they "resigned themselves to all the transports of joy and indignation." 1 In the song that Moses and the children of Israel sang, when the Egyptian horse and his rider, their pursuers, had been thrown into the sea, exulting notes were struck on the dread that should take hold on the inhabitants of Palestina. To Him that had delivered and would yet deliver Israel was this song sung, and to the confusion of His foes: Fear and dread should fall upon them: by the greatness of His arm they should be as still as a stone, till His people passed over, till the people passed over which He had purchased. Utrumque SACRO digna SILENTIO Mirantur umbræ dicere, says Horace, adverting to the profound silence enforced at ancient rites, whence the phrase "sacred silence" became equivalent to silence the deepest. Thucydides may be said to have immortalised the "solemn and touching moment," as Mr. Grote calls it, of silence-profound, intensified, wistful silence-of the whole population of Athens, assembled on the shores of Piræus, to see the Sicilian expedition off. That the silence was followed by a burst of "prayer and praise," from the voices of crews and spectators alike, only enhances the original effect. When Francis Xavier inspirited the dismayed people of Malacca to resist the Moslem, his life was for a time in instant jeopardy; for he, the idol of the preceding hour, as Sir James Stephen says, was now the object of popular fury. As he knelt before the altar, the menacing crowd were "scarcely restrained by the sanctity of the place from immolating him there as a victim to his own disastrous counsels." Still he knelt and prayed, with mien and in tones of passionate fervour. So fervid and so impassioned indeed that a solemn pause ensued: 'one half hour of deep and agonising silence held the awestricken assembly in breathless expectation," when, bounding to his feet, his countenance radiant with joy and his voice clear 66 1 Wenck, citing Dion, calls Gibbon's picture of the "silent suspense more imaginary than historical. Y and ringing as with the swelling notes of the trumpet, he exclaimed that Christ had conquered, and that at that very moment His invading foes were being slaughtered and put to shame. It was when the same apostle of the Indies, bound for China, passed through the gates of Malacca to the beach, followed by a grateful and admiring people, that, as he fell on his face on the earth, and as he there "poured forth a passionate, though silent prayer," his body heaving and shaking with the throes of inward conflict, a contagious terror is said to have passed from eye to eye, but every voice was hushed. “It was as the calm preceding the first thunder peal which is to rend the firmament." For when he arose it was to vent sacred indignation, expressed with vehement action, against the devoted city. On the return of Cortes to Mexico, on Midsummer day, 1520, the historian specially notes the difference the scene presented from that of his former entrance. "A deathlike stillness brooded over the scene," as the Spanish general rode moodily on at the head of his battalions; "a stillness that spoke louder to the heart than the acclamations of multitudes." When Montezuma finally consented to interpose with his infuriated subjects on behalf of the Spaniards, his presence was instantly recognised by the people, and, as the royal retinue advanced along the battlements, a change, we are told, as if by magic, came over the scene. "The clang of instruments, the fierce cries of the assailants were hushed, and a deathlike stillness pervaded the whole assembly, so fiercely agitated but a few moments before by the wild tumult of war." On that 20th of September, on the Alma, likened by Mr. Kinglake to some remembered day of June in England, for the sun was unclouded, and the soft breeze of the morning had lulled to a breath at noontide, and was creeping faintly along the hills, then it was that "in the Allied armies there occurred a singular pause of sound: a pause so general as to have been observed and remembered by many in remote parts of the ground, and so marked that its interruption by the mere neighing of an angry horse seized the attention of thousands; and although this strange silence was the mere result of weariness and chance, it seemed to carry a meaning, for it was now that, after near forty years of peace, the great nations of Europe were once more meeting for battle." At Trafalgar, when a shot from Villeneuve's flagship, the Bucentaure, at length went through the Victory's maintopgallant-sail, affording to the enemy the first visible proof that his shot would reach-and that indeed already it had told on Nelson's own ship-we read that "a minute or two of awful silence ensued," before the whole van of the French fleet opened a crashing fire on that one vessel, which for forty minutes, and notwithstanding the loss of fifty men, attempted no return. Wordsworth, in one of his sonnets on the anabasis and katabasis of the French army in Russia, thus commemorates an incident on the heights of Hochheim :— "Abruptly paused the strife; the field throughout With breath suspended, like a listening scout." When Canaris sent, or rather took, the fireships into the