{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_26716/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_26716","id":"gutenberg_26716","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26716","summary":null,"tags":["Architecture","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Conduct of life","Drawing -- Study and teaching","Economics","English literature -- History and criticism","War","Work"],"text":"E-text prepared by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Josephine Paolucci, and\nthe Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team\n(https://www.pgdp.net)\n\n\n\nNote: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this\n      file which includes the original illustrations.\n      See 26716-h.htm or 26716-h.zip:\n      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/6/7/1/26716/26716-h/26716-h.htm)\n      or\n      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/6/7/1/26716/26716-h.zip)\n\n\n\n\n\nIllustrated Library Edition\n\nTHE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE\n\nAlso\n\nMUNERA PULVERIS\n\nPRE-RAPHAELITISM--ARATRA PENTELICI\n\nTHE ETHICS OF THE DUST\n\nFICTION, FAIR AND FOUL\n\nTHE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING\n\nby\n\nJOHN RUSKIN, M.A.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: _Portrait of Carlyle_\n\nEtched by E. A. Fowle--From Painting by Samuel Lawrence]\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\nBoston and New York\nColonial Press Company\nPublishers\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n\nTHE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.\n\n\n                                           PAGE\nLECTURE I.\n\nWORK,                                        17\n\nLECTURE II.\n\nTRAFFIC,                                     44\n\nLECTURE III.\n\nWAR,                                         66\n\n\nMUNERA PULVERIS.\n\nPREFACE,                                     97\n\nCHAP.\n\nI. DEFINITIONS,                             111\n\nII. STORE-KEEPING,                          125\n\nIII. COIN-KEEPING,                          151\n\nIV. COMMERCE,                               170\n\nV. GOVERNMENT,                              181\n\nVI. MASTERSHIP,                             204\n\nAPPENDICES,                                 222\n\n\nPRE-RAPHAELITISM.\n\nPREFACE,                                    235\n\nPRE-RAPHAELITISM,                           237\n\n\nARATRA PENTELICI.\n\nPREFACE,                                    283\n\nLECTURE\n\nI. OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS,                 287\n\nII. IDOLATRY,                               304\n\nIII. IMAGINATION,                           322\n\nIV. LIKENESS,                               350\n\nV. STRUCTURE,                               372\n\nVI. THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS,                   395\n\n\nTHE FUTURE OF ENGLAND,                      415\n\n\nNOTES ON POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA,      435\n\n\n\n\nLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.\n\n\nARATRA PENTELICI.\n\nPLATES                                            FACING PAGE\n\nI. PORCH OF SAN ZENONE. VERONA,                           300\n\nII. THE ARETHUSA OF SYRACUSE,                             302\n\nIII. THE WARNING TO THE KINGS,                            302\n\nIV. THE NATIVITY OF ATHENA,                               308\n\nV. TOMB OF THE DOGES JACOPO AND LORENZO TIEPOLO,          333\n\nVI. ARCHAIC ATHENA OF ATHENS AND CORINTH,                 334\n\nVII. ARCHAIC, CENTRAL AND DECLINING ART OF GREECE,        355\n\nVIII. THE APOLLO OF SYRACUSE AND THE SELF-MADE MAN,       366\n\nIX. APOLLO CHRYSOCOMES OF CLAZOMENAE,                      368\n\nX. MARBLE MASONRY IN THE DUOMO OF VERONA,                 381\n\nXI. THE FIRST ELEMENTS OF SCULPTURE,                      382\n\nXII. BRANCH OF PHILLYREA. DARK PURPLE,                    390\n\nXIII. GREEK FLAT RELIEF AND SCULPTURE BY EDGED INCISION,  392\n\nXIV. APOLLO AND THE PYTHON. HERACLES AND THE NEMEAN LION, 400\n\nXV. HERA OF ARGOS. ZEUS OF SYRACUSE,                      401\n\nXVI. DEMETER OF MESSENE. HERA OF CROSSUS,                 402\n\nXVII. ATHENA OF THURIUM. SEREIE LIGEIA OF TERINA,         402\n\nXVIII. ARTEMIS OF SYRACUSE. HERA OF LACINIAN CAPE,        404\n\nXIX. ZEUS OF MESSENE. AJAX OF OPUS,                       405\n\nXX. GREEK AND BARBARIAN SCULPTURE,                        407\n\nXXI. THE BEGINNINGS OF CHIVALRY,                          409\n\n\nFIGURE                                                   PAGE\n\n1. SPECIMEN OF PLATE,                                     293\n\n2. WOODCUT,                                               323\n\n3. FIGURE ON GREEK TYPE OF VASES,                         326\n\n4. EARLY DRAWING OF THE MYTH                              330\n\n5. CUT, \"GIVE IT TO ME,\"                                  332\n\n6. ENGRAVING ON COIN,                                     335\n\n7. DRAWING OF FISH. BY TURNER,                            362\n\n8. IRON BAR,                                              379\n\n9. DIAGRAM OF LEAF,                                       391\n\n\n\n\nTHE\n\nCROWN OF WILD OLIVE\n\nTHREE LECTURES ON\n\nWORK, TRAFFIC AND WAR\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nTwenty years ago, there was no lovelier piece of lowland scenery in\nSouth England, nor any more pathetic in the world, by its expression of\nsweet human character and life, than that immediately bordering on the\nsources of the Wandle, and including the lower moors of Addington, and\nthe villages of Beddington and Carshalton, with all their pools and\nstreams. No clearer or diviner waters ever sang with constant lips of\nthe hand which 'giveth rain from heaven;' no pastures ever lightened in\nspring time with more passionate blossoming; no sweeter homes ever\nhallowed the heart of the passer-by with their pride of peaceful\ngladness--fain-hidden--yet full-confessed. The place remains, or, until\na few months ago, remained, nearly unchanged in its larger features;\nbut, with deliberate mind I say, that I have never seen anything so\nghastly in its inner tragic meaning,--not in Pisan Maremma--not by\nCampagna tomb,--not by the sand-isles of the Torcellan shore,--as the\nslow stealing of aspects of reckless, indolent, animal neglect, over the\ndelicate sweetness of that English scene: nor is any blasphemy or\nimpiety--any frantic saying or godless thought--more appalling to me,\nusing the best power of judgment I have to discern its sense and scope,\nthan the insolent defilings of those springs by the human herds that\ndrink of them. Just where the welling of stainless water, trembling and\npure, like a body of light, enters the pool of Carshalton, cutting\nitself a radiant channel down to the gravel, through warp of feathery\nweeds, all waving, which it traverses with its deep threads of\nclearness, like the chalcedony in moss-agate, starred here and there\nwith white grenouillette; just in the very rush and murmur of the first\nspreading currents, the human wretches of the place cast their street\nand house foulness; heaps of dust and slime, and broken shreds of old\nmetal, and rags of putrid clothes; they having neither energy to cart it\naway, nor decency enough to dig it into the ground, thus shed into the\nstream, to diffuse what venom of it will float and melt, far away, in\nall places where God meant those waters to bring joy and health. And, in\na little pool, behind some houses farther in the village, where another\nspring rises, the shattered stones of the well, and of the little\nfretted channel which was long ago built and traced for it by gentler\nhands, lie scattered, each from each, under a ragged bank of mortar, and\nscoria; and brick-layers' refuse, on one side, which the clean water\nnevertheless chastises to purity; but it cannot conquer the dead earth\nbeyond; and there, circled and coiled under festering scum, the stagnant\nedge of the pool effaces itself into a slope of black slime, the\naccumulation of indolent years. Half-a-dozen men, with one day's work,\ncould cleanse those pools, and trim the flowers about their banks, and\nmake every breath of summer air above them rich with cool balm; and\nevery glittering wave medicinal, as if it ran, troubled of angels, from\nthe porch of Bethesda. But that day's work is never given, nor will be;\nnor will any joy be possible to heart of man, for evermore, about those\nwells of English waters.\n\nWhen I last left them, I walked up slowly through the back streets of\nCroydon, from the old church to the hospital; and, just on the left,\nbefore coming up to the crossing of the High Street, there was a new\npublic-house built. And the front of it was built in so wise manner,\nthat a recess of two feet was left below its front windows, between them\nand the street-pavement--a recess too narrow for any possible use (for\neven if it had been occupied by a seat, as in old time it might have\nbeen, everybody walking along the street would have fallen over the legs\nof the reposing wayfarers). But, by way of making this two feet depth of\nfreehold land more expressive of the dignity of an establishment for the\nsale of spirituous liquors, it was fenced from the pavement by an\nimposing iron railing, having four or five spearheads to the yard of it,\nand six feet high; containing as much iron and iron-work, indeed as\ncould well be put into the space; and by this stately arrangement, the\nlittle piece of dead ground within, between wall and street, became a\nprotective receptacle of refuse; cigar ends, and oyster shells, and the\nlike, such as an open-handed English street-populace habitually scatters\nfrom its presence, and was thus left, unsweepable by any ordinary\nmethods. Now the iron bars which, uselessly (or in great degree worse\nthan uselessly), enclosed this bit of ground, and made it pestilent,\nrepresented a quantity of work which would have cleansed the Carshalton\npools three times over;--of work, partly cramped and deadly, in the\nmine; partly fierce[1] and exhaustive, at the furnace; partly foolish\nand sedentary, of ill-taught students making bad designs: work from the\nbeginning to the last fruits of it, and in all the branches of it,\nvenomous, deathful, and miserable. Now, how did it come to pass that\nthis work was done instead of the other; that the strength and life of\nthe English operative were spent in defiling ground, instead of\nredeeming it; and in producing an entirely (in that place) valueless\npiece of metal, which can neither be eaten nor breathed, instead of\nmedicinal fresh air, and pure water?\n\nThere is but one reason for it, and at present a conclusive one,--that\nthe capitalist can charge per-centage on the work in the one case, and\ncannot in the other. If, having certain funds for supporting labour at\nmy disposal, I pay men merely to keep my ground in order, my money is,\nin that function, spent once for all; but if I pay them to dig iron out\nof my ground, and work it, and sell it, I can charge rent for the\nground, and per-centage both on the manufacture and the sale, and make\nmy capital profitable in these three bye-ways. The greater part of the\nprofitable investment of capital, in the present day, is in operations\nof this kind, in which the public is persuaded to buy something of no\nuse to it, on production, or sale, of which, the capitalist may charge\nper-centage; the said public remaining all the while under the\npersuasion that the per-centages thus obtained are real national gains,\nwhereas, they are merely filchings out of partially light pockets, to\nswell heavy ones.\n\nThus, the Croydon publican buys the iron railing, to make himself more\nconspicuous to drunkards. The public-housekeeper on the other side of\nthe way presently buys another railing, to out-rail him with. Both are,\nas to their _relative_ attractiveness to customers of taste, just where\nthey were before; but they have lost the price of the railings; which\nthey must either themselves finally lose, or make their aforesaid\ncustomers of taste pay, by raising the price of their beer, or\nadulterating it. Either the publicans, or their customers, are thus\npoorer by precisely what the capitalist has gained; and the value of the\nwork itself, meantime, has been lost to the nation; the iron bars in\nthat form and place being wholly useless. It is this mode of taxation of\nthe poor by the rich which is referred to in the text (page 31), in\ncomparing the modern acquisitive power of capital with that of the lance\nand sword; the only difference being that the levy of black mail in old\ntimes was by force, and is now by cozening. The old rider and reiver\nfrankly quartered himself on the publican for the night; the modern one\nmerely makes his lance into an iron spike, and persuades his host to buy\nit. One comes as an open robber, the other as a cheating pedlar; but the\nresult, to the injured person's pocket, is absolutely the same. Of\ncourse many useful industries mingle with, and disguise the useless\nones; and in the habits of energy aroused by the struggle, there is a\ncertain direct good. It is far better to spend four thousand pounds in\nmaking a good gun, and then to blow it to pieces, than to pass life in\nidleness. Only do not let it be called 'political economy.' There is\nalso a confused notion in the minds of many persons, that the gathering\nof the property of the poor into the hands of the rich does no ultimate\nharm; since, in whosesoever hands it may be, it must be spent at last,\nand thus, they think, return to the poor again. This fallacy has been\nagain and again exposed; but grant the plea true, and the same apology\nmay, of course, be made for black mail, or any other form of robbery. It\nmight be (though practically it never is) as advantageous for the nation\nthat the robber should have the spending of the money he extorts, as\nthat the person robbed should have spent it. But this is no excuse for\nthe theft. If I were to put a turnpike on the road where it passes my\nown gate, and endeavour to exact a shilling from every passenger, the\npublic would soon do away with my gate, without listening to any plea on\nmy part that 'it was as advantageous to them, in the end, that I should\nspend their shillings, as that they themselves should.' But if, instead\nof out-facing them with a turnpike, I can only persuade them to come in\nand buy stones, or old iron, or any other useless thing, out of my\nground, I may rob them to the same extent, and be, moreover, thanked as\na public benefactor, and promoter of commercial prosperity. And this\nmain question for the poor of England--for the poor of all countries--is\nwholly omitted in every common treatise on the subject of wealth. Even\nby the labourers themselves, the operation of capital is regarded only\nin its effect on their immediate interests; never in the far more\nterrific power of its appointment of the kind and the object of labour.\nIt matters little, ultimately, how much a labourer is paid for making\nanything; but it matters fearfully what the thing is, which he is\ncompelled to make. If his labour is so ordered as to produce food, and\nfresh air, and fresh water, no matter that his wages are low;--the food\nand fresh air and water will be at last there; and he will at last get\nthem. But if he is paid to destroy food and fresh air or to produce\niron bars instead of them,--the food and air will finally _not_ be\nthere, and he will _not_ get them, to his great and final inconvenience.\nSo that, conclusively, in political as in household economy, the great\nquestion is, not so much what money you have in your pocket, as what you\nwill buy with it, and do with it.\n\nI have been long accustomed, as all men engaged in work of investigation\nmust be, to hear my statements laughed at for years, before they are\nexamined or believed; and I am generally content to wait the public's\ntime. But it has not been without displeased surprise that I have found\nmyself totally unable, as yet, by any repetition, or illustration, to\nforce this plain thought into my readers' heads,--that the wealth of\nnations, as of men, consists in substance, not in ciphers; and that the\nreal good of all work, and of all commerce, depends on the final worth\nof the thing you make, or get by it. This is a practical enough\nstatement, one would think: but the English public has been so possessed\nby its modern school of economists with the notion that Business is\nalways good, whether it be busy in mischief or in benefit; and that\nbuying and selling are always salutary, whatever the intrinsic worth of\nwhat you buy or sell,--that it seems impossible to gain so much as a\npatient hearing for any inquiry respecting the substantial result of our\neager modern labours. I have never felt more checked by the sense of\nthis impossibility than in arranging the heads of the following three\nlectures, which, though delivered at considerable intervals of time, and\nin different places, were not prepared without reference to each other.\nTheir connection would, however, have been made far more distinct, if I\nhad not been prevented, by what I feel to be another great difficulty in\naddressing English audiences, from enforcing, with any decision, the\ncommon, and to me the most important, part of their subjects. I chiefly\ndesired (as I have just said) to question my hearers--operatives,\nmerchants, and soldiers, as to the ultimate meaning of the _business_\nthey had in hand; and to know from them what they expected or intended\ntheir manufacture to come to, their selling to come to, and their\nkilling to come to. That appeared the first point needing determination\nbefore I could speak to them with any real utility or effect. 'You\ncraftsmen--salesmen--swordsmen,--do but tell me clearly what you want,\nthen, if I can say anything to help you, I will; and if not, I will\naccount to you as I best may for my inability.' But in order to put this\nquestion into any terms, one had first of all to face the difficulty\njust spoken of--to me for the present insuperable,--the difficulty of\nknowing whether to address one's audience as believing, or not\nbelieving, in any other world than this. For if you address any average\nmodern English company as believing in an Eternal life, and endeavour to\ndraw any conclusions, from this assumed belief, as to their present\nbusiness, they will forthwith tell you that what you say is very\nbeautiful, but it is not practical. If, on the contrary, you frankly\naddress them as unbelievers in Eternal life, and try to draw any\nconsequences from that unbelief,--they immediately hold you for an\naccursed person, and shake off the dust from their feet at you. And the\nmore I thought over what I had got to say, the less I found I could say\nit, without some reference to this intangible or intractable part of the\nsubject. It made all the difference, in asserting any principle of war,\nwhether one assumed that a discharge of artillery would merely knead\ndown a certain quantity of red clay into a level line, as in a brick\nfield; or whether, out of every separately Christian-named portion of\nthe ruinous heap, there went out, into the smoke and dead-fallen air of\nbattle, some astonished condition of soul, unwillingly released. It made\nall the difference, in speaking of the possible range of commerce,\nwhether one assumed that all bargains related only to visible\nproperty--or whether property, for the present invisible, but\nnevertheless real, was elsewhere purchasable on other terms. It made all\nthe difference, in addressing a body of men subject to considerable\nhardship, and having to find some way out of it--whether one could\nconfidentially say to them, 'My friends,--you have only to die, and all\nwill be right;' or whether one had any secret misgiving that such advice\nwas more blessed to him that gave, than to him that took it. And\ntherefore the deliberate reader will find, throughout these lectures, a\nhesitation in driving points home, and a pausing short of conclusions\nwhich he will feel I would fain have come to; hesitation which arises\nwholly from this uncertainty of my hearers' temper. For I do not now\nspeak, nor have I ever spoken, since the time of my first forward youth,\nin any proselyting temper, as desiring to persuade any one of what, in\nsuch matters, I thought myself; but, whomsoever I venture to address, I\ntake for the time his creed as I find it; and endeavour to push it into\nsuch vital fruit as it seems capable of. Thus, it is a creed with a\ngreat part of the existing English people, that they are in possession\nof a book which tells them, straight from the lips of God all they ought\nto do, and need to know. I have read that book, with as much care as\nmost of them, for some forty years; and am thankful that, on those who\ntrust it, I can press its pleadings. My endeavour has been uniformly to\nmake them trust it more deeply than they do; trust it, not in their own\nfavourite verses only, but in the sum of all; trust it not as a fetish\nor talisman, which they are to be saved by daily repetitions of; but as\na Captain's order, to be heard and obeyed at their peril. I was always\nencouraged by supposing my hearers to hold such belief. To these, if to\nany, I once had hope of addressing, with acceptance, words which\ninsisted on the guilt of pride, and the futility of avarice; from these,\nif from any, I once expected ratification of a political economy, which\nasserted that the life was more than the meat, and the body than\nraiment; and these, it once seemed to me, I might ask without accusation\nor fanaticism, not merely in doctrine of the lips, but in the bestowal\nof their heart's treasure, to separate themselves from the crowd of whom\nit is written, 'After all these things do the Gentiles seek.'\n\nIt cannot, however, be assumed, with any semblance of reason, that a\ngeneral audience is now wholly, or even in majority, composed of these\nreligious persons. A large portion must always consist of men who admit\nno such creed; or who, at least, are inaccessible to appeals founded on\nit. And as, with the so-called Christian, I desired to plead for honest\ndeclaration and fulfilment of his belief in life,--with the so-called\nInfidel, I desired to plead for an honest declaration and fulfilment of\nhis belief in death. The dilemma is inevitable. Men must either\nhereafter live, or hereafter die; fate may be bravely met, and conduct\nwisely ordered, on either expectation; but never in hesitation between\nungrasped hope, and unconfronted fear. We usually believe in\nimmortality, so far as to avoid preparation for death; and in mortality,\nso far as to avoid preparation for anything after death. Whereas, a wise\nman will at least hold himself prepared for one or other of two events,\nof which one or other is inevitable; and will have all things in order,\nfor his sleep, or in readiness, for his awakening.\n\nNor have we any right to call it an ignoble judgment, if he determine to\nput them in order, as for sleep. A brave belief in life is indeed an\nenviable state of mind, but, as far as I can discern, an unusual one. I\nknow few Christians so convinced of the splendour of the rooms in their\nFather's house, as to be happier when their friends are called to those\nmansions, than they would have been if the Queen had sent for them to\nlive at Court: nor has the Church's most ardent 'desire to depart, and\nbe with Christ,' ever cured it of the singular habit of putting on\nmourning for every person summoned to such departure. On the contrary, a\nbrave belief in death has been assuredly held by many not ignoble\npersons, and it is a sign of the last depravity in the Church itself,\nwhen it assumes that such a belief is inconsistent with either purity of\ncharacter, or energy of hand. The shortness of life is not, to any\nrational person, a conclusive reason for wasting the space of it which\nmay be granted him; nor does the anticipation of death to-morrow\nsuggest, to any one but a drunkard, the expediency of drunkenness\nto-day. To teach that there is no device in the grave, may indeed make\nthe deviceless person more contented in his dulness; but it will make\nthe deviser only more earnest in devising, nor is human conduct likely,\nin every case, to be purer under the conviction that all its evil may in\na moment be pardoned, and all its wrong-doing in a moment redeemed; and\nthat the sigh of repentance, which purges the guilt of the past, will\nwaft the soul into a felicity which forgets its pain,--than it may be\nunder the sterner, and to many not unwise minds, more probable,\napprehension, that 'what a man soweth that shall he also reap'--or\nothers reap,--when he, the living seed of pestilence, walketh no more in\ndarkness, but lies down therein.\n\nBut to men whose feebleness of sight, or bitterness of soul, or the\noffence given by the conduct of those who claim higher hope, may have\nrendered this painful creed the only possible one, there is an appeal to\nbe made, more secure in its ground than any which can be addressed to\nhappier persons. I would fain, if I might offencelessly, have spoken to\nthem as if none others heard; and have said thus: Hear me, you dying\nmen, who will soon be deaf for ever. For these others, at your right\nhand and your left, who look forward to a state of infinite existence,\nin which all their errors will be overruled, and all their faults\nforgiven; for these, who, stained and blackened in the battle smoke of\nmortality, have but to dip themselves for an instant in the font of\ndeath, and to rise renewed of plumage, as a dove that is covered with\nsilver, and her feathers like gold; for these, indeed, it may be\npermissible to waste their numbered moments, through faith in a future\nof innumerable hours; to these, in their weakness, it may be conceded\nthat they should tamper with sin which can only bring forth fruit of\nrighteousness, and profit by the iniquity which, one day, will be\nremembered no more. In them, it may be no sign of hardness of heart to\nneglect the poor, over whom they know their Master is watching; and to\nleave those to perish temporarily, who cannot perish eternally. But, for\nyou, there is no such hope, and therefore no such excuse. This fate,\nwhich you ordain for the wretched, you believe to be all their\ninheritance; you may crush them, before the moth, and they will never\nrise to rebuke you;--their breath, which fails for lack of food, once\nexpiring, will never be recalled to whisper against you a word of\naccusing;--they and you, as you think, shall lie down together in the\ndust, and the worms cover you;--and for them there shall be no\nconsolation, and on you no vengeance,--only the question murmured above\nyour grave: 'Who shall repay him what he hath done?' Is it therefore\neasier for you in your heart to inflict the sorrow for which there is no\nremedy? Will you take, wantonly, this little all of his life from your\npoor brother, and make his brief hours long to him with pain? Will you\nbe readier to the injustice which can never be redressed; and niggardly\nof mercy which you _can_ bestow but once, and which, refusing, you\nrefuse for ever? I think better of you, even of the most selfish, than\nthat you would do this, well understood. And for yourselves, it seems to\nme, the question becomes not less grave, in these curt limits. If your\nlife were but a fever fit,--the madness of a night, whose follies were\nall to be forgotten in the dawn, it might matter little how you fretted\naway the sickly hours,--what toys you snatched at, or let fall,--what\nvisions you followed wistfully with the deceived eyes of sleepless\nphrenzy. Is the earth only an hospital? Play, if you care to play, on\nthe floor of the hospital dens. Knit its straw into what crowns please\nyou; gather the dust of it for treasure, and die rich in that, clutching\nat the black motes in the air with your dying hands;--and yet, it may be\nwell with you. But if this life be no dream, and the world no hospital;\nif all the peace and power and joy you can ever win, must be won now;\nand all fruit of victory gathered here, or never;--will you still,\nthroughout the puny totality of your life, weary yourselves in the fire\nfor vanity? If there is no rest which remaineth for you, is there none\nyou might presently take? was this grass of the earth made green for\nyour shroud only, not for your bed? and can you never lie down _upon_\nit, but only _under_ it? The heathen, to whose creed you have returned,\nthought not so. They knew that life brought its contest, but they\nexpected from it also the crown of all contest: No proud one! no\njewelled circlet flaming through Heaven above the height of the\nunmerited throne; only some few leaves of wild olive, cool to the tired\nbrow, through a few years of peace. It should have been of gold, they\nthought; but Jupiter was poor; this was the best the god could give\nthem. Seeking a greater than this, they had known it a mockery. Not in\nwar, not in wealth, not in tyranny, was there any happiness to be found\nfor them--only in kindly peace, fruitful and free. The wreath was to be\nof _wild_ olive, mark you:--the tree that grows carelessly, tufting the\nrocks with no vivid bloom, no verdure of branch; only with soft snow of\nblossom, and scarcely fulfilled fruit, mixed with grey leaf and thornset\nstem; no fastening of diadem for you but with such sharp embroidery! But\nthis, such as it is, you may win while yet you live; type of grey honour\nand sweet rest.[2] Free-heartedness, and graciousness, and undisturbed\ntrust, and requited love, and the sight of the peace of others, and the\nministry to their pain;--these, and the blue sky above you, and the\nsweet waters and flowers of the earth beneath; and mysteries and\npresences, innumerable, of living things,--these may yet be here your\nriches; untormenting and divine: serviceable for the life that now is\nnor, it may be, without promise of that which is to come.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[1] 'A fearful occurrence took place a few days since, near\nWolverhampton. Thomas Snape, aged nineteen, was on duty as the \"keeper\"\nof a blast furnace at Deepfield, assisted by John Gardner, aged\neighteen, and Joseph Swift, aged thirty-seven. The furnace contained\nfour tons of molten iron, and an equal amount of cinders, and ought to\nhave been run out at 7.30 P.M. But Snape and his mates, engaged in\ntalking and drinking, neglected their duty, and in the meantime, the\niron rose in the furnace until it reached a pipe wherein water was\ncontained. Just as the men had stripped, and were proceeding to tap the\nfurnace, the water in the pipe, converted into steam, burst down its\nfront and let loose on them the molten metal, which instantaneously\nconsumed Gardner; Snape, terribly burnt, and mad with pain, leaped into\nthe canal and then ran home and fell dead on the threshold, Swift\nsurvived to reach the hospital, where he died too.