The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 74, December, 1863

Now that water pervades this net-work of fissures in the glacier to a depth not yet ascertained, my experiments upon the glacier of the Aar have abundantly proved; and that the fissures themselves exist at a depth of two hundred and fifty feet I also know, from actual observation. All this can, of course, take place, even if the internal temperature of the glacier never should fall below 32° Fahrenheit; and it has actually been assumed that the temperature within the glacier does not fall below this point, and that, therefore, no phenomena, dependent upon a greater degree of cold, can take place beyond a very superficial depth, to which the cold outside may be supposed to penetrate. I have, however, observed facts which seem to me irreconcilable with this assumption. In the first place, a thermometrograph indicating -2° Centigrade, (about 28° Fahrenheit,) at a depth of a little over two metres, that is, about six feet and a half, has been recovered from the interior of the glacier of the Aar, while all my attempts to thaw out other instruments placed in the ice at a greater depth utterly failed, owing to the circumstance, that, after being left for some time in the glacier, they were invariably frozen up in newly formed water-ice, entirely different in its structure from the surrounding glacier-ice. This freezing could not have taken place, did the mass of the glacier never fall below 32° Fahrenheit. And this is not the only evidence of hard frost in the interior of the glaciers. The innumerable large walls of water-ice, which may be seen intersecting their mass in every direction and to any depth thus far reached, show that water freezes in their interior. It cannot be objected, that this is merely the result of pressure; since the thin fluid seams, exhibited under pressure in the interesting experiments of Dr. Tyndall, and described in his work under the head of Crystallization and Internal Liquefaction, cannot be compared to the large, irregular masses of water-ice found in the interior of the glacier, to which I here allude.

In the absence of direct thermometric observations, from which the lowest internal temperature of the glacier could be determined with precision in all its parts, we are certainly justified in assuming that every particle of water-ice found in the glacier, the formation of which cannot be ascribed to the mere fact of pressure, is due to the influence of a temperature inferior to 32° Fahrenheit at the time of its consolidation. The fact that the temperature in winter has been proved by actual experimentation to fall as low as 28° Fahrenheit, that is, four degrees below the freezing-point at a depth of six feet below a thick covering of snow, though not absolutely conclusive as to the temperature at a greater depth, is certainly very significant.

Under these circumstances, it is not out of place to consider through what channels the low temperature of the air surrounding the glacier may penetrate into the interior. The heavy cold air may of course sink from the surface into every large open space, such as the crevasses, large fissures, and moulins or mill like holes to be described in a future article; it may also penetrate with the currents which ingulf themselves under the glacier, or it may enter through its terminal vault, or through the lateral openings between the walls of the valley and the ice. Indeed, if all the spaces in the mass of the glacier, not occupied by continuous ice, could be graphically represented, I believe it would be seen that cold air surrounds the glacier-ice itself in every direction, so that probably no masses of a greater thickness than that already known to be permeable to cold at the surface would escape this contact with the external temperature. If this be the case, it is evident that water may freeze in any part of the glacier.

To substantiate this position, which, if sustained, would prove that the dilatation of the mass of the glacier is an essential element of its motion, I may allude to several other well-known facts. The loose snow of the upper regions is gradually transformed into compact ice. The experiments of Dr. Tyndall prove that this may be the result of pressure; but in the region of the névé it is evidently owing to the transformation of the snow-flakes into ice by repeated melting and freezing, for it takes place in the uppermost layers of the snow, where pressure can have no such effect, as well as in its deeper beds. I take it for granted, also, that no one, familiar with the presence of the numerous ice-seams parallel to the layers of snow in these upper regions of the glacier, can doubt that they, as well as the névé, are the result of frost. But be this as it may, the difference between the porous ice of the upper region of the glacier and the compact blue ice of its lower track seems to me evidence direct that at times the whole mass must assume the rigidity imparted to it by a temperature inferior to the freezing-point. We know that at 32° Fahrenheit, regelation renders the mass continuous, and that it becomes brittle only at a temperature below this. In other words, the ice can break up into a mass of disconnected fragments, such as the capillary fissures and the infiltration-experiments described in my "Système Glaciaire," show to exist, only when it is below 32° Fahrenheit. If it be contended that ice at 32° does break, and that therefore the whole mass of the glacier may break at that temperature, setting aside the contradiction to the facts of regelation which such an assumption involves, I would refer to Dr. Tyndall's experiments concerning the vacuous spots in the ice.

