Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 - Various
Think of it!--fit enough for St. Augustine and St. Francis, (to
mention no greater names,) fit enough for Taylor and Barrow, for
Bossuet and Fenelon, but not for Mr. Buchanan or Mr. Cushing!
In another place Mr. Choate says, "that even the laughter of fools,
and children, and madmen, little ministers, little editors, and little
politicians, can inflict the mosquito-bite, not deep, but stinging."
As this is one of the best of his sarcasms, we give it the advantage
of the circulation of the "Atlantic,"--generous and tidal circulation,
as he himself might call it. We do not think the mosquito image
new,--if we remember, the editor of the Bungtown Copperhead uses it
weekly against "our pitiful contemporary,"--though the notion of a
mosquito-bite inflicted by a laugh is original with Mr. Choate, unless
Lord Castlereagh may have used it before. But we would seriously ask
Mr. Choate who the big ministers of the country are, if the Beechers,
if Wayland, Park, Bushnell, Cheever, Furness, Parker, Hedge, Bellows,
and Huntington are the little ones?
There is an amusing passage in which Mr. Choate would seem to assume
to himself and those who agree with him the honors of martyrdom. This
shows a wonderful change in public opinion; though the martyrs in the
"Legenda Aurea" and Fox seem to have had a harder time of it than we
supposed to be the case with Mr. Choate.
We have not space to follow him farther, and only the reputation of
the man, and the singularity of the occasion, which gave a kind of
national significance to the affair, would have tempted us to intrude
upon the select privacy of the Young Men's Democratic Association.
Finally, as Mr. Choate appears to have a very mean opinion of the
understandings and the culture of those opposed to him in politics, we
beg to remind him, since he has been led out, like Balaam, to prophesy
against the tents and armies of the Republican Israel, and has ended
by proving their invincibility, that it was an animal in all respects
inferior to a prophet, and in some to a politician, who was first
aware of the presence of the heavenly messenger; and it may be that
persons incapable of a generalization--as that patient creature
undoubtedly was--may see as far into the future as the greatest
philosopher who turns his eyes always to the past.
Footnote 1: We may be allowed to wonder, however, at his speaking of
"memories that burn and revel in the pages of Herodotus,"--a phrase
which does injustice to the simple and quiet style of the delightful
Pepys of Antiquity.
LITERARY NOTICES.
DR. ASA GRAY'S _Botanical Series_, New York, Ivison & Phinney,
consisting of--
I. _How Plants Grow_, etc., _with a Popular Flora,_
etc. 16mo. pp. 233.
II. _First Lessons in Botany and Vegetable Physiology._
8vo. pp. 236.
III. _Introduction to Structural and Systematic Botany and Vegetable
Physiology._ 8vo. pp. 555.
IV. _Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, including
Virginia, Kentucky,_ etc. 8vo. pp. 636.
V. Same as IV., with the _Mosses and Liverworts_ added,
illustrated by Engravings, pp. 739.
VI. Same as IV., with II. bound up with it. pp. 872.
The first-named of these books is a new candidate for public favor;
the others are revised and improved editions of books which have
already been favorably received. We have sometimes thought that the
popularity of a school-book is in inverse proportion to its merits,
and are glad to learn that five editions of Dr. Gray's "Structural and
Systematic Botany" are witnesses against the truth of this assumption.
No man can deny that Dr. Gray's books are all of the highest order of
merit. The accuracy and extent of his scholarship are manifest on
every page,--a scholarship consisting not merely in an extensive
acquaintance with the works of other botanists, but in a careful
confirmation of their results, and in additions to their knowledge, by
an observation of Nature for himself. His clearness of style is an
equally valuable characteristic, making the reader sure that he
understands Dr. Gray, and that Dr. Gray understands the subject. In
the "Manual" this clearness of style extends to the judicious
selection of distinctive marks, whereby allied species may be
distinguished from each other. Even the most difficult genera of
golden-rods, asters, and grasses become intelligible in this manual;
and many a less difficult genus which puzzled our boyhood, with
Beck's, Eaton's, and Pursh's manuals, became so plain in Gray, that we
cannot now imagine where was the difficulty. The extent of the field
which Gray's Manual covers prevents him, of course, from giving
such lifelike descriptions of plants as may be found in Dr.
Bigelow's "Plants of Boston and its Vicinity," or such minute
word-daguerreotypes as those in Mr. Emerson's "Trees of
Massachusetts,"--books which no New England student of botany can
afford to be without; but, on the other hand, the description of each
species, aided by typographical devices of Italics, etc., is
sufficient for any intelligent observer to identify a specimen. The
exquisite engravings, illustrating the genera of Ferns, Hepaticae, and
Mosses, are also a great assistance.