\n\nIn further illustration of this matter, I beg the reader to look at the\narticle on the 'Decay of the English Race,' in the '_Pall-Mall Gazette_'\nof April 17, of this year; and at the articles on the 'Report of the\nThames Commission,' in any journals of the same date.\n\n[2] [Greek: melitoessa, aethlon g' eneken].\n\n\n\n\nTHE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE I.\n\n_WORK._\n\n(_Delivered before the Working Men's Institute, at Camberwell._)\n\n\nMy Friends,--I have not come among you to-night to endeavour to give you\nan entertaining lecture; but to tell you a few plain facts, and ask you\nsome plain, but necessary questions. I have seen and known too much of\nthe struggle for life among our labouring population, to feel at ease,\neven under any circumstances, in inviting them to dwell on the\ntrivialities of my own studies; but, much more, as I meet to-night, for\nthe first time, the members of a working Institute established in the\ndistrict in which I have passed the greater part of my life, I am\ndesirous that we should at once understand each other, on graver\nmatters. I would fain tell you, with what feelings, and with what hope,\nI regard this Institution, as one of many such, now happily established\nthroughout England, as well as in other countries;--Institutions which\nare preparing the way for a great change in all the circumstances of\nindustrial life; but of which the success must wholly depend upon our\nclearly understanding the circumstances and necessary _limits_ of this\nchange. No teacher can truly promote the cause of education, until he\nknows the conditions of the life for which that education is to prepare\nhis pupil. And the fact that he is called upon to address you nominally,\nas a 'Working Class,' must compel him, if he is in any wise earnest or\nthoughtful, to inquire in the outset, on what you yourselves suppose\nthis class distinction has been founded in the past, and must be founded\nin the future. The manner of the amusement, and the matter of the\nteaching, which any of us can offer you, must depend wholly on our first\nunderstanding from you, whether you think the distinction heretofore\ndrawn between working men and others, is truly or falsely founded. Do\nyou accept it as it stands? do you wish it to be modified? or do you\nthink the object of education is to efface it, and make us forget it for\never?\n\nLet me make myself more distinctly understood. We call this--you and\nI--a 'Working Men's' Institute, and our college in London, a 'Working\nMen's' College. Now, how do you consider that these several institutes\ndiffer, or ought to differ, from 'idle men's' institutes and 'idle\nmen's' colleges? Or by what other word than 'idle' shall I distinguish\nthose whom the happiest and wisest of working men do not object to call\nthe 'Upper Classes?' Are there really upper classes,--are there lower?\nHow much should they always be elevated, how much always depressed? And,\ngentlemen and ladies--I pray those of you who are here to forgive me the\noffence there may be in what I am going to say. It is not _I_ who wish\nto say it. Bitter voices say it; voices of battle and of famine through\nall the world, which must be heard some day, whoever keeps silence.\nNeither is it to _you_ specially that I say it. I am sure that most now\npresent know their duties of kindness, and fulfil them, better perhaps\nthan I do mine. But I speak to you as representing your whole class,\nwhich errs, I know, chiefly by thoughtlessness, but not therefore the\nless terribly. Wilful error is limited by the will, but what limit is\nthere to that of which we are unconscious?\n\nBear with me, therefore, while I turn to these workmen, and ask them,\nalso as representing a great multitude, what they think the 'upper\nclasses' are, and ought to be, in relation to them. Answer, you workmen\nwho are here, as you would among yourselves, frankly; and tell me how\nyou would have me call those classes. Am I to call them--would _you_\nthink me right in calling them--the idle classes? I think you would feel\nsomewhat uneasy, and as if I were not treating my subject honestly, or\nspeaking from my heart, if I went on under the supposition that all rich\npeople were idle. You would be both unjust and unwise if you allowed me\nto say that;--not less unjust than the rich people who say that all the\npoor are idle, and will never work if they can help it, or more than\nthey can help.\n\nFor indeed the fact is, that there are idle poor and idle rich; and\nthere are busy poor and busy rich. Many a beggar is as lazy as if he had\nten thousand a year; and many a man of large fortune is busier than his\nerrand-boy, and never would think of stopping in the street to play\nmarbles. So that, in a large view, the distinction between workers and\nidlers, as between knaves and honest men, runs through the very heart\nand innermost economies of men of all ranks and in all positions. There\nis a working class--strong and happy--among both rich and poor; there is\nan idle class--weak, wicked, and miserable--among both rich and poor.\nAnd the worst of the misunderstandings arising between the two orders\ncome of the unlucky fact that the wise of one class habitually\ncontemplate the foolish of the other. If the busy rich people watched\nand rebuked the idle rich people, all would be right; and if the busy\npoor people watched and rebuked the idle poor people, all would be\nright. But each class has a tendency to look for the faults of the\nother. A hard-working man of property is particularly offended by an\nidle beggar; and an orderly, but poor, workman is naturally intolerant\nof the licentious luxury of the rich. And what is severe judgment in the\nminds of the just men of either class, becomes fierce enmity in the\nunjust--but among the unjust _only_. None but the dissolute among the\npoor look upon the rich as their natural enemies, or desire to pillage\ntheir houses and divide their property. None but the dissolute among the\nrich speak in opprobrious terms of the vices and follies of the poor.\n\nThere is, then, no class distinction between idle and industrious\npeople; and I am going to-night to speak only of the industrious. The\nidle people we will put out of our thoughts at once--they are mere\nnuisances--what ought to be done with _them_, we'll talk of at another\ntime. But there are class distinctions, among the industrious\nthemselves; tremendous distinctions, which rise and fall to every\ndegree in the infinite thermometer of human pain and of human\npower--distinctions of high and low, of lost and won, to the whole reach\nof man's soul and body.\n\nThese separations we will study, and the laws of them, among energetic\nmen only, who, whether they work or whether they play, put their\nstrength into the work, and their strength into the game; being in the\nfull sense of the word 'industrious,' one way or another--with a\npurpose, or without. And these distinctions are mainly four:\n\nI. Between those who work, and those who play.\n\nII. Between those who produce the means of life, and those who consume\nthem.\n\nIII. Between those who work with the head, and those who work with the\nhand.\n\nIV. Between those who work wisely, and who work foolishly.\n\nFor easier memory, let us say we are going to oppose, in our\nexamination.--\n\n    I.   Work to play;\n    II.  Production to consumption;\n    III. Head to Hand; and,\n    IV.  Sense to nonsense.\n\nI. First, then, of the distinction between the classes who work and the\nclasses who play. Of course we must agree upon a definition of these\nterms,--work and play,--before going farther. Now, roughly, not with\nvain subtlety of definition, but for plain use of the words, 'play' is\nan exertion of body or mind, made to please ourselves, and with no\ndetermined end; and work is a thing done because it ought to be done,\nand with a determined end. You play, as you call it, at cricket, for\ninstance. That is as hard work as anything else; but it amuses you, and\nit has no result but the amusement. If it were done as an ordered form\nof exercise, for health's sake, it would become work directly. So, in\nlike manner, whatever we do to please ourselves, and only for the sake\nof the pleasure, not for an ultimate object, is 'play,' the 'pleasing\nthing,' not the useful thing. Play may be useful in a secondary sense\n(nothing is indeed more useful or necessary); but the use of it depends\non its being spontaneous.\n\nLet us, then, enquire together what sort of games the playing class in\nEngland spend their lives in playing at.\n\nThe first of all English games is making money. That is an all-absorbing\ngame; and we knock each other down oftener in playing at that than at\nfoot-ball, or any other roughest sport; and it is absolutely without\npurpose; no one who engages heartily in that game ever knows why. Ask a\ngreat money-maker what he wants to do with his money--he never knows. He\ndoesn't make it to do anything with it. He gets it only that he _may_\nget it. 'What will you make of what you have got?' you ask. 'Well, I'll\nget more,' he says. Just as, at cricket, you get more runs. There's no\nuse in the runs, but to get more of them than other people is the game.\nAnd there's no use in the money, but to have more of it than other\npeople is the game. So all that great foul city of London\nthere,--rattling, growling, smoking, stinking,--a ghastly heap of\nfermenting brick-work, pouring out poison at every pore,--you fancy it\nis a city of work? Not a street of it! It is a great city of play; very\nnasty play, and very hard play, but still play. It is only Lord's\ncricket ground without the turf,--a huge billiard table without the\ncloth, and with pockets as deep as the bottomless pit; but mainly a\nbilliard table, after all.\n\nWell, the first great English game is this playing at counters. It\ndiffers from the rest in that it appears always to be producing money,\nwhile every other game is expensive. But it does not always produce\nmoney. There's a great difference between 'winning' money and 'making'\nit; a great difference between getting it out of another man's pocket\ninto ours, or filling both. Collecting money is by no means the same\nthing as making it; the tax-gatherer's house is not the Mint; and much\nof the apparent gain (so called), in commerce, is only a form of\ntaxation on carriage or exchange.\n\nOur next great English game, however, hunting and shooting, is costly\naltogether; and how much we are fined for it annually in land, horses,\ngamekeepers, and game laws, and all else that accompanies that\nbeautiful and special English game, I will not endeavour to count now:\nbut note only that, except for exercise, this is not merely a useless\ngame, but a deadly one, to all connected with it. For through\nhorse-racing, you get every form of what the higher classes everywhere\ncall 'Play,' in distinction from all other plays; that is--gambling; by\nno means a beneficial or recreative game: and, through game-preserving,\nyou get also some curious laying out of ground; that beautiful\narrangement of dwelling-house for man and beast, by which we have grouse\nand black-cock--so many brace to the acre, and men and women--so many\nbrace to the garret. I often wonder what the angelic builders and\nsurveyors--the angelic builders who build the 'many mansions' up above\nthere; and the angelic surveyors, who measured that four-square city\nwith their measuring reeds--I wonder what they think, or are supposed to\nthink, of the laying out of ground by this nation, which has set itself,\nas it seems, literally to accomplish, word for word, or rather fact for\nword, in the persons of those poor whom its Master left to represent\nhim, what that Master said of himself--that foxes and birds had homes,\nbut He none.\n\nThen, next to the gentlemen's game of hunting, we must put the ladies'\ngame of dressing. It is not the cheapest of games. I saw a brooch at a\njeweller's in Bond Street a fortnight ago, not an inch wide, and without\nany singular jewel in it, yet worth 3,000_l._ And I wish I could tell\nyou what this 'play' costs, altogether, in England, France, and Russia\nannually. But it is a pretty game, and on certain terms, I like it; nay,\nI don't see it played quite as much as I would fain have it. You ladies\nlike to lead the fashion:--by all means lead it--lead it thoroughly,\nlead it far enough. Dress yourselves nicely, and dress everybody else\nnicely. Lead the _fashions for the poor_ first; make _them_ look well,\nand you yourselves will look, in ways of which you have now no\nconception, all the better. The fashions you have set for some time\namong your peasantry are not pretty ones; their doublets are too\nirregularly slashed, and the wind blows too frankly through them.\n\nThen there are other games, wild enough, as I could show you if I had\ntime.\n\nThere's playing at literature, and playing at art--very different, both,\nfrom working at literature, or working at art, but I've no time to speak\nof these. I pass to the greatest of all--the play of plays, the great\ngentlemen's game, which ladies like them best to play at,--the game of\nWar. It is entrancingly pleasant to the imagination; the facts of it,\nnot always so pleasant. We dress for it, however, more finely than for\nany other sport; and go out to it, not merely in scarlet, as to hunt,\nbut in scarlet and gold, and all manner of fine colours: of course we\ncould fight better in grey, and without feathers; but all nations have\nagreed that it is good to be well dressed at this play. Then the bats\nand balls are very costly; our English and French bats, with the balls\nand wickets, even those which we don't make any use of, costing, I\nsuppose, now about fifteen millions of money annually to each nation;\nall of which, you know is paid for by hard labourer's work in the furrow\nand furnace. A costly game!--not to speak of its consequences; I will\nsay at present nothing of these. The mere immediate cost of all these\nplays is what I want you to consider; they all cost deadly work\nsomewhere, as many of us know too well. The jewel-cutter, whose sight\nfails over the diamonds; the weaver, whose arm fails over the web; the\niron-forger, whose breath fails before the furnace--_they_ know what\nwork is--they, who have all the work, and none of the play, except a\nkind they have named for themselves down in the black north country,\nwhere 'play' means being laid up by sickness. It is a pretty example for\nphilologists, of varying dialect, this change in the sense of the word\n'play,' as used in the black country of Birmingham, and the red and\nblack country of Baden Baden. Yes, gentlemen, and gentlewomen, of\nEngland, who think 'one moment unamused a misery, not made for feeble\nman,' this is what you have brought the word 'play' to mean, in the\nheart of merry England! You may have your fluting and piping; but there\nare sad children sitting in the market-place, who indeed cannot say to\nyou, 'We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced:' but eternally\nshall say to you, 'We have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented.'\n\nThis, then, is the first distinction between the 'upper and lower'\nclasses. And this is one which is by no means necessary; which indeed\nmust, in process of good time, be by all honest men's consent abolished.\nMen will be taught that an existence of play, sustained by the blood of\nother creatures, is a good existence for gnats and sucking fish; but not\nfor men: that neither days, nor lives, can be made holy by doing nothing\nin them: that the best prayer at the beginning of a day is that we may\nnot lose its moments; and the best grace before meat, the consciousness\nthat we have justly earned our dinner. And when we have this much of\nplain Christianity preached to us again, and enough respect for what we\nregard as inspiration, as not to think that 'Son, go work to-day in my\nvineyard,' means 'Fool, go play to-day in my vineyard,' we shall all be\nworkers, in one way or another; and this much at least of the\ndistinction between 'upper' and 'lower' forgotten.\n\nII. I pass then to our second distinction; between the rich and poor,\nbetween Dives and Lazarus,--distinction which exists more sternly, I\nsuppose, in this day, than ever in the world, Pagan or Christian, till\nnow. I will put it sharply before you, to begin with, merely by reading\ntwo paragraphs which I cut from two papers that lay on my breakfast\ntable on the same morning, the 25th of November, 1864. The piece about\nthe rich Russian at Paris is commonplace enough, and stupid besides (for\nfifteen francs,--12_s._ 6_d._,--is nothing for a rich man to give for a\ncouple of peaches, out of season). Still, the two paragraphs printed on\nthe same day are worth putting side by side.\n\n'Such a man is now here. He is a Russian, and, with your permission, we\nwill call him Count Teufelskine. In dress he is sublime; art is\nconsidered in that toilet, the harmony of colour respected, the _chiar'\noscuro_ evident in well-selected contrast. In manners he is\ndignified--nay, perhaps apathetic; nothing disturbs the placid serenity\nof that calm exterior. One day our friend breakfasted _chez_ Bignon.\nWhen the bill came he read, \"Two peaches, 15f.\" He paid. \"Peaches\nscarce, I presume?\" was his sole remark. \"No, sir,\" replied the waiter,\n\"but Teufelskines are.\"' _Telegraph_, November 25, 1864.\n\n'Yesterday morning, at eight o'clock, a woman, passing a dung heap in\nthe stone yard near the recently-erected alms-houses in Shadwell Gap,\nHigh Street, Shadwell, called the attention of a Thames police-constable\nto a man in a sitting position on the dung heap, and said she was afraid\nhe was dead. Her fears proved to be true. The wretched creature appeared\nto have been dead several hours. He had perished of cold and wet, and\nthe rain had been beating down on him all night. The deceased was a\nbone-picker. He was in the lowest stage of poverty, poorly clad, and\nhalf-starved. The police had frequently driven him away from the stone\nyard, between sunset and sunrise, and told him to go home. He selected a\nmost desolate spot for his wretched death. A penny and some bones were\nfound in his pockets. The deceased was between fifty and sixty years of\nage. Inspector Roberts, of the K division, has given directions for\ninquiries to be made at the lodging-houses respecting the deceased, to\nascertain his identity if possible.'--_Morning Post_, November 25, 1864.\n\nYou have the separation thus in brief compass; and I want you to take\nnotice of the 'a penny and some bones were found in his pockets,' and to\ncompare it with this third statement, from the _Telegraph_ of January\n16th of this year:--\n\n'Again, the dietary scale for adult and juvenile paupers was drawn up by\nthe most conspicuous political economists in England. It is low in\nquantity, but it is sufficient to support nature; yet within ten years\nof the passing of the Poor Law Act, we heard of the paupers in the\nAndover Union gnawing the scraps of putrid flesh and sucking the marrow\nfrom the bones of horses which they were employed to crush.'\n\nYou see my reason for thinking that our Lazarus of Christianity has some\nadvantage over the Jewish one. Jewish Lazarus expected, or at least\nprayed, to be fed with crumbs from the rich man's table; but _our_\nLazarus is fed with crumbs from the dog's table.\n\nNow this distinction between rich and poor rests on two bases. Within\nits proper limits, on a basis which is lawful and everlastingly\nnecessary; beyond them, on a basis unlawful, and everlastingly\ncorrupting the framework of society. The lawful basis of wealth is, that\na man who works should be paid the fair value of his work; and that if\nhe does not choose to spend it to-day, he should have free leave to keep\nit, and spend it to-morrow. Thus, an industrious man working daily, and\nlaying by daily, attains at last the possession of an accumulated sum of\nwealth, to which he has absolute right. The idle person who will not\nwork, and the wasteful person who lays nothing by, at the end of the\nsame time will be doubly poor--poor in possession, and dissolute in\nmoral habit; and he will then naturally covet the money which the other\nhas saved. And if he is then allowed to attack the other, and rob him of\nhis well-earned wealth, there is no more any motive for saving, or any\nreward for good conduct; and all society is thereupon dissolved, or\nexists only in systems of rapine. Therefore the first necessity of\nsocial life is the clearness of national conscience in enforcing the\nlaw--that he should keep who has JUSTLY EARNED.\n\nThat law, I say, is the proper basis of distinction between rich and\npoor. But there is also a false basis of distinction; namely, the power\nheld over those who earn wealth by those who levy or exact it. There\nwill be always a number of men who would fain set themselves to the\naccumulation of wealth as the sole object of their lives. Necessarily,\nthat class of men is an uneducated class, inferior in intellect, and\nmore or less cowardly. It is physically impossible for a well-educated,\nintellectual, or brave man to make money the chief object of his\nthoughts; as physically impossible as it is for him to make his dinner\nthe principal object of them. All healthy people like their dinners, but\ntheir dinner is not the main object of their lives. So all healthily\nminded people like making money--ought to like it, and to enjoy the\nsensation of winning it; but the main object of their life is not money;\nit is something better than money. A good soldier, for instance, mainly\nwishes to do his fighting well. He is glad of his pay--very properly\nso, and justly grumbles when you keep him ten years without it--still,\nhis main notion of life is to win battles, not to be paid for winning\nthem. So of clergymen. They like pew-rents, and baptismal fees, of\ncourse; but yet, if they are brave and well educated, the pew-rent is\nnot the sole object of their lives, and the baptismal fee is not the\nsole purpose of the baptism; the clergyman's object is essentially to\nbaptize and preach, not to be paid for preaching. So of doctors. They\nlike fees no doubt,--ought to like them; yet if they are brave and well\neducated, the entire object of their lives is not fees. They, on the\nwhole, desire to cure the sick; and,--if they are good doctors, and the\nchoice were fairly put to them,--would rather cure their patient, and\nlose their fee, than kill him, and get it. And so with all other brave\nand rightly trained men; their work is first, their fee second--very\nimportant always, but still _second_. But in every nation, as I said,\nthere are a vast class who are ill-educated, cowardly, and more or less\nstupid. And with these people, just as certainly the fee is first, and\nthe work second, as with brave people the work is first and the fee\nsecond. And this is no small distinction. It is the whole distinction in\na man; distinction between life and death _in_ him, between heaven and\nhell _for_ him. You cannot serve two masters;--you _must_ serve one or\nother. If your work is first with you, and your fee second, work is your\nmaster, and the lord of work, who is God. But if your fee is first with\nyou, and your work second, fee is your master, and the lord of fee, who\nis the Devil; and not only the Devil, but the lowest of devils--the\n'least erected fiend that fell.' So there you have it in brief terms;\nWork first--you are God's servants; Fee first--you are the Fiend's. And\nit makes a difference, now and ever, believe me, whether you serve Him\nwho has on His vesture and thigh written, 'King of Kings,' and whose\nservice is perfect freedom; or him on whose vesture and thigh the name\nis written, 'Slave of Slaves,' and whose service is perfect slavery.\n\nHowever, in every nation there are, and must always be, a certain number\nof these Fiend's servants, who have it principally for the object of\ntheir lives to make money. They are always, as I said, more or less\nstupid, and cannot conceive of anything else so nice as money. Stupidity\nis always the basis of the Judas bargain. We do great injustice to\nIscariot, in thinking him wicked above all common wickedness. He was\nonly a common money-lover, and, like all money-lovers, didn't understand\nChrist;--couldn't make out the worth of Him, or meaning of Him. He\ndidn't want Him to be killed. He was horror-struck when he found that\nChrist would be killed; threw his money away instantly, and hanged\nhimself. How many of our present money-seekers, think you, would have\nthe grace to hang themselves, whoever was killed? But Judas was a\ncommon, selfish, muddle-headed, pilfering fellow; his hand always in the\nbag of the poor, not caring for them. He didn't understand Christ;--yet\nbelieved in Him, much more than most of us do; had seen Him do miracles,\nthought He was quite strong enough to shift for Himself, and he, Judas,\nmight as well make his own little bye-perquisites out of the affair.\nChrist would come out of it well enough, and he have his thirty pieces.\nNow, that is the money-seeker's idea, all over the world. He doesn't\nhate Christ, but can't understand Him--doesn't care for him--sees no\ngood in that benevolent business; makes his own little job out of it at\nall events, come what will. And thus, out of every mass of men, you have\na certain number of bag-men--your 'fee-first' men, whose main object is\nto make money. And they do make it--make it in all sorts of unfair ways,\nchiefly by the weight and force of money itself, or what is called the\npower of capital; that is to say, the power which money, once obtained,\nhas over the labour of the poor, so that the capitalist can take all its\nproduce to himself, except the labourer's food. That is the modern\nJudas's way of 'carrying the bag,' and 'bearing what is put therein.'\n\nNay, but (it is asked) how is that an unfair advantage? Has not the man\nwho has worked for the money a right to use it as he best can? No; in\nthis respect, money is now exactly what mountain promontories over\npublic roads were in old times. The barons fought for them fairly:--the\nstrongest and cunningest got them; then fortified them, and made\neveryone who passed below pay toll. Well, capital now is exactly what\ncrags were then. Men fight fairly (we will, at least, grant so much,\nthough it is more than we ought) for their money; but, once having got\nit, the fortified millionaire can make everybody who passes below pay\ntoll to his million, and build another tower of his money castle. And I\ncan tell you, the poor vagrants by the roadside suffer now quite as much\nfrom the bag-baron, as ever they did from the crag-baron. Bags and crags\nhave just the same result on rags. I have not time, however, to-night to\nshow you in how many ways the power of capital is unjust; but this one\ngreat principle I have to assert--you will find it quite indisputably\ntrue--that whenever money is the principal object of life with either\nman or nation, it is both got ill, and spent ill; and does harm both in\nthe getting and spending; but when it is not the principal object, it\nand all other things will be well got, and well spent. And here is the\ntest, with every man, of whether money is the principal object with him,\nor not. If in mid-life he could pause and say, \"Now I have enough to\nlive upon, I'll live upon it; and having well earned it, I will also\nwell spend it, and go out of the world poor, as I came into it,\" then\nmoney is not principal with him; but if, having enough to live upon in\nthe manner befitting his character and rank, he still wants to make\nmore, and to _die_ rich, then money is the principal object with him,\nand it becomes a curse to himself, and generally to those who spend it\nafter him. For you know it _must_ be spent some day; the only question\nis whether the man who makes it shall spend it, or some one else. And\ngenerally it is better for the maker to spend it, for he will know best\nits value and use. This is the true law of life. And if a man does not\nchoose thus to spend his money, he must either hoard it or lend it, and\nthe worst thing he can generally do is to lend it; for borrowers are\nnearly always ill-spenders, and it is with lent money that all evil is\nmainly done, and all unjust war protracted.\n\nFor observe what the real fact is, respecting loans to foreign military\ngovernments, and how strange it is. If your little boy came to you to\nask for money to spend in squibs and crackers, you would think twice\nbefore you gave it him; and you would have some idea that it was wasted,\nwhen you saw it fly off in fireworks, even though he did no mischief\nwith it. But the Russian children, and Austrian children, come to you,\nborrowing money, not to spend in innocent squibs, but in cartridges and\nbayonets to attack you in India with, and to keep down all noble life in\nItaly with, and to murder Polish women and children with; and _that_ you\nwill give at once, because they pay you interest for it. Now, in order\nto pay you that interest, they must tax every working peasant in their\ndominions; and on that work you live. You therefore at once rob the\nAustrian peasant, assassinate or banish the Polish peasant, and you live\non the produce of the theft, and the bribe for the assassination! That\nis the broad fact--that is the practical meaning of your foreign loans,\nand of most large interest of money; and then you quarrel with Bishop\nColenso, forsooth, as if _he_ denied the Bible, and you believed it!\nthough, wretches as you are, every deliberate act of your lives is a new\ndefiance of its primary orders; and as if, for most of the rich men of\nEngland at this moment, it were not indeed to be desired, as the best\nthing at least for _them_, that the Bible should _not_ be true, since\nagainst them these words are written in it: 'The rust of your gold and\nsilver shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh, as it\nwere fire.'\n\n\nIII. I pass now to our third condition of separation, between the men\nwho work with the hand, and those who work with the head.