A GENUINE GEOGRAPHY.*
Nov many years ago a German of some intellectual distinction 'finished a tour in this country by a visit to one of our Univer- eities. One of his hosts, a man who was in the habit of speaking &is own mind freely, and who liked free speaking in return, asked inm what impressions England had made on him. He answered, 4' You are a strange race, practical, and practical only. ,Even in your intellectual, as in all other pursuits, you never seem to attempt to grasp the principles of any subject, and the practical value of your study is itself damaged by that defect. You have your scholars, but you have no philologists ; your scientific men, but no philosophers ; your lawyers, but no jurists." Au English- man in his partiality for his own country may be permitted to doubt whether the criticism was not at least in part one of mere names, whether, not to refer to living men, Bentley and Person would have been more complete in their knowledge had each been
Physical, Historical, and Military Geography. From the French of Th. Layallee, Into Professor of Military History and Statistics at the Military School of Saint Cyr. Edited, with additions and corrections, by Captain Lenny, F.L.S., Director of the Practical Military College at Sunbury. London: Stanford.
called " philolog," instead of scholar, and whether Davy and Faraday would have gone further into the principles of science had each been named " philosoph " instead of experimentalist. But had similar criticism been applied to our study of the subject on which the work before us must become from henceforth the chief authority, an Englishman could only have answered by a surrender at discretion. It may safely be asserted that the study of geography as a science has yet to be introduced into England. The best known criticism on our English ignorance of the subject is characteristic of the kind of meaning which an Englishman attaches to the words a "knowledge of geography." Mr. Cobden used the same standard as the rest of his countrymen when he complained, naming an important town, that an Englishman hardly knew of its existence. An English boy, if he is so fortu- nate as to learn at school anything of geography at all, learns, for instance, that York, Leeds, Sheffield, Hull, Bradford, and Hud- dersfield are the chief towns of Yorkshire ; that York is famous for such and such a trade, Leed. for another, and so on ; and he fancies that if he knows the name of every obscure town in the most remote regions of the world, the nature of its exports and imports, and the fact that some battle or other was fought near it, he is a perfect master of geography.
But a much more damaging instance of our national ignorance, in the eyes of foreign critics, than that which Mr. Cobden paraded, was held up to scorn not long ago in our leading journal. It is impossible to say what may have been the importance of an anony- mous writer, whose letter was printed, if we remember right, in large and leaded type ; but the Times does not usually go out of its way to crush a mere worm. The case was this. One of the Times' correspondents from the seat of war had used the expres- sion "water-shed." The writer of the letter to which we allude asked sarcastically what the word might mean. The Times, in an editorial note, referred him to the first page of the most elementary geography he could obtain. The punishment, though severe, was doubtless merited by the ignorant attempt at satire, if not by the ignorance itself; but we must confess our belief that had the question been put at the time to an average hundred of public-school men, not fifty of them could have given any exact and definite answer to it. Now, seeing that the word " water-shed " stands to geography in much the same relation that "plane "does to geometry, occurring, for instance, say, fifty times in Captain Lendy's table of contents, that is a rather serious charge.
We have no wish, however, to ignore the efforts which have been made within the last few years to remedy the defects in our English system of geographical education. The introduction to Mr. Hughes' _Manual of Geography might serve to replace this article as an argu- ment for the adoption in England of the method of M. La.vallee, and both this manual itself and that of Mrs. Sommerville are in theirway most excellent books. But what these works have in fact effected has been the commencement among us of an entirely independent study, consisting in an inquiry into the nature of the phenomena which occur upon the earth's surface, and the manner in which they are distributed upon it. The independent interest of such a study is immense, but it does not render geography available for the reading of history. For that we must consider not mere groups of phenomena, but the earth's surface itself, methodically divided into such definite and natural units, that while each is distinct and complete if studied alone, its position as a part of the whole is suggested by its very character and outline. When once such a system of natural geography is completed on a clear and comprehensive basis, it is no difficult task to paint over it, as it were, the divisions which have been created by the political history of man, and to assign their true positions to all such phenomena as affect that history. To illustrate the way in which such a natural study of the globe may supply us with a kind of clue to history, which we at present simply do not possess in Eng- land, let us consider this simple instance.
There is probably scarcely an English drawing-room in which during the course of the last few years two questions have not been discussed,—the motives which induce France to desire so eagerly the restoration to her of those not very wealthy or majestic towns Sarre-Louis, Philippeville, and Marienburg, and which make Europe so determined that they shall not be given back to her ;— and the reasons why the most clear-headed of monarchs, for the sake of an apparently almost profitless strip of territory, sacrificed the magnificent position which he had so ingeniously assumed of being the disinterested arbiter of Europe, coupled with the yet more singular coincidence that all Frenchmen, almost to a man, Red, Orleanist, Legitimist as warmly as the most zealous Im- perialist, approved and defended that deed. Yet beyond a sort of general idea that France desires to possess
"the Rhine frontier," scarcely an Englishman has a notion of the geographical circumstances which, being perfectly known to all Frenchmen, account for the political facts to which we have alluded ; and there is not in existence among us a work of general geography which would serve to explain them ; not that there is any accidental omission in this one respect, but that the aim of our geographers does not include the elucidation of this class of ques- tions. Our geographies either belong to the mere town-catalogue class, to which we have already alluded, or they are a study of phy- sical phenomena only, or, as is the case with Mr. Hughes' manual, they combine the two together in a manner no doubt highly interesting, but by no means conducive to the adequate study of historical facts. We shall at once proceed to set in contrast to these the method known throughout the Continent as the" hydro- graphic system," which, though any one educated in a Prussian or a French school would equally take it for granted, is to all intents and purposes, except in a few favoured localities, a method of teaching geography unknown ineEngland.
