THINGS FROM THE EMPIRE CITY

New Zealand Graphic, Volume X, Issue 22, 3 June 1893, Page 507

THINGS FROM THE EMPIRE CITY

by

THE AUTOGRATIC IDLER.

Long before this present autocrat could comArt and Ice. r prebend how incomprehensible this world was (not to mention the starry firmament at all), be chanced to see Firth’s great picture of the Derby Day, then on exhibition in Dublin. There is the history of an era of English life crowded into that not very extensive bit of canvas : it is the • Vanity Fair ’of the artist; and just as Thackeray never wrote a truer story in fiction than * Vanity Fair,’ so Firth never painted anything more life-like than the Derby Day, in all his subsequent efforts. However, I am not going to speak now of the portrait of Miss Gilbert in the left hand corner of the picture, nor of the straw that seemed ready to be blown away by any chance breath from the just opened hamper, but of a lump of ice in the foreground which appeared to be melting away in the heat and crush of the Academy. My raw intelligence could not realize that that bit of ice was part and parcel of the picture : it was ice, surely ; it was real ice, cold ice, melting ice, transparent, colourless, sparkling ice! Since then a few years have rolled away, and I have learned not to be mystified—having observed far more curious things, hardly explainable, although perfectly real. I have seen a fly in amber and wondered how it got there. So has everybody else. 1 have seen fish, without eyes, in the water, at the 840 foot level at the bottom of a gold mine. I have seen Fisher Georgius with a double set of opinions, at the top of the poll and on the right and left side of the House at the one moment. Only last night, going along Lambton Quay, I saw almost as inexplicable a thing as any of these—except, perhaps, the last mentioned. Nobody seemed to think it at all wonderful, and yet, twenty years ago it would have been thought impossible, and a few years still further back would have been deemed by our unsophisticated forefathers absolutely miraculous; the work, perhaps of an omnipotent Creator, perhaps of the devil, who, naturally, would much like to manufacture ice for his own personal use, although having, of course, an intense abhorrence of it as a cooling and refreshing aid to human enjoyment.

„ „. All the way from Mr Tate’s garden on the river Thames they came —chrysanthemums as large as breakfast plates, each in the mums - centre of a block of beautifully-transparent ice, no smaller than a Stilton cheese. There was the •Elsie,’ the most lovely canary yellow ever seen; the * G.O. M.,’ red and fiery like the planet Mars ; the ‘ Empress of India,’ a very pale blue; the • Golden Empress;' the magnificent and glittering * Sunflower,’ and a host of other beautiful specimens representing all varieties of this exquisite flower, of every conceivable hue and tint, and of all sizes, from that of a small daisy to a circumference of eighteen inches. There would, indeed, appear to be no limit to the power of cultivation in developing this plant, which blooms in the garden in winter time, and brightens up the bare grounds as the smile of a friend, and his outstretched hand, in the time of adversity—cheers the despairing heart! It is to Japan that we are indebted for what is most gorgeous and striking in the chrysanthemum, and the patient, industrious Jap was the first to discover its capabilities. It was curious to note, at the Chrysanthemum Show, that the thing which, a quarter of a century ago, would have been the great feature of the exhibition attracted no notice whatever. Nobody asked by what queer process the flowers got into the ice, or the ice got around the flowers. Nobody saw anything at all wonderful in it; no one seemed amazed that these blooms had opened on the Thames ; had been admired by great personages in the home country, and had crossed the ocean in a very cosy aud comfortable ice bunk 1 No man, woman, or child expressed any amazement, and yet I don’t think very many in the crowd were at all aware how it was done.

When Home Rule is granted to Ireland there Astronomical. & civil wftr j n t |j at an( j w l ien

