A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers

T >> Thomas De Quincey >> Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers




Here ends the tale of the Kalmuck wanderings in the Desert; for any
subsequent marches which awaited them, were neither long nor painful.
Every possible alleviation and refreshment for their exhausted bodies
had been already provided by Kien Long with the most princely
munificence; and lands of great fertility were immediately assigned to
them in ample extent along the river Ily, not very far from the point
at which they had first emerged from the wilderness of Kobi. But the
beneficent attention of the Chinese Emperor may be best stated in his
own words, as translated into French by one of the Jesuit
missionaries:--"La nation des Torgotes (_savoir les Kalmuques_) arriva
à Ily, toute _delabree_, n'ayant ni de quoi vivre, ni de quoi se vêtir.
Je l'avais prévu; et j'avais ordonné de faire en tout genre les
provisions nécessaires pour pouvoir les secourir promptement; c'est ce
qui a été exécuté. On a fait la division des terres; et on a assigné à
chaque famille une portion suffisante pour pouvoir servir à son
entretien, soit en la cultivant, soit en y nourissant des bestiaux. On
a donne a chaque particulier des étoffes pour l'habiller, des grains
pour se nourrir pendant l'espace d'une année, des ustensiles pour le
ménage et d'autres choses nécessaires: et outre cela plusieurs onces
d'argent, pour se pourvoir de ce qu'on aurait pu oublier. On a désigné
des lieux particuliers, fertiles en pâturages; et on leur a donné des
boeufs, moutons, &c. pour qu'ils pussent dans la suite travailler par
euxmêmes a leur entretien et à leur bienêtre."

These are the words of the Emperor himself, speaking in his own person
of his own paternal cares; but another Chinese, treating the same
subject, records the munificence of this prince in terms which proclaim
still more forcibly the disinterested generosity which prompted, and
the delicate considerateness which conducted this extensive bounty. He
has been speaking of the Kalmucks, and he goes on thus:--"Lorsqu'ils
arrivèrent sur nos frontières (au nombre de plusieurs centaines de
mille), quoique la fatigue extrême, la faim, la soif, et toutes les
autres incommodités inséparables d'une très-longue et très pénible
route en eussent fait périr presque autant, ils étaient réduits a la
dernière misère: ils manquaient de tout. Il" (viz. l'Empereur, Kien
Long) "leur fit préparer des logemens conformes a leur manière de
vivre; il leur fit distribuer des aliments et des habits; il leur fit
donner des boeufs, des moutons, et des ustensiles, pour les mettre en
état de former des troupeaux et de cultiver la terre, _et tout cela à
ses propres frais_, qui se sont montés à des sommes immenses, sans
compter l'argent qu'il a donné à chaque chef-de-famille, pour pourvoir
à la subsistance de sa femme et de ses enfans."

Thus, after their memorable year of misery, the Kalmucks were replaced
in territorial possessions, and in comfort equal perhaps, or even
superior, to that which they had enjoyed in Russia, and with superior
political advantages. But, if equal or superior, their condition was no
longer the same; if not in degree, their social prosperity had altered
in quality; for instead of being a purely pastoral and vagrant people,
they were now in circumstances which obliged them to become essentially
dependent upon agriculture; and thus far raised in social rank, that by
the natural course of their habits and the necessities of life they
were effectually reclaimed from roving, and from the savage customs
connected with so unsettled a life. They gained also in political
privileges, chiefly through the immunity from military service which
their new relations enabled them to obtain. These were circumstances of
advantage and gain. But one great disadvantage there was, amply to
overbalance all other possible gain; the chances were lost or were
removed to an incalculable distance for their conversion to
Christianity, without which in these times there is no absolute advance
possible on the path of true civilization.

