NATURE AND ART.

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BY SAMUEL MARTIN.

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When we see an insect in the fields pumping a sweet fluid from the nectaries of flowers, and carrying it home and storing it in convenient receptacles, which it carefully covers so as to exclude the dust and hinder evaporation, we are filled with devout astonishment; and as we write hymns about the “Little Busy Bee,” in her industry and foresight, and curious contrivances, we recognize an all-pervading Mind and an all-controlling Hand. And in this we are right. But here is another animal, still more resourceful and provident. The bee collects the honey from such flowers as happen to contain it, and which yield it almost ready-made; but she takes no trouble to secure a succession of those flowers or to increase their productiveness. This other creature is at infinite pains to propagate and improve his favorite mellifluent herbs. From the sweet juices of flowers the bee can only elaborate a single fluid, while her rival from the same syrup can obtain a multitude of dainties; and, according to the taste of the consumer, he offers it in the guise of nectar or ambrosia, in crystals of topaz or in pyramids of snow. And when the manufacture is complete, the bee knows only one mode of stowage; this other creature packs it, as the case may require, in bags or baskets, in boxes or barrels, all his own workmanship, and all cleverly made. What, then, is the reason that when we look at a honeycomb we are apt to be reminded of the wisdom and goodness of God; but looking at the same thing magnified—surveying a hundred hogsheads of sugar piled up in a West Indian warehouse—we have no devout associations with the ingenuity and industry which placed them there? Why are chords of pious feeling struck by the proceedings of an insect, and no emotion roused by the on-goings of our fellow-men?

We examine two paper-mills. The one is situated in a gooseberry-bush, and the owner is a wasp. The other covers some acres of land, and belongs to a kind-hearted and popular legislator. But after exploring the latter with all its water-wheels and steam-engines, and with all the beautiful expedients for converting rags into pulp, and then weaving and sizing, and cutting and drying, and folding and packing, we go away admiring nothing except human skill; whereas, the moment Madam Vespa fetches a bundle of vegetable fibres and moistens them with her saliva, and then spreads them out in a patch of whitey-brown, we lift our hands in amazement, and go home to write another “Bridgewater Treatise,” or to add a new meditation to Sturm. That a wasp should make paper at all is very wonderful; but if the rude fabric which she compiles from raspings of wood is wonderful, how much more admirable is that texture which, as it flows from between these flying cylinders for furlongs together, becomes a fit repository for the story of the universe, and can receive on its delicate and evenly expanse, not only the musings of genius but the pictures of Prophecy and the lessons of Inspiration!

However, it is said, the cases are quite distinct. Man has reason to guide him; the lower animal proceeds by instinct. In surveying human handiwork, we admire the resources of reason; in looking at bird architecture or insect manufactures, we are in more direct contact with the Infinite Mind. Their Maker is their teacher, but man is his own instructor; and, therefore, we see the wisdom and goodness of God in the operations of the lower animals more clearly than in our own.

Without arguing the identity of reason and instinct, it will be admitted that the lower animals frequently perform actions which imply a reasoning process. Reverting to our insect illustrations, Huber and others have mentioned cases which make it hard to deny judgment and reflection to the wasp; and the reader who is himself “judicious” will not refuse a tiny measure of his own endowments to the bee. On a bright day, four or five summers since, we were gazing at a clump of fuchsias planted out on a lawn, not far from London. As every one knows, the flower of the fuchsia is a graceful pendent, something like a funnel or red coral suspended with the opening downward; and in the varieties planted on this lawn the tube of the funnel was long and slender. In the case of every expanded flower, we noticed that there was a small hole near the apex, just as if some one had pierced it with a pin. It was not long till we detected the authors of these perforations. The border was all alive with bees, and we soon noticed that in dealing with the fuchsias they extracted the honey through these artificial apertures. They had found the tube of the blossom so long that their haustella could not reach the honey at its farther end; and so, by this engineering stratagem, they got at it sideways. Surely this was sensible. When a mason releases a sweep stuck fast in a chimney by digging a hole in the gable, or when a chancellor of the exchequer gains a revenue by indirect taxation, he merely carries out the principle. And what makes the manœuvre more striking, is the fact that the problem was new. The fuchsias had come from Mexico and Chili not many years ago; whereas the bees were derived from a long line of English ancestors, and could not have learned the art of tapping from their American congeners. In cases such as these, and hundreds which might be quoted, no one feels his admiration of the all-pervading Wisdom lessen as instinct approaches reason, or actually merges in it. In the case of the inferior animals no one feels—The more of reason, the less of God. And, because man is all reason together, why should it be thought that in human inventions and operations there is nothing divine? How is it that in the dyke-building of that beaver, or the nest building of that bird, so many mark the varied evolutions of the Supreme Intelligence; but, when they come to the operations of the artisan or the architect, they are conscious of an abrupt transition, and, feeling the groundless holy, they exclaim,

