From The Spectator. THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH HUMOR. But that English humor is only in its infancy. and that we are likely to have an immense multiplication of its surprises, rather than THE publication of Mr. Ainger's little that it is already in the sere and yellow book on Charles Lamb, one of the truest leaf. The truth is, no doubt, that as huand most unique of all the great English man competition increases, there is a tenhumorists, has set people talking, as peo- dency to refine and subdivide and think ple always will talk, of the superiority of more exclusively about a succession of the past over the present, and the gradual trifles, which is not favorable to the larger decay of the forms of life which make humor; but then this very tendency the past so fascinating. "Will there ever drives men into opposition to it, makes be such another humorist as Charles them eager to steep themselves, as Charles Lamb?" said one literary man, during Lamb steeped himself, in the dramatic the present week, to another. "Is there life of a more spontaneous age, and the not a tendency at work in our modern life contrast brings to light ever new forms of to the pettification of everything, till the that grotesque and conscious inconsishighest form of humor which the public tency and incompatibility between human will enjoy is the form given in Mr. Gil- desire and human condition, on which the bert's operettas and Mr. Burnand's sense of humor feeds. When Charles 'Happy Thoughts'?" The interlocutor Lamb called Coleridge "an archangel, interrogated wisely reserved judgment, a little damaged," he painted the contrast thinking reserve wise, as the judges do on between human ideas and human expegreat occasions, and suspecting that pes-rience in its most perfect form. simism is always, apt to be out in its reck- every new generation is probably richer oning, moreover, that it is rather a hasty in suggestions of that kind than all the thing to assume that because our clever-preceding generations put together, for est operettas and contributions to Punch this, if for no other reason, - - that whether may leave something in the way of large- we still believe in the ideals of the past ness to be desired, largeness of humor is or not, as future realities, we never cease dying out in the world. And, indeed, if to yearn after them, and to yearn after we only consider what stores of fun Hood, them all the more that they excite less who was one of Lamb's youngest friends, active hope, while the accumulating expeproduced; then that before Lamb's death, rience of centuries brings us face to face the greatest English humorist of any age with the oddest and most grotesque forms Shakespeare himself not excepted of disappointment and disillusion. was beginning to try his wings; further, contrast could have been more striking, that one of the greatest of Dickens's for instance, than that between Coleridge's contemporaries, Thackeray, though much eloquent expositions of divine philosophy more of a satirist than a humorist, was and faith, and his own helpless life, spongstill a humorist of a very high order; ing on the hospitality of Good Samaritans, moreover, that while both of them were and leaving his family to the generosity in the maturity of their powers, a totally of friends. And no condition of the new school of humor of the most original world can be reasonably expected in kind sprang into existence on the other which contrasts of that pathetic kind will side of the Atlantic, of which the present not be multiplied rather than diminished American minister to this country is the in number, or in which it may not reasonacknowledged master, the "Biglow Pa- ably be expected that the eye to discern pers" having scarcely been surpassed and the power to make us feel these conin either kind or scale of humor since the trasts will be multiplied at the same time. world began; and finally, that to prove that very true humor of slighter calibre is plentiful enough, we have the extraordinary popularity and originality of such books as "Alice in Wonderland on this side of the Atlantic, and of trifles like Artemus Ward's various lectures, Hans Breitmann's ballads, and Bret Harte's "Heathen Chinee," on the other side of the Atlantic, to bring up in evidence, we suspect that it would be much more plausible, looking at the matter from the point of view of mere experience, to argue No In some respects, though in some only, Charles Lamb's humor anticipates the type of humor which we now call, in the main, American. When, for instance, he gravely narrated the origin of the Chinese invention of roast pig, in the burning down of a house, when he told a friend that he had moved just forty-two inches nearer to his beloved London, and again, when he wrote to Manning in China that the new Persian ambassador was called "Shaw Ali Mirza," but that the common people called him "Shaw Nonsense," we might think we were listening to Artemus the carpenter, provide us with a type of We quite admit that we never expect to see the greater types of transatlantic humor reproduced on this side of the Atlantic. These, for the most part, imply a rare faculty for turning the mind aside from the direct way of saying a thing to one that is so indirect as to lead you trav elling on a totally opposite track, as, for example, when Bret Harte declares that one of his rowdies took a point of order when And he smiled a kind o' sickly smile, and the subsekent proceedings interested him no more; It might be asserted, perhaps, that even if the prospect of a great future for English humor is good, there is still reason to fear that it must dwindle in largeness | And of conception, so that such massive forms of humor as we find, for instance, in or when the American blasphemer re"Gulliver's Travels" or the "Tale of a torted that if his censor had but "jumped Tub," are not likely to return. But even out of bed on to the business end of a tinthis we greatly doubt. As we noticed tack, even he would have cursed some." just now, Dickens, who, as a humorist was This wonderful power of suggesting misprobably not inferior in conception, and leading analogies taken from the very certainly more abundant in creation, than province which would seem to be least any humorist in the world, is wholly suggested either by analogy or contrast, modern, and he certainly has by no means seems to be, in some sense, indigenous exhausted the field even of that sort of in the United States, and no one is so humor in which he himself was most po- great a master of it as Mr. Lowell himself, tent. The field of what we may call ideal-who has made the sayings of John P. ized vulgarities, which includes sketches of the abstract monthly nurse whose every thought and action breathe the fawning brutalities of the Mrs. Gamp species, of beadles who incarnate all beadledom, of London pickpockets who have assim ilated all that is entertaining in the world of professional slang and nothing that is disgusting, of boarding-house keepers whose whole mind is transformed into an instrument for providing enough food and gravy and amusement for their commercial gentlemen, of water-rate collectors glorified by one ideal passion for the ballet, of rascally schoolmasters whose every action betrays the coward and the bully, or of hypocrites who secrete airs of pretentious benevolence as an oilgland secretes oil, is by no means exhausted, hardly more than Robinson and of Birdofredom Sawin Riding on a rail whale. Why the United States should seem to have a very special affinity for this species of humor it may seem difficult to attacked. divine. Perhaps it is that amongst our kinsmen there the principle of utility has gained what we may call a really imaginative ascendancy over all minds, to a degree to which it has never yet touched the imagination of Europe, and that this has resulted not only in the marvellous And yet it promises a sort of humor particularly well adapted to this period of at once almost sordid realism and ingenious abstraction. Nor can it be denied that "Alice in Wonderland," especially such plaintive ballads as that of the walrus and inventiveness which Americans have al- concerning the so-called Japanese coralways shown in the small devices of lium that I send the present notes. At a practical life, but in the discovery of an late meeting of the Zoological Society, almost new class of mental associations, Mr. G. O. Ridley, of the British Museum, -such as that which distinguishes the read a paper on the Corallida, and rehead of the nail from the point as sleep-viewed the species known, and exhibited ing and working partners in the same specimens of the form said to come from operation, or such as that which suggested Japan. I obtained specimens of this to a reader of the story of Jonah, that if corallium from Mr. Cutter, the London the prophet had had to pass resolutions dealer, from whom I first learned that as to the desirability of getting out of a precious coral was called Japanese. He the whale's belly, he would certainly have told me that he had seen a large quantity passed them with something very much in the market in London, but that it would like the unanimity of an assembly in not fetch any price, whereas Messrs. which the completeness of the concord is Greck state that Japanese coral sold for caused by stress of circumstances. The an extremely high price in Italy. Messrs. humor of the United States, if closely Phillips, of Cockspur Street, who also examined, will be found to depend in exhibited a fine series of specimens of great measure on the ascendancy which precious coral at one of my lectures, the principle of utility has gained over showed amongst them a carved jewel cut the imaginations of a rather imaginative out of Japanese coral, which is remarkpeople. And utility is a principle which able as being of mixed color, marbled has certainly not yet completed its ca- white and red, and also, as they informed reer, even in the way of suggesting me, for its far greater hardness than what seems to us the strangest and ordinary precious coral. quaintest of all strange and quaint analogies. PRECIOUS CORAL. From Nature. WHILST preparing a set of lectures on corals, lately delivered at the Royal Institution, I made some inquiries as to the present state of the fisheries of precious coral from Messrs. Greck and Co., coral merchants, of Rathbone Place, who also have an establishment at Naples. They exhibited a very fine series of examples of raw and worked coral at one of my lectures, and also sent me the following short notes on the Italian and Sicilian coral fisheries, partly taken from an Italian newspaper, but which contain some facts which may be interesting to the readers of Nature. I was shown a large number of the Sciacca specimens, all attached to groups of bivalve shells or pieces of dead coral. The blackened coral is described by Lacaze Duthiers in his famous monograph as "corail noirci dans la vase." It is very possible that the blackening substance is binoxide of manganese, since we dredged in deep water, during the " Challenger" expedition, large quantities of a dead coral skeleton, apparently allied to corallium, which was blackened by that substance. It is in the hope of eliciting some definite inforination from the readers of Nature Now although this coral, which is of a named species, is evidently universally regarded in the trade as Japanese, all evidence available seems to prove that no precious coral occurs in Japan. The Challenger" did not meet with any; and though I inquired, I heard of none as dredged there. Moreover, in numerous Japanese illustrated works on the races of men, certain foreigners of some kind are represented as bearing in their hands