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Alabaster Blue Sectory 15
Page 03
The cave of Gailenreuth, in Bavaria, was explored by Dr. Goldfuss in 1810. He came to the conclusion that the bones of bears and other extinct animals were proofs of the former presence of the animals themselves. Dr. Buckland, a celebrated English writer, visited the cave in 1816, and became much interested in the work; so much so that when Kirkdale Cavern, in England, was discovered in 1821, he at once repaired to the spot and made a careful exploration. The results satisfied him that hyenas and other extinct animals had once lived in England. He followed up his explorations in a number of cases, and published a work on this subject in 1822, which marks the commencement of a new era in cave research.
Some years ago a German Artist was travelling in Norway, on foot, with his knapsack on his back and his stick in his hand. He lodged most of time in the cottages that he fell in with on his road. In one of them there was a seal, which the fisherman had found on the sand, after harpooning the mother of the poor animal. No sooner was it admitted into the cottage than the seal became the friend of the family and the playmate of the children. It played from morning till night with them, would lick their hands, and call them with a gentle little cry, which is not unlike the human voice, and it would look at them tenderly with its large blue eyes, shaded by long black lashes. It almost always followed its master to fish, swimming around the boat and taking a great many fish, which it delivered to the fisherman without even giving them a bite. A dog could not have been more devoted, faithful, teachable, or even more intelligent.
"That is very ungracious," I said. "You are as perverse as I was about Byron when the old banker quoted him with tears. I was going to say, and I will say it, that Tennyson, with all his faults, was a great lord of music; and he put into words the fine, homely domestic emotion of the race--the poetry of labour, order, and peace. It was new and rich and splendid, and because it seems to you old-fashioned, you call it mere respectability; but it was the marching music of the world, because he showed men that faith was enlarged and not overturned by science. These two were great, because they saw far and wide; they knew by instinct just what the ordinary man was thinking, who yet wished his life to be set to music. These little men of yours don't see that. They have their moments of ecstasy, as we all have, in the blossoming orchard full of the songs of birds. And that will always and for ever give us the lyric, if the skill is there. But I want something more than that; I, you, thousands of people, are feeling something that makes the brain thrill and the heart leap. The mischief is that we don't know what it is, and I want a great poet to come and tell us."
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