to the aid of reason and experience. Chemistry has already told us many remarkable things in regard to the vegetable food we eat – that it contains, for example, a certain per centage of the actual fat and lean we consume in our beef, or mutton, or pork – and, therefore, that he who lives upon vegetable food may be as strong as the man who lives upon animal food, because both in reality feed upon the same things in a somewhat different form. Now it appears, from analysis, that wheaten flour contains on an average not more than ten per cent of actual dry beef – of that which forms the living muscle of the animal that feeds upon it – with three per cent of fat, and fifty of starch. And because of this chemical composition, our southern neighbours think wheaten flour the most nourishing, the most refined, and the most civilized of all food.
But Professor Johnston, in the recent edition of his Elements,28 tells us, that, from experiments made in the laboratory of the Agricultural Chemistry Association of Scotland, it turns out that oats are far richer in all the three things above named than the best wheat flour grown in any part of England – that they contain eighteen or twenty per cent of that which forms muscle, five to eight of fat, and sixty-five of starch. The account, therefore, between shelled oats (groats) and fine wheaten flour stands thus. One hundred pounds of each contain —
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1
Daguerreotype, &c.
2
Valerius Flaccus.
3
Cicero, in a well-known passage of his Ethics, speaks of trade as irredeemably base, if petty; but as not so absolutely felonious if wholesale. He gives a real merchant (one who is such in the English sense) leave to think himself a shade above small-beer.
4
"The astonishment of science." – Her medical attendants were Dr Percival, a well-known literary physician, who had been a correspon
1
Daguerreotype, &c.
2
Valerius Flaccus.
3
Cicero, in a well-known passage of his Ethics, speaks of trade as irredeemably base, if petty; but as not so absolutely felonious if wholesale. He gives a real merchant (one who is such in the English sense) leave to think himself a shade above small-beer.
4
"The astonishment of science." – Her medical attendants were Dr Percival, a well-known literary physician, who had been a correspondent of Condorcet, D'Alembert, &c., and Mr Charles White, a very distinguished surgeon. It was he who pronounced her head to be the finest in its structure and development of any that he had ever seen – an assertion which, to my own knowledge, he repeated in after years, and with enthusiasm. That he had some acquaintance with the subject may be presumed from this, that he wrote and published a work on the human skull, supported by many measurements which he had made of heads selected from all varieties of the human species. Meantime, as I would be loth that any trait of what might seem vanity should creep into this record, I will candidly admit that she died of hydrocephalus; and it has been often supposed that the premature expansion of the intellect in cases of that class, is altogether morbid – forced on, in fact, by the mere stimulation of the disease. I would, however, suggest, as a possibility, the very inverse order of relation between the disease and the intellectual manifestations. Not the disease may always have caused the preternatural growth of the intellect, but, on the contrary, this growth coming on spontaneously, and outrunning the capacities of the physical structure, may have caused the disease.
5
Amongst the oversights in the Paradise Lost, some of which have not yet been perceived, it is certainly one– that, by placing in such overpowering light of pathos the sublime sacrifice of Adam to his love for his frail companion, he has too much lowered the guilt of his disobedience to God. All that Milton can say afterwards, does not, and cannot, obscure the beauty of that action: reviewing it calmly, we condemn – but taking the impassioned station of Adam at the moment of temptation, we approve in our hearts. This was certainly an oversight; but it was one very difficult to redress. I remember, amongst the many exquisite thoughts of John Paul, (Richter,) one which strikes me as peculiarly touching upon this subject. He suggests – not as any grave theological comment, but as the wandering fancy of a poetic heart – that, had Adam conquered the anguish of separation as a pure sacrifice of obedience to God, his reward would have been the pardon and reconciliation of Eve, together with her restoration to innocence.
6
"I stood in unimaginable trance
And agony, which cannot be remember'd."
– Speech of Alhadra in Coleridge's Remorse.
7
Some readers will question the fact, and seek no reason. But did they ever suffer grief at any season of the year?
8
Φυγη μονου προς μονον. – Plotinus.
9
The thoughts referred to will be given in final notes; as at this point they seemed too much to interrupt the course of the narrative.
10
"Everlasting Jew!" —der ewige Jude– which is the common German expression for The Wandering Jew, and sublimer even than our own.
11
"I felt." – The reader must not forget, in reading this and other passages, that, though a child's feelings are spoken of, it is not the child who speaks. I decipher what the child only felt in cipher. And so far is this distinction or this explanation from pointing to any thing metaphysical or doubtful, that a man must be grossly unobservant who is not aware of what I am here noticing, not as a peculiarity of this child or that, but as a necessity of all children. Whatsoever in a man's mind blossoms and expands to his own consciousness in mature life, must have pre-existed in germ during his infancy. I, for instance, did not, as a child, consciously read in my own deep feeling these ideas. No, not at all; nor was it possible for a child to do so. I the child had the feelings, I the man decipher them. In the child lay the handwriting mysterious to him; in me the interpretation and the comment.
12
I except, however, one case – the case of a child dying of an organic disorder, so therefore as to die slowly, and aware of its own condition. Because such a child is solemnized, and sometimes, in a partial sense, inspired – inspired by the depth of its sufferings, and by the awfulness of its prospect. Such a child having put off the earthly mind in many things, may naturally have put off the childish mind in all things. I therefore, speaking for myself only, acknowledge
<p>28</p>
Elements of Agricultural Chemistry and Geology, 4th Edition, p. 239.
to the aid of reason and experience. Chemistry has already told us many remarkable things in regard to the vegetable food we eat – that it contains, for example, a certain per centage of the actual fat and lean we consume in our beef, or mutton, or pork – and, therefore, that he who lives upon vegetable food may be as strong as the man who lives upon animal food, because both in reality feed upon the same things in a somewhat different form. Now it appears, from analysis, that wheaten flour contains on an average not more than ten per cent of actual dry beef – of that which forms the living muscle of the animal that feeds upon it – with three per cent of fat, and fifty of starch. And because of this chemical composition, our southern neighbours think wheaten flour the most nourishing, the most refined, and the most civilized of all food.