\n\nAnd here we have at last an inevitable distinction. There _must_ be work\ndone by the arms, or none of us could live. There _must_ be work done by\nthe brains, or the life we get would not be worth having. And the same\nmen cannot do both. There is rough work to be done, and rough men must\ndo it; there is gentle work to be done, and gentlemen must do it; and it\nis physically impossible that one class should do, or divide, the work\nof the other. And it is of no use to try to conceal this sorrowful fact\nby fine words, and to talk to the workman about the honourableness of\nmanual labour and the dignity of humanity. That is a grand old proverb\nof Sancho Panza's, 'Fine words butter no parsnips;' and I can tell you\nthat, all over England just now, you workmen are buying a great deal too\nmuch butter at that dairy. Rough work, honourable or not, takes the life\nout of us; and the man who has been heaving clay out of a ditch all day,\nor driving an express train against the north wind all night, or holding\na collier's helm in a gale on a lee-shore, or whirling white hot iron at\na furnace mouth, that man is not the same at the end of his day, or\nnight, as one who has been sitting in a quiet room, with everything\ncomfortable about him, reading books, or classing butterflies, or\npainting pictures. If it is any comfort to you to be told that the rough\nwork is the more honourable of the two, I should be sorry to take that\nmuch of consolation from you; and in some sense I need not. The rough\nwork is at all events real, honest, and, generally, though not always,\nuseful; while the fine work is, a great deal of it, foolish and false as\nwell as fine, and therefore dishonourable; but when both kinds are\nequally well and worthily done, the head's is the noble work, and the\nhand's the ignoble; and of all hand work whatsoever, necessary for the\nmaintenance of life, those old words, 'In the sweat of thy face thou\nshalt eat bread,' indicate that the inherent nature of it is one of\ncalamity; and that the ground, cursed for our sake, casts also some\nshadow of degradation into our contest with its thorn and its thistle;\nso that all nations have held their days honourable, or 'holy,' and\nconstituted them 'holydays' or 'holidays,' by making them days of rest;\nand the promise, which, among all our distant hopes, seems to cast the\nchief brightness over death, is that blessing of the dead who die in the\nLord, that 'they rest from their labours, and their works do follow\nthem.'\n\nAnd thus the perpetual question and contest must arise, who is to do\nthis rough work? and how is the worker of it to be comforted, redeemed,\nand rewarded? and what kind of play should he have, and what rest, in\nthis world, sometimes, as well as in the next? Well, my good working\nfriends, these questions will take a little time to answer yet. They\nmust be answered: all good men are occupied with them, and all honest\nthinkers. There's grand head work doing about them; but much must be\ndiscovered, and much attempted in vain, before anything decisive can be\ntold you. Only note these few particulars, which are already sure.\n\nAs to the distribution of the hard work. None of us, or very few of us,\ndo either hard or soft work because we think we ought; but because we\nhave chanced to fall into the way of it, and cannot help ourselves. Now,\nnobody does anything well that they cannot help doing: work is only done\nwell when it is done with a will; and no man has a thoroughly sound will\nunless he knows he is doing what he should, and is in his place. And,\ndepend upon it, all work must be done at last, not in a disorderly,\nscrambling, doggish way, but in an ordered, soldierly, human way--a\nlawful way. Men are enlisted for the labour that kills--the labour of\nwar: they are counted, trained, fed, dressed, and praised for that. Let\nthem be enlisted also for the labour that feeds: let them be counted,\ntrained, fed, dressed, praised for that. Teach the plough exercise as\ncarefully as you do the sword exercise, and let the officers of troops\nof life be held as much gentlemen as the officers of troops of death;\nand all is done: but neither this, nor any other right thing, can be\naccomplished--you can't even see your way to it--unless, first of all,\nboth servant and master are resolved that, come what will of it, they\nwill do each other justice. People are perpetually squabbling about what\nwill be best to do, or easiest to do, or adviseablest to do, or\nprofitablest to do; but they never, so far as I hear them talk, ever ask\nwhat it is _just_ to do. And it is the law of heaven that you shall not\nbe able to judge what is wise or easy, unless you are first resolved to\njudge what is just, and to do it. That is the one thing constantly\nreiterated by our Master--the order of all others that is given\noftenest--'Do justice and judgment.' That's your Bible order; that's the\n'Service of God,' not praying nor psalm-singing. You are told, indeed,\nto sing psalms when you are merry, and to pray when you need anything;\nand, by the perversion of the Evil Spirit, we get to think that praying\nand psalm-singing are 'service.' If a child finds itself in want of\nanything, it runs in and asks its father for it--does it call that,\ndoing its father a service? If it begs for a toy or a piece of\ncake--does it call that serving its father? That, with God, is prayer,\nand He likes to hear it: He likes you to ask Him for cake when you want\nit; but He doesn't call that 'serving Him.' Begging is not serving: God\nlikes mere beggars as little as you do--He likes honest servants, not\nbeggars. So when a child loves its father very much, and is very happy,\nit may sing little songs about him; but it doesn't call that serving its\nfather; neither is singing songs about God, serving God. It is enjoying\nourselves, if it's anything; most probably it is nothing; but if it's\nanything, it is serving ourselves, not God. And yet we are impudent\nenough to call our beggings and chauntings 'Divine Service:' we say\n'Divine service will be \"performed\"' (that's our word--the form of it\ngone through) 'at eleven o'clock.' Alas!--unless we perform Divine\nservice in every willing act of our life, we never perform it at all.\nThe one Divine work--the one ordered sacrifice--is to do justice; and it\nis the last we are ever inclined to do. Anything rather than that! As\nmuch charity as you choose, but no justice. 'Nay,' you will say,\n'charity is greater than justice.' Yes, it is greater; it is the summit\nof justice--it is the temple of which justice is the foundation. But you\ncan't have the top without the bottom; you cannot build upon charity.\nYou must build upon justice, for this main reason, that you have not, at\nfirst, charity to build with. It is the last reward of good work. Do\njustice to your brother (you can do that, whether you love him or not),\nand you will come to love him. But do injustice to him, because you\ndon't love him; and you will come to hate him. It is all very fine to\nthink you can build upon charity to begin with; but you will find all\nyou have got to begin with, begins at home, and is essentially love of\nyourself. You well-to-do people, for instance, who are here to-night,\nwill go to 'Divine service' next Sunday, all nice and tidy, and your\nlittle children will have their tight little Sunday boots on, and lovely\nlittle Sunday feathers in their hats; and you'll think, complacently and\npiously, how lovely they look! So they do: and you love them heartily\nand you like sticking feathers in their hats. That's all right: that\n_is_ charity; but it is charity beginning at home. Then you will come to\nthe poor little crossing-sweeper, got up also,--it, in its Sunday\ndress,--the dirtiest rags it has,--that it may beg the better: we shall\ngive it a penny, and think how good we are. That's charity going abroad.\nBut what does Justice say, walking and watching near us? Christian\nJustice has been strangely mute, and seemingly blind; and, if not blind,\ndecrepit, this many a day: she keeps her accounts still, however--quite\nsteadily--doing them at nights, carefully, with her bandage off, and\nthrough acutest spectacles (the only modern scientific invention she\ncares about). You must put your ear down ever so close to her lips to\nhear her speak; and then you will start at what she first whispers, for\nit will certainly be, 'Why shouldn't that little crossing-sweeper have a\nfeather on its head, as well as your own child?' Then you may ask\nJustice, in an amazed manner, 'How she can possibly be so foolish as to\nthink children could sweep crossings with feathers on their heads?' Then\nyou stoop again, and Justice says--still in her dull, stupid way--'Then,\nwhy don't you, every other Sunday, leave your child to sweep the\ncrossing, and take the little sweeper to church in a hat and feather?'\nMercy on us (you think), what will she say next? And you answer, of\ncourse, that 'you don't, because every body ought to remain content in\nthe position in which Providence has placed them.' Ah, my friends,\nthat's the gist of the whole question. _Did_ Providence put them in that\nposition, or did _you_? You knock a man into a ditch, and then you tell\nhim to remain content in the 'position in which Providence has placed\nhim.' That's modern Christianity. You say--'_We_ did not knock him into\nthe ditch.' How do you know what you have done, or are doing? That's\njust what we have all got to know, and what we shall never know, until\nthe question with us every morning, is, not how to do the gainful thing,\nbut how to do the just thing; nor until we are at least so far on the\nway to being Christian, as to have understood that maxim of the poor\nhalf-way Mahometan, 'One hour in the execution of justice is worth\nseventy years of prayer.'\n\nSupposing, then, we have it determined with appropriate justice, _who_\nis to do the hand work, the next questions must be how the hand-workers\nare to be paid, and how they are to be refreshed, and what play they are\nto have. Now, the possible quantity of play depends on the possible\nquantity of pay; and the quantity of pay is not a matter for\nconsideration to hand-workers only, but to all workers. Generally, good,\nuseful work, whether of the hand or head, is either ill-paid, or not\npaid at all. I don't say it should be so, but it always is so. People,\nas a rule, only pay for being amused or being cheated, not for being\nserved. Five thousand a year to your talker, and a shilling a day to\nyour fighter, digger, and thinker, is the rule. None of the best head\nwork in art, literature, or science, is ever paid for. How much do you\nthink Homer got for his Iliad? or Dante for his Paradise? only bitter\nbread and salt, and going up and down other people's stairs. In science,\nthe man who discovered the telescope, and first saw heaven, was paid\nwith a dungeon; the man who invented the microscope, and first saw\nearth, died of starvation, driven from his home: it is indeed very clear\nthat God means all thoroughly good work and talk to be done for nothing.\nBaruch, the scribe, did not get a penny a line for writing Jeremiah's\nsecond roll for him, I fancy; and St. Stephen did not get bishop's pay\nfor that long sermon of his to the Pharisees; nothing but stones. For\nindeed that is the world-father's proper payment. So surely as any of\nthe world's children work for the world's good, honestly, with head and\nheart; and come to it, saying, 'Give us a little bread, just to keep the\nlife in us,' the world-father answers them, 'No, my children, not bread;\na stone, if you like, or as many as you need, to keep you quiet.' But\nthe hand-workers are not so ill off as all this comes to. The worst that\ncan happen to _you_ is to break stones; not be broken by them. And for\nyou there will come a time for better payment; some day, assuredly, more\npence will be paid to Peter the Fisherman, and fewer to Peter the Pope;\nwe shall pay people not quite so much for talking in Parliament and\ndoing nothing, as for holding their tongues out of it and doing\nsomething; we shall pay our ploughman a little more and our lawyer a\nlittle less, and so on: but, at least, we may even now take care that\nwhatever work is done shall be fully paid for; and the man who does it\npaid for it, not somebody else; and that it shall be done in an orderly,\nsoldierly, well-guided, wholesome way, under good captains and\nlieutenants of labour; and that it shall have its appointed times of\nrest, and enough of them; and that in those times the play shall be\nwholesome play, not in theatrical gardens, with tin flowers and gas\nsunshine, and girls dancing because of their misery; but in true\ngardens, with real flowers, and real sunshine, and children dancing\nbecause of their gladness; so that truly the streets shall be full (the\n'streets,' mind you, not the gutters) of children, playing in the midst\nthereof. We may take care that working-men shall have at least as good\nbooks to read as anybody else, when they've time to read them; and as\ncomfortable fire-sides to sit at as anybody else, when they've time to\nsit at them. This, I think, can be managed for you, my working friends,\nin the good time.\n\nIV. I must go on, however, to our last head, concerning ourselves all,\nas workers. What is wise work, and what is foolish work? What the\ndifference between sense and nonsense, in daily occupation?\n\nWell, wise work is, briefly, work _with_ God. Foolish work is work\n_against_ God. And work done with God, which He will help, may be\nbriefly described as 'Putting in Order'--that is, enforcing God's law of\norder, spiritual and material, over men and things. The first thing you\nhave to do, essentially; the real 'good work' is, with respect to men,\nto enforce justice, and with respect to things, to enforce tidiness, and\nfruitfulness. And against these two great human deeds, justice and\norder, there are perpetually two great demons contending,--the devil of\niniquity, or inequity, and the devil of disorder, or of death; for death\nis only consummation of disorder. You have to fight these two fiends\ndaily. So far as you don't fight against the fiend of iniquity, you work\nfor him. You 'work iniquity,' and the judgment upon you, for all your\n'Lord, Lord's,' will be 'Depart from me, ye that work iniquity.' And so\nfar as you do not resist the fiend of disorder, you work disorder, and\nyou yourself do the work of Death, which is sin, and has for its wages,\nDeath himself.\n\nObserve then, all wise work is mainly threefold in character. It is\nhonest, useful, and cheerful.\n\n\nI. It is HONEST. I hardly know anything more strange than that you\nrecognise honesty in play, and you do not in work. In your lightest\ngames, you have always some one to see what you call 'fair-play.' In\nboxing, you must hit fair; in racing, start fair. Your English watchword\nis fair-play, your English hatred, foul-play. Did it ever strike you\nthat you wanted another watchword also, fair-work, and another hatred\nalso, foul-work? Your prize-fighter has some honour in him yet; and so\nhave the men in the ring round him: they will judge him to lose the\nmatch, by foul hitting. But your prize-merchant gains his match by foul\nselling, and no one cries out against that. You drive a gambler out of\nthe gambling-room who loads dice, but you leave a tradesman in\nflourishing business, who loads scales! For observe, all dishonest\ndealing _is_ loading scales. What does it matter whether I get short\nweight, adulterate substance, or dishonest fabric? The fault in the\nfabric is incomparably the worst of the two. Give me short measure of\nfood, and I only lose by you; but give me adulterate food, and I die by\nyou. Here, then, is your chief duty, you workmen and tradesmen--to be\ntrue to yourselves, and to us who would help you. We can do nothing for\nyou, nor you for yourselves, without honesty. Get that, you get all;\nwithout that, your suffrages, your reforms, your free-trade measures,\nyour institutions of science, are all in vain. It is useless to put your\nheads together, if you can't put your hearts together. Shoulder to\nshoulder, right hand to right hand, among yourselves, and no wrong hand\nto anybody else, and you'll win the world yet.\n\n\nII. Then, secondly, wise work is USEFUL. No man minds, or ought to mind,\nits being hard, if only it comes to something; but when it is hard, and\ncomes to nothing; when all our bees' business turns to spiders'; and\nfor honeycomb we have only resultant cobweb, blown away by the next\nbreeze--that is the cruel thing for the worker. Yet do we ever ask\nourselves, personally, or even nationally, whether our work is coming to\nanything or not? We don't care to keep what has been nobly done; still\nless do we care to do nobly what others would keep; and, least of all,\nto make the work itself useful instead of deadly to the doer, so as to\nuse his life indeed, but not to waste it. Of all wastes, the greatest\nwaste that you can commit is the waste of labour. If you went down in\nthe morning into your dairy, and you found that your youngest child had\ngot down before you; and that he and the cat were at play together, and\nthat he had poured out all the cream on the floor for the cat to lap up,\nyou would scold the child, and be sorry the milk was wasted. But if,\ninstead of wooden bowls with milk in them, there are golden bowls with\nhuman life in them, and instead of the cat to play with--the devil to\nplay with; and you yourself the player; and instead of leaving that\ngolden bowl to be broken by God at the fountain, you break it in the\ndust yourself, and pour the human blood out on the ground for the fiend\nto lick up--that is no waste! What! you perhaps think, 'to waste the\nlabour of men is not to kill them.' Is it not? I should like to know how\nyou could kill them more utterly--kill them with second deaths, seventh\ndeaths, hundredfold deaths? It is the slightest way of killing to stop a\nman's breath. Nay, the hunger, and the cold, and the little whistling\nbullets--our love-messengers between nation and nation--have brought\npleasant messages from us to many a man before now; orders of sweet\nrelease, and leave at last to go where he will be most welcome and most\nhappy. At the worst you do but shorten his life, you do not corrupt his\nlife. But if you put him to base labour, if you bind his thoughts, if\nyou blind his eyes, if you blunt his hopes, if you steal his joys, if\nyou stunt his body, and blast his soul, and at last leave him not so\nmuch as to reap the poor fruit of his degradation, but gather that for\nyourself, and dismiss him to the grave, when you have done with him,\nhaving, so far as in you lay, made the walls of that grave everlasting\n(though, indeed, I fancy the goodly bricks of some of our family vaults\nwill hold closer in the resurrection day than the sod over the\nlabourer's head), this you think is no waste, and no sin!\n\n\nIII. Then, lastly, wise work is CHEERFUL, as a child's work is. And now\nI want you to take one thought home with you, and let it stay with you.\n\nEverybody in this room has been taught to pray daily, 'Thy kingdom\ncome.' Now, if we hear a man swear in the streets, we think it very\nwrong, and say he 'takes God's name in vain.' But there's a twenty times\nworse way of taking His name in vain, than that. It is to _ask God for\nwhat we don't want_. He doesn't like that sort of prayer. If you don't\nwant a thing, don't ask for it: such asking is the worst mockery of your\nKing you can mock Him with; the soldiers striking Him on the head with\nthe reed was nothing to that. If you do not wish for His kingdom, don't\npray for it. But if you do, you must do more than pray for it; you must\nwork for it. And, to work for it, you must know what it is: we have all\nprayed for it many a day without thinking. Observe, it is a kingdom that\nis to come to us; we are not to go to it. Also, it is not to be a\nkingdom of the dead, but of the living. Also, it is not to come all at\nonce, but quietly; nobody knows how. 'The kingdom of God cometh not with\nobservation.' Also, it is not to come outside of us, but in the hearts\nof us: 'the kingdom of God is within you.' And, being within us, it is\nnot a thing to be seen, but to be felt; and though it brings all\nsubstance of good with it, it does not consist in that: 'the kingdom of\nGod is not meat and drink, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy\nGhost:' joy, that is to say, in the holy, healthful, and helpful Spirit.\nNow, if we want to work for this kingdom, and to bring it, and enter\ninto it, there's just one condition to be first accepted. You must enter\nit as children, or not at all; 'Whosoever will not receive it as a\nlittle child shall not enter therein.' And again, 'Suffer little\nchildren to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the\nkingdom of heaven.'\n\n_Of such_, observe. Not of children themselves, but of such as\nchildren. I believe most mothers who read that text think that all\nheaven is to be full of babies. But that's not so. There will be\nchildren there, but the hoary head is the crown. 'Length of days, and\nlong life and peace,' that is the blessing, not to die in babyhood.\nChildren die but for their parents sins; God means them to live, but He\ncan't let them always; then they have their earlier place in heaven: and\nthe little child of David, vainly prayed for;--the little child of\nJeroboam, killed by its mother's step on its own threshold,--they will\nbe there. But weary old David, and weary old Barzillai, having learned\nchildren's lessons at last, will be there too: and the one question for\nus all, young or old, is, have we learned our child's lesson? it is the\n_character_ of children we want, and must gain at our peril; let us see,\nbriefly, in what it consists.\n\nThe first character of right childhood is that it is Modest. A well-bred\nchild does not think it can teach its parents, or that it knows\neverything. It may think its father and mother know everything,--perhaps\nthat all grown-up people know everything; very certainly it is sure that\n_it_ does not. And it is always asking questions, and wanting to know\nmore. Well, that is the first character of a good and wise man at his\nwork. To know that he knows very little;--to perceive that there are\nmany above him wiser than he; and to be always asking questions, wanting\nto learn, not to teach. No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or\ngoverns well who wants to govern; it is an old saying (Plato's, but I\nknow not if his, first), and as wise as old.\n\nThen, the second character of right childhood is to be Faithful.\nPerceiving that its father knows best what is good for it, and having\nfound always, when it has tried its own way against his, that he was\nright and it was wrong, a noble child trusts him at last wholly, gives\nhim its hand, and will walk blindfold with him, if he bids it. And that\nis the true character of all good men also, as obedient workers, or\nsoldiers under captains. They must trust their captains;--they are bound\nfor their lives to choose none but those whom they _can_ trust. Then,\nthey are not always to be thinking that what seems strange to them, or\nwrong in what they are desired to do, _is_ strange or wrong. They know\ntheir captain: where he leads they must follow, what he bids, they must\ndo; and without this trust and faith, without this captainship and\nsoldiership, no great deed, no great salvation, is possible to man.\nAmong all the nations it is only when this faith is attained by them\nthat they become great: the Jew, the Greek, and the Mahometan, agree at\nleast in testifying to this. It was a deed of this absolute trust which\nmade Abraham the father of the faithful; it was the declaration of the\npower of God as captain over all men, and the acceptance of a leader\nappointed by Him as commander of the faithful, which laid the foundation\nof whatever national power yet exists in the East; and the deed of the\nGreeks, which has become the type of unselfish and noble soldiership to\nall lands, and to all times, was commemorated, on the tomb of those who\ngave their lives to do it, in the most pathetic, so far as I know, or\ncan feel, of all human utterances: 'Oh, stranger, go and tell our people\nthat we are lying here, having _obeyed_ their words.'\n\nThen the third character of right childhood is to be Loving and\nGenerous. Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.\nIt loves everything near it, when it is a right kind of child--would\nhurt nothing, would give the best it has away, always, if you need\nit--does not lay plans for getting everything in the house for itself,\nand delights in helping people; you cannot please it so much as by\ngiving it a chance of being useful, in ever so little a way.\n\nAnd because of all these characters, lastly, it is Cheerful. Putting its\ntrust in its father, it is careful for nothing--being full of love to\nevery creature, it is happy always, whether in its play or in its duty.\nWell, that's the great worker's character also. Taking no thought for\nthe morrow; taking thought only for the duty of the day; trusting\nsomebody else to take care of to-morrow; knowing indeed what labour is,\nbut not what sorrow is; and always ready for play--beautiful play,--for\nlovely human play is like the play of the Sun. There's a worker for you.\nHe, steady to his time, is set as a strong man to run his course, but\nalso, he _rejoiceth_ as a strong man to run his course. See how he\nplays in the morning, with the mists below, and the clouds above, with a\nray here and a flash there, and a shower of jewels everywhere; that's\nthe Sun's play; and great human play is like his--all various--all full\nof light and life, and tender, as the dew of the morning.\n\nSo then, you have the child's character in these four things--Humility,\nFaith, Charity, and Cheerfulness. That's what you have got to be\nconverted to. 'Except ye be converted and become as little\nchildren'--You hear much of conversion now-a-days; but people always\nseem to think they have got to be made wretched by conversion,--to be\nconverted to long faces. No, friends, you have got to be converted to\nshort ones; you have to repent into childhood, to repent into delight,\nand delightsomeness. You can't go into a conventicle but you'll hear\nplenty of talk of backsliding. Backsliding, indeed! I can tell you, on\nthe ways most of us go, the faster we slide back the better. Slide back\ninto the cradle, if going on is into the grave--back, I tell you;\nback--out of your long faces, and into your long clothes. It is among\nchildren only, and as children only, that you will find medicine for\nyour healing and true wisdom for your teaching. There is poison in the\ncounsels of the _men_ of this world; the words they speak are all\nbitterness, 'the poison of asps is under their lips,' but, 'the sucking\nchild shall play by the hole of the asp.' There is death in the looks of\nmen. 'Their eyes are privily set against the poor;' they are as the\nuncharmable serpent, the cockatrice, which slew by seeing. But 'the\nweaned child shall lay his hand on the cockatrice den.' There is death\nin the steps of men: 'their feet are swift to shed blood; they have\ncompassed us in our steps like the lion that is greedy of his prey, and\nthe young lion lurking in secret places,' but, in that kingdom, the wolf\nshall lie down with the lamb, and the fatling with the lion, and 'a\nlittle child shall lead them.' There is death in the thoughts of men:\nthe world is one wide riddle to them, darker and darker as it draws to a\nclose; but the secret of it is known to the child, and the Lord of\nheaven and earth is most to be thanked in that 'He has hidden these\nthings from the wise and prudent, and has revealed them unto babes.'\nYes, and there is death--infinitude of death in the principalities and\npowers of men. As far as the east is from the west, so far our sins\nare--_not_ set from us, but multiplied around us: the Sun himself, think\nyou he _now_ 'rejoices' to run his course, when he plunges westward to\nthe horizon, so widely red, not with clouds, but blood? And it will be\nred more widely yet. Whatever drought of the early and latter rain may\nbe, there will be none of that red rain. You fortify yourselves, you arm\nyourselves against it in vain; the enemy and avenger will be upon you\nalso, unless you learn that it is not out of the mouths of the knitted\ngun, or the smoothed rifle, but 'out of the mouths of babes and\nsucklings' that the strength is ordained which shall 'still the enemy\nand avenger.'\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE II.\n\n_TRAFFIC._\n\n(_Delivered in the Town Hall, Bradford._)\n\n\nMy good Yorkshire friends, you asked me down here among your hills that\nI might talk to you about this Exchange you are going to build: but\nearnestly and seriously asking you to pardon me, I am going to do\nnothing of the kind. I cannot talk, or at least can say very little,\nabout this same Exchange. I must talk of quite other things, though not\nwillingly;--I could not deserve your pardon, if when you invited me to\nspeak on one subject, I wilfully spoke on another. But I cannot speak,\nto purpose, of anything about which I do not care; and most simply and\nsorrowfully I have to tell you, in the outset, that I do _not_ care\nabout this Exchange of yours.\n\nIf, however, when you sent me your invitation, I had answered, 'I won't\ncome, I don't care about the Exchange of Bradford,' you would have been\njustly offended with me, not knowing the reasons of so blunt a\ncarelessness. So I have come down, hoping that you will patiently let me\ntell you why, on this, and many other such occasions, I now remain\nsilent, when formerly I should have caught at the opportunity of\nspeaking to a gracious audience.\n\nIn a word, then, I do not care about this Exchange,--because _you_\ndon't; and because you know perfectly well I cannot make you. Look at\nthe essential circumstances of the case, which you, as business men,\nknow perfectly well, though perhaps you think I forget them. You are\ngoing to spend 30,000_l._, which to you, collectively, is nothing; the\nbuying a new coat is, as to the cost of it, a much more important matter\nof consideration to me than building a new Exchange is to you. But you\nthink you may as well have the right thing for your money. You know\nthere are a great many odd styles of architecture about; you don't want\nto do anything ridiculous; you hear of me, among others, as a\nrespectable architectural man-milliner: and you send for me, that I may\ntell you the leading fashion; and what is, in our shops, for the moment,\nthe newest and sweetest thing in pinnacles.