One word remains to be said upon the _personal_ interests
concerned in this great drama. The catastrophe in this respect was
remarkable and complete. Oubacha, with all his goodness and incapacity
of suspecting, had, since the mysterious affair on the banks of the
Torgau, felt his mind alienated from his cousin; he revolted from the
man that would have murdered him; and he had displayed his caution so
visibly as to provoke a reaction in the bearing of Zebek-Dorchi, and a
displeasure which all his dissimulation could not hide. This had
produced a feud, which, by keeping them aloof, had probably saved the
life of Oubacha; for the friendship of Zebek-Dorchi was more fatal than
his open enmity. After the settlement on the Ily this feud continued to
advance, until it came under the notice of the Emperor, on occasion of
a visit which all the Tartar chieftains made to his Majesty at his
hunting-lodge in 1772. The Emperor informed himself accurately of all
the particulars connected with the transaction--of all the rights and
claims put forward--and of the way in which they would severally affect
the interests of the Kalmuck people. The consequence was, that he
adopted the cause of Oubacha, and repressed the pretensions of Zebek-
Dorchi, who, on his part, so deeply resented this discountenance to his
ambitious projects, that in conjunction with other chiefs he had the
presumption even to weave nets of treason against the Emperor himself.
Plots were laid--were detected--were baffled--counterplots were
constructed upon the same basis, and with the benefit of the
opportunities thus offered.

Finally, Zebek-Dorchi was invited to the imperial lodge, together with
all his accomplices; and under the skilful management of the Chinese
nobles in the Emperor's establishment, the murderous artifices of these
Tartar chieftains were made to recoil upon themselves; and the whole of
them perished by assassination at a great imperial banquet. For the
Chinese morality is exactly of that kind which approves in everything
the _lex talionis:_--

----'lex nec justior ulla est (as _they_ think)
Quam necis artifices arte perire sua.'

So perished Zebek-Dorchi, the author and originator of the great Tartar
_Exodus_. Oubacha, meantime, and his people, were gradually
recovering from the effects of their misery, and repairing their
losses. Peace and prosperity, under the gentle rule of a fatherly lord
paramount, re-dawned upon the tribes; their household _lares_,
after so harsh a translation to distant climates, found again a happy
reinstatement in what had in fact been their primitive abodes; they
found themselves settled in quiet sylvan scenes, rich in all the
luxuries of life, and endowed with the perfect loveliness of Arcadian
beauty. But from the hills of this favored land and even from the level
grounds as they approach its western border, they still look out upon
that fearful wilderness which once beheld a nation in agony--the utter
extirpation of nearly half a million from amongst its numbers, and, for
the remainder, a storm of misery so fierce, that in the end (as
happened also at Athens during the Peloponnesian war from a different
form of misery) very many lost their memory; all records of their past
life were wiped out as with a sponge--utterly erased and cancelled; and
many others lost their reason; some in a gentle form of pensive
melancholy, some in a more restless form of feverish delirium and
nervous agitation, and others in the fixed forms of tempestuous mania,
raving frenzy, or moping idiocy. Two great commemorative monuments
arose in after years to mark the depth and permanence of the awe--the
sacred and reverential grief with which all persons looked back upon
the dread calamities attached to the year of the Tiger--all who had
either personally shared in those calamities, and had themselves drunk
from that cup of sorrow, or who had effectually been made witnesses to
their results, and associated with their relief; two great monuments,
we say; first of all, one in the religious solemnity, enjoined by the
Dalai Lama, called in the Tartar language a _Romanang_, that is, a
national commemoration, with music the most rich and solemn, of all the
souls who departed to the rest of Paradise from the afflictions of the
Desert: this took place about six years after the arrival in China.
Secondly, another more durable and more commensurate to the scale of
the calamity and to the grandeur of this national Exodus, in the mighty
columns of granite and brass, erected by the Emperor Kien Long, near
the banks of the Ily: these columns stand upon the very margin of the
_steppes_; and they bear a short but emphatic inscription
[Footnote: This inscription has been slightly altered in one or two
phrases, and particularly in adapting to the Christian era the
Emperor's expressions for the year of the original Exodus from China
and the retrogressive Exodus from Russia. With respect to the
designation adopted for the Russian Emperor, either it is built upon
some confusion between him and the Byzantine Caesars, as though the
former, being of the same religion with the latter (and occupying in
part the same longitudes, though in different latitudes) might be
considered as his modern successor; or else it refers simply to the
Greek form of Christianity professed by the Russian Emperor and
Church.] to the following effect:--

By the Will of God
Here, upon the Brink of these Deserts,
Which from this Point begin and stretch away
Pathless, treeless, waterless,
For thousands of miles--and along the margins of many mighty Nations,
Rested from their labors and from great afflictions
Under the shadow of the Chinese Wall,
And by the favor of KIEN LONG, God's Lieutenant upon Earth,
The ancient Children of the Wilderness--the Torgote Tartars
Flying before the wrath of the Grecian Czar,
Wandering Sheep who had strayed away from the Celestial Empire in the
year 1616,
But are now mercifully gathered again, after infinite sorrow,
Into the fold of their forgiving Shepherd.
Hallowed be the spot for ever,
and
Hallowed be the day--September 8, 1771!
Amen.