Those who have read his startling investigations will remember that by sending a beam of sunlight through ice he brought to view the primitive crystalline forms to which it owes its solidity, and that he insisted that these star-shaped figures are always in the plane of crystallization. Without knowing what might be their origin, I had myself noticed these figures, and represented them in a diagram, part of which is reproduced in the annexed wood-cut. I had considered them to be compressed air-bubbles; and though I cannot, under my present circumstances, repeat the experiment of Dr. Tyndall upon glacier-ice, I conceive that the star-shaped figures represented upon Pl. VII. figs. 8 and 9, in my "Système Glaciaire," may refer to the same phenomenon as that observed by him in pond-ice. Yet while I make this concession, I still maintain, that besides these crystalline figures there exist compressed air-bubbles in the angular fragments of the glacier-ice, as shown in the above wood-cut; and that these bubbles are grouped in sets, trending in the same direction in one and the same fragment, and diverging under various angles in the different fragments. I have explained this fact concerning the position of the compressed air-bubbles, by assuming that ice, under various pressure, may take the appearance it presents in each fragment with every compressed air-bubble trending in the same direction, while their divergence in the different fragments is owing to a change in the respective position of the fragments resulting from the movement of the whole glacier. I have further assumed, that throughout the glacier the change of the snow and porous ice into compact ice is the result of successive freezing, alternating with melting, or at least with the resumption of a temperature of 32° Fahrenheit in consequence of the infiltration of liquid water, to which the effects of pressure must be added, the importance of which in this connection no one could have anticipated prior to the experiments of Dr. Tyndall. Of course, if the interior temperature of the glacier never falls below 32°, the changes here alluded to could not take place. But if the vacuous spaces observed by Dr. Tyndall are really identical with the spaces I have described as extremely flattened air-bubbles, I think the arrangement of these spaces as above described proves that it freezes in the interior of the glacier to the depth at which these crosswise fragments have been observed: that is, at a depth of two hundred feet. For, since the experiments of Dr. Tyndall show that the vacuous spaces are parallel to the surface of crystallization, and as no crystallization of water can take place unless the surrounding temperature fall below 32°, it follows that these vacuous spaces could not exist in such large continuous fragments, presenting throughout the fragments the same trend, if there had been no frost within the mass, affecting the whole of such a fragment while it remained in the same position.

The most striking evidence, in my opinion, that at times the whole mass of the glacier actually freezes, is drawn from the fact, already alluded to, that, while the surface of the glacier loses annually from nine to ten feet of its thickness by evaporation and melting, it swells, on the other hand, in the spring, to the amount of about five feet. Such a dilatation can hardly be the result of pressure and the packing of the snow and ice, since the difference in the bulk of the ice brought down, during one year, from a point above to that under observation, would not account for the swelling. It is more readily explained by the freezing of the water of infiltration during spring and early summer, when the infiltration is most copious and the winter cold has been accumulating for the longest time. This view of the case is sustained by Élie de Beaumont, who states his opinion upon this point as follows:—

"Pendant l'hiver, la température de la surface du glacier s'abaisse à un grand nombre de degrés au-dessous de zéro, et cette basse température pénètre, quoique avec un affaiblissement graduel, dans l'interieur de la masse. Le glacier se fendille par l'effet de la contraction résultant de ce refroidissement. Les fentes restent d'abord vides, et concourent an refroidissement des glaciers en favorisant l'introduction de l'air froid extérieur; mais an printemps, lorsque les rayons du soleil échaffent la surface de la neige qui couvre le glacier, ils la remènent d'abord à zéro, et ils produisent ensuite de l'eau à zéro qui tombe dans le glacier refroidi et fendillé. Cette eau s'y congèle à l'instant, en laissant dégager de la chaleur qui tend à ramener le glacier à zéro; et la phénomène se continue jusqu'à ce que la masse entière du glacier refroidi soit ramené à la température de zéro."[8 - "During the winter, the temperature at the surface of the glacier sinks a great many degrees below 32° Fahrenheit, and this low temperature penetrates, though at a gradually decreasing rate, into the interior of the mass. The glacier becomes fissured in consequence of the contraction resulting from this cooling process. The cracks remain open at first, and contribute to lower the temperature of the glacier by favoring the introduction of the cold air from without; but in the spring, when the rays of the sun raise the temperature of the snow covering the glacier, they first bring it back to 32° Fahrenheit, and presently produce water at 32°, which falls into the chilled and fissured mass of the glacier. There this water is instantly frozen, releasing heat which tends to bring back the glacier to the temperature of 32°; and this process continues till the entire mass of the cooled glacier returns to the temperature of 32°."]