\n\nNow, pardon me for telling you frankly, you cannot have good\narchitecture merely by asking people's advice on occasion. All good\narchitecture is the expression of national life and character; and it is\nproduced by a prevalent and eager national taste, or desire for beauty.\nAnd I want you to think a little of the deep significance of this word\n'taste;' for no statement of mine has been more earnestly or oftener\ncontroverted than that good taste is essentially a moral quality. 'No,'\nsay many of my antagonists, 'taste is one thing, morality is another.\nTell us what is pretty; we shall be glad to know that; but preach no\nsermons to us.'\n\nPermit me, therefore, to fortify this old dogma of mine somewhat. Taste\nis not only a part and an index of morality--it is the ONLY morality.\nThe first, and last, and closest trial question to any living creature\nis, 'What do you like?' Tell me what you like, and I'll tell you what\nyou are. Go out into the street, and ask the first man or woman you\nmeet, what their 'taste' is, and if they answer candidly, you know them,\nbody and soul. 'You, my friend in the rags, with the unsteady gait, what\ndo _you_ like?' 'A pipe and a quartern of gin.' I know you. 'You, good\nwoman, with the quick step and tidy bonnet, what do you like?' 'A swept\nhearth and a clean tea-table, and my husband opposite me, and a baby at\nmy breast.' Good, I know you also. 'You, little girl with the golden\nhair and the soft eyes, what do you like?' 'My canary, and a run among\nthe wood hyacinths.' 'You, little boy with the dirty hands and the low\nforehead, what do you like?' 'A shy at the sparrows, and a game at\npitch-farthing.' Good; we know them all now. What more need we ask?\n\n'Nay,' perhaps you answer: 'we need rather to ask what these people and\nchildren do, than what they like. If they _do_ right, it is no matter\nthat they like what is wrong; and if they _do_ wrong, it is no matter\nthat they like what is right. Doing is the great thing; and it does not\nmatter that the man likes drinking, so that he does not drink; nor that\nthe little girl likes to be kind to her canary, if she will not learn\nher lessons; nor that the little boy likes throwing stones at the\nsparrows, if he goes to the Sunday school.' Indeed, for a short time,\nand in a provisional sense, this is true. For if, resolutely, people do\nwhat is right, in time they come to like doing it. But they only are in\na right moral state when they _have_ come to like doing it; and as long\nas they don't like it, they are still in a vicious state. The man is not\nin health of body who is always thirsting for the bottle in the\ncupboard, though he bravely bears his thirst; but the man who heartily\nenjoys water in the morning and wine in the evening, each in its proper\nquantity and time. And the entire object of true education is to make\npeople not merely _do_ the right things, but _enjoy_ the right\nthings--not merely industrious, but to love industry--not merely\nlearned, but to love knowledge--not merely pure, but to love purity--not\nmerely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice.\n\nBut you may answer or think, 'Is the liking for outside ornaments,--for\npictures, or statues, or furniture, or architecture,--a moral quality?'\nYes, most surely, if a rightly set liking. Taste for _any_ pictures or\nstatues is not a moral quality, but taste for good ones is. Only here\nagain we have to define the word 'good.' I don't mean by 'good,'\nclever--or learned--or difficult in the doing. Take a picture by\nTeniers, of sots quarrelling over their dice: it is an entirely clever\npicture; so clever that nothing in its kind has ever been done equal to\nit; but it is also an entirely base and evil picture. It is an\nexpression of delight in the prolonged contemplation of a vile thing,\nand delight in that is an 'unmannered,' or 'immoral' quality. It is 'bad\ntaste' in the profoundest sense--it is the taste of the devils. On the\nother hand, a picture of Titian's, or a Greek statue, or a Greek coin,\nor a Turner landscape, expresses delight in the perpetual contemplation\nof a good and perfect thing. That is an entirely moral quality--it is\nthe taste of the angels. And all delight in art, and all love of it,\nresolve themselves into simple love of that which deserves love. That\ndeserving is the quality which we call 'loveliness'--(we ought to have\nan opposite word, hateliness, to be said of the things which deserve to\nbe hated); and it is not an indifferent nor optional thing whether we\nlove this or that; but it is just the vital function of all our being.\nWhat we _like_ determines what we _are_, and is the sign of what we are;\nand to teach taste is inevitably to form character. As I was thinking\nover this, in walking up Fleet Street the other day, my eye caught the\ntitle of a book standing open in a bookseller's window. It was--'On the\nnecessity of the diffusion of taste among all classes.' 'Ah,' I thought\nto myself, 'my classifying friend, when you have diffused your taste,\nwhere will your classes be? The man who likes what you like, belongs to\nthe same class with you, I think. Inevitably so. You may put him to\nother work if you choose; but, by the condition you have brought him\ninto, he will dislike the other work as much as you would yourself. You\nget hold of a scavenger, or a costermonger, who enjoyed the Newgate\nCalendar for literature, and \"Pop goes the Weasel\" for music. You think\nyou can make him like Dante and Beethoven? I wish you joy of your\nlessons; but if you do, you have made a gentleman of him:--he won't like\nto go back to his costermongering.'\n\nAnd so completely and unexceptionally is this so, that, if I had time\nto-night, I could show you that a nation cannot be affected by any vice,\nor weakness, without expressing it, legibly, and for ever, either in bad\nart, or by want of art; and that there is no national virtue, small or\ngreat, which is not manifestly expressed in all the art which\ncircumstances enable the people possessing that virtue to produce. Take,\nfor instance, your great English virtue of enduring and patient courage.\nYou have at present in England only one art of any consequence--that is,\niron-working. You know thoroughly well how to cast and hammer iron. Now,\ndo you think in those masses of lava which you build volcanic cones to\nmelt, and which you forge at the mouths of the Infernos you have\ncreated; do you think, on those iron plates, your courage and endurance\nare not written for ever--not merely with an iron pen, but on iron\nparchment? And take also your great English vice--European vice--vice of\nall the world--vice of all other worlds that roll or shine in heaven,\nbearing with them yet the atmosphere of hell--the vice of jealousy,\nwhich brings competition into your commerce, treachery into your\ncouncils, and dishonour into your wars--that vice which has rendered for\nyou, and for your next neighbouring nation, the daily occupations of\nexistence no longer possible, but with the mail upon your breasts and\nthe sword loose in its sheath; so that, at last, you have realised for\nall the multitudes of the two great peoples who lead the so-called\ncivilisation of the earth,--you have realised for them all, I say, in\nperson and in policy, what was once true only of the rough Border riders\nof your Cheviot hills--\n\n                  'They carved at the meal\n                   With gloves of steel,\n    And they drank the red wine through the helmet barr'd;--\n\ndo you think that this national shame and dastardliness of heart are not\nwritten as legibly on every rivet of your iron armour as the strength of\nthe right hands that forged it? Friends, I know not whether this thing\nbe the more ludicrous or the more melancholy. It is quite unspeakably\nboth. Suppose, instead of being now sent for by you, I had been sent for\nby some private gentleman, living in a suburban house, with his garden\nseparated only by a fruit-wall from his next door neighbour's; and he\nhad called me to consult with him on the furnishing of his drawing room.\nI begin looking about me, and find the walls rather bare; I think such\nand such a paper might be desirable--perhaps a little fresco here and\nthere on the ceiling--a damask curtain or so at the windows. 'Ah,' says\nmy employer, 'damask curtains, indeed! That's all very fine, but you\nknow I can't afford that kind of thing just now!' 'Yet the world credits\nyou with a splendid income!' 'Ah, yes,' says my friend, 'but do you\nknow, at present, I am obliged to spend it nearly all in steel-traps?'\n'Steel-traps! for whom?' 'Why, for that fellow on the other side the\nwall, you know: we're very good friends, capital friends; but we are\nobliged to keep our traps set on both sides of the wall; we could not\npossibly keep on friendly terms without them, and our spring guns. The\nworst of it is, we are both clever fellows enough; and there's never a\nday passes that we don't find out a new trap, or a new gun-barrel, or\nsomething; we spend about fifteen millions a year each in our traps,\ntake it all together; and I don't see how we're to do with less.' A\nhighly comic state of life for two private gentlemen! but for two\nnations, it seems to me, not wholly comic? Bedlam would be comic,\nperhaps, if there were only one madman in it; and your Christmas\npantomime is comic, when there is only one clown in it; but when the\nwhole world turns clown, and paints itself red with its own heart's\nblood instead of vermilion, it is something else than comic, I think.\n\nMind, I know a great deal of this is play, and willingly allow for that.\nYou don't know what to do with yourselves for a sensation: fox-hunting\nand cricketing will not carry you through the whole of this unendurably\nlong mortal life: you liked pop-guns when you were schoolboys, and\nrifles and Armstrongs are only the same things better made: but then the\nworst of it is, that what was play to you when boys, was not play to the\nsparrows; and what is play to you now, is not play to the small birds of\nState neither; and for the black eagles, you are somewhat shy of taking\nshots at them, if I mistake not.\n\nI must get back to the matter in hand, however. Believe me, without\nfarther instance, I could show you, in all time, that every nation's\nvice, or virtue, was written in its art: the soldiership of early\nGreece; the sensuality of late Italy; the visionary religion of Tuscany;\nthe splendid human energy and beauty of Venice. I have no time to do\nthis to-night (I have done it elsewhere before now); but I proceed to\napply the principle to ourselves in a more searching manner.\n\nI notice that among all the new buildings that cover your once wild\nhills, churches and schools are mixed in due, that is to say, in large\nproportion, with your mills and mansions and I notice also that the\nchurches and schools are almost always Gothic, and the mansions and\nmills are never Gothic. Will you allow me to ask precisely the meaning\nof this? For, remember, it is peculiarly a modern phenomenon. When\nGothic was invented, houses were Gothic as well as churches; and when\nthe Italian style superseded the Gothic, churches were Italian as well\nas houses. If there is a Gothic spire to the cathedral of Antwerp, there\nis a Gothic belfry to the Hotel de Ville at Brussels; if Inigo Jones\nbuilds an Italian Whitehall, Sir Christopher Wren builds an Italian St.\nPaul's. But now you live under one school of architecture, and worship\nunder another. What do you mean by doing this? Am I to understand that\nyou are thinking of changing your architecture back to Gothic; and that\nyou treat your churches experimentally, because it does not matter what\nmistakes you make in a church? Or am I to understand that you consider\nGothic a pre-eminently sacred and beautiful mode of building, which you\nthink, like the fine frankincense, should be mixed for the tabernacle\nonly, and reserved for your religious services? For if this be the\nfeeling, though it may seem at first as if it were graceful and\nreverent, you will find that, at the root of the matter, it signifies\nneither more nor less than that you have separated your religion from\nyour life.\n\nFor consider what a wide significance this fact has; and remember that\nit is not you only, but all the people of England, who are behaving thus\njust now.\n\nYou have all got into the habit of calling the church 'the house of\nGod.' I have seen, over the doors of many churches, the legend actually\ncarved, '_This_ is the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.'\nNow, note where that legend comes from, and of what place it was first\nspoken. A boy leaves his father's house to go on a long journey on foot,\nto visit his uncle; he has to cross a wild hill-desert; just as if one\nof your own boys had to cross the wolds of Westmoreland, to visit an\nuncle at Carlisle. The second or third day your boy finds himself\nsomewhere between Hawes and Brough, in the midst of the moors, at\nsunset. It is stony ground, and boggy; he cannot go one foot farther\nthat night. Down he lies, to sleep, on Wharnside, where best he may,\ngathering a few of the stones together to put under his head;--so wild\nthe place is, he cannot get anything but stones. And there, lying under\nthe broad night, he has a dream; and he sees a ladder set up on the\nearth, and the top of it reaches to heaven, and the angels of God are\nascending and descending upon it. And when he wakes out of his sleep, he\nsays, 'How dreadful is this place; surely, this is none other than the\nhouse of God, and this is the gate of heaven.' This PLACE, observe; not\nthis church; not this city; not this stone, even, which he puts up for a\nmemorial--the piece of flint on which his head has lain. But this\n_place_; this windy slope of Wharnside; this moorland hollow,\ntorrent-bitten, snow-blighted; this _any_ place where God lets down the\nladder. And how are you to know where that will be? or how are you to\ndetermine where it may be, but by being ready for it always? Do you know\nwhere the lightning is to fall next? You _do_ know that, partly; you can\nguide the lightning; but you cannot guide the going forth of the Spirit,\nwhich is that lightning when it shines from the east to the west.\n\nBut the perpetual and insolent warping of that strong verse to serve a\nmerely ecclesiastical purpose, is only one of the thousand instances in\nwhich we sink back into gross Judaism. We call our churches 'temples.'\nNow, you know, or ought to know, they are _not_ temples. They have never\nhad, never can have, anything whatever to do with temples. They are\n'synagogues'--'gathering places'--where you gather yourselves together\nas an assembly; and by not calling them so, you again miss the force of\nanother mighty text--'Thou, when thou prayest, shalt not be as the\nhypocrites are; for they love to pray standing in the _churches_' [we\nshould translate it], 'that they may be seen of men. But thou, when thou\nprayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray\nto thy Father,'--which is, not in chancel nor in aisle, but 'in\nsecret.'\n\nNow, you feel, as I say this to you--I know you feel--as if I were\ntrying to take away the honour of your churches. Not so; I am trying to\nprove to you the honour of your houses and your hills; I am trying to\nshow you--not that the Church is not sacred--but that the whole Earth\nis. I would have you feel, what careless, what constant, what infectious\nsin there is in all modes of thought, whereby, in calling your churches\nonly 'holy,' you call your hearths and homes profane; and have separated\nyourselves from the heathen by casting all your household gods to the\nground, instead of recognising, in the place of their many and feeble\nLares, the presence of your One and Mighty Lord and Lar.\n\n\n'But what has all this to do with our Exchange?' you ask me,\nimpatiently. My dear friends, it has just everything to do with it; on\nthese inner and great questions depend all the outer and little ones;\nand if you have asked me down here to speak to you, because you had\nbefore been interested in anything I have written, you must know that\nall I have yet said about architecture was to show this. The book I\ncalled 'The Seven Lamps' was to show that certain right states of temper\nand moral feeling were the magic powers by which all good architecture,\nwithout exception, had been produced. 'The Stones of Venice,' had, from\nbeginning to end, no other aim than to show that the Gothic architecture\nof Venice had arisen out of, and indicated in all its features, a state\nof pure national faith, and of domestic virtue; and that its Renaissance\narchitecture had arisen out of, and in all its features indicated, a\nstate of concealed national infidelity, and of domestic corruption. And\nnow, you ask me what style is best to build in; and how can I answer,\nknowing the meaning of the two styles, but by another question--do you\nmean to build as Christians or as Infidels? And still more--do you mean\nto build as honest Christians or as honest Infidels? as thoroughly and\nconfessedly either one or the other? You don't like to be asked such\nrude questions. I cannot help it; they are of much more importance than\nthis Exchange business; and if they can be at once answered, the\nExchange business settles itself in a moment. But, before I press them\nfarther, I must ask leave to explain one point clearly. In all my past\nwork, my endeavour has been to show that good architecture is\nessentially religious--the production of a faithful and virtuous, not of\nan infidel and corrupted people. But in the course of doing this, I have\nhad also to show that good architecture is not _ecclesiastical_. People\nare so apt to look upon religion as the business of the clergy, not\ntheir own, that the moment they hear of anything depending on\n'religion,' they think it must also have depended on the priesthood; and\nI have had to take what place was to be occupied between these two\nerrors, and fight both, often with seeming contradiction. Good\narchitecture is the work of good and believing men; therefore, you say,\nat least some people say, 'Good architecture must essentially have been\nthe work of the clergy, not of the laity.' No--a thousand times no; good\narchitecture has always been the work of the commonalty, _not_ of the\nclergy. What, you say, those glorious cathedrals--the pride of\nEurope--did their builders not form Gothic architecture? No; they\ncorrupted Gothic architecture. Gothic was formed in the baron's castle,\nand the burgher's street. It was formed by the thoughts, and hands, and\npowers of free citizens and soldier kings. By the monk it was used as an\ninstrument for the aid of his superstition; when that superstition\nbecame a beautiful madness, and the best hearts of Europe vainly dreamed\nand pined in the cloister, and vainly raged and perished in the\ncrusade--through that fury of perverted faith and wasted war, the Gothic\nrose also to its loveliest, most fantastic, and, finally, most foolish\ndreams; and, in those dreams, was lost.\n\nI hope, now, that there is no risk of your misunderstanding me when I\ncome to the gist of what I want to say to-night--when I repeat, that\nevery great national architecture has been the result and exponent of a\ngreat national religion. You can't have bits of it here, bits there--you\nmust have it everywhere, or nowhere. It is not the monopoly of a\nclerical company--it is not the exponent of a theological dogma--it is\nnot the hieroglyphic writing of an initiated priesthood; it is the manly\nlanguage of a people inspired by resolute and common purpose, and\nrendering resolute and common fidelity to the legible laws of an\nundoubted God.\n\nNow, there have as yet been three distinct schools of European\narchitecture. I say, European, because Asiatic and African architectures\nbelong so entirely to other races and climates, that there is no\nquestion of them here; only, in passing, I will simply assure you that\nwhatever is good or great in Egypt, and Syria, and India, is just good\nor great for the same reasons as the buildings on our side of the\nBosphorus. We Europeans, then, have had three great religions: the\nGreek, which was the worship of the God of Wisdom and Power; the\nMediaeval, which was the Worship of the God of Judgment and Consolation;\nthe Renaissance, which was the worship of the God of Pride and Beauty;\nthese three we have had--they are past,--and now, at last, we English\nhave got a fourth religion, and a God of our own, about which I want to\nask you. But I must explain these three old ones first.\n\nI repeat, first, the Greeks essentially worshipped the God of Wisdom; so\nthat whatever contended against their religion,--to the Jews a stumbling\nblock,--was, to the Greeks--_Foolishness_.\n\nThe first Greek idea of Deity was that expressed in the word, of which\nwe keep the remnant in our words '_Di_-urnal' and '_Di_-vine'--the god\nof _Day_, Jupiter the revealer. Athena is his daughter, but especially\ndaughter of the Intellect, springing armed from the head. We are only\nwith the help of recent investigation beginning to penetrate the depth\nof meaning couched under the Athenaic symbols: but I may note rapidly,\nthat her aegis, the mantle with the serpent fringes, in which she often,\nin the best statues, is represented as folding up her left hand for\nbetter guard, and the Gorgon on her shield, are both representative\nmainly of the chilling horror and sadness (turning men to stone, as it\nwere,) of the outmost and superficial spheres of knowledge--that\nknowledge which separates, in bitterness, hardness, and sorrow, the\nheart of the full-grown man from the heart of the child. For out of\nimperfect knowledge spring terror, dissension, danger, and disdain; but\nfrom perfect knowledge, given by the full-revealed Athena, strength and\npeace, in sign of which she is crowned with the olive spray, and bears\nthe resistless spear.\n\nThis, then, was the Greek conception of purest Deity, and every habit of\nlife, and every form of his art developed themselves from the seeking\nthis bright, serene, resistless wisdom; and setting himself, as a man,\nto do things evermore rightly and strongly;[3] not with any ardent\naffection or ultimate hope; but with a resolute and continent energy of\nwill, as knowing that for failure there was no consolation, and for sin\nthere was no remission. And the Greek architecture rose unerring,\nbright, clearly defined, and self-contained.\n\nNext followed in Europe the great Christian faith, which was essentially\nthe religion of Comfort. Its great doctrine is the remission of sins;\nfor which cause it happens, too often, in certain phases of\nChristianity, that sin and sickness themselves are partly glorified, as\nif, the more you had to be healed of, the more divine was the healing.\nThe practical result of this doctrine, in art, is a continual\ncontemplation of sin and disease, and of imaginary states of\npurification from them; thus we have an architecture conceived in a\nmingled sentiment of melancholy and aspiration, partly severe, partly\nluxuriant, which will bend itself to every one of our needs, and every\none of our fancies, and be strong or weak with us, as we are strong or\nweak ourselves. It is, of all architecture, the basest, when base people\nbuild it--of all, the noblest, when built by the noble.\n\nAnd now note that both these religions--Greek and Mediaeval--perished by\nfalsehood in their own main purpose. The Greek religion of Wisdom\nperished in a false philosophy--'Oppositions of science, falsely so\ncalled.' The Mediaeval religion of Consolation perished in false comfort;\nin remission of sins given lyingly. It was the selling of absolution\nthat ended the Mediaeval faith; and I can tell you more, it is the\nselling of absolution which, to the end of time, will mark false\nChristianity. Pure Christianity gives her remission of sins only by\n_ending_ them; but false Christianity gets her remission of sins by\n_compounding for_ them. And there are many ways of compounding for them.\nWe English have beautiful little quiet ways of buying absolution,\nwhether in low Church or high, far more cunning than any of Tetzel's\ntrading.\n\nThen, thirdly, there followed the religion of Pleasure, in which all\nEurope gave itself to luxury, ending in death. First, _bals masques_ in\nevery saloon, and then guillotines in every square. And all these three\nworships issue in vast temple building. Your Greek worshipped Wisdom,\nand built you the Parthenon--the Virgin's temple. The Mediaeval\nworshipped Consolation, and built you Virgin temples also--but to our\nLady of Salvation. Then the Revivalist worshipped beauty, of a sort, and\nbuilt you Versailles, and the Vatican. Now, lastly, will you tell me\nwhat _we_ worship, and what _we_ build?\n\nYou know we are speaking always of the real, active, continual, national\nworship; that by which men act while they live; not that which they talk\nof when they die. Now, we have, indeed, a nominal religion, to which we\npay tithes of property, and sevenths of time; but we have also a\npractical and earnest religion, to which we devote nine-tenths of our\nproperty and six-sevenths of our time. And we dispute a great deal about\nthe nominal religion; but we are all unanimous about this practical one,\nof which I think you will admit that the ruling goddess may be best\ngenerally described as the 'Goddess of Getting-on,' or 'Britannia of the\nMarket.' The Athenians had an 'Athena Agoraia,' or Minerva of the\nMarket: but she was a subordinate type of their goddess, while our\nBritannia Agoraia is the principal type of ours. And all your great\narchitectural works, are, of course, built to her. It is long since you\nbuilt a great cathedral; and how you would laugh at me, if I proposed\nbuilding a cathedral on the top of one of these hills of yours, taking\nit for an Acropolis! But your railroad mounds, prolonged masses of\nAcropolis; your railroad stations, vaster than the Parthenon, and\ninnumerable; your chimneys, how much more mighty and costly than\ncathedral spires! your harbour-piers; your warehouses; your\nexchanges!--all these are built to your great Goddess of 'Getting-on;'\nand she has formed, and will continue to form, your architecture, as\nlong as you worship her; and it is quite vain to ask me to tell you how\nto build to _her_; you know far better than I.\n\nThere might indeed, on some theories, be a conceivably good architecture\nfor Exchanges--that is to say if there were any heroism in the fact or\ndeed of exchange, which might be typically carved on the outside of your\nbuilding. For, you know, all beautiful architecture must be adorned with\nsculpture or painting; and for sculpture or painting, you must have a\nsubject. And hitherto it has been a received opinion among the nations\nof the world that the only right subjects for either, were _heroisms_ of\nsome sort. Even on his pots and his flagons, the Greek put a Hercules\nslaying lions, or an Apollo slaying serpents, or Bacchus slaying\nmelancholy giants, and earth-born despondencies. On his temples, the\nGreek put contests of great warriors in founding states, or of gods with\nevil spirits. On his houses and temples alike, the Christian put\ncarvings of angels conquering devils; or of hero-martyrs exchanging this\nworld for another; subject inappropriate, I think, to our manner of\nexchange here. And the Master of Christians not only left his followers\nwithout any orders as to the sculpture of affairs of exchange on the\noutside of buildings, but gave some strong evidence of his dislike of\naffairs of exchange within them. And yet there might surely be a heroism\nin such affairs; and all commerce become a kind of selling of doves, not\nimpious. The wonder has always been great to me, that heroism has never\nbeen supposed to be in anywise consistent with the practice of\nsupplying people with food, or clothes; but rather with that of\nquartering oneself upon them for food, and stripping them of their\nclothes. Spoiling of armour is an heroic deed in all ages; but the\nselling of clothes, old, or new, has never taken any colour of\nmagnanimity. Yet one does not see why feeding the hungry and clothing\nthe naked should ever become base businesses, even when engaged in on a\nlarge scale. If one could contrive to attach the notion of conquest to\nthem anyhow? so that, supposing there were anywhere an obstinate race,\nwho refused to be comforted, one might take some pride in giving them\ncompulsory comfort; and as it were, 'occupying a country' with one's\ngifts, instead of one's armies? If one could only consider it as much a\nvictory to get a barren field sown, as to get an eared field stripped;\nand contend who should build villages, instead of who should 'carry'\nthem. Are not all forms of heroism, conceivable in doing these\nserviceable deeds? You doubt who is strongest? It might be ascertained\nby push of spade, as well as push of sword. Who is wisest? There are\nwitty things to be thought of in planning other business than campaigns.\nWho is bravest? There are always the elements to fight with, stronger\nthan men; and nearly as merciless. The only absolutely and\nunapproachably heroic element in the soldier's work seems to be--that he\nis paid little for it--and regularly: while you traffickers, and\nexchangers, and others occupied in presumably benevolent business, like\nto be paid much for it--and by chance. I never can make out how it is\nthat a knight-errant does not expect to be paid for his trouble, but a\npedlar-errant always does;--that people are willing to take hard knocks\nfor nothing, but never to sell ribands cheap;--that they are ready to go\non fervent crusades to recover the tomb of a buried God, never on any\ntravels to fulfil the orders of a living God;--that they will go\nanywhere barefoot to preach their faith, but must be well bribed to\npractise it, and are perfectly ready to give the Gospel gratis, but\nnever the loaves and fishes. If you chose to take the matter up on any\nsuch soldierly principle, to do your commerce, and your feeding of\nnations, for fixed salaries; and to be as particular about giving people\nthe best food, and the best cloth, as soldiers are about giving them the\nbest gunpowder, I could carve something for you on your exchange worth\nlooking at. But I can only at present suggest decorating its frieze with\npendant purses; and making its pillars broad at the base for the\nsticking of bills. And in the innermost chambers of it there might be a\nstatue of Britannia of the Market, who may have, perhaps advisably, a\npartridge for her crest, typical at once of her courage in fighting for\nnoble ideas; and of her interest in game; and round its neck the\ninscription in golden letters, 'Perdix fovit quae non peperit.'