The Pleasures of Life by Sir John Lubbock

S >> Sir John Lubbock >> The Pleasures of Life

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16

So far is a thorough love and enjoyment of travel from interfering with
the love of home, that perhaps no one can thoroughly enjoy his home who
does not sometimes wander away. They are like exertion and rest, each the
complement of the other; so that, though it may seem paradoxical, one of
the greatest pleasures of travel is the return; and no one who has not
roamed abroad, can realize the devotion which the wanderer feels for
Domiduca--the sweet and gentle goddess who watches over our coming home.

[1] Seneca.

[2] Ruskin.

[3] Morris.

[4] Helps.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PLEASURES OF HOME.

"There's no place like Home."--_Old English Song_.

It may well be doubted which is more delightful,--to start for a holiday
which has been fully earned, or to return home from one which has been
thoroughly enjoyed; to find oneself, with renewed vigor, with a fresh
store of memories and ideas, back once more by one's own fireside, with
one's family, friends, and books.

"To sit at home," says Leigh Hunt, "with an old folio (?) book of romantic
yet credible voyages and travels to read, an old bearded traveller for its
hero, a fireside in an old country house to read it by, curtains drawn,
and just wind enough stirring out of doors to make an accompaniment to the
billows or forests we are reading of--this surely is one of the perfect
moments of existence."

It is no doubt a great privilege to visit foreign countries; to travel say
in Mexico or Peru, or to cruise among the Pacific Islands; but in some
respects the narratives of early travellers, the histories of Prescott or
the voyages of Captain Cook, are even more interesting; describing to us,
as they do, a state of society which was then so unlike ours, but which
has now been much changed and Europeanized.

Thus we may make our daily travels interesting, even though, like those of
the Vicar of Wakefield, all our adventures are by our own fireside, and
all our migrations from one room to another.

Moreover, even if the beauties of home are humble, they are still
infinite, and a man "may lie in his bed, like Pompey and his sons, in all
quarters of the earth." [1]

It is, then, wise to "cultivate a talent very fortunate for a man of my
disposition, that of travelling in my easy chair; of transporting myself,
without stirring from my parlor, to distant places and to absent friends;
of drawing scenes in my mind's eye; and of peopling them with the groups
of fancy, or the society of remembrance." [2]

We may indeed secure for ourselves endless variety without leaving our own
firesides.

In the first place, the succession of seasons multiplies every home. How
different is the view from our windows as we look on the tender green of
spring, the rich foliage of summer, the glorious tints of autumn, or the
delicate tracery of winter.

Our climate is so happy, that even in the worst months of the year, "calm
mornings of sunshine visit us at times, appearing like glimpses of
departed spring amid the wilderness of wet and windy days that lead to
winter. It is pleasant, when these interludes of silver light occur, to
ride into the woods and see how wonderful are all the colors of decay.
Overhead, the elms and chestnuts hang their wealth of golden leaves, while
the beeches darken into russet tones, and the wild cherry glows like
blood-red wine. In the hedges crimson haws and scarlet hips are wreathed
with hoary clematis or necklaces of coral briony-berries; the brambles
burn with many-colored flames; the dog-wood is bronzed to purple; and here
and there the spindle-wood puts forth its fruit, like knots of rosy buds,
on delicate frail twigs. Underneath lie fallen leaves, and the brown brake
rises to our knees as we thread the forest paths." [3]

Nay, every day gives us a succession of glorious pictures in never-ending
variety. It is remarkable how few people seem to derive any pleasure from
the beauty of the sky. Gray, after describing a sunrise--how it began with
a slight whitening, just tinged with gold and blue, lit up all at once by
a little line of insufferable brightness which rapidly grew to half an
orb, and so to a whole one too glorious to be distinctly seen--adds, "I
wonder whether any one ever saw it before. I hardly believe it." [4]

No doubt from the dawn of poetry, the splendors of the morning and evening
skies have delighted all those who have eyes to see. But we are especially
indebted to Ruskin for enabling us more vividly to realize these glorious
sky pictures. As he says, in language almost as brilliant as the sky
itself, the whole heaven, "from the zenith to the horizon, becomes one
molten, mantling sea of color and fire; every block bar turns into massy
gold, every ripple and wave into unsullied, shadowless crimson, and
purple, and scarlet, and colors for which there are no words in language,
and no ideas in the mind--things which can only be conceived while they
are visible; the intense hollow blue of the upper sky melting through it
all, showing here deep and pure, and lightness; there, modulated by the
filmy, formless body of the transparent vapor, till it is lost
imperceptibly in its crimson and gold."