“God made the country, but man made the town?”

One would think that the right way to regard human handiwork is with the feelings which an accomplished naturalist expresses:—“A reference to the Deity, even through works of human invention, must lead to increased brotherly love among mankind. When we see a mechanic working at his trade, and observe the dexterity which he displays, together with the ingenious adaptation of his tools to their various uses, and then consider the original source of all this, do we not see a being at work, employing for his own purposes an intelligence derived from the Almighty?—and will not such a consideration serve to raise him in our opinion, rather than induce us to look down slightingly upon him for being employed in a mechanical trade? For my own part, when I watch a mechanic at his work I find it very agreeable, and, I believe, a very useful kind of mental employment, to think of him as I would of an insect building its habitation, and in both see the workings of the Deity.”^[7]

And yet it must be admitted that few have the feelings which Mr. Drummond describes. They cannot see as much of God in the manipulations of the mechanic as in the operations of the bird or the beaver; nor can a life-boat send their thoughts upward so readily as the shell of a nautilus or the float of a raft-building spider.

The difference is mainly moral. Man is sinful. Many of his works are constructed with sinful motives, and are destined for evil purposes. And the artificer is often a wicked man. We know this, and when we look on man’s works we cannot help remembering this. It is a pure pleasure to watch a hive of bees, but it is not so pleasant to survey a sugar plantation in Brazil, there is a painful thought in knowing how much of their produce will be manufactured into intoxicating liquors. It is pleasant to observe the paper-making of a hymenopterous insect; for it does not swear nor use bad language at its work, and, when finished, its tissues will not be blotted by effusions of impiety and vice; but of this you can seldom be assured in the more splendid manufactures of us lords of the creation. But if this element were guaranteed—if the will of God were done among ourselves even as it is done among the high artificers of heaven and among the humble laborers in earth’s deep places—our feelings should be wholly revolutionized. If of every stately fabric we knew, as we know regarding St. Paul’s, that no profane word had been uttered all the time of its construction; if of every factory we could hope, as of the mills at Lowell, that it is meant to be the reward of good conduct and the gymnasium of intelligence and virtue; if of every fine painting or statue we might believe that, like Michael Angelo’s works, it was commenced in prayer; this suffusion of the moral over the mechanical would sanctify the Arts, and in Devotion’s breast it would kindle the conviction, at once joyful and true, “My Father made them all.”

Still, however, in man’s works, we are bound to distinguish these two things—the mechanical and the moral. When God made man at first, he made him both upright and intelligent; he endowed him with both goodness and genius. In his fall he has lost a large amount of both attributes; but whatever measure of either he retains is still divine. Any dim instincts of devotion, as well as every benevolent affection which lingers in man’s nature are relics of his first estate; and so is any portion of intellectual power which he still possesses. Too often they exist asunder. In our self-entailed economy of defect and disorder, too often are the genius and the goodness divided. Too many of our good men want cleverness, and too many clever men are bad. But, whether consecrated or misdirected, it must not be forgotten that talent, genius, dexterity, are gifts of God, and that all their products, so far as these are innocent or useful, are results of an original inspiration.

