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998 THE LEADER. [Saturday,
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LATHAM'S ETHNOLOGY. The Ethnology of Eur...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Palissy The Pottee. The Life Ef Bernard ...
hours missing painfully the consolation ' of his wife ; but he retired to have his own discussion in himself , to ascertain in peace what was his present duty . We have alread y seen enough of Bernard Palissy to know that he is not likely to bow his head and own that he is vanquished by the most imperious of difficulties . After experiencing this last severe rebuff , Palissy withdrew into his chamber ; and there , he says , ' when I had remained some time upon the bed , and had considered within myself ' that if a man should fall into a pit , his duty would be to endeavour to get out again '—a very simple rule , which all men have not strength enough to follow ; tbcy often die while they are waiting to be pulled out— ' 1 / Palissy adds , ' being in like case , set myself to make some paintings , and in various ways I took pains to recover a little money . '
" That is to say , he tranquilly abandoned his experiments , while he devoted himself for a short time wholly to the repair of his household fortunes . People thought him a good painter , and as he had by no means glutted his market lately in that character , he probably found it not difficult to sell the sketches that he made . About their price he was not at all proud or particular . He drew from naturte with minute accuracy , and was versed in the common details of a painter ' s art ; but his genius had dwelt upon the works of masters , and he thought , therefore , but little of his own . ' People / he said , ' thought him a better painter than he was . ' " Having paid just attention to these things , and with , perhaps , about a year ' s toil having "" revived some of the gloss on his establishment , and earned a little money in reserve , Palissy was at leisure to resume his enterprise . ' I said within myself , that my losses and hazards were all past , and there was no longer anything to hinder me from making good pieces ; and I betook myself ( as before ) to labour
in the same art . Does one not seein to be reading Balzac's touching romance , La Becherche de VAbsolu ? But the romance is all truth here : — " Great strength of body must have enabled Palissy to endure , in addition to privation and distress , the intense -toil to which he subjected himself in the prosecution of his struggles . But his physical frame bore strong marks of the contest . ' I was for the space of ten years , ' he says , ' so wasted in my person , that there was no form nor prominence of muscle on my arms or legs ; also , the said legs were
throughout of one size , so that the garters with which I tied my stockings , were at once , when I walked , clown upon my heels , with the stockings too . I often walked about the fields of Xaintes considering my miseries and weariness , and , above all things , that in my own house I could have no peace , nor do anything that was considered good . I was despised and mocked by all . ' More than once breaks out this yearning for domestic love , so simply , with so quaint a patho ^ that we sometimes half wonder how a man so loveable could be denied the consolation of domestic sympathy . But it is nothing strange ; it would have been , more strange had he been mated with a wife as capable as he himself was of endurance .
" She was afflicted with more grief than I have named ; her family was large , but death had removed six of her children . In one of his treatises , speaking of wormwood , Palissy says , ' before I knew the value of the said herb , the worms caused me the death of six children , as we discovered both by having caused their bodies to be opened , anc . by their frequently passing from the mouth , and when they were near death , the worms passed also by the nostrils . The districts of Xaintonge , Gascony , Agen Quercy , and the parts towards Toulouse are very subject to the said worms . ' " It is very characteristic that Palissy should not have rested satisfied until he had assured himself , by causing a post mortem inspection , of the reason of his children ' s death . These deaths concern us now as representing to Bernard and his wife an additional large source of pain ; the wife might well be dulled in spirit , might easily be broken down into a scold , by poverty and sorrow .