It is in some cases indeed "not color but conflagration," and though the
tints are richer and more varied toward morning and at sunset, the
glorious kaleidoscope goes on all day long. Yet "it is a strange thing how
little in general people know about the sky. It is the part of creation in
which Nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole
and evident purpose of talking to him, and teaching him, than in any other
of her works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her.
There are not many of her other works in which some more material or
essential purpose than the mere pleasing of man is not answered by every
part of their organization; but every essential purpose of the sky might,
so far as we know, be answer, if once in three days, or thereabouts, a
great, ugly, black rain-cloud were brought up over the blue, and
everything well watered, and so all left blue again till next time, with
perhaps a film of morning and evening mist for dew. And instead of this,
there is not a moment of any day of our lives when Nature is not producing
scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, and working
still upon such exquisite and constant principles of the most perfect
beauty, that it is quite certain it is all done for us, and intended for
our perpetual pleasure." [5]

Nor does the beauty end with the day. "It is nothing to sleep under the
canopy of heaven, where we have the globe of the earth for our place of
repose, and the glories of the heavens for our spectacle?" [6] For my part
I always regret the custom of shutting up our rooms in the evening, as
though there was nothing worth seeing outside. What, however, can be more
beautiful than to "look how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid with
patines of bright gold," or to watch the moon journeying in calm and
silver glory through the night. And even if we do not feel that "the man
who has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds at midnight, has been
present like an Archangel at the creation of light and of the world," [7]
still "the stars say something significant to all of us: and each man has
a whole hemisphere of them, if he will but look up, to counsel and
befriend him"; [8] for it is not so much, as Helps elsewhere observes, "in
guiding us over the seas of our little planet, but out of the dark waters
of our own perturbed minds, that we may make to ourselves the most of
their significance." Indeed,

"How beautiful is night!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air;
No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of heaven:
In full-orbed glory yonder moon divine
Rolls through the dark blue depths;
Beneath her steady ray
The desert circle spreads,
Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky;
How beautiful is night!" [9]

I have never wondered at those who worshipped the sun and moon.

On the other hand, when all outside is dark and cold; when perhaps

"Outside fall the snowflakes lightly;
Through the night loud raves the storm;
In my room the fire glows brightly,
And 'tis cosy, silent, warm.

"Musing sit I on the settle
By the firelight's cheerful blaze,
Listening to the busy kettle
Humming long forgotten lays." [10]

For after all the true pleasures of home are not without, but within; and
"the domestic man who loves no music so well as his own kitchen clock and
the airs which the logs sing to him as they burn on the hearth, has
solaces which others never dream of." [11]

We love the ticking of the clock, and the flicker of the fire, like the
sound of the cawing of rooks, not so much for any beauty of their own as
for their associations.

It is a great truth that when we retire into ourselves we can call up what
memories we please.

"How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood,
When fond recollection recalls them to view.--
The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wildwood
And every lov'd spot which my infancy knew." [12]

It is not so much the

"Fireside enjoyments,
And _all the comforts_ of the lowly roof," [13]

but rather, according to the higher and better ideal of Keble,

"Sweet is the smile of home; the mutual look,
When hearts are of each other sure;
Sweet all the joys that crowd the household nook,
The haunt of all affections pure."

In ancient times, not only among savage races, but even among the Greeks
themselves, there seems to have been but little family life. What a
contrast was the home life of the Greeks, as it seems to have been, to
that, for instance, described by Cowley--a home happy "in books and
gardens," and above all, in a

"Virtuous wife, where thou dost meet
Both pleasures more refined and sweet;
The fairest garden in her looks
And in her mind the wisest books."

No one who has ever loved mother or wife, sister or daughter, can read
without astonishment and pity St. Chrysostom's description of woman as "a
necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic
peril, a deadly fascination, and a painted ill."