It is true that his Creator has not made each individual man an instinctive constructor of railways and palaces, as he has made each beaver a constitutional dyke-builder and each mole a constitutional tunnel-borer. But he has endowed the human race with faculties and tendencies, which, under favoring circumstances, shall eventually develop in railways and palaces as surely as beaver mind has all along developed in dykes, and mole mind worked in tunnels. And just as in carrying out His own great scheme with our species, the Most High has conveyed great moral truths through all sorts of messengers—through a Balaam and a Caiaphas as well as a Daniel and a John;—so, in carrying out His merciful plan, and gradually augmenting our sum of material comfort, the Father of earth’s families has conveyed His gifts through very various channels, sometimes sending into our world a great discovery through a scoffing philosopher, and sometimes through a Christian sage. Be the craftsman what he may; when once we have separated the moral from the mechanical—the sin which is man’s from the skill which is Jehovah’s—in every exquisite product, and more especially in every contribution to human comfort, we ought to recognize as their ultimate origin the wisdom and goodness of God. The arts themselves are His gift; the abuse alone is human. And just as an enlightened Christian looks forth on the landscape, and in its fair features as well as its countless inhabitants beholds mementoes of his Master; so, surveying a beautiful city, its museums and its monuments, its statues and fountains, or sauntering through a gallery of art or useful inventions—in all the symmetry of proportion and splendor of coloring, in every ingenious device and every powerful engine, he may read manifestations of that mind which is “wonderful in counsel and excellent in working;” and, so far as skill and adaptation and elegance are involved, piety will hail the Great Architect himself as the Maker of the Town.

Reason may be regarded as the Instinct of the human race. Like instinct, commonly so called, it has an irresistible tendency toward certain results; and when circumstances favor, these results evolve. But reason is a slow and experimental instinct. It is long before it attains to any optimism. The inferior races are only repeating masterpieces which their ancestor produced in the year of the world One. Man is constantly improving on his models, and there are many inventions on which he has only hit in this 59th century of his existence. Nevertheless, as the oak is in the acorn, so these inventions have from the first been in the instinct of humanity. That is, if you say that its nest was in the mind of the bird, or its cocoon in the mind of the silk-worm as it came from the hand of its Maker, and if you consequently deem it true and devout to recognize in these humble fabrics a trace of the wisdom which moulds the universe; so we say that the Barberini Vase and the Britannia Bridge existed in the mind of our species when first ushered into this earthly abode, and now in the providential progress of events these germs have developed in structures of beauty or grandeur, whilst admiring the human workmanship, it is right and it is comely to adore the original Authorship.

His are the minerals and the metals, the timbers and the vegetable tissues, from which our houses and our ships, our clothing and our furniture, are fabricated. Of these, the variety is amazing, and it plainly indicates that, in the arrangements of this planet, the Creator contemplated not only the necessities but the enjoyments of his intelligent creatures. For instance, there might have been only one or two metals; and the eagerness with which tribes confined to copper, or to gold and silver, grasp at an axe or a butcher’s whittle, shows how rich are the tribes possessing iron. But even that master-metal, with all his capabilities, and aided by his three predecessors, cannot answer every purpose. The chemist requires a crucible which will stand a powerful heat, and which, withal, does not yield to the corroding action of air or water. Gold would answer the latter, and iron the former purpose, well; but every one knows how readily iron rusts and how easily gold melts. But there is another metal—platinum—on which air and water have not the slightest action, and which stands unscathed in the eye of a furnace where iron would run down like wax, and gold would burn like paper. In the same way there are many ends for which none of these metals are available, but which are excellently answered by tin, and lead, and zinc, and rhodium, and mercury. Or will the reader bestow a passing thought on his apparel? His forefathers found one garment sufficient, and for mere protection from the weather a suit of cat-skin or sheep-skin might still suffice. But, oh reader! what a romance is your toilette! and should all the rest of you be prose, what a poem you become when you put on your attire! That snowy lawn once blossomed on the banks of the Don or the Dnieper, and before it shone in a London drawing-room, that broad-cloth comforted its rightful owner amidst the snows of the Cheviots. Did these boots really speak for themselves, you would find that the upper leathers belonged to a goat, and the soles to a horse or a cow. And could such metamorphic retributions happen now as in the days of Ovid, the best way to punish the pride of an exquisite would be to let every creature come and recover his own. A worm would get his satin cravat, and a pearl oyster his studs; and if no fabulous beaver laid claim to his hat, the rats of Paris or the kittens of Worcester would assuredly run off with his gloves. But viewed in a graver and truer light, it is marvellous from how many sources we derive the several ingredients in the simplest clothing, many of them essential to health, and most of them conducive to our well-being; so that we need not go to the crowded mart or the groaning wharf in order to convince ourselves of earth’s opulent resources. Few will read these pages who have not the evidence at home. Open that cupboard, unlock that wardrobe, look round the chamber where you are seated, and think a little of all the kingdoms of Nature and all the regions of the globe from which their contents have been collected, and say if the Framer of this world is not a bountiful Provider. “O Lord, how manifold are thy works! The earth is full of thy riches; so is this great and wide sea.”