[4] Then,\nfor her spear, she might have a weaver's beam; and on her shield,\ninstead of her Cross, the Milanese boar, semi-fleeced, with the town of\nGennesaret proper, in the field and the legend 'In the best market,' and\nher corslet, of leather, folded over her heart in the shape of a purse,\nwith thirty slits in it for a piece of money to go in at, on each day of\nthe month. And I doubt not but that people would come to see your\nexchange, and its goddess, with applause.\n\nNevertheless, I want to point out to you certain strange characters in\nthis goddess of yours. She differs from the great Greek and Mediaeval\ndeities essentially in two things--first, as to the continuance of her\npresumed power; secondly, as to the extent of it.\n\n1st, as to the Continuance.\n\nThe Greek Goddess of Wisdom gave continual increase of wisdom, as the\nChristian Spirit of Comfort (or Comforter) continual increase of\ncomfort. There was no question, with these, of any limit or cessation of\nfunction. But with your Agora Goddess, that is just the most important\nquestion. Getting on--but where to? Gathering together--but how much? Do\nyou mean to gather always--never to spend? If so, I wish you joy of your\ngoddess, for I am just as well off as you, without the trouble of\nworshipping her at all. But if you do not spend, somebody else\nwill--somebody else must. And it is because of this (among many other\nsuch errors) that I have fearlessly declared your so-called science of\nPolitical Economy to be no science; because, namely, it has omitted the\nstudy of exactly the most important branch of the business--the study of\n_spending_. For spend you must, and as much as you make, ultimately. You\ngather corn:--will you bury England under a heap of grain; or will you,\nwhen you have gathered, finally eat? You gather gold:--will you make\nyour house-roofs of it, or pave your streets with it? That is still one\nway of spending it. But if you keep it, that you may get more, I'll give\nyou more; I'll give you all the gold you want--all you can imagine--if\nyou can tell me what you'll do with it. You shall have thousands of gold\npieces;--thousands of thousands--millions--mountains, of gold: where\nwill you keep them? Will you put an Olympus of silver upon a golden\nPelion--make Ossa like a wart? Do you think the rain and dew would then\ncome down to you, in the streams from such mountains, more blessedly\nthan they will down the mountains which God has made for you, of moss\nand whinstone? But it is not gold that you want to gather! What is it?\ngreenbacks? No; not those neither. What is it then--is it ciphers after\na capital I? Cannot you practise writing ciphers, and write as many as\nyou want? Write ciphers for an hour every morning, in a big book, and\nsay every evening, I am worth all those noughts more than I was\nyesterday. Won't that do? Well, what in the name of Plutus is it you\nwant? Not gold, not greenbacks, not ciphers after a capital I? You will\nhave to answer, after all, 'No; we want, somehow or other, money's\n_worth_.' Well, what is that? Let your Goddess of Getting-on discover\nit, and let her learn to stay therein.\n\n\nII. But there is yet another question to be asked respecting this\nGoddess of Getting-on. The first was of the continuance of her power;\nthe second is of its extent.\n\nPallas and the Madonna were supposed to be all the world's Pallas, and\nall the world's Madonna. They could teach all men, and they could\ncomfort all men. But, look strictly into the nature of the power of your\nGoddess of Getting-on; and you will find she is the Goddess--not of\neverybody's getting on--but only of somebody's getting on. This is a\nvital, or rather deathful, distinction. Examine it in your own ideal of\nthe state of national life which this Goddess is to evoke and maintain.\nI asked you what it was, when I was last here;[5]--you have never told\nme. Now, shall I try to tell you?\n\nYour ideal of human life then is, I think, that it should be passed in a\npleasant undulating world, with iron and coal everywhere underneath it.\nOn each pleasant bank of this world is to be a beautiful mansion, with\ntwo wings; and stables, and coach-houses; a moderately sized park; a\nlarge garden and hot houses; and pleasant carriage drives through the\nshrubberies. In this mansion are to live the favoured votaries of the\nGoddess; the English gentleman, with his gracious wife, and his\nbeautiful family; always able to have the boudoir and the jewels for the\nwife, and the beautiful ball dresses for the daughters, and hunters for\nthe sons, and a shooting in the Highlands for himself. At the bottom of\nthe bank, is to be the mill; not less than a quarter of a mile long,\nwith a steam engine at each end, and two in the middle, and a chimney\nthree hundred feet high. In this mill are to be in constant employment\nfrom eight hundred to a thousand workers, who never drink, never strike,\nalways go to church on Sunday, and always express themselves in\nrespectful language.\n\nIs not that, broadly, and in the main features, the kind of thing you\npropose to yourselves? It is very pretty indeed seen from above; not at\nall so pretty, seen from below. For, observe, while to one family this\ndeity is indeed the Goddess of Getting on, to a thousand families she is\nthe Goddess of _not_ Getting on. 'Nay,' you say, 'they have all their\nchance.' Yes, so has every one in a lottery, but there must always be\nthe same number of blanks. 'Ah! but in a lottery it is not skill and\nintelligence which take the lead, but blind chance.' What then! do you\nthink the old practice, that 'they should take who have the power, and\nthey should keep who can,' is less iniquitous, when the power has become\npower of brains instead of fist? and that, though we may not take\nadvantage of a child's or a woman's weakness, we may of a man's\nfoolishness? 'Nay, but finally, work must be done, and some one must be\nat the top, some one at the bottom.' Granted, my friends. Work must\nalways be, and captains of work must always be; and if you in the least\nremember the tone of any of my writings, you must know that they are\nthought unfit for this age, because they are always insisting on need of\ngovernment, and speaking with scorn of liberty. But I beg you to observe\nthat there is a wide difference between being captains or governors of\nwork, and taking the profits of it. It does not follow, because you are\ngeneral of an army, that you are to take all the treasure, or land, it\nwins (if it fight for treasure or land); neither, because you are king\nof a nation, that you are to consume all the profits of the nation's\nwork. Real kings, on the contrary, are known invariably by their doing\nquite the reverse of this,--by their taking the least possible quantity\nof the nation's work for themselves. There is no test of real kinghood\nso infallible as that. Does the crowned creature live simply, bravely,\nunostentatiously? probably he _is_ a King. Does he cover his body with\njewels, and his table with delicates? in all probability he is _not_ a\nKing. It is possible he may be, as Solomon was; but that is when the\nnation shares his splendour with him. Solomon made gold, not only to be\nin his own palace as stones, but to be in Jerusalem as stones. But even\nso, for the most part, these splendid kinghoods expire in ruin, and only\nthe true kinghoods live, which are of royal labourers governing loyal\nlabourers; who, both leading rough lives, establish the true dynasties.\nConclusively you will find that because you are king of a nation, it\ndoes not follow that you are to gather for yourself all the wealth of\nthat nation; neither, because you are king of a small part of the\nnation, and lord over the means of its maintenance--over field, or mill,\nor mine, are you to take all the produce of that piece of the foundation\nof national existence for yourself.\n\nYou will tell me I need not preach against these things, for I cannot\nmend them. No, good friends, I cannot; but you can, and you will; or\nsomething else can and will. Do you think these phenomena are to stay\nalways in their present power or aspect? All history shows, on the\ncontrary, that to be the exact thing they never can do. Change _must_\ncome; but it is ours to determine whether change of growth, or change of\ndeath. Shall the Parthenon be in ruins on its rock, and Bolton priory in\nits meadow, but these mills of yours be the consummation of the\nbuildings of the earth, and their wheels be as the wheels of eternity?\nThink you that 'men may come, and men may go,' but--mills--go on\nforever? Not so; out of these, better or worse shall come; and it is for\nyou to choose which.\n\nI know that none of this wrong is done with deliberate purpose. I know,\non the contrary, that you wish your workmen well; that you do much for\nthem, and that you desire to do more for them, if you saw your way to it\nsafely. I know that many of you have done, and are every day doing,\nwhatever you feel to be in your power; and that even all this wrong and\nmisery are brought about by a warped sense of duty, each of you striving\nto do his best, without noticing that this best is essentially and\ncentrally the best for himself, not for others. And all this has come of\nthe spreading of that thrice accursed, thrice impious doctrine of the\nmodern economist, that 'To do the best for yourself, is finally to do\nthe best for others.' Friends, our great Master said not so; and most\nabsolutely we shall find this world is not made so. Indeed, to do the\nbest for others, is finally to do the best for ourselves; but it will\nnot do to have our eyes fixed on that issue. The Pagans had got beyond\nthat. Hear what a Pagan says of this matter; hear what were, perhaps,\nthe last written words of Plato,--if not the last actually written (for\nthis we cannot know), yet assuredly in fact and power his parting\nwords--in which, endeavouring to give full crowning and harmonious close\nto all his thoughts, and to speak the sum of them by the imagined\nsentence of the Great Spirit, his strength and his heart fail him, and\nthe words cease, broken off for ever. It is the close of the dialogue\ncalled 'Critias,' in which he describes, partly from real tradition,\npartly in ideal dream, the early state of Athens; and the genesis, and\norder, and religion, of the fabled isle of Atlantis; in which genesis he\nconceives the same first perfection and final degeneracy of man, which\nin our own Scriptural tradition is expressed by saying that the Sons of\nGod intermarried with the daughters of men, for he supposes the earliest\nrace to have been indeed the children of God; and to have corrupted\nthemselves, until 'their spot was not the spot of his children.' And\nthis, he says, was the end; that indeed 'through many generations, so\nlong as the God's nature in them yet was full, they were submissive to\nthe sacred laws, and carried themselves lovingly to all that had kindred\nwith them in divineness; for their uttermost spirit was faithful and\ntrue, and in every wise great; so that, in all meekness of wisdom, they\ndealt with each other, and took all the chances of life; and despising\nall things except virtue, they cared little what happened day by day,\nand _bore lightly the burden_ of gold and of possessions; for they saw\nthat, if only their common love and virtue increased, all these things\nwould be increased together with them; but to set their esteem and\nardent pursuit upon material possession would be to lose that first, and\ntheir virtue and affection together with it. And by such reasoning, and\nwhat of the divine nature remained in them, they gained all this\ngreatness of which we have already told, but when the God's part of them\nfaded and became extinct, being mixed again and again, and effaced by\nthe prevalent mortality; and the human nature at last exceeded, they\nthen became unable to endure the courses of fortune; and fell into\nshapelessness of life, and baseness in the sight of him who could see,\nhaving lost everything that was fairest of their honour; while to the\nblind hearts which could not discern the true life, tending to\nhappiness, it seemed that they were then chiefly noble and happy, being\nfilled with all iniquity of inordinate possession and power. Whereupon,\nthe God of God's, whose Kinghood is in laws, beholding a once just\nnation thus cast into misery, and desiring to lay such punishment upon\nthem as might make them repent into restraining, gathered together all\nthe gods into his dwelling-place, which from heaven's centre overlooks\nwhatever has part in creation; and having assembled them, he said'----\n\nThe rest is silence. So ended are the last words of the chief wisdom of\nthe heathen, spoken of this idol of riches; this idol of yours; this\ngolden image high by measureless cubits, set up where your green fields\nof England are furnace-burnt into the likeness of the plain of Dura:\nthis idol, forbidden to us, first of all idols, by our own Master and\nfaith; forbidden to us also by every human lip that has ever, in any age\nor people, been accounted of as able to speak according to the purposes\nof God. Continue to make that forbidden deity your principal one, and\nsoon no more art, no more science, no more pleasure will be possible.\nCatastrophe will come; or worse than catastrophe, slow mouldering and\nwithering into Hades. But if you can fix some conception of a true human\nstate of life to be striven for--life for all men as for yourselves--if\nyou can determine some honest and simple order of existence; following\nthose trodden ways of wisdom, which are pleasantness, and seeking her\nquiet and withdrawn paths, which are peace;--then, and so sanctifying\nwealth into 'commonwealth,' all your art, your literature, your daily\nlabours, your domestic affection, and citizen's duty, will join and\nincrease into one magnificent harmony. You will know then how to build,\nwell enough; you will build with stone well, but with flesh better;\ntemples not made with hands, but riveted of hearts; and that kind of\nmarble, crimson-veined, is indeed eternal.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[3] It is an error to suppose that the Greek worship, or seeking, was\nchiefly of Beauty. It was essentially of Rightness and Strength, founded\non Forethought: the principal character of Greek art is not Beauty, but\nDesign: and the Dorian Apollo-worship and Athenian Virgin-worship are\nboth expressions of adoration of divine Wisdom and Purity. Next to these\ngreat deities rank, in power over the national mind, Dionysus and Ceres,\nthe givers of human strength and life: then, for heroic example,\nHercules. There is no Venus-worship among the Greek in the great times:\nand the Muses are essentially teachers of Truth, and of its harmonies.\n\n[4] Jerem. xvii. 11 (best in Septuagint and Vulgate). 'As the partridge,\nfostering what she brought not forth, so he that getteth riches, not by\nright shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be\na fool.'\n\n[5] Two Paths, p. 98.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE III.\n\n_WAR._\n\n(_Delivered at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich._)\n\n\nYoung soldiers, I do not doubt but that many of you came unwillingly\nto-night, and many in merely contemptuous curiosity, to hear what a\nwriter on painting could possibly say, or would venture to say,\nrespecting your great art of war. You may well think within yourselves,\nthat a painter might, perhaps without immodesty, lecture younger\npainters upon painting, but not young lawyers upon law, nor young\nphysicians upon medicine--least of all, it may seem to you, young\nwarriors upon war. And, indeed, when I was asked to address you, I\ndeclined at first, and declined long; for I felt that you would not be\ninterested in my special business, and would certainly think there was\nsmall need for me to come to teach you yours. Nay, I knew that there\nought to be _no_ such need, for the great veteran soldiers of England\nare now men every way so thoughtful, so noble, and so good, that no\nother teaching than their knightly example, and their few words of grave\nand tried counsel should be either necessary for you, or even, without\nassurance of due modesty in the offerer, endured by you.\n\nBut being asked, not once nor twice, I have not ventured persistently to\nrefuse; and I will try, in very few words, to lay before you some reason\nwhy you should accept my excuse, and hear me patiently. You may imagine\nthat your work is wholly foreign to, and separate from mine. So far from\nthat, all the pure and noble arts of peace are founded on war; no great\nart ever yet rose on earth, but among a nation of soldiers. There is no\nart among a shepherd people, if it remains at peace. There is no art\namong an agricultural people, if it remains at peace. Commerce is barely\nconsistent with fine art; but cannot produce it. Manufacture not only is\nunable to produce it, but invariably destroys whatever seeds of it\nexist. There is no great art possible to a nation but that which is\nbased on battle.\n\nNow, though I hope you love fighting for its own sake, you must, I\nimagine, be surprised at my assertion that there is any such good fruit\nof fighting. You supposed, probably, that your office was to defend the\nworks of peace, but certainly not to found them: nay, the common course\nof war, you may have thought, was only to destroy them. And truly, I who\ntell you this of the use of war, should have been the last of men to\ntell you so, had I trusted my own experience only. Hear why: I have\ngiven a considerable part of my life to the investigation of Venetian\npainting and the result of that enquiry was my fixing upon one man as\nthe greatest of all Venetians, and therefore, as I believed, of all\npainters whatsoever. I formed this faith, (whether right or wrong\nmatters at present nothing,) in the supremacy of the painter Tintoret,\nunder a roof covered with his pictures; and of those pictures, three of\nthe noblest were then in the form of shreds of ragged canvas, mixed up\nwith the laths of the roof, rent through by three Austrian shells. Now\nit is not every lecturer who _could_ tell you that he had seen three of\nhis favourite pictures torn to rags by bombshells. And after such a\nsight, it is not every lecturer who _would_ tell you that, nevertheless,\nwar was the foundation of all great art.\n\nYet the conclusion is inevitable, from any careful comparison of the\nstates of great historic races at different periods. Merely to show you\nwhat I mean, I will sketch for you, very briefly, the broad steps of the\nadvance of the best art of the world. The first dawn of it is in Egypt;\nand the power of it is founded on the perpetual contemplation of death,\nand of future judgment, by the mind of a nation of which the ruling\ncaste were priests, and the second, soldiers. The greatest works\nproduced by them are sculptures of their kings going out to battle, or\nreceiving the homage of conquered armies. And you must remember also,\nas one of the great keys to the splendour of the Egyptian nation, that\nthe priests were not occupied in theology only. Their theology was the\nbasis of practical government and law, so that they were not so much\npriests as religious judges, the office of Samuel, among the Jews, being\nas nearly as possible correspondent to theirs.\n\nAll the rudiments of art then, and much more than the rudiments of all\nscience, are laid first by this great warrior-nation, which held in\ncontempt all mechanical trades, and in absolute hatred the peaceful life\nof shepherds. From Egypt art passes directly into Greece, where all\npoetry, and all painting, are nothing else than the description, praise,\nor dramatic representation of war, or of the exercises which prepare for\nit, in their connection with offices of religion. All Greek institutions\nhad first respect to war; and their conception of it, as one necessary\noffice of all human and divine life, is expressed simply by the images\nof their guiding gods. Apollo is the god of all wisdom of the intellect;\nhe bears the arrow and the bow, before he bears the lyre. Again, Athena\nis the goddess of all wisdom in conduct. It is by the helmet and the\nshield, oftener than by the shuttle, that she is distinguished from\nother deities.\n\nThere were, however, two great differences in principle between the\nGreek and the Egyptian theories of policy. In Greece there was no\nsoldier caste; every citizen was necessarily a soldier. And, again,\nwhile the Greeks rightly despised mechanical arts as much as the\nEgyptians, they did not make the fatal mistake of despising agricultural\nand pastoral life; but perfectly honoured both. These two conditions of\ntruer thought raise them quite into the highest rank of wise manhood\nthat has yet been reached; for all our great arts, and nearly all our\ngreat thoughts, have been borrowed or derived from them. Take away from\nus what they have given; and I hardly can imagine how low the modern\nEuropean would stand.\n\nNow, you are to remember, in passing to the next phase of history, that\nthough you _must_ have war to produce art--you must also have much more\nthan war; namely, an art-instinct or genius in the people; and that,\nthough all the talent for painting in the world won't make painters of\nyou, unless you have a gift for fighting as well, you may have the gift\nfor fighting, and none for painting. Now, in the next great dynasty of\nsoldiers, the art-instinct is wholly wanting. I have not yet\ninvestigated the Roman character enough to tell you the causes of this;\nbut I believe, paradoxical as it may seem to you, that, however truly\nthe Roman might say of himself that he was born of Mars, and suckled by\nthe wolf, he was nevertheless, at heart, more of a farmer than a\nsoldier. The exercises of war were with him practical, not poetical; his\npoetry was in domestic life only, and the object of battle, 'pacis\nimponere morem.' And the arts are extinguished in his hands, and do not\nrise again, until, with Gothic chivalry, there comes back into the mind\nof Europe a passionate delight in war itself, for the sake of war. And\nthen, with the romantic knighthood which can imagine no other noble\nemployment,--under the fighting kings of France, England, and Spain; and\nunder the fighting dukeships and citizenships of Italy, art is born\nagain, and rises to her height in the great valleys of Lombardy and\nTuscany, through which there flows not a single stream, from all their\nAlps or Apennines, that did not once run dark red from battle: and it\nreaches its culminating glory in the city which gave to history the most\nintense type of soldiership yet seen among men;--the city whose armies\nwere led in their assault by their king, led through it to victory by\ntheir king, and so led, though that king of theirs was blind, and in the\nextremity of his age.\n\nAnd from this time forward, as peace is established or extended in\nEurope, the arts decline. They reach an unparalleled pitch of\ncostliness, but lose their life, enlist themselves at last on the side\nof luxury and various corruption, and, among wholly tranquil nations,\nwither utterly away; remaining only in partial practice among races who,\nlike the French and us, have still the minds, though we cannot all live\nthe lives, of soldiers.\n\n'It may be so,' I can suppose that a philanthropist might exclaim.\n'Perish then the arts, if they can flourish only at such a cost. What\nworth is there in toys of canvas and stone if compared to the joy and\npeace of artless domestic life?' And the answer is--truly, in\nthemselves, none. But as expressions of the highest state of the human\nspirit, their worth is infinite. As results they may be worthless, but,\nas signs, they are above price. For it is an assured truth that,\nwhenever the faculties of men are at their fulness, they _must_ express\nthemselves by art; and to say that a state is without such expression,\nis to say that it is sunk from its proper level of manly nature. So\nthat, when I tell you that war is the foundation of all the arts, I mean\nalso that it is the foundation of all the high virtues and faculties of\nmen.\n\nIt was very strange to me to discover this; and very dreadful--but I saw\nit to be quite an undeniable fact. The common notion that peace and the\nvirtues of civil life flourished together, I found, to be wholly\nuntenable. Peace and the _vices_ of civil life only flourish together.\nWe talk of peace and learning, and of peace and plenty, and of peace and\ncivilisation; but I found that those were not the words which the Muse\nof History coupled together: that on her lips, the words were--peace and\nsensuality, peace and selfishness, peace and corruption, peace and\ndeath. I found, in brief, that all great nations learned their truth of\nword, and strength of thought, in war; that they were nourished in war,\nand wasted by peace; taught by war, and deceived by peace; trained by\nwar, and betrayed by peace;--in a word, that they were born in war, and\nexpired in peace.\n\nYet now note carefully, in the second place, it is not _all_ war of\nwhich this can be said--nor all dragon's teeth, which, sown, will start\nup into men. It is not the ravage of a barbarian wolf-flock, as under\nGenseric or Suwarrow; nor the habitual restlessness and rapine of\nmountaineers, as on the old borders of Scotland; nor the occasional\nstruggle of a strong peaceful nation for its life, as in the wars of the\nSwiss with Austria; nor the contest of merely ambitious nations for\nextent of power, as in the wars of France under Napoleon, or the just\nterminated war in America. None of these forms of war build anything but\ntombs. But the creative or foundational war is that in which the\nnatural restlessness and love of contest among men are disciplined, by\nconsent, into modes of beautiful--though it may be fatal--play: in which\nthe natural ambition and love of power of men are disciplined into the\naggressive conquest of surrounding evil: and in which the natural\ninstincts of self-defence are sanctified by the nobleness of the\ninstitutions, and purity of the households, which they are appointed to\ndefend. To such war as this all men are born; in such war as this any\nman may happily die; and forth from such war as this have arisen\nthroughout the extent of past ages, all the highest sanctities and\nvirtues of humanity.\n\nI shall therefore divide the war of which I would speak to you into\nthree heads. War for exercise or play; war for dominion; and, war for\ndefence.\n\n\nI. And first, of war for exercise or play. I speak of it primarily in\nthis light, because, through all past history, manly war has been more\nan exercise than anything else, among the classes who cause, and\nproclaim it. It is not a game to the conscript, or the pressed sailor;\nbut neither of these are the causers of it. To the governor who\ndetermines that war shall be, and to the youths who voluntarily adopt it\nas their profession, it has always been a grand pastime; and chiefly\npursued because they had nothing else to do. And this is true without\nany exception. No king whose mind was fully occupied with the\ndevelopment of the inner resources of his kingdom, or with any other\nsufficing subject of thought, ever entered into war but on compulsion.\nNo youth who was earnestly busy with any peaceful subject of study, or\nset on any serviceable course of action, ever voluntarily became a\nsoldier. Occupy him early, and wisely, in agriculture or business, in\nscience or in literature, and he will never think of war otherwise than\nas a calamity. But leave him idle; and, the more brave and active and\ncapable he is by nature, the more he will thirst for some appointed\nfield for action; and find, in the passion and peril of battle, the only\nsatisfying fulfilment of his unoccupied being. And from the earliest\nincipient civilisation until now, the population of the earth divides\nitself, when you look at it widely, into two races; one of workers, and\nthe other of players--one tilling the ground, manufacturing, building,\nand otherwise providing for the necessities of life;--the other part\nproudly idle, and continually therefore needing recreation, in which\nthey use the productive and laborious orders partly as their cattle, and\npartly as their puppets or pieces in the game of death.\n\nNow, remember, whatever virtue or goodliness there may be in this game\nof war, rightly played, there is none when you thus play it with a\nmultitude of small human pawns.\n\nIf you, the gentlemen of this or any other kingdom, choose to make your\npastime of contest, do so, and welcome; but set not up these unhappy\npeasant-pieces upon the green fielded board. If the wager is to be of\ndeath, lay it on your own heads, not theirs. A goodly struggle in the\nOlympic dust, though it be the dust of the grave, the gods will look\nupon, and be with you in; but they will not be with you, if you sit on\nthe sides of the amphitheatre, whose steps are the mountains of earth,\nwhose arena its valleys, to urge your peasant millions into gladiatorial\nwar. You also, you tender and delicate women, for whom, and by whose\ncommand, all true battle has been, and must ever be; you would perhaps\nshrink now, though you need not, from the thought of sitting as queens\nabove set lists where the jousting game might be mortal. How much more,\nthen, ought you to shrink from the thought of sitting above a theatre\npit in which even a few condemned slaves were slaying each other only\nfor your delight! And do you _not_ shrink from the _fact_ of sitting\nabove a theatre pit, where,--not condemned slaves,--but the best and\nbravest of the poor sons of your people, slay each other,--not man to\nman,--as the coupled gladiators; but race to race, in duel of\ngenerations? You would tell me, perhaps, that you do not sit to see\nthis; and it is indeed true, that the women of Europe--those who have no\nheart-interests of their own at peril in the contest--draw the curtains\nof their boxes, and muffle the openings; so that from the pit of the\ncircus of slaughter there may reach them only at intervals a half-heard\ncry and a murmur as of the wind's sighing, when myriads of souls expire.\nThey shut out the death-cries; and are happy, and talk wittily among\nthemselves. That is the utter literal fact of what our ladies do in\ntheir pleasant lives.