In few respects has mankind made a greater advance than in the relations
of men and women. It is terrible to think how women suffer in savage life;
and even among the intellectual Greeks, with rare exceptions, they seem to
have been treated rather as housekeepers or playthings than as the Angels
who make a Heaven of home.

The Hindoo proverb that you should "never strike a wife, even with a
flower," though a considerable advance, tells a melancholy tale of what
must previously have been.

In _The Origin of Civilization_ I have given many cases showing how small
a part family affection plays in savage life. Here I will only mention one
case in illustration. The Algonquin (North America) language contained no
word for "to love," so that when the missionaries translated the Bible
into it they were obliged to invent one. What a life, and what a language,
without love.

Yet in marriage even the rough passion of a savage may contrast favorably
with any cold calculation, which, like the enchanted hoard of the
Nibelungs, is almost sure to bring misfortune. In the Kalevala, the
Finnish epic, the divine smith, Ilmarinnen, forges a bride of gold and
silver for Wainamoinen, who was pleased at first to have so rich a wife,
but soon found her intolerably cold, for, in spite of fires and furs,
whenever he touched her she froze him.

Moreover, apart from mere coldness, how much we suffer from foolish
quarrels about trifles; from mere misunderstandings; from hasty words
thoughtlessly repeated, sometimes without the context or tone which would
have deprived them of any sting. How much would that charity which
"beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all
things," effect to smooth away the sorrows of life and add to the
happiness of home. Home indeed may be a sure haven of repose from the
storms and perils of the world. But to secure this we must not be content
to pave it with good intentions, but must make it bright and cheerful.

If our life be one of toil and of suffering, if the world outside be cold
and dreary, what a pleasure to return to the sunshine of happy faces and
the warmth of hearts we love.

[1] Sir T. Browne.

[2] Mackenzie, _The Lounger_.

[3] J. A. Symonds.

[4] Gray's Letters.

[5] Ruskin.

[6] Seneca.

[7] Emerson.

[8] Helps.

[9] Southey.

[10] Heine, trans. by E. A. Bowring.

[11] Emerson.

[12] Woodworth.

[13] Cowper.

CHAPTER IX.

SCIENCE.

"Happy is he that findeth wisdom,
And the man that getteth understanding:
For the merchandise of it is better than silver,
And the gain thereof than fine gold.
She is more precious than rubies:
And all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.
Length of days is in her right hand,
And in her left hand riches and honor.
Her ways are ways of pleasantness,
And all her paths are peace."

PROVERBS OF SOLOMON.

Those who have not tried for themselves can hardly imagine how much
Science adds to the interest and variety of life. It is altogether a
mistake to regard it as dry, difficult, or prosaic--much of it is as easy
as it is interesting. A wise instinct of old united the prophet and the
"seer." "The wise man's eyes are in his head, but the fool walketh in
darkness." Technical works, descriptions of species, etc., bear the same
relation to science as dictionaries do to literature.

Occasionally, indeed, Science may destroy some poetical myth of antiquity,
such as the ancient Hindoo explanation of rivers, that "Indra dug out
their beds with his thunderbolts, and sent them forth by long continuous
paths;" but the real causes of natural phenomena are far more striking,
and contain more true poetry, than those which have occurred to the
untrained imagination of mankind.

In endless aspects science is as wonderful and interesting as a fairy
tale.

"There are things whose strong reality
Outshines our fairyland; in shape and hues
More beautiful than our fantastic sky,
And the strange constellations which the Muse
O'er her wild universe is skillful to diffuse." [1]

Mackay justly exclaims:

"Blessings on Science! When the earth seemed old,
When Faith grew doting, and our reason cold,
'Twas she discovered that the world was young,
And taught a language to its lisping tongue."

Botany, for instance, is by many regarded as a dry science. Yet though
without it we may admire flowers and trees, it is only as strangers, only
as one may admire a great man or a beautiful woman in a crowd. The
botanist, on the contrary--nay, I will not say the botanist, but one with
even a slight knowledge of that delightful science--when he goes out into
the woods, or into one of those fairy forests which we call fields, finds
himself welcomed by a glad company of friends, every one with something
interesting to tell. Dr. Johnson said that, in his opinion, when you had
seen one green field you had seen all; and a greater even than
Johnson--Socrates--the very type of intellect without science, said he was
always anxious to learn, and from fields and trees he could learn nothing.