But where direct observations are still so scanty, and the interpretations of the facts so conflicting, it is the part of wisdom to be circumspect in forming opinions. This much, however, I believe to be already settled: that any theory which ascribes the very complicated phenomena of the glacier to one cause must be defective and one-sided. It seems to me most probable, that, while pressure has the larger share in producing the onward movement of the glacier, as well as in the transformation of the snow into ice, a careful analysis of all the facts will show that this pressure is owing partly to the weight of the mass itself, partly to the pushing on of the accumulated snow from behind, partly to its sliding along the surface upon which it rests, partly to the weight of water pervading the whole, partly to the softening of the rigid ice by the infiltration of water, and partly, also, to the dilatation of the mass, requiting from the freezing of this water. These causes, of course, modify the ice itself, while they contribute to the motion. Further investigations are required to ascertain in what proportion these different influences contribute to the general result, and at what time and under what circumstances they modify most directly the motion of the glacier.

That a glacier cannot be altogether compared to a river, although there is an unmistakable analogy between the flow of the one and the onward movement of the other, seems to me plain,—since the river, by the combination of its tributaries, goes on increasing in bulk in consequence of the incompressibility of water, while a glacier gradually thins out in consequence of the packing of its mass, however large and numerous may be its accessions. The analogy fails also in one important point, that of the acceleration of speed with the steepness of the slope. The motion of the glacier bears no such direct relation to the inclination of its bed. And though in a glacier, as in a river, the axis of swiftest motion is thrown alternately on one or the other side of the valley, according to its shape and slope, the very nature of ice makes it impossible that eddies should be formed in the glacier, and the impressive feature of whirlpools is altogether wanting in them. What have been called glacier-cascades bear only a remote resemblance to river-cascades, as in the former the surface only is thrown into confusion by breaking, without affecting the primitive structure;[9 - For the evidence of this statement I must, however, refer to my work on Glaciers, already so often quoted in this article, where it may be found with all the necessary details.] and I reiterate my formerly expressed opinion that even the stratification of the upper regions is still recognizable at the lower end of the glacier of the Rhone.

The internal structure of the glacier has already led me beyond the limits I had proposed to myself in the present article. But I trust my readers will not be discouraged by this dry discussion of various theories concerning it, and will meet me again on the glacier, when we will examine together some of its more picturesque features, its crevasses, its rivulets and cascades, its moraines, its boulders, etc., and endeavor also to track its ancient course and boundaries in earlier geological times.

IN AN ATTIC

This is my attic-room. Sit down, my friend;
My swallow's-nest is high and hard to gain;
The stairs are long and steep, but at the end
The rest repays the pain.

For here are peace and freedom; room for speech
Or silence, as may suit a changeful mood;—
Society's hard by-laws do not reach
This lofty altitude.

You hapless dwellers in the lower rooms
See only bricks and sand and windowed walls;
But here, above the dust and smoky glooms,
Heaven's light unhindered falls.

So early in the street the shadows creep,
Your night begins while yet my eyes behold
The purpling hills, the wide horizon's sweep,
Flooded with sunset gold.

The day comes earlier here. At morn I see
Along the roofs the eldest sunbeam peep,—
I live in daylight, limitless and free,
While you are lost in sleep.

I catch the rustle of the maple-leaves,
I see their breathing branches rise and fall,
And hear, from their high perch along the eaves,
The bright-necked pigeons call.

Far from the parlors with their garrulous crowds
I dwell alone, with little need of words;
I have mute friendships with the stars and clouds,
And love-trysts with the birds.

So all who walk steep ways, in grief and night,
Where every step is full of toil and pain,
May see, when they have gained the sharpest height,
It has not been in vain:

Since they have left behind the noise and heat,—
And, though their eyes drop tears, their sight is clear;
The air is purer, and the breeze is sweet,
And the blue heaven more near.

