, or of embracing boa constrictors; but for our English reptiles we claim good words and good-will. We beg to introduce here, formally, our unappreciated friends to any of our human friends who may not yet have cultivated their acquaintance.

The Common Lizard – surely you know the Common Lizard, if not by his name of state —Zootoca vivipara. He wears a brilliant jacket, and you have made friends with him, as a nimble, graceful fellow; as a bit of midsummer. His very name reminds you of a warm bank in the country, and a sunny day. Is he a reptile? Certainly; suppose we stop two minutes to remember what a reptile is.

The heart of a reptile has three cavities; that is to say, it is not completely double, like our own. It sends only a small part of the blood which comes into it for renovation into the air-chambers – the lungs; while the remainder circulates again unpurified. That change made in the blood by contact with the oxygen of air, is chiefly the cause of heat in animals. Aëration, therefore, being in reptiles very partial, the amount of heat evolved is small; reptiles are therefore called cold-blooded. They are unable to raise their heat above the temperature of the surrounding air. Fishes are cold-blooded, through deficient aëration in another way; in them, all the blood passes from the heart into the place where air shall come in contact with it; but, then there is a limitation to the store of air supplied, which can be no more than the quantity extracted from the water. The temperature of water is maintained below the surface, and we know how that of the air varies, since a certain quantity of heat is necessary to the vital processes; reptiles, depending upon air for heat, hybernate or become torpid when the temperature falls below a certain point. The rapidity of all their vital actions will depend upon the state of the thermometer; they digest faster in the heat of summer than in the milder warmth of spring. Their secretions (as the poison of the adder) are in hot weather more copious, and in winter are not formed at all. The reptiles breathe, in all cases, by lungs; but we must except here those called Batrachians, as frogs or newts, which breathe, in the first stage, by gills, and afterward by gills and lungs, or by lungs only. The Batrachians, again, are the only exception to another great characteristic of the reptile class, the hard, dry covering of plates or scales. The reptiles all produce their young from eggs, or are "oviparous" – some hatch their eggs within the body, and produce their young alive, or are "ovo-viviparous." These are the characters belonging to all members of the reptile-class. The class is subdivided into orders somewhat thus: 1. The Testudinate (tortoises and turtles). 2. Enaliosaurian (all fossil, the Ichthyosaurus and his like). 3. Loricate (crocodiles and alligators). 4. Saurian (lizards). 5. Ophidian (serpents); and the last order, Batrachian (frogs, toads, &c.); which is, by some, parted from the reptiles, and established as another class.

Now we have in England no tortoises or turtles, and no crocodiles: and the fossil order is, in all places, extinct; so our reptiles can belong only to the three last-named orders, Lizards, Serpents, and Batrachians.

Thus we come back, then, to our Lizards, of which we have among us but two genera, a single species of each. These are the Common Lizard, well known to us all, and the Sand Lizard, known only to some of us who happen to live upon the southern coast. The species of lizard so extremely common in this country, has not been found in countries farther south, and is, in fact, peculiar to our latitude. We, therefore, may love him as a sympathetic friend. The sand lizard (Lacerta agilis) is found as far north as the country of Linnæus, and as far south as the northern part of France; in England, however, it seems to be rare, and has been detected only in Dorsetshire – chiefly near Poole, or in some other southern counties. It frequents sandy heaths, and is of a brown sandy color, marked and dotted; but there is a green variety said to be found among the verdure of marshy places. It is larger than our common lizard, averaging seven inches long, is very timid, and when made a prisoner pines and dies. Its female lays eggs, like a turtle, in the sand, covers them over, and leaves them to be hatched by the summer sun. This kind of lizard, therefore, is oviparous. The eggs of our common lizard are hatched also by the sun; for, reptiles having no heat of their own, can not provide that which is necessary to the development of an embryo; but in this case the sun hatches them within the parent's body. The female of this lizard stretches herself out upon a sunny bank, and lets the bright rays fall upon her body while she lies inactive. At this period, she will not move for any thing less than a real cause of alarm. She is not sunning herself lazily, however, but fulfilling an ordinance of God. The eggs break as the young lizards – three to six – are born. This lizard is, therefore, ovo-viviparous. The little ones begin at once to run about, and soon dart after insects, their proper food; but they accompany the mother with some instinct of affection for a little time. These lizards are very various in size and color; difference in these respects does not denote difference in kind. The little scales which cover them are arranged in a peculiar manner on the head, under the neck, &c.; and some differences of arrangement, in such respects, are characteristic. The best distinction between the only two species of lizard known in this country has been pointed out by Mr. Bell. In the hind legs, under each thigh, there is a row of openings, each opening upon a single scale. In sand lizards, the opening is obviously smaller than the scale; in our common lizards, the opening is so comparatively large that the scale seems to be the mere edge of a tube around it.

These are our lizards, then, our Saurian reptiles; and they do not merit any hate. Suffer an introduction now to English Snakes.