The Supreme Governor has so ordered it, that the progress of the arts—that is, of human comfort and accommodation—shall be nearly in proportion to human industry, sobriety, and peacefulness. The last thirty years have been fraught with inventions, chiefly because they have been years of peace. In England, however, the reign of Charles II. was tolerably tranquil; but, except for the accident of Newton and the Royal Society, its peace was the parent of few discoveries, for it was a peace which had converted the noise of the warrior, not into the quiet of the artisan, but into the din of the drunken debauchee. Such honor does the Most High put upon peaceful activity and sober perseverance, that wherever these exist economic comfort is sure to follow. Thus, without uncommon intellectuality, and with a false religion, the Chinese anticipated many of the arts of modern Europe. Whilst Christendom, so called, was divided betwixt lazy monks and a brutal soldiery—whilst mediæval churchmen were droning masses, and feudal barons amused themselves in knocking out each other’s brains—the Chinese, neither fierce nor indolent, were spinning silk and manufacturing porcelain, compiling almanacs, and sinking Artesian wells. And long before any Friar Schwartz, or Gutenberg, or Flavio di Gioia, had revealed them to the Western World, the pacific and painstaking Chinese were favored with prelibations of our vaunted discoveries—gunpowder, book-printing, and the mariner’s compass.

We have compared our world to a well-furnished dwelling, in which, however, many of the treasures are locked up, and it is left to patience and ingenuity to open the several doors. Caoutchouc and gutta percha have always been elastic and extensible; but it is only of late that their properties have been ascertained and turned to profitable account. The cinchonas had grown for five thousand years in Peru before the Jesuit missionaries discovered the tonic influence which the bark exerts on the human system. Steam was always capable of condensation, so as to leave in its place a vacuum; but it is only a century and a half since it struck the Marquis of Worcester to employ this circumstance as a motive power. And ever since our earthly ball was fashioned, electricity has been able to sweep round it at the rate of ten times each second, though it is only within the last few years that Professor Wheatstone thought of sending tidings on its wings. And doubtless the cabinets still unlocked contain secrets as wonderful and as profitable as these; whilst the language of Providence is, “Be diligent, and be at peace among yourselves, and the doors which have defied the spell of the sorcerer and the battle-axe of the warrior will open to the prayer of harmonious industry.”

So thoroughly provided with all needful commodities is the great house of the world, that, in order to obtain whatever we desiderate, seldom is aught else requisite than a distinct realization of our want and a determined effort to supply it. In working mines, one of the difficulties with which the excavator has to contend is the influx of water. The effort to remedy this evil gave birth to the steam-engine; and, with the relief afforded by the steam-pump, many mines are easily and profitably wrought which otherwise must have long since become mere water-holes. But a worse enemy than water encounters the collier, in the shape of fire-damp, or inflammable gas. Formerly, in quarrying his subterranean gallery, the axe of the unsuspecting pitman would pierce a magazine of this combustible air, and unlike water, there being nothing to bewray its presence, it filled the galleries with its invisible serpent-coils; and it was not till a candle approached that it revealed itself in a shattering explosion, and a wretched multitude lay burning and bleeding along its track—a fearful hecatomb to this fiery dragon. What was to be done? Were the blast furnaces of Wales and Wolverhampton to be extinguished, and were household fires to go out? Or, for the sake of a blazing ingle and good cutlery, were brave men still to be sacrificed to this Moloch of the mine? The question was put to Science, and Science set to work to solve it. Many good expedients were suggested, but the most ingenious was in practice the simplest and safest. It was ascertained that a red heat, if unaccompanied by flame, will not ignite the fire-damp; and it was also known, that the most powerful flame will not pass through wire-gauze, if the openings are sufficiently small. A lamp or a candle might, therefore, be put into a lantern of this gauze, and then plunged into an atmosphere of inflammable air; and whilst the flame inside the lantern gave light enough to guide the laborer, none of that flame could come through to act as a match of mischief. And now, like a diver in his pneumatic helmet, the miner, with his “Davy,” can traverse in security, the depths of an inflammable ocean.