It has, I know, been said that botanists

"Love not the flower they pluck and know it not.
And all their botany is but Latin names."

Contrast this, however, with the language of one who would hardly claim to
be a master in botany, though he is certainly a loving student.
"Consider," says Ruskin, "what we owe to the meadow grass, to the covering
of the dark ground by that glorious enamel, by the companies of those
soft, countless, and peaceful spears of the field! Follow but for a little
time the thought of all that we ought to recognize in those words. All
spring and summer is in them--the walks by silent scented paths, the rest
in noonday heat, the joy of the herds and flocks, the power of all
shepherd life and meditation; the life of the sunlight upon the world,
falling in emerald streaks and soft blue shadows, when else it would have
struck on the dark mould or scorching dust; pastures beside the pacing
brooks, soft banks and knolls of lowly hills, thymy slopes of down
overlooked by the blue line of lifted sea; crisp lawns all dim with early
dew, or smooth in evening warmth of barred sunshine, dinted by happy feet,
softening in their fall the sound of loving voices."

My own tastes and studies have led me mainly in the direction of Natural
History and Archaeology; but if you love one science, you cannot but feel
intense interest in them all. How grand are the truths of Astronomy!
Prudhomme, in a sonnet beautifully translated by Arthur O'Shaugnessy, has
pictured an Observatory. He says--

"'Tis late; the astronomer in his lonely height,
Exploring, all the dark, descries afar
Orbs that like distant isles of splendor are."

He notices a comet, and calculating its orbit, finds that it will return
in a thousand years--

"The star will come. It dare not by one hour
Cheat Science, or falsify her calculation;
Men will have passed, but, watchful in the tower,
Man shall remain in sleepless contemplation;
And should all men have perished in their turn,
Truth in their place would watch that star's return."

Ernest Rhys well says of a student's chamber--

"Strange things pass nightly in this little room,
All dreary as it looks by light of day;
Enchantment reigns here when at evening play
Red fire-light glimpses through the pallid gloom."

And the true student, in Ruskin's words, stands on an eminence from which
he looks back on the universe of God and forward over the generations of
men.

Even if it be true that science was dry when it was buried in huge folios,
that is certainly no longer the case now; and Lord Chesterfield's wise
wish, that Minerva might have three graces as well as Venus, has been
amply fulfilled.

The study of natural history indeed seems destined to replace the loss of
what is, not very happily I think, termed "sport;" engraven in us as it is
by the operation of thousands of years, during which man lived greatly on
the produce of the chase. Game is gradually becoming "small by degrees and
beautifully less." Our prehistoric ancestors hunted the mammoth, the
woolly-haired rhinoceros, and Irish elk; the ancient Britons had the wild
ox, the deer, and the wolf. We have still the pheasant, the partridge, the
fox, and the hare; but even these are becoming scarcer, and must be
preserved first, in order that they may be killed afterwards. Some of us
even now--and more, no doubt, will hereafter--satisfy instincts,
essentially of the same origin, by the study of birds, or insects, or even
infusoria--of creatures which more than make up by their variety what they
want in size.

Emerson avers that when a naturalist has "got all snakes and lizards in
his phials, science has done for him also, and has put the man into a
bottle." I do not deny that there are such cases, but they are quite
exceptional. The true naturalist is no mere dry collector.

I cannot resist, although it is rather long, quoting the following
description from Hudson and Gosse's beautiful work on the Rotifera:--

"On the Somersetshire side of the Avon, and not far from Clifton, is a
little combe, at the bottom of which lies an old fish-pond. Its slopes are
covered with plantations of beech and fir, so as to shelter the pond on
three sides, and yet leave it open to the soft south-western breezes, and
to the afternoon sun. At the head of the combe wells up a clear spring,
which sends a thread of water, trickling through a bed of osiers, into the
upper end of the pond. A stout stone wall has been drawn across the combe
from side to side, so as to dam up the stream; and there is a gap in one
corner through which the overflow finds its way in a miniature cascade,
down into the lower plantation.

"If we approach the pond by the gamekeeper's path from the cottage above,
we shall pass through the plantation, and come unseen right on the corner
of the wall; so that one quiet step will enable us to see at a glance its
whole surface, without disturbing any living thing that may be there.

