who through all discouragements believe in the essential equality of men, this inflexible and unmanageable fact of death ought to prove reassuring as it does, no doubt. But in the very face of the great law,-aqua lege necessitas,-your aristocratic moralist is by no means silenced. The poor, he tells you, do not feel the blow as the rich do,— like cattle or sheep they graze away with perfect unconcern when a brother or sister is taken to the shambles. This attempt to carry flunkeyism (immortal Jeames!) into the next world, is just a little too bad. Surely the old anguish,

O God! to clasp those fingers close,
And yet to feel so lonely;
To see a light on dearest brows,

Which is the daylight only, smites even their empty hearts bitterly. But it may readily enough be granted that death is brought home to the poor after a different fashion than to the rich; though which is the wiser or better experience, may admit of some discussion. Men who earn their bread with the sweat of their brow have little time for the expression of sorrow. There is no leisure for the luxury of woe when hunger is watching at the door. A child in the village is taken ill it grows hourly worse and weaker; the neighbours gather into the house, and discourse with the parents around the dying boy; and there they wait, and talk, and wait, and before the discourse is ended the poor child's pain is over. Then next morning there is a plain coffin got (it has been ordered over-night); the friends drop in during the forenoon to take a look at the little fellow, laid out in his clean linen; in the afternoon he is iaid in the kirk-yard,' and the place that knew him knows him no more. Death is thus brought nearer-dealt with as a commoner thing; not treated with the elaborate and fastidious deference which shuts it up by itself, and associates the chamber of the dead with a peculiar and mysterious trouble.

I went to the funeral of a fisherboy the other day-a poor halfwitted lad, who had died in what they called a 'fit' the night before. The father's was the silent and sturdy grief of the man, but the

mother's was loud and querulous. At one moment she could not restrain her convulsive sobs, and her pitiful complaint, Little did I think to see ye leave the house afore me! rung through the cottage; and the next, with that rare power of abstraction which the poor, happily for themselves, possess, she was carefully superintending the homely details and vulgar duties which the ceremony necessitates. Then the guests are taken into the little chamber, with its decent muslin curtain darkening the light, to look at the dead boy. His face is wonderfully transformed; the habitual look of puzzled difficulty and frightened anxiety replaced by one of content and calm, profoundly expressive of rest, as though the uneasy troubles of his brain were now well solved. What a dignity death gives! how a great pain ennobles! This ignorant, half-witted fellow, who yesterday was so proud of, and grateful for, any token of recognition, now bears quite a different relation. He has acquired an experience of which the wisest of us are ignorant, and endured a struggle which to our imagination is more solemn than any other. It is this-this consciousness that they have borne the hardest conflict and suffered the sternest sorrow of our human life—which gives that sense of power and superiority even to the ignoble dead.

Yet not ignoble, for there is nothing mean about death. You cannot by any dearth of circumstance make it ludicrous or grotesque. It separates the rich man from his possessions-præter invisas cupressus, and the poor man from the filth and meanness of his poverty. Pale, worn with the conflict, the shadow of the dark trouble lying upon the weary eyelids, no trickery or false taste can take away the tragic element from these. Perhaps the worst taste in the world is exhibited at Père-la-Chaise; but go there yourself, and see whether you are disposed to laugh. There is, for example, over this tomb, a great muster of funereal display: a wooden cross, wax tapers, little vases with flowers, a gilt angel in plaster of Paris, not by any means choicely selected, and very crowded,

1856.]

591

beauty of the fact. So that perhaps there is considerable reason and propriety in the vulgar Scotch custom of showing the dead frankly, and even sometimes, it may be, with a certain pride. At least, there can be no doubt, I should fancy, that it is more rational than the practice of society, which, by determining not to recognise the fact at all, gives death when it does come-and even in polite circles the last act of the play must not be omitted- a novel and fictitious terror.

-

SHIRLEY.