END OF VOLUME I.




VOLUME II


SYSTEM OF THE HEAVENS AS REVEALED BY LORD ROSSE'S TELESCOPES.
[Footnote: Thoughts on Some Important Points relating to the System of
the World. By J. P. Nichol, LL.D., Professor of Astronomy in the
University of Glasgow. William Tait, Edinburgh. 1846.]

Some years ago, some person or other, [in fact I believe it was
myself,] published a paper from the German of Kant, on a very
interesting question, viz., the age of our own little Earth. Those who
have never seen that paper, a class of unfortunate people whom I
suspect to form _rather_ the majority in our present perverse
generation, will be likely to misconceive its object. Kant's purpose
was, not to ascertain how many years the Earth had lived: a million of
years, more or less, made very little difference to _him_. What he
wished to settle was no such barren conundrum. For, had there even been
any means of coercing the Earth into an honest answer, on such a
delicate point, which the Sicilian canon, Recupero, fancied that there
was; [Footnote: _Recupero_. See Brydone's Travels, some sixty or
seventy years ago. The canon, being a beneficed clergyman in the Papal
church, was naturally an infidel. He wished exceedingly to refute
Moses: and he fancied that he really had done so by means of some
collusive assistance from the layers of lava on Mount Etna. But there
survives, at this day, very little to remind us of the canon, except an
unpleasant guffaw that rises, at times, in solitary valleys of Etna.]
but which, in my own opinion, there neither is, nor ought to be,--
(since a man deserves to be cudgelled who could put such improper
questions to a _lady_ planet,)--still what would it amount to?
What good would it do us to have a certificate of our dear little
mother's birth and baptism? Other people--people in Jupiter, or the
Uranians--may amuse themselves with her pretended foibles or
infirmities: it is quite safe to do so at _their_ distance; and,
in a female planet like Venus, it might be natural, (though, strictly
speaking, not quite correct,) to scatter abroad malicious insinuations,
as though our excellent little mamma had begun to wear false hair, or
had lost some of her front teeth. But all this, we men of sense know to
be gammon. Our mother Tellus, beyond all doubt, is a lovely little
thing. I am satisfied that she is very much admired throughout the
Solar System: and, in clear seasons, when she is seen to advantage,
with her bonny wee pet of a Moon tripping round her like a lamb, I
should be thankful to any gentleman who will mention where he has
happened to observe--either he or his telescope--will he only have the
goodness to say, in what part of the heavens he has discovered a more
elegant turn-out. I wish to make no personal reflections. I name no
names. Only this I say, that, though some people have the gift of
seeing things that other people never could see, and though some other
people, or other some people are born with a silver spoon in their
mouths, so that, generally, their geese count for swans, yet, after
all, swans or geese, it would be a pleasure to me, and really a
curiosity, to see the planet that could fancy herself entitled to
sneeze at our Earth. And then, if she (viz., our Earth,) keeps but one
Moon, even _that_ (you know) is an advantage as regards some
people that keep none. There are people, pretty well known to you and
me, that can't make it convenient to keep even one Moon. And so I come
to my moral; which is this, that, to all appearance, it is mere
justice; but, supposing it were not, still it is _our_ duty, (as
children of the Earth,) right or wrong, to stand up for our bonny young
mamma, if she _is_ young; or for our dear old mother, if she
_is_ old; whether young or old, to take her part against all
comers; and to argue through thick and thin, which (sober or not) I
always attempt to do, that she is the most respectable member of the
Copernican System.