Turkish fleet off Chios, in 1822, profound was the consternation of the Turks who watched the event from the town. The Capitan Pacha's three decker was ablaze, and several others, and not a vessel in the fleet but was distinctly to be seen that night in the glare of that dread conflagration. When the admiral's ship blew up at last, it was with "an explosion so tremendous that every house for miles around was shaken to its foundation, every ship in the straits rocked as in a tempest; and the awful silence which immediately ensued was broken, as in an eruption of Vesuvius, by the clatter of the spars and masts which fell upon the fleet." On the evening of the assault on Ciudad Rodrigo, which must be carried, Wellington said, at seven o'clock, the trenches of the British lines were crowded with armed men, among whom not a whisper was to be heard; so completely, says Alison, had the absorbing anxiety of the moment stilled every dauntless heart. The pages of this historian are indeed rife with illustrations of bated breath, from causes military, maritime, and miscellaneous. At one time it is when all Paris is listening, in 1810, for the number of discharges from the cannon's mouth, to know whether 'tis son or daughter that is born to the emperor. "At the first report, the whole inhabitants of Paris awakened, and the discharges were counted with intense interest, till, when the twenty-first gun had gone off, the anxiety of all classes had risen to an unbearable pitch. The gunners delayed an instant before the next piece was discharged, and some hundred thousand persons held their breath." At another time it is when Moscow in flames is described: "while even the bravest hearts, subdued by the sublimity of the scene, and the feeling of human impotence in the midst of such elemental strife, sank, and trembled in silence." At another it is just before the battle of Dresden, 1813, when "a silence more terrible than the roar of artillery bespoke the awful moments of suspense which preceded the commencement of the fight." Or again, just before the conflict at Etoges, 1814, when the Prussians all at once beheld Grouchy's horsemen drawn up in array before them, seemingly an impassable barrier: "At this appalling sight, the boldest in the Allied ranks held his breath; total defeat appeared to be inevitable." Or again, just before the battle of Arcis-sur-Aube, 1814, when, as one army confronted the other, "not a sound was to be heard" in either: not a voice was raised; it seemed as if both hosts, impressed with the solemnity of the moment which was to decide the conflict of twenty years, were too deeply affected to disturb the stillness of the scene." Or, once more, at the battle of Chippewa, in another hemisphere but the same year, when, "from pure mutual exhaustion," the combatants sank to rest for awhile, and the "loud roar of battle was succeeded by silence so profound, that the dull roar of the falls of Niagara, interrupted at intervals by the groans of the wounded, was distinctly heard." 1 One of those incurable Scotticisms in which Sir Archibald abounds. It is of the close of the action at Copenhagen that Southey, in his Life of Nelson, remarks, that "the very silence which follows the cessation of such a battle becomes a weight upon the heart at first, rather than a relief." Nor will Southey's readers have forgotten a paragraph in his description of the battle of the Nile, when the tremendous explosion of the Orient was followed by a silence not less awful: "the firing immediately ceased on both sides, and the first sound which broke the silence was the dash of her shattered masts and yards falling into the water, from the vast height to which they had been exploded." It is upon record, we are reminded, that a battle between two armies was once broken off by an earthquake. Such an event would be felt like a miracle; but no incident in war, produced by human means, has ever, Southey affirms, equalled the sublimity of this co-instantaneous pause, and all its circumstances. Referring to this incident, in his admiring memoir of Sir Alexander Ball, one of whose lieutenants it was that fired the Orient, Coleridge, too, says that "the tremendous explosion of that vessel, with the deep silence and interruption of the engagement which succeeded to it, has been justly deemed the sublimest war incident recorded in history." If differing in degree, almost identical in kind, of excitement and awe such as this, is every instance of even your common shipwreck. Take, for example, Hartley Coleridge's narrative of Captain Cook's ship striking at midnight, off the coast of Australia: "In a minute every soul was on deck, and each might read his own terror in the other's countenance. The roughest sailors were tamed, not an oath was heard. The awe of a deathbed was upon all." The hush may precede the oration, when the orator's power is known, and great issues hang upon it. When the chief captain-all Jerusalem in an uproar-had given St. Paul licence, the apostle, standing on the stairs, beckoned with his hand unto the people; and when there was made a great silence-πολλῆς δὲ σιγῆς γενομένης—he spake unto them in the Hebrew tongue, bidding those men, brethren, and fathers |