So plentiful is the provision for our wants, that little more is needed than a distinct statement in order to secure a supply. During his long contest with England, and when both the ocean and the sugar-growing islands were in the power of his enemy, Napoleon said to his savans, “Make sugar for the French out of something which grows in France.” And, like Archimedes with the tyrant’s crown, they set to work on the problem. They knew that sugar is not confined to the Indian cane. They knew that it can be obtained from many things—from maple, and parsnips, and rags; but the difficulty was to obtain it in sufficient quantities, and by an inexpensive process. However, knowing the compartment in which the treasure was concealed, they soon found the key; and it was not long till beet-root sugar was manufactured in thousands of tons, nearly as good, though not nearly so cheap, as the produce of England’s colonies. A few years ago the British Foreign Office had a dispute with the Neapolitan Government. The best sulphur is found in Sicily, and from that island Great Britain imports for its own manufactures about 20,000 tons a year. On the occasion referred to, the Neapolitan Government was about to complete an arrangement which would have enormously enhanced the price of this important commodity. Some wished that England should make it a casus belli, and send her ships of war to fetch away the brimstone by force. But the chemists of England took the quarrel into their own hands; and, had not the King of Naples yielded, doubtless we should now have been supplied with sulphur from sources at command but yet undeveloped.

A modification of the same problem is constantly occurring to practical science, and its almost uniform solution shows that our world has been arranged with a benevolent eye to the growing comfort of the greater number. Science is perpetually importuned to cheapen commodities; and by substituting a simple method for an intricate process, or by making a common material fulfill the part of a rare one, it is every year giving presents to the poor. Few substances are more essential to our daily comfort than soda. It is a large constituent of glass and soap, and many other useful articles. The cleanliness of a nation depends on the cheapness of soda; and if soda is cheap, you can substitute plate-glass for crown in your windows, and you can adorn your apartments with glazed pictures and mirrors. So that from the bleacher who spends thousands-a-year on the carbonate, to the apprentice who in the dog-days lays out a penny on ginger-beer or soda-water, all are interested in the cheapness of soda. But this alkali used to be dear. Small quantities were found native, and larger supplies were obtained from the burning of sea-weed. Still the cost was considerable. However, it was well known that a vast magazine of the precious article surrounds us on every side. The sea is water changed to brine by a salt of soda. If only a plan could be contrived for separating this soda from the hydro-chloric acid, which makes it common salt, there is at our doors a depot large enough to form a Mont Blanc of pure soda. That plan was discovered; and now a laundress buys a pound of soda (the carbonate) for three half-pence, and the baker of unfermented bread can procure the more costly bicarbonate for sixpence.

Lately, if not still, in the shops of provincial apothecaries, no article was in such demand as one styled in the Pharmacopœia, muriate of magnesia. This popular medicine was first obtained by evaporation from certain mineral waters, and as the supply was limited the price was high. But few ingredients could be cheaper than the earth and the acid from which it is combined. The earth forms whole mountains, and the acid is that cheap one set free when the soda is separated from common salt. Accordingly, chemists went to work, and in their laboratories did what the mineral spring had been doing since the Deluge, and by a simple process they manufactured the muriate of magnesia. A few years ago, looking at the remarkable rocks of magnesian limestone which defend the Durham coast, near Shields, our companion remarked, “Many a hundred tons of these rocks have we converted into Epsom salts!”