Meantime, what Kant understood by being old, is something that still
remains to be explained. If one stumbled, in the steppes of Tartary, on
the grave of a Megalonyx, and, after long study, had deciphered from
some pre-Adamite heiro-pothooks, the following epitaph:--'_Hic
jacet_ a Megalonyx, or _Hic jacet_ a Mammoth, (as the case
might be,) who departed this life, to the grief of his numerous
acquaintance in the seventeen thousandth year of his age,'--of course,
one would be sorry for him; because it must be disagreeable at
_any_ age to be torn away from life, and from all one's little
megalonychal comforts; that's not pleasant, you know, even if one
_is_ seventeen thousand years old. But it would make all the
difference possible in your grief, whether the record indicated a
premature death, that he had been cut off, in fact, whilst just
stepping into life, or had kicked the bucket when full of honors, and
been followed to the grave by a train of weeping grandchildren. He had
died 'in his teens,' that's past denying. But still we must know to
what stage of life in a man, had corresponded seventeen thousand years
in a Mammoth. Now exactly this was what Kant desired to know about our
planet. Let her have lived any number of years that you suggest, (shall
we say if you please, that she is in her billionth year?) still that
tells us nothing about the _period_ of life, the _stage_, which she may
be supposed to have reached. Is she a child, in fact, or is she an
adult? And, _if_ an adult, and that you gave a ball to the Solar
System, is she that kind of person, that you would introduce to a
waltzing partner, some fiery young gentlemen like Mars, or would
you rather suggest to her the sort of partnership which takes place at
a whist-table? On this, as on so many other questions, Kant was
perfectly sensible that people, of the finest understandings, may and
do take the most opposite views. Some think that our planet is in that
stage of her life, which corresponds to the playful period of twelve or
thirteen in a spirited girl. Such a girl, were it not that she is
checked by a sweet natural sense of feminine grace, you might call a
romp; but not a hoyden, observe; no horse-play; oh, no, nothing of that
sort. And these people fancy that earthquakes, volcanoes, and all such
little _escapades_ will be over, they will, in lawyer's phrase,
'cease and determine,' as soon as our Earth reaches the age of maidenly
bashfulness. Poor thing! It's quite natural, you know, in a healthy
growing girl. A little overflow of vivacity, a _pirouette_ more or
less, what harm should _that_ do to any of us? Nobody takes more
delight than I in the fawn-like sportiveness of an innocent girl, at
this period of life: even a shade of _espièglerie_ does not annoy
me. But still my own impressions incline me rather to represent the
Earth as a fine noble young woman, full of the pride which is so
becoming to her sex, and well able to take her own part, in case that,
at any solitary point of the heavens, she should come across one of
those vulgar fussy Comets, disposed to be rude and take improper
liberties. These Comets, by the way, are public nuisances, very much
like the mounted messengers of butchers in great cities, who are always
at full gallop, and moving upon such an infinity of angles to human
shinbones, that the final purpose of such boys (one of whom lately had
the audacity nearly to ride down the Duke of Wellington) seems to be--
not the translation of mutton, which would certainly find its way into
human mouths even if riding boys were not,--but the improved geometry
of transcendental curves. They ought to be numbered, ought these boys,
and to wear badges--X 10, &c. And exactly the same evil, asking
therefore by implication for exactly the same remedy, affects the
Comets. A respectable planet is known everywhere, and responsible for
any mischief that he does. But if a cry should arise, 'Stop that
wretch, who was rude to the Earth: who is he?' twenty voices will
answer, perhaps, 'It's Encke's Comet; he is always doing mischief;'
well, what can you say? it _may_ be Encke's, it may be some other
man's Comet; there are so many abroad and on so many roads, that you
might as well ask upon a night of fog, such fog as may be opened with
an oyster knife, whose cab that was (whose, viz., out of 27,000 in
London) that floored you into the kennel.

These are constructive ideas upon the Earth's stage of evolution, which
Kant was aware of, and which will always find toleration, even where
they do not find patronage. But others there are, a class whom I
perfectly abominate, that place our Earth in the category of decaying
women, nay of decayed women, going, going, and all but gone. 'Hair like
arctic snows, failure of vital heat, palsy that shakes the head as in
the porcelain toys on our mantel-pieces, asthma that shakes the whole
fabric--these they absolutely fancy themselves to _see_. They
absolutely _hear_ the tellurian lungs wheezing, panting, crying,
'Bellows to mend!' periodically as the Earth approaches her aphelion.