" Just now I spoke of the dilapidated outhouse in which the furnaces of Palissy were built . It was , of course , absolutely necessary for the success of his work that his furnaces should be protected from the wind and rain ; but to got such protection was not by any menus an easy matter . Since there could be no space for a furnace in any room of a small suburban hou . se , Palissy had to make not only a furnace but a shed ; and the amateur roofing of a man who had no money to buy materials , was of a character extremely trying to the temper of hi . s wife . At first lie borrowed laths and tiles—his clumsy work soon fell into decay ; the wind and rain . spoilt more tlmn half of it ; protection was essential , means of getting it in any usual way did not exist , and I ' alissy was glad to patch his shod in a rude manner with green boughs and sticks , until he could afford a little money upon more effectual contrivances . These shiftingK and changes , of course , fell under the
judgment of the entire population of judicious neighbours . In a provincial town , wifli about ten thousand inhabitants , every man is plagued-with officious neighbours to the number of nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine . Then , — when the holes in his outhouse , on a rainy , windy night , were letting in such blasts an promised the destruction of some eontly work , — Palksy did not comfort hi . s wife greatly by awakening her with the noise he made in wrenching oil" perhaps her bedroom door ; which , for want of other material , he was obliged to use , at one of his critical moments , for the patching of bin ruinous outbuilding . The wife had not enough philosophy to feel that door . s , and tables , and house-nails , were such accidents of life as could be parted with for the attainment of an object intellectually high ; an object , even in a worldly sense , worth many dooiK , and nails , and tables . Every day she went out telling new distresses to her neighbours in
tin ; town ; and every night when 1 missy came up to bed , perhaps arousing her long after midnight ' , cold , wet through , and stupid with work , she adiuiinHtered to him the wholesome cordial of a curtniii-lccture . We will let Paliasy state bin own cane in the matter , and then let women of Kngland judge whether they would not , to a woman , have resented his behaviour . " ' I had another afllidion , allied with the before named , which was , that the heat , the cold , the winds , and rains , and droppings , spoilt the largest portion of my work before I baked it ; so that 1 was obliged to borrow carpentry , laths , tiles , and nails to make shift with . Then , very often having nothing wherewith to
build , I wan obliged to make shift with green houghs and sticks . Then again , when ' my means augmented , I undid what I had done , and built a little better ; which caused some artisans , as hosiery shoemakers , sergeants , and notaries , a knot of old women—all those , without regarding that my art could not ho exercised without much space , siiifl that I did nothing but bo ^ le , mid blamed me for that which should have touched their pity , since 1 was forced to use things neeensary for my house to build the conveniences which my art required ; and , what is worse , the incitement to the said mockeries proceeded from those of my own house , who would have had me work without app liances—a thing more than unreasonable . Then , the more the matter wits unrouaoimble , the more extreme wu » my
affliction . I have been for several years , when , without the means of covering my furnaces , I was every night at the mency of the rain and winds , without receiving any help , aid , or consolation , except from the owls that screeched on one side , and . the dogs that howled upon , the other ; sometimes there would arise winds and storms , which blew in such a manner up and down my furnaces , that I was constrained to quit the whole with loss of my labour , and several times have found that , having quitted all , and having nothing dry upon me because of the rains which had fallen , I would go to bed at midnight , or near dawn , dressed like a man who has been dragged through all the puddles in the town , and turning thus to retire , I would walk rolling , without a candle , falling to one side and the other like a man drunk with wine , filled with great sorrows , inasmuch as , having laboured long , I saw my labour wasted ; then , retiring in this manner , soiled an £ drenched , I have found in my chamber a second persecution worse than the first , which causes me to marvel now that T was not consumed with suffering . ' " Worse than wind and rain , and ruin , was the want of a wife ' s sympathy in those
hours of fatigue and suffering ; but I should like to hear of any British matron who is shocked at the behaviour of the wife of Palissy . She had not her husband's courage for a journey among thorns ; and truly , there are few men who , for any object , would have courage to go far through such a thicket as that from which we now discover Palissy at length emerging . " It occupied him for fifteen or sixteen years to teach himself by his own genius , without aid from without , the full perfection he attained in the moulding and enamelling of ornamental pottery . During the last eight of these , however , —more especially during the last six , —he produced many things in his vocation as a potter which enabled him to keep his family in tolerable comfort . At the tenth year he might have stopped and rested comfortably on his profitable knowled ge , but Pah ' ssy never did stop , he never did account himself to have attained an end ; to the eye of his genius there lay always before every range of thought a long vista of almost infinite improvement . "
When our interest ceases in the struggling discoverer , it is replaced by interest in the conscientious Huguenot , and the delightful writer . Palissy , as one of the earliest of French prose writers , deserves study . His dialogues have a peculiar charm , and not the least interesting portion of these volumes is the ample appendix in which some of Palissy ' s writings are translated .