The volume which we have marked III. is the fifth revised edition of
the "Botanical Text-Book." It contains a complete, although concise,
sketch of Structural Botany and Vegetable Physiology, and a birds'-eye
view of the whole vegetable kingdom in its subdivision into families,
illustrated by over thirteen hundred engravings on wood. It has become
a standard of botany, wherever our language is read.
For those who do not wish to pursue the study so far, the "First
Lessons" is one of the most happily arranged and happily written
scientific text-books ever published, and is illustrated by three
hundred and sixty well-executed wood-cuts. This takes scholars of
thirteen or fourteen years of age far enough into the recesses of the
science for them to see its beauties, and to learn the passwords which
shall admit them to all its hidden and inexhaustible treasures. It
goes over substantially the same ground that is covered by the volume
we have marked III., but in simpler language and with much less
detail; and closes with clear practical directions how to collect
specimens and make an herbarium.
The first book is intended for children of ten or twelve years old, at
home or in school. We hail it as a remarkably successful effort of a
truly learned man to write a book actually adapted to young children.
While all teachers, and writers upon education, insist on the
importance of having a child's first impressions such as shall not
need to be afterwards corrected, and such as shall attract the child
towards the study to which it is introduced, our elementary books have
usually sinned in one or both these points. They are either dry and
repulsive, or else vague and incorrect;--frequently have both
faults. But the child is here told "how plants grow" in a very
pleasant manner, with neat and pretty pictures to illustrate the
words, by one whose thorough knowledge and perspicuity of style
prevent him from ever giving a wrong impression. The "Popular Flora"
which is appended, contains a description of about one hundred
families of the most common cultivated and wild plants, and of the
most familiar genera and species in each family. The English names are
in all cases put in the foreground in bold type,--while the Latin
names stand modestly back, half hidden in parentheses and Italics; and
these English names are in general very well selected,--although we
think that when two or three English names are given to one plant, or
one name to several plants, Dr. Gray ought to indicate which name he
prefers. He allows "Dogwood" to stand without rebuke for the poison
sumac, as well as for the flowering cornel; and gives "Winterberry"
and "Black Alder" without comment to _Prinos verticellata_. A
word of preference on his part might do something towards reforming
and simplifying the popular nomenclature, and this child's manual is
the place to utter that word. We think also that in a second edition
of this Popular Flora it would be well to give a _popular_
description of a few of the most beautiful flowers belonging to those
families which are too difficult for the child properly to
analyze. Thus, Arethusa, Cypripedium, Pogonia, Calopogon, Spiranthes,
Festuca, Osmunda, Onoclea, Lycopodium, Polytrichum, Bryum, Marchantia,
Usnea, Parmelia, Cladonia, Agaricus, Chondrus, and perhaps a few other
genera, furnish plants so familiar and so striking that a child will
be sure to inquire concerning them, and a general description could
easily be framed in a few words which could not mislead him concerning
them.
In writing for children, Dr. Gray seems to have put on a new nature,
in which we have a much fuller sympathy with him than we have ever had
in reading his larger books. We do not like that cold English common
sense which seems reluctant to admit any truth in the higher regions
of thought; and we confess, that, until we had read this little
child's book, "How Plants Grow," we had always suspected Dr. Gray of
leaning towards that old error, so finely exposed by Agassiz in
zooelogy, of considering genera, families, etc., as divisions made by
human skill, for human convenience,--instead of as divisions belonging
to the Creator's plan, as yet but partially understood by human
students.
We hope that the appearance of this masterly little book, so finely
adapted to the child's understanding, may have the effect of
introducing botany into the common schools. The natural taste of
children for flowers indicates clearly the propriety and utility of
giving them lessons upon botany in their earliest years. Go into any
of our New England country-schools at this season of the year, and you
will find a bouquet of wild flowers on the teacher's desk. Take it up
and separate it,--show each flower to the school, tell its name, and
its relationship to other and more familiar cultivated flowers, the
characteristic sensible properties of its family, etc.,--and you will
find the younger scholars your most attentive listeners. And if any
practical man ask, What is the use of the younger scholars learning
anything about wild flowers, which the cultivation of the country may
soon render extinct, and which are but weeds at best?--there are two
sufficient answers ready: first, that all truth is divine, and that
the workmanship of infinite skill is beautiful and worthy of the eyes
which may behold it; secondly, that no mental discipline is better
adapted for the young mind than this learning how to distinguish
plants. No more striking deficiency is observable, in most men, than
the lack of a power to observe closely and with accuracy. The general
inaccuracy of testimony, usually ascribed to inaccuracy of memory, is
in fact to be attributed to inaccuracy of observation. In like
manner, a large proportion of popular errors of judgment spring from
an imperfect perception of the data on which the true conclusions
should be founded. The best remedy for this lack of clear perceptions
would evidently be the cultivation of those habits of close
observation and nice discrimination necessary in a successful
naturalist.