the North is thoroughly beaten a remarkable change will take place in the Heavens. I don’t mean to say that the stars will alter their courses in any very observable degree, but the constellations as known to the ancients, as well as other celestial objects, will be known—as through countless ages they have been known—no more. There is a good deal of • known ’ about this last sentence, but it is true, all the same. The first point of Aries will be shifted into Taurus, and Taurus will, thenceforward, be known as Taurus Hibernieus, or Irish Bull ; Orion will be appropriately named O’Brien; and Sextus will very readily become Sexton. In fact a fitting Irish nomenclature can be quite easily invented for a considerable number of stars, planets, and comets, as is but fitting when Ireland becomes a nation. Even the Atlantic Ocean will undergo a slight renovation, and be known in the future as Atlantic O’Cane —who was a very celebrated Kerry chieftain in the year 1122. All this sounds very like prophecy. Very well—l know of no reason whatever why I should not make astronomical prophecies that possibly may come true. Dean Swift was a great many terrible things ; but he wasn’t much of an astronomer ; and yet he went far beyond me, and made veritable astronomical prophecies which have proved to be precisely true. Just listen to this from ‘ The Voyage to Laputa’ :— ‘ They have likewise discovered two lesser stars or satellites, which revolve about Mars, whereof the innermost is distant from the centre of the primary planet exactly three of his diameters, and the outermost, five ; the former revolves in the space of ten hours, and the latter twenty-one and a half; so that the squares of their periodic times are very near in the same proportion with the cubes of their distance from the centre of Mars, which evidently shows them to be governed by the same law of gravitation that influences other heavenly bodies.’ Now this was written in Queen Anne’s time, when very little was known about Mars, and when nothing at all was known of any moon attending the planet. Yet it almost precisely expresses what has been since, and very recently discovered. When that prophecy came to be realized, surely Taurus, in due course of time, may become an Irish Bull? However, all these great changes depend on the granting of Home Rule and the licking of the North. It may, of course, happen that Home Rule will not be granted, and that the North will not be licked. In that case Taurus will remain Taurus, and the Atlantic will be the same melancholy, turbulent, placid, troubled, peaceful ocean that it has been for millions of years—and Mr A. O’Cane will have to remain in his present obscurity—wherever that is. _. „ There is no more beautiful story in all the The Star of J Sacred writings than that of the Star and the Bethlehem. Magi, as told tn St. Matthew's Gospel, and no doubtcountless persons in many Christian countries feltangry with Science, (as I did) when it was found that Science said that the story was but a legend, and, as a matter of fact, untrue. No star, or planet could, in point of fact, behave as this star is said to have behaved, and, although Proctor sought to get over the difficulty by suggesting that the star wasn’t a star at all, but a comet, this doesn’t in the least help us, for no comet could behave so. The Chinese have a record of the appearance of a comet about this time (whose visit was not recorded in the Western Hemisphere), but neither this comet, nor any celestial object whatever will fit in with the description of the movements of the star, as related by St. Matthew. The narratives of the evangelists were, none of them, penned until at least fifty years after the events recorded, and during that interval, in a poetic and legendary age, fancy—beautiful fancy, sometimes—usurped the plain, unvarnished throne of reality ; giving us the simple, touching, legendary lorqj^,herds who knew the night sky more familiarly we do. Furthermore, not only is the story astronomically and scientifically untenable, but St. Matthew’s account won’t at all fit in with the account of St. Luke. If the account given by Matthew is right then Luke is wrong ; and if Luke is right Matthew is all astray. Matthew relates the story of the flight into Egypt with the infant Jesus, of Joseph and Mary, and their stay in that country until the death of Herod the King. But on their return, they return, not to Bethlehem, but to Nazareth.

Luke, however, describes Joseph and Mary as returning to Nazareth immediately after the purification ; and, if you carefully read the two accounts you will see that it is quite evident that one evangelist regarded Bethlehem as the birthplace of Jesus, and the other Nazareth. It would appear as though it were inevitable in the order of things, and what we call the progress of the world, that all poems, all that touches the heart in all literature, all delicate and innocent and emotional fancy, were ultimately to perish utterly, and to vanish from the earth. Nature, men always saw, was sometimes cruel ; but her brooks have continued to ripple pleasantly throughout the ages, her oceans are eternal, her hills are everlasting. But science is cruel, and in no shape or form kind to man, except as regards his mere being : his eating, his drinking, his sleeping. There is a poem in every river ; but truth has no metre: there is melody in every stream and even in the beating of the breakers, but no bar of music in any scientific investigation. Truth is as cold as a stone. She is cold as any icicle. But she is spotless and pure as Alpine snow ; and we must still venerate her, because she is honest and true, even though she takes from us those dreams and fancies which were the delight of Christendom in its infancy, and its hope in its more advanced age !