THE

HE over-population' theory, so popular at the beginning of this century, has been falling fast into disrepute. That start.ing dogma of the science du néant which used of old so magisterially to inform the human race that it was on the whole a failure, because the number of human beings had always a tendency to increase faster than the means of subsistence,' is now becoming, not merely questionable, but ludicrous. Started, so wicked wags affirm, by a few old bachelors, who, having no children themselves, bore a grudge against their 'recklessly-multiplying' neighbours for having any-it was suspected from the first on moral grounds; and may be now considered as fairly abolished on scientific ones. The moral philosopher answered to it, that it was impossible that the universe could be one grand mistake; human nature a disease; and the Creator of mankind one who reverence forbids us to say what we should have a right to say of Him, were that theory a true one. The student of humanity asked, 'Is it possible that the family life, which is the appointed method of educating the highest and holiest feelings of man, should be at the same time the normal cause of his final poverty and starvation? Leave such inhuman dreams to monks and faquirs.'

but

The scientific agriculturist doubted the truth of the dogma more and more as his science revealed to him that the limit of productiveness, even upon old soils, had been nowhere reached. The sanitary reformer put in as a demurrer the important fact, that under proper arrangements that limit could never be reached; for as each human being (so he asserted) returned to the soil, the whole elements of the food which he consumed, saving those which already existed in boundless abundance in the atmosphere, the productiveness of the soil ought to increase in exact ratio to the number of human beings concentrated on it. From these broad facts, the advocates of the science du néant took refuge in arguments about the cost of production. More skilful farming, more complete sewage, might certainly enable the land to support greater numbers; but not to do so profitably. The increased expense of the processes would interfere with the general rapid production of wealth. Here perhaps they had, on the whole, the best of the argument; and if it were any pleasure to them to prove the impotency of humanity, they must have enjoyed that lofty gratification awhile. One would have thought, certainly, that the business of the philosopher who desired the good of

his fellow-creatures, was rather to show them what they could do, than what they could not; to preach progress, rather than the stationary state,' and hope, rather than despair; to bend his mind, like a practical man, to the ascertaining by experiment what could be done towards increasing the sustenance of the peoples, instead of sending forth from his remote study, idola specús, abstract maxims which only strengthened the dogged laziness which refused to till the land, and the dogged ignorance which refused either to use or let others use the refuse of the towns, though it was poisoning hundreds yearly by epidemics. But the science du néant took little account of such plain matters; after all, why help to support more human beings, when it had settled long ago that there were too many already? Why even stop epidemics, which might be only nature's wholesome method of ridding herself of that plethora of rational beings-'Children of God'-as the obsolete traditions of an obscure Semitic tribe (so men talked) called them-with which she was periodically embarrassed. So the agriculturist and the sanitary reformer had to fight on, and on the whole, conquer, with little or no help from that science which arrogated to itself the knowledge of the laws of wealth.

Meanwhile stood by, laughing bitterly enough, the really practical men, such men as the author of the book now before us: the travellers, the geographers, the experimental men of science, who took the trouble, before deciding on what could be, to find out what was; and, as it were, took stock' of the earth and her capabilities, before dogmatizing on the future fate of her inhabitants. And, What?' they asked in blank astonishment, 'what, in the name of maps and common sense, means this loud squabble? What right has any one to dogmatize on the future of humanity, while the far greater part of the globe is yet unredeemed from the wild beast and the wild hunter? If scientific agriculture be too costly, is there not room enough on the earth for as much unscientific and cheap tillage as would support many times over her present population?