LONGFELLOW

The preface of "Outre-Mer," Longfellow's first book, is dated 1833. The last poem in his last volume is published in 1863. In those thirty years what wide renown, what literary achievement, what love of friends in many lands, what abounding success and triumph, what profound sorrow, mark the poet's career! The young scholar, returning from that European tour which to the imaginative and educated American is the great romance, sits down in Bowdoin College in Maine, where he is Professor, and writes the "Epistle Dedicatory" to the "worthy and gentle reader." Those two phrases tell the tale. The instinct of genius and literary power stirring in the heart of the young man naturally takes the quaint, dainty expression of an experience fed, thus far, only upon good old books and his own imagination. The frolicking tone of mock humility, deprecating the intrusion upon the time of a busy world, does not conceal the conviction that the welcome so airily asked by the tyro will at last be commanded by the master.

Like the "Sketch-Book" of the other most popular of our authors, Irving, the "Outre-Mer" of Longfellow is a series of tales, reveries, descriptions, reminiscences, and character-pieces, suggested by European travel. But his beat lies in France, Spain, and Italy. It is the romance of the Continent, and not that of England, which inspires him. It is the ruddy light upon the vines and the scraps of old chansons which enliven and decorate his pilgrimage, and through all his literary life they have not lost their fascination. While Irving sketches "Rural Life in England," Longfellow paints "The Village of Auteuil"; Irving gives us "The Boar's Head Tavern," and Longfellow "The Golden Lion Inn" at Rouen; Irving draws "A Royal Poet," Longfellow discusses "The Trouvères," or "The Devotional Poetry of Spain." It is delightful to trace the charming resemblance between the books and the writers, widely different as they are. There is the same geniality, the same tender pathos, the same lambent humor, the same delicate observation of details, the same overpowering instinct of literary art. But Geoffrey Crayon is a humorist, while the Pilgrim beyond the Sea is a poet. The one looks at the broad aspects of English life with the shrewd, twinkling eye of a man of the world; the other haunts the valley of the Loire, the German street, the Spanish inn, with the kindling fancy of the scholar and poet. The moral and emotional elements are quite wanting in Irving; they are characteristic of Longfellow. But the sweetness of soul, the freedom from cynicism or stinging satire, which is most unusual in American, or in any humorous or descriptive literature, is remarkable in both. "I have no wife, nor children, good or bad, to provide for," begins Geoffrey Crayon, quoting from old Burton. But neither had he an enemy against whom to defend himself. It was true of Geoffrey Crayon, down to the soft autumn day on which he died, leaving a people to mourn for him. It is true of the Pilgrim of Outre-Mer, in all the thirty years since first he launched forth "into the uncertain current of public favor."

In this earliest book of Longfellow's the notable points are not power of invention, or vigorous creation, or profound thought, but a mellowness of observation, instinctively selecting the picturesque and characteristic details, a copious and rich scholarship, and that indefinable grace of the imagination which announces genius. The work, like the "Sketch-Book," was originally issued in parts, and it was hardly possible for any observer thirty years ago not to see that its peculiar character revealed a new strain in our literature. Longfellow's poems as yet were very few, printed in literary journals, and not yet signalizing his genius. It was the day when Percival Halleck, Sprague, Dana, Willis, Bryant, were the undisputed lords of the American Parnassus. But the school reading-books already contained "An April Day" and "Woods in Winter," and all the verses of the young author had a recognition in volumes of elegant extracts and commonplace-books. But the universal popularity of Longfellow was not established until the publication of "Hyperion" in 1839, followed by "The Voices of the Night" in the next year. With these two works his name arose to the highest popularity, both in America and England; and no living author has been more perpetually reproduced in all forms and with every decoration.

If now we care to explain the eager and affectionate welcome which always hails his writings, it is easy to see to what general quality that greeting must be ascribed. As with Walter Scott, or Victor Hugo, or Béranger, or Dickens, or Addison in the "Spectator," or Washington Irving, it is a genial humanity. It is a quality, in all these instances, independent of literary art and of genius, but which is made known to others, and therefore becomes possible to be recognized, only through literary forms. The creative imagination, the airy fancy, the exquisite grace, harmony, and simplicity, the rhetorical brilliancy, the incisive force, all the intellectual powers and charms of style with which that feeling may be expressed, are informed and vitalized by the sympathy itself. But whether a man who writes verses has genius,—whether he be a poet according to arbitrary canons,—whether some of his lines resemble the lines of other writers,—and whether he be original, are questions which may be answered in every way of every poet in history. Who is a poet but he whom the heart of man permanently accepts as a singer of its own hopes, emotions, and thoughts? And what is poetry but that song? If words have a uniform meaning, it is useless to declare that Pope cannot be a poet, if Lord Byron is, or that Moore is counterfeit, if Wordsworth be genuine. For the art of poetry is like all other arts. The casket that Cellini worked is not less genuine and excellent than the dome of Michel Angelo. Is nobody but Shakspeare a poet? Is there no music but Beethoven's? Is there no mountain-peak but Dhawalaghiri? no cataract but Niagara?