But suddenly at this point a demur arises upon the total question.
Kant's very problem explodes, bursts, as poison in Venetian wine-glass
of old shivered the glass into fragments. For is there, after all, any
stationary meaning in the question? Perhaps in reality the Earth is
both young and old. Young? If she is not young at present, perhaps she
_will_ be so in future. Old? if she is not old at this moment,
perhaps she _has_ been old, and has a fair chance of becoming so
again. In fact, she is a Phoenix that is known to have secret processes
for rebuilding herself out of her own ashes. Little doubt there is but
she has seen many a birthday, many a funeral night, and many a morning
of resurrection. Where now the mightiest of oceans rolls in pacific
beauty, once were anchored continents and boundless forests. Where the
south pole now shuts her frozen gates inhospitably against the
intrusions of flesh, once were probably accumulated the ribs of
empires; man's imperial forehead, woman's roseate lips, gleamed upon
ten thousand hills; and there were innumerable contributions to
antarctic journals almost as good (but not quite) as our own. Even
within our domestic limits, even where little England, in her south-
eastern quarter now devolves so quietly to the sea her sweet pastoral
rivulets, once came roaring down, in pomp of waters, a regal Ganges
[Footnote: _'Ganges:'_--Dr. Nichol calls it by this name for the
purpose of expressing its grandeur; and certainly in breadth, in
diffusion at all times, but especially in the rainy season, the Ganges
is the cock of the walk in our British orient. Else, as regards the
body of water discharged, the absolute payments made into the sea's
exchequer, and the majesty of column riding downwards from the
Himalaya, I believe that, since Sir Alexander Burnes's measurements,
the Indus ranks foremost by a long chalk.], that drained some
hyperbolical continent, some Quinbus Flestrin of Asiatic proportions,
long since gone to the dogs. All things pass away. Generations wax old
as does a garment: but eternally God says:--'Come again, ye children of
men.' Wildernesses of fruit, and worlds of flowers, are annually
gathered in solitary South America to ancestral graves: yet still the
Pomona of Earth, yet still the Flora of Earth, does not become
superannuated, but blossoms in everlasting youth. Not otherwise by
secular periods, known to us geologically as facts, though obscure as
durations, _Tellus_ herself, the planet, as a whole, is for ever
working by golden balances of change and compensation, of ruin and
restoration. She recasts her glorious habitations in decomposing them;
she lies down for death, which perhaps a thousand times she has
suffered; she rises for a new birth, which perhaps for the thousandth
time has glorified her disc. Hers is the wedding garment, hers is the
shroud, that eternally is being woven in the loom. And God imposes upon
her the awful necessity of working for ever at her own grave, yet of
listening for ever to his far-off trumpet of _palingenesis_.

If this account of the matter be just, and were it not treasonable to
insinuate the possibility of an error against so great a swell as
Immanuel Kant, one would be inclined to fancy that Mr. Kant had really
been dozing a little on this occasion; or, agreeably to his own
illustration elsewhere, that he had realized the pleasant picture of
one learned doctor trying to milk a he-goat, whilst another doctor,
equally learned, holds the milk-pail below. [Footnote: Kant applied
this illustration to the case where one worshipful scholar proposes
some impossible problem, (as the squaring of the circle, or the
perpetual motion,) which another worshipful scholar sits down to solve.
The reference was of course to Virgil's line,--'Atque idem jungat
vulpes, et _mulgeat hircos_.'] And there is apparently this two-
edged embarrassment pressing upon the case--that, if our dear excellent
mother the Earth could be persuaded to tell us her exact age in Julian
years, still _that_ would leave us all as much in the dark as
ever: since, if the answer were, 'Why, children, at my next birth-day I
shall count a matter of some million centuries,' we should still be at
a loss to _value_ her age: would it mean that she was a mere
chicken, or that she was 'getting up in years?' On the other hand, if
(declining to state any odious circumstantialities,) she were to
reply,--'No matter, children, for my precise years, which are
disagreeable remembrances; I confess generally to being a lady of a
certain age,'--here, in the inverse order, given the _valuation_
of the age, we should yet be at a loss for the _absolute_ years
numerically: would a 'certain age,' mean that 'mamma' was a million, be
the same more or less, or perhaps not much above seventy thousand?