\n\nNay, you might answer, speaking for them--'We do not let these wars come\nto pass for our play, nor by our carelessness; we cannot help them. How\ncan any final quarrel of nations be settled otherwise than by war?' I\ncannot now delay, to tell you how political quarrels might be otherwise\nsettled. But grant that they cannot. Grant that no law of reason can be\nunderstood by nations; no law of justice submitted to by them: and that,\nwhile questions of a few acres, and of petty cash, can be determined by\ntruth and equity, the questions which are to issue in the perishing or\nsaving of kingdoms can be determined only by the truth of the sword, and\nthe equity of the rifle. Grant this, and even then, judge if it will\nalways be necessary for you to put your quarrel into the hearts of your\npoor, and sign your treaties with peasants' blood. You would be ashamed\nto do this in your own private position and power. Why should you not be\nashamed also to do it in public place and power? If you quarrel with\nyour neighbour, and the quarrel be indeterminable by law, and mortal,\nyou and he do not send your footmen to Battersea fields to fight it out;\nnor do you set fire to his tenants' cottages, nor spoil their goods. You\nfight out your quarrel yourselves, and at your own danger, if at all.\nAnd you do not think it materially affects the arbitrement that one of\nyou has a larger household than the other; so that, if the servants or\ntenants were brought into the field with their masters, the issue of the\ncontest could not be doubtful? You either refuse the private duel, or\nyou practise it under laws of honour, not of physical force; that so it\nmay be, in a manner, justly concluded. Now the just or unjust conclusion\nof the private feud is of little moment, while the just or unjust\nconclusion of the public feud is of eternal moment: and yet, in this\npublic quarrel, you take your servants' sons from their arms to fight\nfor it, and your servants' food from their lips to support it; and the\nblack seals on the parchment of your treaties of peace are the deserted\nhearth and the fruitless field. There is a ghastly ludicrousness in\nthis, as there is mostly in these wide and universal crimes. Hear the\nstatement of the very fact of it in the most literal words of the\ngreatest of our English thinkers:--\n\n     'What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the\n     net-purport and upshot of war? To my own knowledge, for\n     example, there dwell and toil, in the British village of\n     Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred souls. From these, by\n     certain \"natural enemies\" of the French, there are\n     successively selected, during the French war, say thirty\n     able-bodied men. Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled\n     and nursed them; she has, not without difficulty and sorrow,\n     fed them up to manhood, and even trained them to crafts, so\n     that one can weave, another build, another hammer, and the\n     weakest can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois.\n     Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are\n     selected; all dressed in red; and shipped away, at the\n     public charges, some two thousand miles, or say only to the\n     south of Spain; and fed there till wanted.\n\n     'And now to that same spot in the south of Spain are thirty\n     similar French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, in like\n     manner wending; till at length, after infinite effort, the\n     two parties come into actual juxtaposition; and Thirty\n     stands fronting Thirty, each with a gun in his hand.\n\n     'Straightway the word \"Fire!\" is given, and they blow the\n     souls out of one another, and in place of sixty brisk useful\n     craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcases, which it must\n     bury, and anon shed tears for. Had these men any quarrel?\n     Busy as the devil is, not the smallest! They lived far\n     enough apart; were the entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a\n     universe, there was even, unconsciously, by commerce, some\n     mutual helpfulness between them. How then? Simpleton! their\n     governors had fallen out; and instead of shooting one\n     another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads\n     shoot.' (Sartor Resartus.)\n\nPositively, then, gentlemen, the game of battle must not, and shall not,\nultimately be played this way. But should it be played any way? Should\nit, if not by your servants, be practised by yourselves? I think, yes.\nBoth history and human instinct seem alike to say, yes. All healthy men\nlike fighting, and like the sense of danger; all brave women like to\nhear of their fighting, and of their facing danger. This is a fixed\ninstinct in the fine race of them; and I cannot help fancying that fair\nfight is the best play for them, and that a tournament was a better game\nthan a steeple-chase. The time may perhaps come in France as well as\nhere, for universal hurdle-races and cricketing: but I do not think\nuniversal 'crickets' will bring out the best qualities of the nobles of\neither country. I use, in such question, the test which I have adopted,\nof the connection of war with other arts; and I reflect how, as a\nsculptor, I should feel, if I were asked to design a monument for a dead\nknight, in Westminster abbey, with a carving of a bat at one end, and a\nball at the other. It may be the remains in me only of savage Gothic\nprejudice; but I had rather carve it with a shield at one end, and a\nsword at the other. And this, observe, with no reference whatever to any\nstory of duty done, or cause defended. Assume the knight merely to have\nridden out occasionally to fight his neighbour for exercise; assume him\neven a soldier of fortune, and to have gained his bread, and filled his\npurse, at the sword's point. Still, I feel as if it were, somehow,\ngrander and worthier in him to have made his bread by sword play than\nany other play; had rather he had made it by thrusting than by\nbatting;--much more, than by betting. Much rather that he should ride\nwar horses, than back race horses; and--I say it sternly and\ndeliberately--much rather would I have him slay his neighbour, than\ncheat him.\n\nBut remember, so far as this may be true, the game of war is only that\nin which the _full personal power of the human creature_ is brought out\nin management of its weapons. And this for three reasons:--\n\nFirst, the great justification of this game is that it truly, when well\nplayed, determines _who is the best man_;--who is the highest bred, the\nmost self-denying, the most fearless, the coolest of nerve, the swiftest\nof eye and hand. You cannot test these qualities wholly, unless there is\na clear possibility of the struggle's ending in death. It is only in the\nfronting of that condition that the full trial of the man, soul and\nbody, comes out. You may go to your game of wickets, or of hurdles, or\nof cards, and any knavery that is in you may stay unchallenged all the\nwhile. But if the play may be ended at any moment by a lance-thrust, a\nman will probably make up his accounts a little before he enters it.\nWhatever is rotten and evil in him will weaken his hand more in holding\na sword hilt, than in balancing a billiard cue; and on the whole, the\nhabit of living lightly hearted, in daily presence of death, always has\nhad, and must have, a tendency both to the making and testing of honest\nmen. But for the final testing, observe, you must make the issue of\nbattle strictly dependent on fineness of frame, and firmness of hand.\nYou must not make it the question, which of the combatants has the\nlongest gun, or which has got behind the biggest tree, or which has the\nwind in his face, or which has gunpowder made by the best chemist, or\niron smelted with the best coal, or the angriest mob at his back. Decide\nyour battle, whether of nations, or individuals, on _those_ terms;--and\nyou have only multiplied confusion, and added slaughter to iniquity. But\ndecide your battle by pure trial which has the strongest arm, and\nsteadiest heart,--and you have gone far to decide a great many matters\nbesides, and to decide them rightly.\n\nAnd the other reasons for this mode of decision of cause, are the\ndiminution both of the material destructiveness, or cost, and of the\nphysical distress of war. For you must not think that in speaking to you\nin this (as you may imagine), fantastic praise of battle, I have\noverlooked the conditions weighing against me. I pray all of you, who\nhave not read, to read with the most earnest attention, Mr. Helps's two\nessays on War and Government, in the first volume of the last series of\n'Friends in Council.' Everything that can be urged against war is there\nsimply, exhaustively, and most graphically stated. And all, there urged,\nis true. But the two great counts of evil alleged against war by that\nmost thoughtful writer, hold only against modern war. If you have to\ntake away masses of men from all industrial employment,--to feed them by\nthe labour of others,--to move them and provide them with destructive\nmachines, varied daily in national rivalship of inventive cost; if you\nhave to ravage the country which you attack,--to destroy for a score of\nfuture years, its roads, its woods, its cities, and its harbours;--and\nif, finally, having brought masses of men, counted by hundreds of\nthousands, face to face, you tear those masses to pieces with jagged\nshot, and leave the fragments of living creatures countlessly beyond all\nhelp of surgery, to starve and parch, through days of torture, down into\nclots of clay--what book of accounts shall record the cost of your\nwork;--What book of judgment sentence the guilt of it?\n\nThat, I say, is _modern_ war,--scientific war,--chemical and mechanic\nwar, worse even than the savage's poisoned arrow. And yet you will tell\nme, perhaps, that any other war than this is impossible now. It may be\nso; the progress of science cannot, perhaps, be otherwise registered\nthan by new facilities of destruction; and the brotherly love of our\nenlarging Christianity be only proved by multiplication of murder. Yet\nhear, for a moment, what war was, in Pagan and ignorant days;--what war\nmight yet be, if we could extinguish our science in darkness, and join\nthe heathen's practice to the Christian's theory. I read you this from a\nbook which probably most of you know well, and all ought to\nknow--Muller's 'Dorians;'--but I have put the points I wish you to\nremember in closer connection than in his text.\n\n'The chief characteristic of the warriors of Sparta was great composure\nand subdued strength; the violence [Greek: lyssa] of Aristodemus and\nIsadas being considered as deserving rather of blame than praise; and\nthese qualities in general distinguished the Greeks from the northern\nBarbarians, whose boldness always consisted in noise and tumult. For the\nsame reason the Spartans _sacrificed to the Muses_ before an action;\nthese goddesses being expected to produce regularity and order in\nbattle; as they _sacrificed on the same occasion in Crete to the god of\nlove_, as the confirmer of mutual esteem and shame. Every man put on a\ncrown, when the band of flute-players gave the signal for attack; all\nthe shields of the line glittered with their high polish, and mingled\ntheir splendour with the dark red of the purple mantles, which were\nmeant both to adorn the combatant, and to conceal the blood of the\nwounded; to fall well and decorously being an incentive the more to the\nmost heroic valour. The conduct of the Spartans in battle denotes a high\nand noble disposition, which rejected all the extremes of brutal rage.\nThe pursuit of the enemy ceased when the victory was completed; and\nafter the signal for retreat had been given, all hostilities ceased. The\nspoiling of arms, at least during the battle, was also interdicted; and\nthe consecration of the spoils of slain enemies to the gods, as, in\ngeneral, all rejoicings for victory, were considered as ill-omened.\n\nSuch was the war of the greatest soldiers who prayed to heathen gods.\nWhat Christian war is, preached by Christian ministers, let any one tell\nyou, who saw the sacred crowning, and heard the sacred flute-playing,\nand was inspired and sanctified by the divinely-measured and musical\nlanguage, of any North American regiment preparing for its charge. And\nwhat is the relative cost of life in pagan and Christian wars, let this\none fact tell you:--the Spartans won the decisive battle of Corinth with\nthe loss of eight men; the victors at indecisive Gettysburg confess to\nthe loss of 30,000.\n\n\nII. I pass now to our second order of war, the commonest among men, that\nundertaken in desire of dominion. And let me ask you to think for a few\nmoments what the real meaning of this desire of dominion is--first in\nthe minds of kings--then in that of nations.\n\nNow, mind you this first,--that I speak either about kings, or masses of\nmen, with a fixed conviction that human nature is a noble and beautiful\nthing; not a foul nor a base thing. All the sin of men I esteem as their\ndisease, not their nature; as a folly which may be prevented, not a\nnecessity which must be accepted. And my wonder, even when things are at\ntheir worst, is always at the height which this human nature can attain.\nThinking it high, I find it always a higher thing than I thought it;\nwhile those who think it low, find it, and will find it, always lower\nthan they thought it: the fact being, that it is infinite, and capable\nof infinite height and infinite fall; but the nature of it--and here is\nthe faith which I would have you hold with me--the _nature_ of it is in\nthe nobleness, not in the catastrophe.\n\nTake the faith in its utmost terms. When the captain of the 'London'\nshook hands with his mate, saying 'God speed you! I will go down with my\npassengers,' _that_ I believe to be 'human nature.' He does not do it\nfrom any religious motive--from any hope of reward, or any fear of\npunishment; he does it because he is a man. But when a mother, living\namong the fair fields of merry England, gives her two-year-old child to\nbe suffocated under a mattress in her inner room, while the said mother\nwaits and talks outside; _that_ I believe to be _not_ human nature. You\nhave the two extremes there, shortly. And you, men, and mothers, who are\nhere face to face with me to-night, I call upon you to say which of\nthese is human, and which inhuman--which 'natural' and which\n'unnatural?' Choose your creed at once, I beseech you:--choose it with\nunshaken choice--choose it forever. Will you take, for foundation of act\nand hope, the faith that this man was such as God made him, or that this\nwoman was such as God made her? Which of them has failed from their\nnature--from their present, possible, actual nature;--not their nature\nof long ago, but their nature of now? Which has betrayed it--falsified\nit? Did the guardian who died in his trust, die inhumanly, and as a\nfool; and did the murderess of her child fulfil the law of her being?\nChoose, I say; infinitude of choices hang upon this. You have had false\nprophets among you--for centuries you have had them--solemnly warned\nagainst them though you were; false prophets, who have told you that all\nmen are nothing but fiends or wolves, half beast, half devil. Believe\nthat and indeed you may sink to that. But refuse that, and have faith\nthat God 'made you upright,' though _you_ have sought out many\ninventions; so, you will strive daily to become more what your Maker\nmeant and means you to be, and daily gives you also the power to be--and\nyou will cling more and more to the nobleness and virtue that is in you,\nsaying, 'My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go.'\n\nI have put this to you as a choice, as if you might hold either of these\ncreeds you liked best. But there is in reality no choice for you; the\nfacts being quite easily ascertainable. You have no business to _think_\nabout this matter, or to choose in it. The broad fact is, that a human\ncreature of the highest race, and most perfect as a human thing, is\ninvariably both kind and true; and that as you lower the race, you get\ncruelty and falseness, as you get deformity: and this so steadily and\nassuredly, that the two great words which, in their first use, meant\nonly perfection of race, have come, by consequence of the invariable\nconnection of virtue with the fine human nature, both to signify\nbenevolence of disposition. The word generous, and the word gentle,\nboth, in their origin, meant only 'of pure race,' but because charity\nand tenderness are inseparable from this purity of blood, the words\nwhich once stood only for pride, now stand as synonyms for virtue.\n\nNow, this being the true power of our inherent humanity, and seeing that\nall the aim of education should be to develop this;--and seeing also\nwhat magnificent self sacrifice the higher classes of men are capable\nof, for any cause that they understand or feel,--it is wholly\ninconceivable to me how well-educated princes, who ought to be of all\ngentlemen the gentlest, and of all nobles the most generous, and whose\ntitle of royalty means only their function of doing every man\n'_right_'--how these, I say, throughout history, should so rarely\npronounce themselves on the side of the poor and of justice, but\ncontinually maintain themselves and their own interests by oppression of\nthe poor, and by wresting of justice; and how this should be accepted as\nso natural, that the word loyalty, which means faithfulness to law, is\nused as if it were only the duty of a people to be loyal to their king,\nand not the duty of a king to be infinitely more loyal to his people.\nHow comes it to pass that a captain will die with his passengers, and\nlean over the gunwale to give the parting boat its course; but that a\nking will not usually die with, much less _for_, his passengers,--thinks\nit rather incumbent on his passengers, in any number, to die for _him_?\nThink, I beseech you, of the wonder of this. The sea captain, not\ncaptain by divine right, but only by company's appointment;--not a man\nof royal descent, but only a plebeian who can steer;--not with the eyes\nof the world upon him, but with feeble chance, depending on one poor\nboat, of his name being ever heard above the wash of the fatal\nwaves;--not with the cause of a nation resting on his act, but helpless\nto save so much as a child from among the lost crowd with whom he\nresolves to be lost,--yet goes down quietly to his grave, rather than\nbreak his faith to these few emigrants. But your captain by divine\nright,--your captain with the hues of a hundred shields of kings upon\nhis breast,--your captain whose every deed, brave or base, will be\nilluminated or branded for ever before unescapable eyes of men,--your\ncaptain whose every thought and act are beneficent, or fatal, from\nsunrising to setting, blessing as the sunshine, or shadowing as the\nnight,--this captain, as you find him in history, for the most part\nthinks only how he may tax his passengers, and sit at most ease in his\nstate cabin!\n\nFor observe, if there had been indeed in the hearts of the rulers of\ngreat multitudes of men any such conception of work for the good of\nthose under their command, as there is in the good and thoughtful\nmasters of any small company of men, not only wars for the sake of mere\nincrease of power could never take place, but our idea of power itself\nwould be entirely altered. Do you suppose that to think and act even for\na million of men, to hear their complaints, watch their weaknesses,\nrestrain their vices, make laws for them, lead them, day by day, to\npurer life, is not enough for one man's work? If any of us were absolute\nlord only of a district of a hundred miles square, and were resolved on\ndoing our utmost for it; making it feed as large a number of people as\npossible; making every clod productive, and every rock defensive, and\nevery human being happy; should we not have enough on our hands think\nyou? But if the ruler has any other aim than this; if, careless of the\nresult of his interference, he desire only the authority to interfere;\nand, regardless of what is ill-done or well-done, cares only that it\nshall be done at his bidding,--if he would rather do two hundred miles'\nspace of mischief, than one hundred miles' space of good, of course he\nwill try to add to his territory; and to add inimitably. But does he add\nto his power? Do you call it power in a child, if he is allowed to play\nwith the wheels and bands of some vast engine, pleased with their murmur\nand whirl, till his unwise touch, wandering where it ought not, scatters\nbeam and wheel into ruin? Yet what machine is so vast, so incognisable,\nas the working of the mind of a nation what child's touch so wanton, as\nthe word of a selfish king? And yet, how long have we allowed the\nhistorian to speak of the extent of the calamity a man causes, as a just\nground for his pride; and to extol him as the greatest prince, who is\nonly the centre of the widest error. Follow out this thought by\nyourselves; and you will find that all power, properly so called, is\nwise and benevolent. There may be capacity in a drifting fire-ship to\ndestroy a fleet; there may be venom enough in a dead body to infect a\nnation:--but which of you, the most ambitious, would desire a drifting\nkinghood, robed in consuming fire, or a poison-dipped sceptre whose\ntouch was mortal? There is no true potency, remember, but that of help;\nnor true ambition, but ambition to save.\n\nAnd then, observe farther, this true power, the power of saving, depends\nneither on multitude of men, nor on extent of territory. We are\ncontinually assuming that nations become strong according to their\nnumbers. They indeed become so, if those numbers can be made of one\nmind; but how are you sure you can stay them in one mind, and keep them\nfrom having north and south minds? Grant them unanimous, how know you\nthey will be unanimous in right? If they are unanimous in wrong, the\nmore they are, essentially the weaker they are. Or, suppose that they\ncan neither be of one mind, nor of two minds, but can only be of _no_\nmind? Suppose they are a more helpless mob; tottering into precipitant\ncatastrophe, like a waggon load of stones when the wheel comes off.\nDangerous enough for their neighbours, certainly, but not 'powerful.'\n\nNeither does strength depend on extent of territory, any more than upon\nnumber of population. Take up your maps when you go home this\nevening,--put the cluster of British Isles beside the mass of South\nAmerica; and then consider whether any race of men need care how much\nground they stand upon. The strength is in the men, and in their unity\nand virtue, not in their standing room: a little group of wise hearts is\nbetter than a wilderness full of fools; and only that nation gains true\nterritory, which gains itself.\n\nAnd now for the brief practical outcome of all this. Remember, no\ngovernment is ultimately strong, but in proportion to its kindness and\njustice; and that a nation does not strengthen, by merely multiplying\nand diffusing itself. We have not strengthened as yet, by multiplying\ninto America. Nay, even when it has not to encounter the separating\nconditions of emigration, a nation need not boast itself of multiplying\non its own ground, if it multiplies only as flies or locusts do, with\nthe god of flies for its god. It multiplies its strength only by\nincreasing as one great family, in perfect fellowship and brotherhood.\nAnd lastly, it does not strengthen itself by seizing dominion over races\nwhom it cannot benefit. Austria is not strengthened, but weakened, by\nher grasp of Lombardy; and whatever apparent increase of majesty and of\nwealth may have accrued to us from the possession of India, whether\nthese prove to us ultimately power or weakness, depends wholly on the\ndegree in which our influence on the native race shall be benevolent and\nexalting. But, as it is at their own peril that any race extends their\ndominion in mere desire of power, so it is at their own still greater\nperil, that they refuse to undertake aggressive war, according to their\nforce, whenever they are assured that their authority would be helpful\nand protective. Nor need you listen to any sophistical objection of the\nimpossibility of knowing when a people's help is needed, or when not.\nMake your national conscience clean, and your national eyes will soon be\nclear. No man who is truly ready to take part in a noble quarrel will\never stand long in doubt by whom, or in what cause, his aid is needed. I\nhold it my duty to make no political statement of any special bearing in\nthis presence; but I tell you broadly and boldly, that, within these\nlast ten years, we English have, as a knightly nation, lost our spurs:\nwe have fought where we should not have fought, for gain; and we have\nbeen passive where we should not have been passive, for fear. I tell you\nthat the principle of non-intervention, as now preached among us, is as\nselfish and cruel as the worst frenzy of conquest, and differs from it\nonly by being not only malignant, but dastardly.\n\nI know, however, that my opinions on this subject differ too widely from\nthose ordinarily held, to be any farther intruded upon you; and\ntherefore I pass lastly to examine the conditions of the third kind of\nnoble war;--war waged simply for defence of the country in which we were\nborn, and for the maintenance and execution of her laws, by whomsoever\nthreatened or defied. It is to this duty that I suppose most men\nentering the army consider themselves in reality to be bound, and I want\nyou now to reflect what the laws of mere defence are; and what the\nsoldier's duty, as now understood, or supposed to be understood. You\nhave solemnly devoted yourselves to be English soldiers, for the\nguardianship of England. I want you to feel what this vow of yours\nindeed means, or is gradually coming to mean. You take it upon you,\nfirst, while you are sentimental schoolboys; you go into your military\nconvent, or barracks, just as a girl goes into her convent while she is\na sentimental schoolgirl; neither of you then know what you are about,\nthough both the good soldiers and good nuns make the best of it\nafterwards. You don't understand perhaps why I call you 'sentimental'\nschoolboys, when you go into the army? Because, on the whole, it is love\nof adventure, of excitement, of fine dress and of the pride of fame, all\nwhich are sentimental motives, which chiefly make a boy like going into\nthe Guards better than into a counting-house. You fancy, perhaps, that\nthere is a severe sense of duty mixed with these peacocky motives? And\nin the best of you, there is; but do not think that it is principal. If\nyou cared to do your duty to your country in a prosaic and unsentimental\nway, depend upon it, there is now truer duty to be done in raising\nharvests than in burning them; more in building houses, than in shelling\nthem--more in winning money by your own work, wherewith to help men,\nthan in taxing other people's work, for money wherewith to slay men;\nmore duty finally, in honest and unselfish living than in honest and\nunselfish dying, though that seems to your boys' eyes the bravest. So\nfar then, as for your own honour, and the honour of your families, you\nchoose brave death in a red coat before brave life in a black one, you\nare sentimental; and now see what this passionate vow of yours comes\nto. For a little while you ride, and you hunt tigers or savages, you\nshoot, and are shot; you are happy, and proud, always, and honoured and\nwept if you die; and you are satisfied with your life, and with the end\nof it; believing, on the whole, that good rather than harm of it comes\nto others, and much pleasure to you. But as the sense of duty enters\ninto your forming minds, the vow takes another aspect. You find that you\nhave put yourselves into the hand of your country as a weapon. You have\nvowed to strike, when she bids you, and to stay scabbarded when she bids\nyou; all that you need answer for is, that you fail not in her grasp.\nAnd there is goodness in this, and greatness, if you can trust the hand\nand heart of the Britomart who has braced you to her side, and are\nassured that when she leaves you sheathed in darkness, there is no need\nfor your flash to the sun. But remember, good and noble as this state\nmay be, it is a state of slavery. There are different kinds of slaves\nand different masters. Some slaves are scourged to their work by whips,\nothers are scourged to it by restlessness or ambition. It does not\nmatter what the whip is; it is none the less a whip, because you have\ncut thongs for it out of your own souls: the fact, so far, of slavery,\nis in being driven to your work without thought, at another's bidding.\nAgain, some slaves are bought with money, and others with praise. It\nmatters not what the purchase-money is. The distinguishing sign of\nslavery is to have a price, and be bought for it. Again, it matters not\nwhat kind of work you are set on; some slaves are set to forced\ndiggings, others to forced marches; some dig furrows, others\nfield-works, and others graves. Some press the juice of reeds, and some\nthe juice of vines, and some the blood of men. The fact of the captivity\nis the same whatever work we are set upon, though the fruits of the toil\nmay be different. But, remember, in thus vowing ourselves to be the\nslaves of any master, it ought to be some subject of forethought with\nus, what work he is likely to put us upon. You may think that the whole\nduty of a soldier is to be passive, that it is the country you have left\nbehind who is to command, and you have only to obey. But are you sure\nthat you have left _all_ your country behind, or that the part of it you\nhave so left is indeed the best part of it? Suppose--and, remember, it\nis quite conceivable--that you yourselves are indeed the best part of\nEngland; that you who have become the slaves, ought to have been the\nmasters; and that those who are the masters, ought to have been the\nslaves! If it is a noble and whole-hearted England, whose bidding you\nare bound to do, it is well; but if you are yourselves the best of her\nheart, and the England you have left be but a half-hearted England, how\nsay you of your obedience? You were too proud to become shopkeepers: are\nyou satisfied then to become the servants of shopkeepers? You were too\nproud to become merchants or farmers yourselves: will you have merchants\nor farmers then for your field marshals? You had no gifts of special\ngrace for Exeter Hall: will you have some gifted person thereat for your\ncommander-in-chief, to judge of your work, and reward it? You imagine\nyourselves to be the army of England: how if you should find yourselves,\nat last, only the police of her manufacturing towns, and the beadles of\nher little Bethels?