Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/356

346[March 13, 1869] and seven tons of stone were deposited. In 1817, a storm displaced two hundred yards of the upper stone-work; but this only strengthened the work, and showed the "angle of repose" at which the stones could safely lie. Rennie died in 1821, and his son and three other engineers completed this noble work. Sir John Rennie, finding the roll of the sea dangerous at the westward end of the Breakwater, built a platform of rubble to "trip up" the heavy seas before they could reach the slope. In 1838, a severe storm carried blocks of twelve and fourteen tons from the sea to the land slope. The western arm was completed in 1840. The stone used has been computed, in the total, at three million tons; the total cost at one million five hundred thousand pounds. The Digue, at Cherbourg, is, however, four thousand one hundred and eleven feet long and ninety feet broad; the Breakwater at Plymouth only one thousand seven hundred and sixty feet long and one hundred and twenty feet broad at the base.

And now rising and soaring far over the proud woods of Mount Edgecumbe, which the admiral of the Armada is said to have selected for his prize when the Spaniards should divide England, the crow drifts on across the wild Cornish moors to Bodmin, en route for the Cornish coast and the haunted cliffs around Tintagel.

THE VINDICATION OF PROSE.

readers of our recent high-flown poets are too apt to despise honest every-day Prose, as an inferior form of composition. By such persons, we apprehend, the nature, origin, and importance of prose, as a vehicle of thought, have not been duly considered, nor its genius properly estimated. Poetry, we concede, is older than history, and verse than prose. The former, moreover, as if by right of primogeniture, have taken the highest rank in general regard. Is it not, however, doubtful whether their claim to such superiority can be maintained? A late eminent poet wrote a very brief but significant essay, on The Wonderfulness of Prose. As an instrument in the hands of a skilful worker, indeed, the utility of prose appears to have no limits; it is available for all subjects, the loftiest as well as the lowliest. It can accommodate itself to either. It has an endless capacity of adaptation. It can vary its rhythm at pleasure, now swelling into sublime eloquence, now condescending to the plainest narrative. It is never monotonous, because always free to suit its cadence to its theme, and to alter the measure with the mental mood; it imposes no form on the thought, but permits the natural expression to every rising emotion.

Now, verse for the most part does the contrary of all this. The metricist dances in fetters, and stands on ceremony and punctilio. Nor is he content to speak the truth in a straightforward manner, but wraps it in fable, and conceals it in myths. The Oriental type of mind is that which best illustrates this, and most aptly transmits to us the pre-historical in its most appropriate—its poetic form. In this there is a want of distinction between the inward feeling and the outward figure; and positive laws are readily accepted for, and instead of, the moral sentiments. Consciousness has not yet made any difference between the inward and outward, and language is left to the mercy of metaphors and allegories, which are not yet submitted to any control but that of grammar; which, with some other studies, such as astronomy, geometry, and algebra, receive early attention. Life and speech with a pre-historic people are ruled by the imagination, unassociated yet with understanding, the objects of which from their first apprehension are perverted by the fancy. Such a people lived in a state of reverie, and revelled in sensuous perceptions and expressions, which were traditionally accepted as identified with truth, and never brought to the bar of conscience or the test of reason. Accordingly, in conversation with Eastern people, we seldom get a veracious answer or any direct information; what appears to the European mind as falsehood pervades every sentence, even to the form of the words, owing to the mind being in a false state: but the seeming falsehood, though it may have the effect of a direct lie, is really a fiction only, prompted by the excitement which a habit of poetic expression continually maintains and indeed requires. Such is the case with the Hindoos to the present day.

Myths, for the most part, have as little place in prose as they ought to have in history. It states things as they actually happen, and not as they may be made to appear by a symbolical interpretation, based on arbitrary suppositions. We meet with this literal dealing with facts first of all in Chinese history. The Chinese writers of history form a distinct series, and commence with a high antiquity, some three thousand years before the Christian era. Their earliest books contain ancient canonical documents, and are called Kings, consisting of the Shu-King, the Y-King, and the Shi-king. The first of these comprises their history, treats of the government of the former monarchs, and gives the statutes enacted by them; the second consists of figures, which have served as the bases of the Chinese written character; and the third preserves a collection of the oldest poems, written in a great variety of styles. These, with two others of less importance, the Li-king and the Tshun-tsin, form the groundwork of the history, the manners, and the laws of China. The Chinese historical works are executed with the strictest accuracy; the historians belong to the highest functionaries. Two ministers, constantly in attendance on the emperor, keep a journal of everything the latter does, commands, and says, and their notes are then worked up and made use of by the historians.

The earliest of these histories, however, could not avoid the mythical element, and represents the human race as originally savages, living in