“Waste not, want not.” An adage which received a touching sanction when, after a miraculous feast, and when He could have converted the whole region into bread, the Saviour said, “Gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost.” And in the progress of discovery, God is constantly teaching us not to waste anything, for this is a world of which nothing need be lost. At the woollen factories of Rheims there used to accumulate a refuse, which “it cost something to throw away.” This was the soap-water containing the fatty matters washed from the woollen stuffs, along with some soda and other ingredients. With its offensive scum this soap-water was a nuisance, and required to be put out of the way with all convenient speed. But now, from one portion of it gas is manufactured, sufficient to supply all the works, and the remainder yields a useful soap.^[8] In the same way, when Lord Kaims found himself proprietor of an extensive peat-moss in the neighborhood of Stirling, with characteristic energy he commenced its improvement. On digging through the moss, he came to a rich alluvial soil; so that to his sanguine imagination, fifteen hundred acres, at whose barrenness his neighbors laughed, were a splendid estate, covered over meanwhile by a carpet seven feet thick. To lift this carpet was the puzzle: for every acre of it weighed some hundred tons. But “the mother of invention” is the near kinswoman of most Highland lairds, and “necessity” suggested a plan to Lord Kaims: a plan which must have approved itself to the mind of a judge, for, by a sort of retributive process, it forced the element which had done the damage to undo it again. By a hydraulic contrivance, a powerful current of water was made to traverse the moss and carry off the loosened fragments, till they reached the river Forth, and were finally floated into the German Ocean. And now “a waste,” which last century was the haunt of the curlew, is covered with heavy crops, and yields its proprietor a revenue of two or three thousand pounds a year. But had Lord Kaims foreseen Mr. Reece’s researches into the composition and capabilities of “bog-earth,” he would, perhaps, have hesitated before he consigned such a treasure to the deep. At this moment we are writing by the light of a candle which last year was a peat! And, however opinion may differ as to the probable expense of the process, there can be no doubt that peat yields in large quantities the ammonia which is so largely used by farmers; the acetic and pyroligneous acids, extensively employed by calico-printers, hatters, etc.; and, along with naptha, a fatty substance capable of being converted into beautiful candles; so that Mr. Owen’s benevolent calculation will, doubtless, sooner or later be fulfilled, and “Irish moss” become a cure for Irish misery.^[9] It is pleasant to know that on every side we are surrounded with mines of unexamined wealth. Some of the old workings may be exhausted; but if we be only devout and diligent new veins will open. Forty years ago, so much oil was required for lighting the streets of cities as well as for private dwellings, that fears began to be entertained lest the great oil-flask of the Northern Ocean might run dry, and the whale family be extirpated. That fear was superseded when, in 1812, gas illumination was introduced.

“The best of things is water.” So sang a very ancient Greek; and of all the fragments preserved in Aristotle’s “Rhetoric,” hydropathy and teetotalism have assigned the palm to this old water-poem. Not so our ship-owners. To them the sorest of problems and the saddest of expenses is water. Soup can be inspissated into osmazome, and meat can be squeezed into pemican; but water is not compressible, and it is rather provoking to see the space available for stowage occupied by tanks and barrels of this cheap element. Many expedients have been suggested, and some have partially succeeded. But since we began to write this paper, our attention has been called to a beautiful contrivance which promises to conquer every difficulty. By means of Mr. Grant’s Distilling Galley,^[10] the brine may be pumped up from the ocean, and, after cooking the mess of the largest ship’s company, it may be collected in the form of the purest fresh water, to the extent of some hundred gallons each day. Nor is it only a vast saving of room which is effected by this beautiful expedient. It is a saving of time. Frequently ships are compelled to leave the straight route, and sometimes lose a favoring wind, in quest of water. But a ship provided with this apparatus is as independent as if she were sailing over a fresh water lake; and, instead of putting into port, she has only to resort to the never-failing pump. And we may add that it is not only space and time which are saved, but the health of the crew and the passengers. With every precaution cistern-water is apt to spoil, and in the Indian Seas and other regions the water obtained on shore is apt to occasion disease. But the produce of this engine is always as pure as the rain which falls from the clouds.

When Pythagoras demonstrated the geometrical proposition, that in a rectangular triangle the sum of the two lateral squares is equal to the square of the hypotenuse, he is said to have offered the sacrifice of a hundred oxen. In modern art we fear that there are many discoveries for which the thank-offering has not yet been rendered.

Both the reader and the writer are deeply indebted to that gracious Providence which has cast our lot in the most favored of all times. Chiefly through the progress of the Arts, the average of existence has been lengthened many years, and into these years it is possible to concentrate an amount of literary acquisition, and moral achievement, and intellectual enjoyment, for which Methuselah himself had not leisure. For lives thus lengthened let us show our gratitude by living to good purpose; and, remembering that railways and telegraphs and steam-printed books are the good gifts of God, let the age which enjoys them be also the age of holiest obedience and largest benevolence.