Every way, you see, reader, there are difficulties. But two things used
to strike me, as unaccountably overlooked by Kant; who, to say the
truth, was profound--yet at no time very agile--in the character of his
understanding. First, what age now might we take our brother and sister
planets to be? For _that_ determination as to a point in
_their_ constitution, will do something to illustrate our own. We
are as good as they, I hope, any day: perhaps in a growl, one might
modestly insinuate--_better_. It's not at all likely that there
can be any great disproportion of age amongst children of the same
household: and therefore, since Kant always countenanced the idea that
Jupiter had not quite finished the upholstery of his extensive
premises, as a comfortable residence for a man, Jupiter having, in
fact, a fine family of mammoths, but no family at all of 'humans,' (as
brother Jonathan calls them,) Kant was bound, _ex analogo_, to
hold that any little precedency in the trade of living, on the part of
our own mother Earth, could not count for much in the long run. At
Newmarket, or Doncaster, the start is seldom mathematically true:
trifling advantages will survive all human trials after abstract
equity; and the logic of this case argues, that any few thousands of
years by which Tellus may have got ahead of Jupiter, such as the having
finished her Roman Empire, finished her Crusades, and finished her
French Revolution, virtually amounts to little or nothing; indicates no
higher proportion to the total scale upon which she has to run, than
the few tickings of a watch by which one horse at the start for the
Leger is in advance of another. When checked in our chronology by each
other, it transpires that, in effect, we are but executing the nice
manoeuvre of a start; and that the small matter of six thousand years,
by which we may have advanced our own position beyond some of our
planetary rivals, is but the outstretched neck of an uneasy horse at
Doncaster. This is _one_ of the data overlooked by Kant; and the
less excusably overlooked, because it was his own peculiar doctrine,--
that uncle Jupiter ought to be considered a greenhorn. Jupiter may be a
younger brother of our mamma; but, if he is a brother at all, he cannot
be so very wide of our own chronology; and therefore the first
_datum_ overlooked by Kant was--the analogy of our whole planetary
system. A second datum, as it always occurred to myself, might
reasonably enough be derived from the intellectual vigor of us men. If
our mother could, with any show of reason, be considered an old decayed
lady, snoring stentorously in her arm-chair, there would naturally be
some _aroma_ of phthisis, or apoplexy, beginning to form about
_us_, that are her children. But _is_ there? If ever Dr. Johnson
said a true word, it was when he replied to the Scottish judge
Burnett, so well known to the world as Lord Monboddo. The judge, a
learned man, but obstinate as a mule in certain prejudices, had said
plaintively, querulously, piteously,--'Ah, Doctor, we are poor
creatures, we men of the eighteenth century, by comparison with our
forefathers!' 'Oh, no, my Lord,' said Johnson, 'we are quite as strong
as our ancestors, and a great deal wiser.' Yes; our kick is, at least,
as dangerous, and our logic does three times as much execution. This
would be a complex topic to treat effectively; and I wish merely to
indicate the opening which it offers for a most decisive order of
arguments in such a controversy. If the Earth were on her last legs, we
her children could not be very strong or healthy. Whereas, if there
were less pedantry amongst us, less malice, less falsehood, and less
darkness of prejudice, easy it would be to show, that in almost every
mode of intellectual power, we are more than a match for the most
conceited of elder generations, and that in some modes we have energies
or arts absolutely and exclusively our own. Amongst a thousand
indications of strength and budding youth, I will mention two:--Is it
likely, is it plausible, that our Earth should just begin to find out
effective methods of traversing land and sea, when she had a summons to
leave both? Is it not, on the contrary, a clear presumption that the
great career of earthly nations is but on the point of opening, that
life is but just beginning to kindle, when the great obstacles to
effectual locomotion, and therefore to extensive human intercourse, are
first of all beginning to give way? Secondly, I ask peremptorily,--Does
it stand with good sense, is it reasonable that Earth is waning,
science drooping, man looking downward, precisely in that epoch when,
first of all, man's eye is arming itself for looking effectively into
the mighty depths of space? A new era for the human intellect, upon a
path that lies amongst its most aspiring, is promised, is inaugurated,
by Lord Rosse's almost awful telescope.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.