precious coral as tribute, or as the staple produce of their country, thus showing apparently that the coral is regarded as something rare from abroad in Japan. Perhaps, some of the correspondents of Nature in Japan can state whether any corallium occurs in Japanese waters. H. N. MOSELEY. Extract from the letter of Messrs Greck and Co.: "Coral fisheries on the coasts of Italy and Sicily begin about the middle of February, and continue till the middle of October. The value of the coral fished up varies immensely according to its color and size; the pale pink is the most prized, especially if it be of a uniform color throughout, without stains. Off Torre del Greco, near Naples, a large quantity of coral is found every year; from four hundred to six hundred boats are sent out in search of it, each boat being of from six to ten tons' burden, with a crew of at least twelve men, and costing from 500l. to 600l. a boat. Nearly all the inhabitants of Torre del Greco are employed by this industry, either as fishermen or in the manufacture of the coral brought to shore. The valuable pink coral is found chiefly off the coast of Sicily: in the year 1873 a bed was discovered in the Straits of Messina, in which the coral, though found only in small quantities and of a small size, was of immense value, owing to its beautiful pink, of a uniform color, and without any of those stains which detract so much from its worth. The coral found in this place is sent chiefly to London and Birmingham; it is usually manufactured in the shape of 'lentils,' and in this form is largely used for rings, either set singly in half-hoops or surrounded by precious stones and pearls. Its value varies from 80%. to upwards of 2001. per ounce. 66 Unfortunately the supply of coral in this bed seems to have run short, and for the last few years coral-merchants have not found it worth their while to send boats in search of it. The last attempt was made last year by the firms of Criscuolo and Greck and Co., who despatched two boats with a crew of thirty selected men, but the find was so small as barely to pay the expenses of the outfit. "This year out of eight hundred boats employed in the coral fishery off the coast of Sicily, not one has been sent to the bed in the Straits of Messina. In 1875 a local bed was discovered about twenty miles off the coast of Sciacca in Sicily, which was invaded for the next two years by seven hundred boats. This number of boats all crowded together in one spot, caused great confusion, and the Italian government despatched a man of war to keep order among the fishermen. Another similar bed was discovered in 1878, about ten miles further from the coast, and in 1880 yet another still further, to which six hundred boats were sent, and we learn from the reports of the Custom House at Sciacca that in a few months about eight thousand tons were fished, and although the quality of the coral is very inferior, being of a reddish color and often quite black, its value is computed at several millions of pounds. The coral found off the coast of Sciacca does not grow as at other places attached to rocks, but is found clinging to any small object it can lay hold of, such as a shell, or a fragment of coral. It is supposed that its dark red or black color is caused by the muddiness of the water in which it lives, although the depth of the sea at such spots is from three hundred to four hundred and fifty feet. This coral is not much esteemed in the English market, but is prepared in large quantities for the Indian market at Calcutta, by being exposed for months to the heat of the sun, and by being kept moist, when in time the black color gradually disappears. "A few years ago a large quantity of Japanese coral found its way into the market at Naples, and fetched as much as 1597. the kilo. in raw branches, in spite of its being a bad color and somewhat cloudy. This high price was given on account of its extraordinary size. It is the largest real coral ever known. Nothing has been heard of it since, excepting that the fishery was prohibited in Japan." THE FOREIGN TRADE OF INDIA. The returns of the foreign trade of India continue to show a great expansion of the exports, accompanied, however, by a falling off in the imports. For the nine months ended the 31st December last, and the corresponding periods of the years 1879 and 1880, the figures are: 1881. 1880. Of ment with respect to the cotton duties. the total increase of 4,420,000l. in the exports, no less than 4,284,000/. is due to the enormous increase in the shipments of wheat, of which in the nine months of 1879 India exported only 1,625,194 cwts., while in the corresponding period of 1881 her shipments amounted to 15,500,950 cwts. Of this latter 1879. quantity Britain took fully seven and a quarter million cwts., France four million cwts., Bel28,591,600|gium upwards of two million cwts., and Holland and Egypt each upwards of half a million Whether, if the price of wheat in the United States had not been artificially enThe decline in the imports, as compared withhanced by cliques of speculators, India would 1880, is pretty fully accounted for by a decrease have found a profitable market for her recent of 1,833,000/. in the value of cotton goods, with large consignments may be questioned; but it which the Indian markets seem to have been is certain, at all events, that the curtailment of largely overstocked in 1879, and trade in the American shipments has enabled her very which, moreover, has been adversely affected strikingly to display her great and increasing by uncertainty as to the action of the govern- | capacities as a grain-producing country. Imports of foreign merchandise Exports of Indian produce and foreign goods. 55,307,200 50,886,600 44,365,200 cwts. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Kemittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. |