M. Lavallee begins by explaining the conditions, as far as we can arrive at them, under which the earth has assumed its present form ; its breaking up into oceans and continents, its climates, its rocks and soils. Then proceeding from these general outlines, he considers how the various continents are divided into primary, secondary, and tertiary water-sheds, and how the lands are divided still further by water-courses and mountain ridges. -" down to the smallest ravine furrowed by the tiniest brook." Having thus far treated of the world as it is by nature, he then, and not till then, proceeds to consider how man has influenced its character, and how he has divided it ; how the peculiarities of the planet in which he finds himself, have influenced -the movements of man, and have tended to create distinctions between his characteristics in different parts of it. But in order to do this, it is necessary to the methodic Frenchman to inquire who man is, and what distinctions other causes besides those connected with the nature of the earth he lives in have created between different parts of the human family. Accordingly, "man considered in himself," and "man considered socially" are disposed of in a very few but very characteristic pages, which no one but a Frenchman could have written, and in which we can promise all our readers no little amusement even if they persist in re- maining obstinately English in their knowledge of geography. These brief chapters are followed by a short history of geo- graphy, and then the real work of the book begins in detail. From this point there is carried on throughout a kind of double investigation of the divisions of the earth's surface. The natural or hydrographical divisions are first traced out in all the detail which we have considered in principle in the earlier part of the work ; the character of each river basin being described in tracing the course of the river, and all towns, and everything else that requires to be noticed, as, for instance, the passages across ranges of hills, &c., being treated of in the basin to which they belong. The frontiers of the different countries are, in the second place, described with minute care as soon as the basins in which they are contained have been adequately completed. Thus our knowledge of the natural and of the political divisions of the globe proceeds together, and while we are made thoroughly acquainted with the physical characteristics of each country of Europe, we are yet made to understand the natural boundaries which limit each group of phenomena of ground, climate, &c., and which are by no means coincident with the political lines of separation.
Beyond all question, that which will most strike an English reader is the essentially French character of the book. It is French in its liveliness, French in its methodic arrangement, French in its general preference for military over commercial illustrations ; and though Captain Lendy's English is especially fresh, clear, and vigorous, no one but an Anglo-Frenchman could have translated a work on such a subject, whilst so quietly ignoring the sundry British prejudices which it will touch very nearly. Seeing that the original work has been used for years in all the military schools of France, it may well be believed that a transla- tor's hand has been needed pretty freely to increase the number of our battles with France which are set down as English victories, but most Britons will be not a little astonished to learn that Quatre Bras is "the site of the battle in which Ney defeated the British." Our countrymen, however, never quite remember that they sometimes amuse themselves by playing the part of man in the old fable of the lion and man, and it is chiefly on that account that they will be surprised to find that when the man has negligently allowed the lion to do his work for him, and to sketch for the man's benefit the fields of their ancient combats, the lion somewhat too often appears in the ascendant. We do ,
not, however, think that it will do John Bull any harm to learn the lesson which, as Punch says, is the hardest of all for him to learn—that he is a foreigner in Paris—and we have too much faith in his good sense to fear lest he should refuse to learn other lessons, of his need for which he is more conscious, because this must be learned at the same time. As to the other French characteristic of the book to which we have already alluded, the rather historical and military than commercial guise uuder which it appears, we must, of course, for that fact, thank the carelessness which has induced a nation of navigators to leave it to a nation of soldiers to write their geography for them ; but we cannot think it a disadvantage, even from a commercial point of view, that a young Englishman instead of learning a dry catalogue of the products of any given district or town, which in the rapidly shifting course of trade history, he will probably find entirely incorrect by the time he requires them for use, should learn first at least the conditions of land and water, of climate and soil, which have adapted the district to the preparation of the products which it exports ; while for the historical student the advantage of getting his chess-table defined for him, with especial reference to the manner in which its nature affects the movements of the pieces, before he begins to study the game, is quite inestimable.
In one respect an English student enjoys for the moment an advantage over all others, lie possesses here in his own language not merely a translation of the best book which is in use on the Continent, but a work which is an infinitely better authority, and more accurate than that book itself. Since the last edition of M. Lavallee's text was published vast trade of ground have been resurveyed in Europe, whole countries have been opened up, and hundreds of errors which had crept into the text of a work abounding in minute detail required correction ; while all the alterations and illustrations suggested by the Italian, American, and German wars had to be filled in. The work as it at present stands scarcely needs commendation at our hands. It has been tried and approved in a far inferior form, during a long experience, by a far more severe criticism than any to which it will be subjected in England. It is now translated into English by the man whom the author had himself selected for the task, and who has executed his work in such a manner that we may safely assert that a new edition will be immediately necessary in France, in order to take advantage of the improvements which have been introduced into the English version. We cannot conclude our notice without expressing our regret, that the issue of such an edition can no longer be watched over by the distinguished man to whom Europe owes the original work.
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