The first snake, the Blindworm, is not a snake, nor yet a worm. It is a half-way animal – between a lizard and a snake. The lizards shade off so insensibly into the snakes, even the boa preserving rudimentary hind legs, that some naturalists counsel their union into a single class of Squamate, or scaled reptiles. By a milder process of arrangement, all those animals which dwell upon the frontier ground between Lizards or Saurians, and Ophidians or Snakes, are to be called Saurophidian. The blindworm then, is Saurophidian; it is quite as much a lizard as a snake. Snakes have the bones of their head all movable, so that their jaws can be dilated, until, like carpet-bags, they swallow any thing. The lizard has its jaws fixed; so has the blindworm. Snakes have a long tongue, split for some distance, and made double-forked; the blindworm's tongue has nothing but a little notch upon the tip. It has a smooth round muzzle, with which it can easily wind its way under dry soil to hybernate; or else it takes a winter nap in any large heap of dead leaves. It comes out early in the spring; for it can bear more cold than reptiles generally like, and it is found all over Europe, from Sweden to the south of Italy. It feeds upon worms, slugs, and insects. Like the snakes, it gets a new coat as it grows, and takes the old one off, by hooking it to some fixed point, and crawling from it, so that the cast skin is dragged backward, and turned inside out. The slow-worm is of a dark gray color, silvery, and about a foot long on the average. It is ovo-viviparous. It is extremely gentle; very rarely thinks of biting those who handle it, and, when it does bite, inflicts no wound with its little teeth. Of course it has no fangs and is not poisonous. Shrinking with fear when taken, it contracts its body and so stiffens it that it will break if we strike or bend it. Therefore it bears the name Linnæus gave it —Anguis fragilis.

We have found nothing yet to shudder at among our reptiles. "O! but," you say perhaps, "that was not a real snake." Well, here is our real snake. Natrix torquata– our common Ringed Snake; he is very common. He may be three or four feet long, and brownish-gray above, with a green tinge, yellow marks upon the neck, and rows of black spots down the back and sides, alternating, like London lamp-posts, with each other. You will find him any where in England, almost any where in Europe, below the latitude of Scotland. You will find him most frequently in a moist place, or near water, for he is rather proud of himself as a swimmer. He has a handsome coat, and gets a new one two, three, four, or five times in a season, if his growth require it. When the new coat is quite hard and fit for use under the old, he strips the old one off among the thorn-bushes. He and his lady hybernate. The lady leaves her sixteen or twenty eggs, all glued together, for the sun to vivify. The snake's tongue, as we have said, is forked, the jaws dilatable; he prefers frogs for his dinner, but is satisfied with mice, or little birds, or lizards. He swallows his prey whole. Catching it first, as Mrs. Glasse would say, between his teeth, which are in double rows upon each jaw, and directed backward that they may act more effectually, he first brings the victim to a suitable position – head first he prefers, then, leaving one set of teeth, say the lower, fixed, he advances the upper jaw, fixes its teeth into the skin, and leaves them there while he moves forward, the lower jaw, and so continues till the bird or frog is worked into his throat; it is then swallowed by the agency of other muscles. This power of moving each jaw freely and in independence of the other, is peculiar to Ophidian reptiles. The frog may reach the stomach both alive and active, so that, if afterward, the snake gapes, as he is apt to do, a frog has been seen to leap out again. The processes of life are so slow in reptiles, that one meal will not be digested by the snake for many days. He is unable to digest vegetable matter. Our snake is very harmless, and if kept and fed, will quickly learn to recognize its patron, will feed out of his hand, and nestle up his sleeve; but he shows a dread of strangers.

We have Adders? Yes, we have a Viper —Pelias Berus is the name he goes by, and his fangs are undeniable. This is the only native reptile that can, in any degree whatever, hurt a man. It is common in England, and, unlike the snake, prefers a dry place to a moist one. "Adder" and "viper" are two words applied to the same thing – adder being derived from the Saxon word for "nether," and viper from viviper; because this reptile, like our common lizard, hatches her eggs within the body, or is viviparous. Our viper is found all over Europe; not in Ireland. As for Ireland, it is an old boast with the Irish that Saint Patrick banned away all reptiles. The paucity of reptiles in Ireland is remarkable, but they are not altogether absent. Our common lizard has a large Irish connection, and frogs were introduced into Ireland years ago. Their spawn was taken over, put into water, throve, and thereafter frogs have multiplied. An attempt was also made to introduce our common snake, but the country-people, with great horror, killed the inlopers; a reward even was offered for one that was known to remain uncaptured. Ireland is free from adders.

The most ready distinction between a common snake and an adder, to unfamiliar eyes, is founded on the difference of marking. While the snake has separate alternate spots, the adder has, down its back, a chain of dark spots, irregularly square, and joined to one another. Adders are generally brown, but differ very much in color. They have on their upper jaw, instead of their lower, a row of teeth, the well-known fangs. These are long, curved teeth, fixed into a movable piece of bone, and hollow. The hollow is not made out of the substance of the tooth; it is as if a broad flat tooth had been bent round upon itself to form a tube. The tube is open below and behind, in the curve, by a little slit. Above, it is open, and rests upon a tiny bag connected with a gland that corresponds to a gland in man for the secretion of saliva; but which, in the present case, secretes a poison. The fang, when out of use, is bent and hidden in a fleshy case; in feeding, it is rarely used. The viper catches for himself his birds or mice, after the manner of a harmless serpent. But, when hurt or angered, he throws back his neck, drops his fang ready for service, bites, and withdraws his head immediately. The fang in penetrating, of necessity, was pressed upon the little bag of poison at its root, and forced a drop along the tube into the wound. After a few bites, the bag becomes exhausted, and the adder must wait for a fresh secretion. The poison has no taste or smell, and may be swallowed with impunity, if there be no raw surface in the mouth, or sore upon the throat, or in the stomach. It is only through a wound that it can act like poison. The bite of an adder in this country never yet proved fatal; but, according to the health of the person bitten, and according to the greater or less heat of the weather (for in very hot weather a more active poison is secreted), the wound made will be more or less severe. It is advisable to get out of an adder's way.