What matters it, save as a question of temporary makeshift, whether England can be made to give thirtythree bushels of wheat per acre instead of thirty-one, by some questionably-remunerative outlay of capital, while the Texan squatter, without any capital save his own two hands, is growing eighty bushels an acre? Your disquisitions about the margin of productiveness' aré interesting, curious, probably correct valuable in old countries: but nowhere else. For is the question, whether men shall live, or even be born at all, to be settled by them, forsooth, while the valley of the Ottawa can grow corn enough to supply all England; the valley of the Mississippi for all Europe; while Australia is a forest, instead of being, as it will be one day, the vineyard of the world? While New Zealand and the Falklands are still waste; and Polynesia, which may become the Greece of the New World, is worse than waste? While the Nebraska alone is capable of supporting a population equal to France and Spain together? While, in the Old World, Asia Minor, once the garden of old Rome, lies a desert in the foul and lazy hands of the Ottoman ? While the Tropics produce almost spontaneously a hundred valuable articles of food, all but overlooked as yet in the exclusive cultivation of cotton and sugar? And finally (asks Mr. Mansfield in his book), while South America alone contains a territory of some eight hundred miles square, at least equalling Egypt in climate, and surpassing England in fertility; easy of access; provided, by means of its great rivers, with unrivalled natural means of communication, and with water-power enough to turn all the mills in the world;' and needing nothing but men to make it one of the gardens of the world?

His mind, full of such a hope for the future of humanity, and full, too, of scientific knowledge which gave bim especial fitness for estimating the capabilities of a foreign country, Mr. Mansfield went out upon a tour, the only fruit of which is the present book.

He did not live either to form the book into shape, or to carry out the plans at which he hints therein. A

1856.]

premature and most tragic death overtook him in the midst of his scientific labours, and the mass of papers which he left behind passed into the hands of his friends, who are now digesting and arranging them, with a view to publication. These letters, carefully edited, and illustrated by notes and appendices, by an intimate friend of his, have been chosen as the firstfruits of his genius, as being at once the most popular work which he has left, and the one, perhaps, which most illustrates the variety, fulness, and energy of his intellect. A short sketch of his life, by the Rev. Charles Kingsley, has been appended by the editor to his preface; but the best evidence of what manner of man he was, is to be found in the Letters themselves.

They are nothing more than letters, though worthy of a man of single heart and open eye; and so complete and full in themselves that the editor must have found little difficulty in forming them into an organic whole. With a reverence for the dead, which will be at once understood and honoured, he has refrained, perhaps here and there too scrupulously, from altering a single word of the documents as he found them, respecting even certain scraps of Cambridge and Winchester slang, which may possibly offend that class of readers who fancy that the sign of magnanimity is to take everything au grand sérieux, and that the world's work must needs be done upon stilts: but which will be, perhaps, to the more thoughtful reader only additional notes of power, of that true English Lebens Gluckseligkeit,' as the German calls it, which makes a jest of danger, and an amusement of toil. Jean Paul makes somewhere the startling assertion, that no man really believes his religious creed unless he can afford to jest about it. Without going so far as that, we will say boldly, that no man feels himself master of his work, unless

593

he can afford to jest about it; and that a frolicsome habit of mind is rather a token of deep, genial, and superabundant vitality, than of a shallow and narrow nature, which, can only be earnest and attentive' by conscious and serious efforts.

However, the best apology for the form in which this book appears is to be found in the editor's own words.

Let none forget that this work is a posthumous one; put together out of letters written with all the careless familiarity of one who is addressing his nearest kindred, and his most intimate friends, Materials homespun for home use,' to quote some happy words respecting them. Had the writer lived to shape out these materials, who knows how much he might have suppressed,* how much added, how much re-written? Those only who have had in hand his graver works (such as that on the Constitution of Salts, now in the press) can tell with what scrupulous, almost painful, care he was wont to elaborate the finished expression of his thoughts.

And the task of editing a posthumous work, unchosen moreover by the dead, differs greatly from that of the chosen editor of a work by a living writer. The latter stands on the author's own footing, and may well deem himself bound to alter or omit whatever might be excepted to. The former should rather seek to preserve all that is capable of being defended; all that the writer might really have wished outspoken. What might have been his last word we know not. We only know that this was his first; and most especially is one called on to be diffident in altering the writings of one like Charles Mansfield, in whom so many rare and loveable gifts were so strangely blended, that though one may meet his equal, none who knew him will ever expect to meet in this world his like.