998 The Leader. [Saturday,
998 THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,
Latham's Ethnology. The Ethnology Of Eur...
LATHAM'S ETHNOLOGY . The Ethnology of Europe . By E . G . Latham , M . D . Van Voorst . The Ethnology of the British ' islands . By R . G . Latham , M . D . Van Voorst . De . Latham is indefatigable as an ethnologist , and his works have the advantage of a very distinct purpose , aided by a clear and rapid style . On the intricate and extensive ethnological questions Dr . Latham raises , we are not competent to offer an opinion ; and although that is a disqualification which seldom disturbs the confidence of a Keviewer , who , ex officio , is assumed to he competent to settle all points , it is to us a very serious reason for declining to give any verdict whatever . Our task must be one of description only . ,,.. ¦ , Latham sets forth
In the two pocket volumes just published , Dr . briefly , yet intelligibly , the leading characters of European Ethnology ; and , in a more specific form , the characters of British Ethnology , lhe isolation of Europe , for the sake of considering its specific characteristics , is justifiable on other grounds besides those of convenience . Races are dependent on physical conditions . Whichever hypothesis we adopt , we must admit so much . And Europe is characterised by certain peculiar conditions , among which Dr . Latham , in the following suggestive survey , indicates tho principal : — " Amongst its positivo features , the most remarkable are connected with its mountain-ranges , the extent of its sea-board , and the direction of its rivers . " a . In no country are the great levels more broken by mountains , or the great mountains more in contiguity to considerable tracts of level country . The effect of this is to give the different characters of the Mountaineer and the Lovvlander
more opportunity of acting and reacting on each other . " b . In no country are tho coasts more indented . We may look in vain for such a sea-board as that of Greece , elsewhere . The effect of this is to give tho different characters of the sailor and landsman , the producer and the trader , nioro opportunity of acting and reacting on each other . " c . Its greatest rivers full into seas navigable throughout the year . Contrast with this the great river * of Asia , tho Obi , the Lena , the Yenesey , and others , which for the purposes of navigation are useless ; falling , as they do , into an Arctic
U / 1 ' } "d . Our greatest river , the Danube , runs from east to west , This ensures a homogeneous character for the population along its bunks . Contrast , with tins tlio Nile , the Mississippi , and the Yenesey , in all of which the simple etlect of clmmio creates a difference between the populations of the source and tho embouchure . The grout rivers of China do the same as the Danube ; but the Danube diflers irom them , and from all other rivers running in a like direction , in emptying itself in -o an inland sea ; a . sea which gives the opportunity of communication not only « 'i ¦» the parts north and south of the rivers which fall into if , but with those ) to tno east of it alsoThe llonng-ho and Kiang-ku empty themselves into an ocean ,
. that , in these days of steam communication , leads to America , but which m ¦ infancy of the world led to u coasting trade only , or , at most , to a large Islam . Japan . The Hulfic and Mediterranean act , to a , curtain degree , in the same » ' »» - ner . The ono law Africa , the other Scandinavia , to insure its being put to i uses of trade . , , " In no part of tho world do the differences between the varieties oi the lnm «" mpecies lie within narrower limits than in Kurope . Tim most extreme "P !*""' ^ to the doctrine of the unify of our kind have never made many hjk-cios out . <> Kuropoan specimens of the -enu . s Jlomo . And these aro by no " «« ' ""» ol
most , satisfactory sort ; . ., i ...., " They are unsatisfactory for the following reasons . The differences tin i inf erred Yrom dissimilarity of lan ^ ua ^ e , are neutralized by an undoubted sum -J of physical form . Tho diHsimilarities that , are inferred from peculiarities < " ' / ^ Hical form are neutralized by undeniable affinities of speech . Looking to j" ^ and colour , the Laplander in far , very far , removed from < ho I ' m . 1 «» 1 . ' iniages belong to one and ( bo same class . Looking <<> their foi . tfiios , He i 1 of the Pyrenees , and tho Kkipctar ( or Albanian of Albania ) are « u * h iHolated I « lutioiiB . Yet their form is but slightly different from tluwo of tho other Luropcai -
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 16, 1852, page 18, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_16101852/page/18/
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