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hours missing painfully the consolation of his wife ; hut he retired to have his own discussion in himself , to ascertain in peace what was his present duty . Wo have already seen enough of Bernard Palissy to know that he is not likely to how 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 myseif , 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 ; they often die while they are waiting to be pulled out—' ' 1 / Palissy adds , ' being in like ease , 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 liim 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 nature 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 seem to be reading Balzac's touching romance , La RecJterche de VAbsolu ? J 3 ut tlie 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 , down 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 pathos , that we sometimes half wonder how a man soloveable 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 lie 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 , am . by their frequently passing from the mouth , and when they were near death , the ' worms passed also by the nostrils . The districts of Xuhitonge , Gnscony , A gen Quurcy , 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 : ui 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 .
" . lust now 1 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 get such protection was not by any means an easy matter . Since there could be no space for a furnace in any room of a small suburban house , 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 Irving to the temper of his wife . At first lie borrowed laths ami tiles ¦ -his clumsy work soon fell info decay ; the wind and rain spoilt more than half of it ; protection was essential , means of getting it in any usual way did not exist , and Palissy was g lad to pal eh his shed in a rude manner with ' green boughs and slicks , until he could afford a little money upon more effectual contrivances . These shifting * and changes , of course , fell under the judgment of the enfire population of judicious neighbours . In a provincial ( own , wilh about , ten thousand inhabitants , every man is plagued with ollicious
neighhours to the number of nine thousand nine hundred and ninely-ninc . Then ,- - when the holes in his outhouse , on a rainy , windy night , wen ; letting in such blasts an promised the destruction of sonic costly work , l'alissy did not comfort his 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 ( he . patching of his ruinous outbuilding . The wife had not . enough philosophy to feel that , doors , and tables , and house-nails , were such accidents of life as could be parted with for the attainment of an object , intellect uallv high ; an object , even in si . worldly sense , worth many doors , and nails , and tables . Kvery day she went out telling new distresses to her neighbours in the ( k )\ vu ; and every nig ht , when l ' alis-y came up l . o bed , perhaps arousing her long afler midnight , cold , wet through , and stupid with work , she administered to him the wholesome cordial of a curtain-lecture . We will let . I ' alissy stale his own ease in ( he matter , mid then lei , women of JKngland judge whether they would not ,
to a woman , have resented his behaviour . ' ' I had another aflliction , allied with ( lie before named , which was , that , the beat , the cold , the " winds , and rains , and droppings , . spoilt , tin- largest , portion of my work before I baked if ; ho Mint I was oliliged to borrow carpentry , laths , tiles , a lid nails , to make shift , with . Then , very often having nothing wherewith to build , I was obliged ' to make shift- with green boughs and sticks . Then again , when ' my menus augmented , I undid what , I had done , and built , a , little better ; which caused smut ; artisans , as hosiers , shoemakers , sergeants , and notaries , a knot , of old women- all those-, without , regarding thai , my art , could not , be exercised without much space , said 1 . 1 ml . I did nothing bul , boggle , and blamed me for thai , which . should have touched their pity , « " «« ' ' was forced to use flungs necessary tor my bouse to build l . he conveniences which my art re . pnred ; and , whal , is worse ' , the incilemenl . to the said mockeries proceeded from those of my own house , who would have bad me work without , app liances—n ( lung more than unreasonable . Thou , the more the matter was ifiireasonuble , Iho more extreme was my
affliction . I have been for several years , when , without the means of covering my furnaces , I was every night at the mercy 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 and 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 knowledge , but Palissy 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 .
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XATIIAM'S ETHNOLOGY . The JEthnoloqy of Europe . By R , G . Latham , M . D . Van Voorst , The Ethnology of the British ' islands . By It , 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 Reviewer , who , ex officio , is assumed to be 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 . sets tortii
In the two pocket volumes just published , Dr . Latham briefly , yet intelligibly , the leading characters of European Ethnology ; and , in a more specific form , the characters of British "Ethnology , lhc isolation of Europe , for the sake of considering its specific characteristics , is justifiable on other grounds besides those of convenience . Jiaces arc dependent on physical conditions . Whichever hypothesis we adopt , yve must , admit so much . And Europe is characterised by certain peculiar conditions , among which Dr . Latham , in the following suggestive survey , indicates the principal : — " Amongst its positive 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 groat mountains more in contiguity to considerable tracts of level country . The client of this is to give the different characters of the Mountaineer and the Lowlandei more , opportunity of acting and reacting on each other . _ " b . In no country are the coasts more indented . We may look m viim 1 <« such a sea-board as that of ( irecce , elsewhere . The effect of this is to give ( He ,
different characters of the sailor and landsman , the producer and the trader , ni « i » opportunity of acting and reacting on each other . " c Its ' -M-eatest rivers fall into seas navigable throughout the year , ( . on ra ^ with this the great rivers of Asia , the Obi , the Lena , the Yenesey , mid othe . 'N which for the purposes of navigation are useless ; falling , an ( hey do , into an Au . i M "rf . Our greatest river , the Danube , runs from east to west . This *"»""* * linnio . rnu . ous character tor the population along its banks . Contrast with tin * i . Nil . ' , the Mississippi , and the Yenesey , in all of which the simple ellecf <> l cn . a (¦ rentes a diligence between the populations of the source and the eu . bm . eIm - - «¦ ---- ¦
\ i \ iii \ . ^ n , yiki ** -i \*** y .,..... 4 j i * it * I r / till The -mil , rivers of China do the same as the Danube ; but , the Danube . hllerslM m them , and from all other rivers running in a like direction , in empfymg ilsell i an inland sea ; a sea . which gives the opportunity of eonnnumcat ion not- only _ the parts north and south of the rivers which fall into it , but with tlio ^ l <> east , of it also . Th . ! Iloang-ho and Kiang-ku empty themselves into an ot ( . ^ that , in these days of steam communication , leads l . o America , but . wliicM in infancy of the world led to a , coasting trade only , or , at most , U > " ]» W ""' Japan ' . The Ifc . Hic and Mediterranean act , to a certain degree , in the same . ii « t The one has Africa , the other Scandinavi . i , to insure its being 1 »«« - Io
uses of trade . . . .. i ,, mia )< » In no part , of the world do the differences between the vanefies of Hi" " species lie within namgver limits than in Kurope . The most , extreme "PP "" ^ ( o the doctrine of the unify of our kind have never made many species oi - ^ Kuropean specimens of flu ; geuu . s fl < wU > . And these are by no means most , satisfactory sort . K . (] ,., ( , ; lre "They are unsatisfactory for fb < ' following r < irons . 1 be « l 11 " ' . ' : i | ., rit . y I nry iini uunm , ¦ .- >»
mferredY . om dissimilarity oflanguage , are . y an ... ; of physical form . The dissimilarities that , are inferred from pernh ; m ^ ^^ nieal form are neutralized by undeniable auinifies of speech l , ooini n ^ ^ mid clour , flu , Laplander is far , very far , removed Iron , ( he i ¦ guages belong to one and the same class . Look .,,- I" H"'"' »¦» " «»* J , „ of the ryrenees , and the Sknjtur ( or Albanian of Albania ) urnj « -M' Jj ^ lafionH . Yet their form in bufkii htly difl ^ cnt from Uioho of the othu 1
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998 THE LEADE R . [ Saturday ,
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Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 16, 1852, page 998, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1956/page/18/
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