\n\nIt is not so yet, nor will be so, I trust, for ever; but what I want you\nto see, and to be assured of, is, that the ideal of soldiership is not\nmere passive obedience and bravery; that, so far from this, no country\nis in a healthy state which has separated, even in a small degree, her\ncivil from her military power. All states of the world, however great,\nfall at once when they use mercenary armies; and although it is a less\ninstant form of error (because involving no national taint of\ncowardice), it is yet an error no less ultimately fatal--it is the error\nespecially of modern times, of which we cannot yet know all the\ncalamitous consequences--to take away the best blood and strength of the\nnation, all the soul-substance of it that is brave, and careless of\nreward, and scornful of pain, and faithful in trust; and to cast that\ninto steel, and make a mere sword of it; taking away its voice and will;\nbut to keep the worst part of the nation--whatever is cowardly,\navaricious, sensual, and faithless--and to give to this the voice, to\nthis the authority, to this the chief privilege, where there is least\ncapacity, of thought. The fulfilment of your vow for the defence of\nEngland will by no means consist in carrying out such a system. You are\nnot true soldiers, if you only mean to stand at a shop door, to protect\nshop-boys who are cheating inside. A soldier's vow to his country is\nthat he will die for the guardianship of her domestic virtue, of her\nrighteous laws, and of her anyway challenged or endangered honour. A\nstate without virtue, without laws, and without honour, he is bound\n_not_ to defend; nay, bound to redress by his own right hand that which\nhe sees to be base in her. So sternly is this the law of Nature and\nlife, that a nation once utterly corrupt can only be redeemed by a\nmilitary despotism--never by talking, nor by its free effort. And the\nhealth of any state consists simply in this: that in it, those who are\nwisest shall also be strongest; its rulers should be also its soldiers;\nor, rather, by force of intellect more than of sword, its soldiers its\nrulers. Whatever the hold which the aristocracy of England has on the\nheart of England, in that they are still always in front of her battles,\nthis hold will not be enough, unless they are also in front of her\nthoughts. And truly her thoughts need good captain's leading now, if\never! Do you know what, by this beautiful division of labour (her brave\nmen fighting, and her cowards thinking), she has come at last to think?\nHere is a bit of paper in my hand,[6] a good one too, and an honest one;\nquite representative of the best common public thought of England at\nthis moment; and it is holding forth in one of its leaders upon our\n'social welfare,'--upon our 'vivid life'--upon the 'political supremacy\nof Great Britain.' And what do you think all these are owing to? To what\nour English sires have done for us, and taught us, age after age? No:\nnot to that. To our honesty of heart, or coolness of head, or steadiness\nof will? No: not to these. To our thinkers, or our statesmen, or our\npoets, or our captains, or our martyrs, or the patient labour of our\npoor? No: not to these; or at least not to these in any chief measure.\nNay, says the journal, 'more than any agency, it is the cheapness and\nabundance of our coal which have made us what we are.' If it be so, then\n'ashes to ashes' be our epitaph! and the sooner the better. I tell you,\ngentlemen of England, if ever you would have your country breathe the\npure breath of heaven again, and receive again a soul into her body,\ninstead of rotting into a carcase, blown up in the belly with carbonic\nacid (and great _that_ way), you must think, and feel, for your England,\nas well as fight for her: you must teach her that all the true greatness\nshe ever had, or ever can have, she won while her fields were green and\nher faces ruddy;--that greatness is still possible for Englishmen, even\nthough the ground be not hollow under their feet, nor the sky black over\ntheir heads;--and that, when the day comes for their country to lay her\nhonours in the dust, her crest will not rise from it more loftily\nbecause it is dust of coal. Gentlemen, I tell you, solemnly, that the\nday is coming when the soldiers of England must be her tutors and the\ncaptains of her army, captains also of her mind.\n\nAnd now, remember, you soldier youths, who are thus in all ways the hope\nof your country; or must be, if she have any hope: remember that your\nfitness for all future trust depends upon what you are now. No good\nsoldier in his old age was ever careless or indolent in his youth. Many\na giddy and thoughtless boy has become a good bishop, or a good lawyer,\nor a good merchant; but no such an one ever became a good general. I\nchallenge you, in all history, to find a record of a good soldier who\nwas not grave and earnest in his youth. And, in general, I have no\npatience with people who talk about 'the thoughtlessness of youth'\nindulgently, I had infinitely rather hear of thoughtless old age, and\nthe indulgence due to _that_. When a man has done his work, and nothing\ncan any way be materially altered in his fate, let him forget his toil,\nand jest with his fate, if he will; but what excuse can you find for\nwilfulness of thought, at the very time when every crisis of future\nfortune hangs on your decisions? A youth thoughtless! when all the\nhappiness of his home for ever depends on the chances, or the passions,\nof an hour! A youth thoughtless! when the career of all his days depends\non the opportunity of a moment! A youth thoughtless! when his every act\nis a foundation-stone of future conduct, and every imagination a\nfountain of life or death! Be thoughtless in _any_ after years, rather\nthan now--though, indeed, there is only one place where a man may be\nnobly thoughtless,--his deathbed. No thinking should ever be left to be\ndone there.\n\nHaving, then, resolved that you will not waste recklessly, but earnestly\nuse, these early days of yours, remember that all the duties of her\nchildren to England may be summed in two words--industry, and honour. I\nsay first, industry, for it is in this that soldier youth are especially\ntempted to fail. Yet surely, there is no reason because your life may\npossibly or probably be shorter than other men's, that you should\ntherefore waste more recklessly the portion of it that is granted you;\nneither do the duties of your profession, which require you to keep your\nbodies strong, in any wise involve the keeping of your minds weak. So\nfar from that, the experience, the hardship, and the activity of a\nsoldier's life render his powers of thought more accurate than those of\nother men; and while, for others, all knowledge is often little more\nthan a means of amusement, there is no form of science which a soldier\nmay not at some time or other find bearing on business of life and\ndeath. A young mathematician may be excused for langour in studying\ncurves to be described only with a pencil; but not in tracing those\nwhich are to be described with a rocket. Your knowledge of a wholesome\nherb may involve the feeding of an army; and acquaintance with an\nobscure point of geography, the success of a campaign. Never waste an\ninstant's time, therefore; the sin of idleness is a thousandfold greater\nin you than in other youths; for the fates of those who will one day be\nunder your command hang upon your knowledge; lost moments now will be\nlost lives then, and every instant which you carelessly take for play,\nyou buy with blood. But there is one way of wasting time, of all the\nvilest, because it wastes, not time only, but the interest and energy of\nyour minds. Of all the ungentlemanly habits into which you can fall, the\nvilest is betting, or interesting yourselves in the issues of betting.\nIt unites nearly every condition of folly and vice; you concentrate your\ninterest upon a matter of chance, instead of upon a subject of true\nknowledge; and you back opinions which you have no grounds for forming,\nmerely because they are your own. All the insolence of egotism is in\nthis; and so far as the love of excitement is complicated with the hope\nof winning money, you turn yourselves into the basest sort of\ntradesmen--those who live by speculation. Were there no other ground for\nindustry, this would be a sufficient one; that it protected you from the\ntemptation to so scandalous a vice. Work faithfully, and you will put\nyourselves in possession of a glorious and enlarging happiness: not such\nas can be won by the speed of a horse, or marred by the obliquity of a\nball.\n\nFirst, then, by industry you must fulfil your vow to your country; but\nall industry and earnestness will be useless unless they are consecrated\nby your resolution to be in all things men of honour; not honour in the\ncommon sense only, but in the highest. Rest on the force of the two main\nwords in the great verse, _integer_ vitae, scelerisque _purus_. You have\nvowed your life to England; give it her wholly--a bright, stainless,\nperfect life--a knightly life. Because you have to fight with machines\ninstead of lances, there may be a necessity for more ghastly danger, but\nthere is none for less worthiness of character, than in olden time. You\nmay be true knights yet, though perhaps not _equites_; you may have to\ncall yourselves 'cannonry' instead of 'chivalry,' but that is no reason\nwhy you should not call yourselves true men. So the first thing you have\nto see to in becoming soldiers is that you make yourselves wholly true.\nCourage is a mere matter of course among any ordinarily well-born\nyouths; but neither truth nor gentleness is matter of course. You must\nbind them like shields about your necks; you must write them on the\ntables of your hearts. Though it be not exacted of you, yet exact it of\nyourselves, this vow of stainless truth. Your hearts are, if you leave\nthem unstirred, as tombs in which a god lies buried. Vow yourselves\ncrusaders to redeem that sacred sepulchre. And remember, before all\nthings--for no other memory will be so protective of you--that the\nhighest law of this knightly truth is that under which it is vowed to\nwomen. Whomsoever else you deceive, whomsoever you injure, whomsoever\nyou leave unaided, you must not deceive, nor injure, nor leave unaided\naccording to your power, any woman of whatever rank. Believe me, every\nvirtue of the higher phases of manly character begins in this;--in truth\nand modesty before the face of all maidens; in truth and pity, or truth\nand reverence, to all womanhood.\n\nAnd now let me turn for a moment to you,--wives and maidens, who are the\nsouls of soldiers; to you,--mothers, who have devoted your children to\nthe great hierarchy of war. Let me ask you to consider what part you\nhave to take for the aid of those who love you; for if you fail in your\npart they cannot fulfil theirs; such absolute helpmates you are that mo\nman can stand without that help, nor labour in his own strength.\n\nI know your hearts, and that the truth of them never fails when an hour\nof trial comes which you recognise for such. But you know not when the\nhour of trial first finds you, nor when it verily finds you. You imagine\nthat you are only called upon to wait and to suffer; to surrender and to\nmourn. You know that you must not weaken the hearts of your husbands and\nlovers, even by the one fear of which those hearts are capable,--the\nfear of parting from you, or of causing you grief. Through weary years\nof separation, through fearful expectancies of unknown fate; through the\ntenfold bitterness of the sorrow which might so easily have been joy,\nand the tenfold yearning for glorious life struck down in its\nprime--through all these agonies you fail not, and never will fail. But\nyour trial is not in these. To be heroic in danger is little;--you are\nEnglishwomen. To be heroic in change and sway of fortune is little;--for\ndo you not love? To be patient through the great chasm and pause of loss\nis little;--for do you not still love in heaven? But to be heroic in\nhappiness; to bear yourselves gravely and righteously in the dazzling of\nthe sunshine of morning; not to forget the God in whom you trust, when\nHe gives you most; not to fail those who trust you, when they seem to\nneed you least; this is the difficult fortitude. It is not in the pining\nof absence, not in the peril of battle, not in the wasting of sickness,\nthat your prayer should be most passionate, or your guardianship most\ntender. Pray, mothers and maidens, for your young soldiers in the bloom\nof their pride; pray for them, while the only dangers round them are in\ntheir own wayward wills; watch you, and pray, when they have to face,\nnot death, but temptation. But it is this fortitude also for which there\nis the crowning reward. Believe me, the whole course and character of\nyour lovers' lives is in your hands; what you would have them be, they\nshall be, if you not only desire to have them so, but deserve to have\nthem so; for they are but mirrors in which you will see yourselves\nimaged. If you are frivolous, they will be so also; if you have no\nunderstanding of the scope of their duty, they also will forget it; they\nwill listen,--they _can_ listen,--to no other interpretation of it than\nthat uttered from your lips. Bid them be brave;--they will be brave for\nyou; bid them be cowards; and how noble soever they be;--they will quail\nfor you. Bid them be wise, and they will be wise for you; mock at their\ncounsel, they will be fools for you: such and so absolute is your rule\nover them. You fancy, perhaps, as you have been told so often, that a\nwife's rule should only be over her husband's house, not over his mind.\nAh, no! the true rule is just the reverse of that; a true wife, in her\nhusband's house, is his servant; it is in his heart that she is queen.\nWhatever of the best he can conceive, it is her part to be; whatever of\nhighest he can hope, it is hers to promise; all that is dark in him she\nmust purge into purity; all that is failing in him she must strengthen\ninto truth: from her, through all the world's clamour, he must win his\npraise; in her, through all the world's warfare, he must find his peace.\n\nAnd, now, but one word more. You may wonder, perhaps, that I have spoken\nall this night in praise of war. Yet, truly, if it might be, I, for one,\nwould fain join in the cadence of hammer-strokes that should beat swords\ninto ploughshares: and that this cannot be, is not the fault of us men.\nIt is _your_ fault. Wholly yours. Only by your command, or by your\npermission, can any contest take place among us. And the real, final,\nreason for all the poverty, misery, and rage of battle, throughout\nEurope, is simply that you women, however good, however religious,\nhowever self-sacrificing for those whom you love, are too selfish and\ntoo thoughtless to take pains for any creature out of your own immediate\ncircles. You fancy that you are sorry for the pain of others. Now I just\ntell you this, that if the usual course of war, instead of unroofing\npeasants' houses, and ravaging peasants' fields, merely broke the china\nupon your own drawing-room tables, no war in civilised countries would\nlast a week. I tell you more, that at whatever moment you chose to put a\nperiod to war, you could do it with less trouble than you take any day\nto go out to dinner. You know, or at least you might know if you would\nthink, that every battle you hear of has made many widows and orphans.\nWe have, none of us, heart enough truly to mourn with these. But at\nleast we might put on the outer symbols of mourning with them. Let but\nevery Christian lady who has conscience toward God, vow that she will\nmourn, at least outwardly, for His killed creatures. Your praying is\nuseless, and your churchgoing mere mockery of God, if you have not plain\nobedience in you enough for this. Let every lady in the upper classes of\ncivilised Europe simply vow that, while any cruel war proceeds, she will\nwear _black_;--a mute's black,--with no jewel, no ornament, no excuse\nfor, or evasion into, prettiness.--I tell you again, no war would last a\nweek.\n\nAnd lastly. You women of England are all now shrieking with one\nvoice,--you and your clergymen together,--because you hear of your\nBibles being attacked. If you choose to obey your Bibles, you will never\ncare who attacks them. It is just because you never fulfil a single\ndownright precept of the Book, that you are so careful for its credit:\nand just because you don't care to obey its whole words, that you are so\nparticular about the letters of them. The Bible tells you to dress\nplainly,--and you are mad for finery; the Bible tells you to have pity\non the poor,--and you crush them under your carriage-wheels; the Bible\ntells you to do judgment and justice,--and you do not know, nor care to\nknow, so much as what the Bible word 'justice means.' Do but learn so\nmuch of God's truth as that comes to; know what He means when He tells\nyou to be just: and teach your sons, that their bravery is but a fool's\nboast, and their deeds but a firebrand's tossing, unless they are indeed\nJust men, and Perfect in the Fear of God;--and you will soon have no\nmore war, unless it be indeed such as is willed by Him, of whom, though\nPrince of Peace, it is also written, 'In Righteousness He doth judge,\nand make war.'\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[6] I do not care to refer to the journal quoted, because the article\nwas unworthy of its general tone, though in order to enable the audience\nto verify the quoted sentence, I left the number containing it on the\ntable, when I delivered this lecture. But a saying of Baron Liebig's,\nquoted at the head of a leader on the same subject in the 'Daily\nTelegraph' of January 11, 1866, summarily digests and presents the\nmaximum folly of modern thought in this respect. 'Civilization,' says\nthe Baron, 'is the economy of power, and English power is coal.' Not\naltogether so, my chemical friend. Civilization is the making of civil\npersons, which is a kind of distillation of which alembics are\nincapable, and does not at all imply the turning of a small company of\ngentlemen into a large company of ironmongers. And English power (what\nlittle of it may be left), is by no means coal, but, indeed, of that\nwhich, 'when the whole world turns to coal, then chiefly lives.'\n\n\n\n\nMUNERA PULVERIS\n\nSIX ESSAYS\n\nON THE ELEMENTS OF\n\nPOLITICAL ECONOMY\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nThe following pages contain, I believe, the first accurate analysis of\nthe laws of Political Economy which has been published in England. Many\ntreatises, within their scope, correct, have appeared in contradiction\nof the views popularly received; but no exhaustive examination of the\nsubject was possible to any person unacquainted with the value of the\nproducts of the highest industries, commonly called the \"Fine Arts;\" and\nno one acquainted with the nature of those industries has, so far as I\nknow, attempted, or even approached, the task.\n\nSo that, to the date (1863) when these Essays were published, not only\nthe chief conditions of the production of wealth had remained unstated,\nbut the nature of wealth itself had never been defined. \"Every one has a\nnotion, sufficiently correct for common purposes, of what is meant by\nwealth,\" wrote Mr. Mill, in the outset of his treatise; and contentedly\nproceeded, as if a chemist should proceed to investigate the laws of\nchemistry without endeavouring to ascertain the nature of fire or water,\nbecause every one had a notion of them, \"sufficiently correct for common\npurposes.\"\n\nBut even that apparently indisputable statement was untrue. There is not\none person in ten thousand who has a notion sufficiently correct, even\nfor the commonest purposes, of \"what is meant\" by wealth; still less of\nwhat wealth everlastingly _is_, whether we mean it or not; which it is\nthe business of every student of economy to ascertain. We, indeed, know\n(either by experience or in imagination) what it is to be able to\nprovide ourselves with luxurious food, and handsome clothes; and if Mr.\nMill had thought that wealth consisted only in these, or in the means\nof obtaining these, it would have been easy for him to have so defined\nit with perfect scientific accuracy. But he knew better: he knew that\nsome kinds of wealth consisted in the possession, or power of obtaining,\nother things than these; but, having, in the studies of his life, no\nclue to the principles of essential value, he was compelled to take\npublic opinion as the ground of his science; and the public, of course,\nwillingly accepted the notion of a science founded on their opinions.\n\nI had, on the contrary, a singular advantage, not only in the greater\nextent of the field of investigation opened to me by my daily pursuits,\nbut in the severity of some lessons I accidentally received in the\ncourse of them.\n\nWhen, in the winter of 1851, I was collecting materials for my work on\nVenetian architecture, three of the pictures of Tintoret on the roof of\nthe School of St. Roch were hanging down in ragged fragments, mixed with\nlath and plaster, round the apertures made by the fall of three Austrian\nheavy shot. The city of Venice was not, it appeared, rich enough to\nrepair the damage that winter; and buckets were set on the floor of the\nupper room of the school to catch the rain, which not only fell directly\nthrough the shot holes, but found its way, owing to the generally\npervious state of the roof, through many of the canvases of Tintoret's\nin other parts of the ceiling.\n\nIt was a lesson to me, as I have just said, no less direct than severe;\nfor I knew already at that time (though I have not ventured to assert,\nuntil recently at Oxford,) that the pictures of Tintoret in Venice were\naccurately the most precious articles of wealth in Europe, being the\nbest existing productions of human industry. Now at the time that three\nof them were thus fluttering in moist rags from the roof they had\nadorned, the shops of the Rue Rivoli at Paris were, in obedience\nto a steadily-increasing public Demand, beginning to show a\nsteadily-increasing Supply of elaborately-finished and coloured\nlithographs, representing the modern dances of delight, among which the\ncancan has since taken a distinguished place.\n\nThe labour employed on the stone of one of these lithographs is very\nmuch more than Tintoret was in the habit of giving to a picture of\naverage size. Considering labour as the origin of value, therefore, the\nstone so highly wrought would be of greater value than the picture; and\nsince also it is capable of producing a large number of immediately\nsaleable or exchangeable impressions, for which the \"demand\" is\nconstant, the city of Paris naturally supposed itself, and on all\nhitherto believed or stated principles of political economy, was,\ninfinitely richer in the possession of a large number of these\nlithographic stones, (not to speak of countless oil pictures and marble\ncarvings of similar character), than Venice in the possession of those\nrags of mildewed canvas, flaunting in the south wind and its salt rain.\nAnd, accordingly, Paris provided (without thought of the expense) lofty\narcades of shops, and rich recesses of innumerable private apartments,\nfor the protection of these better treasures of hers from the weather.\n\nYet, all the while, Paris was not the richer for these possessions.\nIntrinsically, the delightful lithographs were not wealth, but polar\ncontraries of wealth. She was, by the exact quantity of labour she had\ngiven to produce these, sunk below, instead of above, absolute Poverty.\nThey not only were false Riches--they were true _Debt_, which had to be\npaid at last--and the present aspect of the Rue Rivoli shows in what\nmanner.\n\nAnd the faded stains of the Venetian ceiling, all the while, were\nabsolute and inestimable wealth. Useless to their possessors as\nforgotten treasure in a buried city, they had in them, nevertheless, the\nintrinsic and eternal nature of wealth; and Venice, still possessing the\nruins of them, was a rich city; only, the Venetians had _not_ a notion\nsufficiently correct even for the very common purpose of inducing them\nto put slates on a roof, of what was \"meant by wealth.\"\n\nThe vulgar economist would reply that his science had nothing to do with\nthe qualities of pictures, but with their exchange-value only; and that\nhis business was, exclusively, to consider whether the remains of\nTintoret were worth as many ten-and-sixpences as the impressions which\nmight be taken from the lithographic stones.\n\nBut he would not venture, without reserve, to make such an answer, if\nthe example be taken in horses, instead of pictures. The most dull\neconomist would perceive, and admit, that a gentleman who had a fine\nstud of horses was absolutely richer than one who had only ill-bred and\nbroken-winded ones. He would instinctively feel, though his\npseudo-science had never taught him, that the price paid for the\nanimals, in either case, did not alter the fact of their worth: that the\ngood horse, though it might have been bought by chance for a few\nguineas, was not therefore less valuable, nor the owner of the galled\njade any the richer, because he had given a hundred for it.\n\nSo that the economist, in saying that his science takes no account of\nthe qualities of pictures, merely signifies that he cannot conceive of\nany quality of essential badness or goodness existing in pictures; and\nthat he is incapable of investigating the laws of wealth in such\narticles. Which is the fact. But, being incapable of defining intrinsic\nvalue in pictures, it follows that he must be equally helpless to define\nthe nature of intrinsic value in painted glass, or in painted pottery,\nor in patterned stuffs, or in any other national produce requiring true\nhuman ingenuity. Nay, though capable of conceiving the idea of intrinsic\nvalue with respect to beasts of burden, no economist has endeavoured to\nstate the general principles of National Economy, even with regard to\nthe horse or the ass. And, in fine, _the modern political economists\nhave been, without exception, incapable of apprehending the nature of\nintrinsic value at all_.\n\nAnd the first specialty of the following treatise consists in its giving\nat the outset, and maintaining as the foundation of all subsequent\nreasoning, a definition of Intrinsic Value, and Intrinsic\nContrary-of-Value; the negative power having been left by former writers\nentirely out of account, and the positive power left entirely undefined.\n\nBut, secondly: the modern economist, ignoring intrinsic value, and\naccepting the popular estimate of things as the only ground of his\nscience, has imagined himself to have ascertained the constant laws\nregulating the relation of this popular demand to its supply; or, at\nleast, to have proved that demand and supply were connected by heavenly\nbalance, over which human foresight had no power. I chanced, by singular\ncoincidence, lately to see this theory of the law of demand and supply\nbrought to as sharp practical issue in another great siege, as I had\nseen the theories of intrinsic value brought, in the siege of Venice.\n\nI had the honour of being on the committee under the presidentship of\nthe Lord Mayor of London, for the victualling of Paris after her\nsurrender. It became, at one period of our sittings, a question of vital\nimportance at what moment the law of demand and supply would come into\noperation, and what the operation of it would exactly be: the demand, on\nthis occasion, being very urgent indeed; that of several millions of\npeople within a few hours of utter starvation, for any kind of food\nwhatsoever. Nevertheless, it was admitted, in the course of debate, to\nbe probable that the divine principle of demand and supply might find\nitself at the eleventh hour, and some minutes over, in want of carts and\nhorses; and we ventured so far to interfere with the divine principle as\nto provide carts and horses, with haste which proved, happily, in time\nfor the need; but not a moment in advance of it. It was farther\nrecognized by the committee that the divine principle of demand and\nsupply would commence its operations by charging the poor of Paris\ntwelve-pence for a penny's worth of whatever they wanted; and would end\nits operations by offering them twelve-pence worth for a penny, of\nwhatever they didn't want. Whereupon it was concluded by the committee\nthat the tiny knot, on this special occasion, was scarcely \"_dignus\nvindice_,\" by the divine principle of demand and supply: and that we\nwould venture, for once, in a profane manner, to provide for the poor of\nParis what they wanted, when they wanted it. Which, to the value of the\nsums entrusted to us, it will be remembered we succeeded in doing.\n\nBut the fact is that the so-called \"law,\" which was felt to be false in\nthis case of extreme exigence, is alike false in cases of less\nexigence. It is false always, and everywhere. Nay to such an extent is\nits existence imaginary, that the vulgar economists are not even agreed\nin their account of it; for some of them mean by it, only that prices\nare regulated by the relation between demand and supply, which is partly\ntrue; and others mean that the relation itself is one with the process\nof which it is unwise to interfere; a statement which is not only, as in\nthe above instance, untrue; but accurately the reverse of the truth: for\nall wise economy, political or domestic, consists in the resolved\nmaintenance of a given relation between supply and demand, other than\nthe instinctive, or (directly) natural, one.\n\nSimilarly, vulgar political economy asserts for a \"law\" that wages are\ndetermined by competition.\n\nNow I pay my servants exactly what wages I think necessary to make them\ncomfortable. The sum is not determined at all by competition; but\nsometimes by my notions of their comfort and deserving, and sometimes by\ntheirs. If I were to become penniless to-morrow, several of them would\ncertainly still serve me for nothing.