Thirty years ago almost every critic in England exploded with laughter over the poetry of Tennyson. Yet his poetry has exactly the same characteristics now that it had then; and Tennyson has gone up to his place among English poets. It is not "Blackwood," nor any quarterly review or monthly magazine, (except, of course, the "North American" and the "Atlantic,") which can decree or deny fame. While the critics are busily proving that an author is a plagiarist or a pretender, the world is crowning him,—as the first ocean-steamer from England brought Dr. Lardner's essay to prove that steamers could not cross the ocean. Literary criticism, indeed, is a lost art, if it ever were an art. For there are no permanent acknowledged canons of literary excellence; and if there were any, there are none who can apply them. What critic shall decide if the song of a new singer be poetry, or the bard himself a poet? Consequently, modern criticism wisely contents itself with pointing out errors of fact or of inference, or the difference between the critic's and the author's philosophic or æsthetic view, and bitterly assaults or foolishly praises him. When Horace Binney Wallace, one of the most accomplished and subtile-minded of our writers, says of General Morris that he is "a great poet," and that "he who can understand Mr. Emerson may value Mr. Bancroft," we can feel only the more profoundly persuaded that fame is not the judgment of individuals, but of the mass of men, and that he whose song men love to hear is a poet.

But while the magnetism of Longfellow's touch lies in the broad humanity of his sympathy, which leads him neither to mysticism nor cynicism, and which commends his poetry to the universal heart, his artistic sense is so exquisite that each of his poems is a valuable literary study. In this he has now reached a perfection quite unrivalled among living poets, except sometimes by Tennyson. His literary career has been contemporary with the sensational school, but he has been entirely untainted by it, and in the present volume, "Tales of a Wayside Inn," his style has a tranquil lucidity which recalls Chaucer. The literary style of an intellectually introverted age or author will always be somewhat obscure, however gorgeous; but Longfellow's mind takes a simple, child-like hold of life, and his style never betrays the inadequate effort to describe thoughts or emotions that are but vaguely perceived, which is the characteristic of the best sensational writing. Indeed, there is little poetry by the eminent contemporary masters which is so ripe and racy as his. He does not make rhetoric stand for passion, nor vagueness for profundity; nor, on the other hand, is he such a voluntary and malicious "Bohemian" as to conceive that either in life or letters a man is released from the plain rules of morality. Indeed, he used to be accused of preaching in his poetry by gentle critics who held that Elysium was to be found in an oyster-cellar, and that intemperance was the royal prerogative of genius.

His literary scholarship, also, his delightful familiarity with the pure literature of all languages and times, must rank Longfellow among the learned poets. Yet he wears this various knowledge like a shining suit of chain-mail, to adorn and strengthen his gait, like Milton, instead of tripping and clumsily stumbling in it, as Ben Jonson sometimes did. He whips out an exquisitely pointed allusion that flashes like a Damascus rapier and strikes nimbly home, or he recounts some weird tradition, or enriches his line with some gorgeous illustration from hidden stores, or merely unrolls, as Milton loved to do, the vast perspective of romantic association by recounting in measured order names which themselves make music in the mind,—names not musical only, but fragrant:—

"Sabean odors from the spicy shore
Of Araby the blest."

In the prelude to the "Wayside Inn," with how consummate a skill the poet graces his modern line with the shadowy charm of ancient verse, by the mere mention of the names!

"The chronicles of Charlemagne,
Of Merlin and the Mort d'Arthure,
Mingled together in his brain
With talcs of Flores and Blanchefleur,
Sir Launcelot, Sir Morgadour,
Sir Guy, Sir Bevis, Sir Gawain."

A most felicitous illustration of this trait is in "The Evening Star," an earlier poem. Chrysaor, in the old mythology, sprang from the blood of Medusa, armed with a golden sword, and married Callirrhoë, one of the Oceanides. The poet, looking at evening upon the sea, muses upon the long-drawn, quivering reflection of the evening star, and sings. How the verses oscillate like the swaying calm of the sea, while the image inevitably floats into the scholar's imagination:—

"Just above yon sandy bar,
As the day grows fainter and dimmer,
Lonely and lovely a single star