This is sound argument, and (save in the case which we have mentioned in a note) we fully concur in it, and take gladly (since it is impossible now to have more) this fragmentary relic of the observations of a true genius, upon countries too rarely visited by men of science or insight.

From Mr. Mansfield's first landing in the Tropics (one might say from his first sight of Lisbon) the fact which seems to have weighed upon his mind was that of waste; palpable, inexcusable, boundless waste; waste springing from idleness and ignorance, and punished by poverty and disease. Can one wonder if the cholera should sweep away thousands in Lisbon, while dead dogs' are lying about the small streets; or if the population there should increase faster than the means of subsistence, while live dogs are asleep in the middle of the streets anywhere? A striking symptom of the inactivity and lifelessness of the town.'

.

So, too, at Pernambuco. Can one wonder at the recurrence of yellow fever, while there is not a drain of any sort, and all imaginable filth lies in the streets;' or that the resources of the country should be altogether undeveloped, while the roads (of one of which Mr. Mansfield gives a sketch) are deep ditches, 'from which a rider can just see, perhaps, over the top of the road,' worked out by the feet of the pack-horses into transverse ridges and furrows of stiff clay, and mud and water, in which many a horse has been abandoned as inextricable? While roads are left in this state, with a boundless supply of timber close at hand (supposing that stone be too far off) to make a sound metal,' who can tell anything of the real resources of the country? Who can tell how much its population might or might not be profitably increased ? Mr. Mansfield's opinion seems to be that its capabilities are boundless. What a paradise is, or at least might be, this country, if it were possessed by the English! I do not feel at all sure that I am not dead, and have not recommenced another life. I should be pretty certain that I was not in the earth world, but in some other planet, if I had had a sound sleep lately to cut the thread of consciousness.' And again: 'What a contrast here!' (compared with St. Vincent's, in the Cape Verd Islands). This place is, even in the hands of these wretched undeveloped people, an Eden of beauty. What a Paradise it would be made by Englishmen of this century! What a heaven it will be made by the brother-men

of the age that is to come! I need not pour out my rapturous admiration of the works of the Great Poet-Father, as you have seen such and have worshipped in similar scenes. The beauty is almost bewildering. The glorious cocoa-nut trees, bananas, palms, bread-fruit, and the magnificent green oranges.

I am too giddy to write soberly about any thing. I feel inclined to cut capers under the trees till I am tired, then sigh like a hippopotamus for some one to pour it all out upon, and then lie down and dream. As for studying the botany of the country, it is impossible. impossible. Nothing is possible but to photographize everybody and everything: cameras cannot get giddy with wonder.'

There is a practical element underlying these raptures, merely æsthetic as they may seem at first sight; and Mr. Mansfield notes a most practical want when he says (as all do who know much of the Tropics):

I suppose there is scarcely any one here who values the glorious imagery of the Mighty Poet who made all this. Negroes, Mulattoes, Portuguese, Brazilians, have all pigs' eyes, by virtue, I suppose, of Adam's fall; and the English, for the same reason, are all absorbed in the pursuit of wealth, and so cannot enjoy.

Most practically does this carelessness about the glory which surrounds them affect Tropic civilization-we had almost said, render it impossible. For without the appreciation of beauty, there can be no art; without art, there can be none of that highest civilization among the rich, which will gradually draw up to its own level, humanizing and educating the classes below.

Tropic art' is a thing which the world has yet to see: but when the inspiration shall come, how poor and cold will be all our northern conceptions by the side of the Ra phaels and Turners of the New World! That a Tropic Art' will be developed some day, seems to us a promise written in the book of destiny; for surely, sooner or later, men's minds will be awakened, and more are intended by heaven to be awakened, to see (and as a necessary consequence to reproduce) the beau