"Far off at the upper end a water-hen is leading her little brood among
the willows; on the fallen trunk of an old beech, lying half way across
the pond, a vole is sitting erect, rubbing his right ear, and the splash
of a beech husk just at our feet tells of a squirrel who is dining
somewhere in the leafy crown above us.

"But see, the water-rat has spied us out, and is making straight for his
hole in the bank, while the ripple above him is the only thing that tells
of his silent flight. The water-hen has long ago got under cover, and the
squirrel drops no more husks. It is a true Silent Pond, and without a sign
of life.

"But if, retaining sense and sight, we could shrink into living atoms and
plunge under the water, of what a world of wonders should we then form
part! We should find this fairy kingdom peopled with the strangest
creatures--creatures that swim with their hair, that have ruby eyes
blazing deep in their necks, with telescopic limbs that now are withdrawn
wholly within their bodies and now stretched out to many times their own
length. Here are some riding at anchor, moored by delicate threads spun
out from their toes; and there are others flashing by in glass armor,
bristling with sharp spikes or ornamented with bosses and flowing curves;
while fastened to a great stem is an animal convolvulus that, by some
invisible power, draws a never-ceasing stream of victims into its gaping
cup, and tears them to death with hooked jaws deep down within its body.

"Close by it, on the same stem, is something that looks like a filmy
heart's-ease. A curious wheelwork runs round its four outspread petals;
and a chain of minute things, living and dead, is winding in and out of
their curves into a gulf at the back of the flower. What happens to them
there we cannot see; for round the stem is raised a tube of golden-brown
balls, all regularly piled on each other. Some creature dashes by, and
like a flash the flower vanishes within its tube.

"We sink still lower, and now see on the bottom slow gliding lumps of
jelly that thrust a shapeless arm out where they will, and grasping their
prey with these chance limbs, wrap themselves round their food to get a
meal; for they creep without feet, seize without hands, eat without
mouths, and digest without stomachs."

Too many, however, still feel only in Nature that which we share "with the
weed and the worm;" they love birds as boys do--that is, they love
throwing stones at them; or wonder if they are good to eat, as the
Esquimaux asked about the watch; or treat them as certain devout Afreedee
villagers are said to have treated a descendant of the Prophet--killed him
in order to worship at his tomb: but gradually we may hope that the love
of Science--the notes "we sound upon the strings of nature" [2]--will
become to more and more, as already it is to many, a "faithful and sacred
element of human feeling."

Science summons us

"To that cathedral, boundless as our wonder,
Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply;
Its choir the winds and waves, its organ thunder,
Its dome the sky." [3]

Where the untrained eye will see nothing but mire and dirt, Science will
often reveal exquisite possibilities. The mud we tread under our feet in
the street is a grimy mixture of clay and sand, soot and water. Separate
the sand, however, as Ruskin observes--let the atoms arrange themselves in
peace according to their nature--and you have the opal. Separate the clay,
and it becomes a white earth, fit for the finest porcelain; or if it still
further purifies itself, you have a sapphire. Take the soot, and if
properly treated it will give you a diamond. While, lastly, the water,
purified and distilled, will become a dew-drop, or crystallize into a
lovely star. Or, again, you may see as you will in any shallow pool either
the mud lying at the bottom, or the image of the heavens above.

Nay, even if we imagine beauties and charms which do not really exist;
still if we err at all it is better to do so on the side of charity; like
Nasmyth, who tells us in his delightful autobiography, that he used to
think one of his friends had a charming and kindly twinkle, and was one
day surprised to discover that he had a glass eye.

But I should err indeed were I to dwell exclusively on science as lending
interest and charm to our leisure hours. Far from this, it would be
impossible to overrate the importance of scientific training on the wise
conduct of life.

"Science," said the Royal Commission of 1861, "quickens and cultivates
directly the faculty of observation, which in very many persons lies
almost dormant through life, the power of accurate and rapid
generalization, and the mental habit of method and arrangement; it
accustoms young persons to trace the sequence of cause and effect; it
familiarizes them with a kind of reasoning which interests them, and which
they can promptly comprehend; and it is perhaps the best corrective for
that indolence which is the vice of half-awakened minds, and which shrinks
from any exertion that is not, like an effort of memory, merely
mechanical."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16