\n\nIn both the real and supposed cases the so-called \"law\" of vulgar\npolitical economy is absolutely set at defiance. But I cannot set the\nlaw of gravitation at defiance, nor determine that in my house I will\nnot allow ice to melt, when the temperature is above thirty-two degrees.\nA true law outside of my house, will remain a true one inside of it. It\nis not, therefore, a law of Nature that wages are determined by\ncompetition. Still less is it a law of State, or we should not now be\ndisputing about it publicly, to the loss of many millions of pounds to\nthe country. The fact which vulgar economists have been weak enough to\nimagine a law, is only that, for the last twenty years a number of very\nsenseless persons have attempted to determine wages in that manner; and\nhave, in a measure, succeeded in occasionally doing so.\n\nBoth in definition of the elements of wealth, and in statement of the\nlaws which govern its distribution, modern political economy has been\nthus absolutely incompetent, or absolutely false. And the following\ntreatise is not, as it has been asserted with dull pertinacity, an\nendeavour to put sentiment in the place of science; but it contains the\nexposure of what insolently pretended to be a science; and the\ndefinition, hitherto unassailed--and I do not fear to assert,\nunassailable--of the material elements with which political economy has\nto deal, and the moral principles in which it consists; being not itself\na science, but \"a system of conduct founded on the sciences, and\nimpossible, except under certain conditions of moral culture.\" Which is\nonly to say, that industry, frugality, and discretion, the three\nfoundations of economy, are moral qualities, and cannot be attained\nwithout moral discipline: a flat truism, the reader may think, thus\nstated, yet a truism which is denied both vociferously, and in all\nendeavour, by the entire populace of Europe; who are at present hopeful\nof obtaining wealth by tricks of trade, without industry; who,\npossessing wealth, have lost in the use of it even the conception,--how\nmuch more the habit?--of frugality; and who, in the choice of the\nelements of wealth, cannot so much as lose--since they have never\nhitherto at any time possessed,--the faculty of discretion.\n\nNow if the teachers of the pseudo-science of economy had ventured to\nstate distinctly even the poor conclusions they had reached on the\nsubjects respecting which it is most dangerous for a populace to be\nindiscreet, they would have soon found, by the use made of them, which\nwere true, and which false.\n\nBut on main and vital questions, no political economist has hitherto\nventured to state one guiding principle. I will instance three subjects\nof universal importance. National Dress. National Rent. National Debt.\n\nNow if we are to look in any quarter for a systematic and exhaustive\nstatement of the principles of a given science, it must certainly be\nfrom its Professor at Cambridge.\n\nTake the last edition of Professor Fawcett's _Manual of Political\nEconomy_, and forming, first clearly in your mind these three following\nquestions, see if you can find an answer to them.\n\nI. Does expenditure of capital on the production of luxurious dress and\nfurniture tend to make a nation rich or poor?\n\nII. Does the payment, by the nation, of a tax on its land, or on the\nproduce of it, to a certain number of private persons, to be expended by\nthem as they please, tend to make the nation rich or poor?\n\nIII. Does the payment, by the nation, for an indefinite period, of\ninterest on money borrowed from private persons, tend to make the nation\nrich or poor?\n\nThese three questions are, all of them, perfectly simple, and primarily\nvital. Determine these, and you have at once a basis for national\nconduct in all important particulars. Leave them undetermined, and there\nis no limit to the distress which may be brought upon the people by the\ncunning of its knaves, and the folly of its multitudes.\n\nI will take the three in their order.\n\n\nI. Dress. The general impression on the public mind at this day is, that\nthe luxury of the rich in dress and furniture is a benefit to the poor.\nProbably not even the blindest of our political economists would venture\nto assert this in so many words. But where do they assert the contrary?\nDuring the entire period of the reign of the late Emperor it was assumed\nin France, as the first principle of fiscal government, that a large\nportion of the funds received as rent from the provincial labourer\nshould be expended in the manufacture of ladies' dresses in Paris. Where\nis the political economist in France, or England, who ventured to assert\nthe conclusions of his science as adverse to this system? As early as\nthe year 1857 I had done my best to show the nature of the error, and to\ngive warning of its danger;[7] but not one of the men who had the\nfoolish ears of the people intent on their words, dared to follow me in\nspeaking what would have been an offence to the powers of trade; and the\npowers of trade in Paris had their full way for fourteen years\nmore,--with this result, to-day,--as told us in precise and curt terms\nby the Minister of Public Instruction,--[8]\n\n     \"We have replaced glory by gold, work by speculation, faith\n     and honour by scepticism. To absolve or glorify immorality;\n     to make much of loose women; to gratify our eyes with\n     luxury, our ears with the tales of orgies; to aid in the\n     manoeuvres of public robbers, or to applaud them; to laugh\n     at morality, and only believe in success; to love nothing\n     but pleasure, adore nothing but force; to replace work with\n     a fecundity of fancies; to speak without thinking; to prefer\n     noise to glory; to erect sneering into a system, and lying\n     into an institution--is this the spectacle that we have\n     seen?--is this the society that we have been?\"\n\nOf course, other causes, besides the desire of luxury in furniture and\ndress, have been at work to produce such consequences; but the most\nactive cause of all has been the passion for these; passion unrebuked by\nthe clergy, and, for the most part, provoked by economists, as\nadvantageous to commerce; nor need we think that such results have been\narrived at in France only; we are ourselves following rapidly on the\nsame road. France, in her old wars with us, never was so fatally our\nenemy as she has been in the fellowship of fashion, and the freedom of\ntrade: nor, to my mind, is any fact recorded of Assyrian or Roman luxury\nmore ominous, or ghastly, than one which came to my knowledge a few\nweeks ago, in England; a respectable and well-to-do father and mother,\nin a quiet north country town, being turned into the streets in their\nold age, at the suit of their only daughter's milliner.\n\n\nII. Rent. The following account of the real nature of rent is given,\nquite accurately, by Professor Fawcett, at page 112 of the last edition\nof his _Political Economy_:--\n\n     \"Every country has probably been subjugated, and grants of\n     vanquished territory were the ordinary rewards which the\n     conquering chief bestowed upon his more distinguished\n     followers. Lands obtained by force had to be defended by\n     force; and before law had asserted her supremacy, and\n     property was made secure, no baron was able to retain his\n     possessions, unless those who lived on his estates were\n     prepared to defend them....[9] As property became secure,\n     and landlords felt that the power of the State would protect\n     them in all the rights of property, every vestige of these\n     feudal tenures was abolished, and the relation between\n     landlord and tenant has thus become purely commercial. A\n     landlord offers his land to any one who is willing to take\n     it; he is anxious to receive the highest rent he can obtain.\n     What are the principles which regulate the rent which may\n     thus be paid?\"\n\nThese principles the Professor goes on contentedly to investigate, never\nappearing to contemplate for an instant the possibility of the first\nprinciple in the whole business--the maintenance, by force, of the\npossession of land obtained by force, being ever called in question by\nany human mind. It is, nevertheless, the nearest task of our day to\ndiscover how far original theft may be justly encountered by reactionary\ntheft, or whether reactionary theft be indeed theft at all; and farther,\nwhat, excluding either original or corrective theft, are the just\nconditions of the possession of land.\n\n\nIII. Debt. Long since, when, a mere boy, I used to sit silently\nlistening to the conversation of the London merchants who, all of them\ngood and sound men of business, were wont occasionally to meet round my\nfather's dining-table; nothing used to surprise me more than the\nconviction openly expressed by some of the soundest and most cautious of\nthem, that \"if there were no National debt they would not know what to\ndo with their money, or where to place it safely.\" At the 399th page of\nhis Manual, you will find Professor Fawcett giving exactly the same\nstatement.\n\n     \"In our own country, this certainty against risk of loss is\n     provided by the public funds;\"\n\nand again, as on the question of rent, the Professor proceeds, without\nappearing for an instant to be troubled by any misgiving that there may\nbe an essential difference between the effects on national prosperity of\na Government paying interest on money which it spent in fire works\nfifty years ago, and of a Government paying interest on money to be\nemployed to-day on productive labour.\n\nThat difference, which the reader will find stated and examined at\nlength, in Secs. 127-129 of this volume, it is the business of economists,\nbefore approaching any other question relating to government, fully to\nexplain. And the paragraphs to which I refer, contain, I believe, the\nonly definite statement of it hitherto made.\n\nThe practical result of the absence of any such statement is, that\ncapitalists, when they do not know what to do with their money, persuade\nthe peasants, in various countries, that the said peasants want guns to\nshoot each other with. The peasants accordingly borrow guns, out of the\nmanufacture of which the capitalists get a per-centage, and men of\nscience much amusement and credit. Then the peasants shoot a certain\nnumber of each other, until they get tired; and burn each other's homes\ndown in various places. Then they put the guns back into towers,\narsenals, &c., in ornamental patterns; (and the victorious party put\nalso some ragged flags in churches). And then the capitalists tax both,\nannually, ever afterwards, to pay interest on the loan of the guns and\ngunpowder. And that is what capitalists call \"knowing what to do with\ntheir money;\" and what commercial men in general call \"practical\" as\nopposed to \"sentimental\" Political Economy.\n\nEleven years ago, in the summer of 1860, perceiving then fully, (as\nCarlyle had done long before), what distress was about to come on the\nsaid populace of Europe through these errors of their teachers, I began\nto do the best I might, to combat them, in the series of papers for the\n_Cornhill Magazine_, since published under the title of _Unto this\nLast_. The editor of the Magazine was my friend, and ventured the\ninsertion of the three first essays; but the outcry against them became\nthen too strong for any editor to endure, and he wrote to me, with great\ndiscomfort to himself, and many apologies to me, that the Magazine must\nonly admit one Economical Essay more.\n\nI made, with his permission, the last one longer than the rest, and gave\nit blunt conclusion as well as I could--and so the book now stands; but,\nas I had taken not a little pains with the Essays, and knew that they\ncontained better work than most of my former writings, and more\nimportant truths than all of them put together, this violent reprobation\nof them by the _Cornhill_ public set me still more gravely thinking;\nand, after turning the matter hither and thither in my mind for two\nyears more, I resolved to make it the central work of my life to write\nan exhaustive treatise on Political Economy. It would not have been\nbegun, at that time, however, had not the editor of _Fraser's Magazine_\nwritten to me, saying that he believed there was something in my\ntheories, and would risk the admission of what I chose to write on this\ndangerous subject; whereupon, cautiously, and at intervals, during the\nwinter of 1862-63, I sent him, and he ventured to print, the preface of\nthe intended work, divided into four chapters. Then, though the Editor\nhad not wholly lost courage, the Publisher indignantly interfered; and\nthe readers of _Fraser_, as those of the _Cornhill_, were protected, for\nthat time, from farther disturbance on my part. Subsequently, loss of\nhealth, family distress, and various untoward chances, prevented my\nproceeding with the body of the book;--seven years have passed\nineffectually; and I am now fain to reprint the Preface by itself, under\nthe title which I intended for the whole.\n\nNot discontentedly; being, at this time of life, resigned to the sense\nof failure; and also, because the preface is complete in itself as a\nbody of definitions, which I now require for reference in the course of\nmy _Letters to Workmen_; by which also, in time, I trust less formally\nto accomplish the chief purpose of _Munera Pulveris_, practically summed\nin the two paragraphs 27 and 28: namely, to examine the moral results\nand possible rectifications of the laws of distribution of wealth, which\nhave prevailed hitherto without debate among men. Laws which ordinary\neconomists assume to be inviolable, and which ordinary socialists\nimagine to be on the eve of total abrogation. But they are both alike\ndeceived. The laws which at present regulate the possession of wealth\nare unjust, because the motives which provoke to its attainment are\nimpure; but no socialism can effect their abrogation, unless it can\nabrogate also covetousness and pride, which it is by no means yet in the\nway of doing. Nor can the change be, in any case, to the extent that has\nbeen imagined. Extremes of luxury may be forbidden, and agony of penury\nrelieved; but nature intends, and the utmost efforts of socialism will\nnot hinder the fulfilment of her intention, that a provident person\nshall always be richer than a spendthrift; and an ingenious one more\ncomfortable than a fool. But, indeed, the adjustment of the possession\nof the products of industry depends more on their nature than their\nquantity, and on wise determination therefore of the aims of industry.\n\nA nation which desires true wealth, desires it moderately, and can\ntherefore distribute it with kindness, and possess it with pleasure; but\none which desires false wealth, desires it immoderately, and can neither\ndispense it with justice, nor enjoy it in peace.\n\nTherefore, needing, constantly in my present work, to refer to the\ndefinitions of true and false wealth given in the following Essays, I\nrepublish them with careful revisal. They were written abroad; partly at\nMilan, partly during a winter residence on the south-eastern slope of\nthe Mont Saleve, near Geneva; and sent to London in as legible MS. as I\ncould write; but I never revised the press sheets, and have been\nobliged, accordingly, now to amend the text here and there, or correct\nit in unimportant particulars. Wherever any modification has involved\nchange in the sense, it is enclosed in square brackets; and what few\nexplanatory comments I have felt it necessary to add, have been\nindicated in the same manner. No explanatory comments, I regret to\nperceive, will suffice to remedy the mischief of my affected\nconcentration of language, into the habit of which I fell by thinking\ntoo long over particular passages, in many and many a solitary walk\ntowards the mountains of Bonneville or Annecy. But I never intended the\nbook for anything else than a dictionary of reference, and that for\nearnest readers; who will, I have good hope, if they find what they\nwant in it, forgive the affectedly curt expressions.\n\nThe Essays, as originally published, were, as I have just stated, four\nin number. I have now, more conveniently, divided the whole into six\nchapters; and (as I purpose throughout this edition of my works)\nnumbered the paragraphs.\n\nI inscribed the first volume of this series to the friend who aided me\nin chief sorrow. Let me inscribe the second to the friend and guide who\nhas urged me to all chief labour, THOMAS CARLYLE.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI would that some better means were in my power of showing reverence to\nthe man who alone, of all our masters of literature, has written,\nwithout thought of himself, what he knew it to be needful for the people\nof his time to hear, if the will to hear were in them: whom, therefore,\nas the time draws near when his task must be ended, Republican and\nFree-thoughted England assaults with impatient reproach; and out of the\nabyss of her cowardice in policy and dishonour in trade, sets the hacks\nof her literature to speak evil, grateful to her ears, of the Solitary\nTeacher who has asked her to be brave for the help of Man, and just, for\nthe love of God.\n\n    _Denmark Hill,_\n    _25th November, 1871._\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[7] _Political Economy of Art._ (Smith and Elder, 1857, pp. 65-76.)\n\n[8] See report of speech of M. Jules Simon, in _Pall Mall Gazette_ of\nOctober 27, 1871.\n\n[9] The omitted sentences merely amplify the statement; they in no wise\nmodify it.\n\n\n\n\nMUNERA PULVERIS.\n\n    \"Te maris et terrae numeroque carentis arenae\n      Mensorem cohibent, Archyta,\n    Pulveris exigui prope litus parva Matinum\n      Munera.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nDEFINITIONS.\n\n\n1. As domestic economy regulates the acts and habits of a household,\nPolitical economy regulates those of a society or State, with reference\nto the means of its maintenance.\n\nPolitical economy is neither an art nor a science; but a system of\nconduct and legislature, founded on the sciences, directing the arts,\nand impossible, except under certain conditions of moral culture.\n\n2. The study which lately in England has been called Political Economy\nis in reality nothing more than the investigation of some accidental\nphenomena of modern commercial operations, nor has it been true in its\ninvestigation even of these. It has no connection whatever with\npolitical economy, as understood and treated of by the great thinkers of\npast ages; and as long as its unscholarly and undefined statements are\nallowed to pass under the same name, every word written on the subject\nby those thinkers--and chiefly the words of Plato, Xenophon, Cicero and\nBacon--must be nearly useless to mankind. The reader must not,\ntherefore, be surprised at the care and insistance with which I have\nretained the literal and earliest sense of all important terms used in\nthese papers; for a word is usually well made at the time it is first\nwanted; its youngest meaning has in it the full strength of its youth:\nsubsequent senses are commonly warped or weakened; and as all careful\nthinkers are sure to have used their words accurately, the first\ncondition, in order to be able to avail our selves of their sayings at\nall, is firm definition of terms.\n\n3. By the \"maintenance\" of a State is to be understood the support of\nits population in healthy and happy life; and the increase of their\nnumbers, so far as that increase is consistent with their happiness. It\nis not the object of political economy to increase the numbers of a\nnation at the cost of common health or comfort; nor to increase\nindefinitely the comfort of individuals, by sacrifice of surrounding\nlives, or possibilities of life.\n\n4. The assumption which lies at the root of nearly all erroneous\nreasoning on political economy,--namely, that its object is to\naccumulate money or exchangeable property,--may be shown in a few words\nto be without foundation. For no economist would admit national economy\nto be legitimate which proposed to itself only the building of a pyramid\nof gold. He would declare the gold to be wasted, were it to remain in\nthe monumental form, and would say it ought to be employed. But to what\nend? Either it must be used only to gain more gold, and build a larger\npyramid, or for some purpose other than the gaining of gold. And this\nother purpose, however at first apprehended, will be found to resolve\nitself finally into the service of man;--that is to say, the extension,\ndefence, or comfort of his life. The golden pyramid may perhaps be\nprovidently built, perhaps improvidently; but the wisdom or folly of the\naccumulation can only be determined by our having first clearly stated\nthe aim of all economy, namely, the extension of life.\n\nIf the accumulation of money, or of exchangeable property, were a\ncertain means of extending existence, it would be useless, in discussing\neconomical questions, to fix our attention upon the more distant\nobject--life--instead of the immediate one--money. But it is not so.\nMoney may sometimes be accumulated at the cost of life, or by\nlimitations of it; that is to say, either by hastening the deaths of\nmen, or preventing their births. It is therefore necessary to keep\nclearly in view the ultimate object of economy; and to determine the\nexpediency of minor operations with reference to that ulterior end.\n\n5. It has been just stated that the object of political economy is the\ncontinuance not only of life, but of healthy and happy life. But all\ntrue happiness is both a consequence and cause of life: it is a sign of\nits vigor, and source of its continuance. All true suffering is in like\nmanner a consequence and cause of death. I shall therefore, in future,\nuse the word \"Life\" singly: but let it be understood to include in its\nsignification the happiness and power of the entire human nature, body\nand soul.\n\n6. That human nature, as its Creator made it, and maintains it wherever\nHis laws are observed, is entirely harmonious. No physical error can be\nmore profound, no moral error more dangerous, than that involved in the\nmonkish doctrine of the opposition of body to soul. No soul can be\nperfect in an imperfect body: no body perfect without perfect soul.\nEvery right action and true thought sets the seal of its beauty on\nperson and face; every wrong action and foul thought its seal of\ndistortion; and the various aspects of humanity might be read as plainly\nas a printed history, were it not that the impressions are so complex\nthat it must always in some cases (and, in the present state of our\nknowledge, in all cases) be impossible to decipher them completely.\nNevertheless, the face of a consistently just, and of a consistently\nunjust person, may always be rightly distinguished at a glance; and if\nthe qualities are continued by descent through a generation or two,\nthere arises a complete distinction of race. Both moral and physical\nqualities are communicated by descent, far more than they can be\ndeveloped by education; (though both may be destroyed by want of\neducation), and there is as yet no ascertained limit to the nobleness of\nperson and mind which the human creature may attain, by persevering\nobservance of the laws of God respecting its birth and training.\n\n7. We must therefore yet farther define the aim of political economy to\nbe \"The multiplication of human life at the highest standard.\" It might\nat first seem questionable whether we should endeavour to maintain a\nsmall number of persons of the highest type of beauty and intelligence,\nor a larger number of an inferior class. But I shall be able to show in\nthe sequel, that the way to maintain the largest number is first to aim\nat the highest standard. Determine the noblest type of man, and aim\nsimply at maintaining the largest possible number of persons of that\nclass, and it will be found that the largest possible number of every\nhealthy subordinate class must necessarily be produced also.\n\n8. The perfect type of manhood, as just stated, involves the perfections\n(whatever we may hereafter determine these to be) of his body,\naffections, and intelligence. The material things, therefore, which it\nis the object of political economy to produce and use, (or accumulate\nfor use,) are things which serve either to sustain and comfort the body,\nor exercise rightly the affections and form the intelligence.[10]\nWhatever truly serves either of these purposes is \"useful\" to man,\nwholesome, healthful, helpful, or holy. By seeking such things, man\nprolongs and increases his life upon the earth.\n\nOn the other hand, whatever does not serve either of these\npurposes,--much more whatever counteracts them,--is in like manner\nuseless to man, unwholesome, unhelpful, or unholy; and by seeking such\nthings man shortens and diminishes his life upon the earth.\n\n9. And neither with respect to things useful or useless can man's\nestimate of them alter their nature. Certain substances being good for\nhis food, and others noxious to him, what he thinks or wishes respecting\nthem can neither change, nor prevent, their power. If he eats corn, he\nwill live; if nightshade, he will die. If he produce or make good and\nbeautiful things, they will _Re-Create_ him; (note the solemnity and\nweight of the word); if bad and ugly things, they will \"corrupt\" or\n\"break in pieces\"--that is, in the exact degree of their power, Kill\nhim. For every hour of labour, however enthusiastic or well intended,\nwhich he spends for that which is not bread, so much possibility of life\nis lost to him. His fancies, likings, beliefs, however brilliant,\neager, or obstinate, are of no avail if they are set on a false object.\nOf all that he has laboured for, the eternal law of heaven and earth\nmeasures out to him for reward, to the utmost atom, that part which he\nought to have laboured for, and withdraws from him (or enforces on him,\nit may be) inexorably, that part which he ought not to have laboured for\nuntil, on his summer threshing-floor, stands his heap of corn; little or\nmuch, not according to his labour, but to his discretion. No \"commercial\narrangements,\" no painting of surfaces, nor alloying of substances, will\navail him a pennyweight. Nature asks of him calmly and inevitably, What\nhave you found, or formed--the right thing or the wrong? By the right\nthing you shall live; by the wrong you shall die.\n\n10. To thoughtless persons it seems otherwise. The world looks to them\nas if they could cozen it out of some ways and means of life. But they\ncannot cozen IT: they can only cozen their neighbours. The world is not\nto be cheated of a grain; not so much as a breath of its air can be\ndrawn surreptitiously. For every piece of wise work done, so much life\nis granted; for every piece of foolish work, nothing; for every piece of\nwicked work, so much death is allotted. This is as sure as the courses\nof day and night. But when the means of life are once produced, men, by\ntheir various struggles and industries of accumulation or exchange, may\nvariously gather, waste, restrain, or distribute them; necessitating, in\nproportion to the waste or restraint, accurately, so much more death.\nThe rate and range of additional death are measured by the rate and\nrange of waste; and are inevitable;--the only question (determined\nmostly by fraud in peace, and force in war) is, Who is to die, and how?\n\n11. Such being the everlasting law of human existence, the essential\nwork of the political economist is to determine what are in reality\nuseful or life-giving things, and by what degrees and kinds of labour\nthey are attainable and distributable. This investigation divides itself\nunder three great heads;--the studies, namely, of the phenomena, first,\nof WEALTH; secondly, of MONEY; and thirdly, of RICHES.\n\nThese terms are often used as synonymous, but they signify entirely\ndifferent things. \"Wealth\" consists of things in themselves valuable;\n\"Money,\" of documentary claims to the possession of such things; and\n\"Riches\" is a relative term, expressing the magnitude of the possessions\nof one person or society as compared with those of other persons or\nsocieties.\n\nThe study of Wealth is a province of natural science:--it deals with the\nessential properties of things.\n\nThe study of Money is a province of commercial science:--it deals with\nconditions of engagement and exchange.\n\nThe study of Riches is a province of moral science:--it deals with the\ndue relations of men to each other in regard of material possessions;\nand with the just laws of their association for purposes of labour.\n\nI shall in this first chapter shortly sketch out the range of subjects\nwhich will come before us as we follow these three branches of inquiry.\n\n12. And first of WEALTH, which, it has been said, consists of things\nessentially valuable. We now, therefore, need a definition of \"value.\"\n\n\"Value\" signifies the strength, or \"availing\" of anything towards the\nsustaining of life, and is always twofold; that is to say, primarily,\nINTRINSIC, and secondarily, EFFECTUAL.\n\nThe reader must, by anticipation, be warned against confusing value with\ncost, or with price. _Value is the life-giving power of anything; cost,\nthe quantity of labour required to produce it; price, the quantity of\nlabour which its possessor will take in exchange for it._[11] Cost and\nprice are commercial conditions, to be studied under the head of money.\n\n13. Intrinsic value is the absolute power of anything to support life. A\nsheaf of wheat of given quality and weight has in it a measurable power\nof sustaining the substance of the body; a cubic foot of pure air, a\nfixed power of sustaining its warmth; and a cluster of flowers of given\nbeauty a fixed power of enlivening or animating the senses and heart.\n\nIt does not in the least affect the intrinsic value of the wheat, the\nair, or the flowers, that men refuse or despise them. Used or not, their\nown power is in them, and that particular power is in nothing else.\n\n14. But in order that this value of theirs may become effectual, a\ncertain state is necessary in the recipient of it. The digesting,\nbreathing, and perceiving functions must be perfect in the human\ncreature before the food, air, or flowers can become of their full value\nto it. _The production of effectual value, therefore, always involves\ntwo needs: first, the production of a thing essentially useful; then the\nproduction of the capacity to use it._ Where the intrinsic value and\nacceptant capacity come together there is Effectual value, or wealth;\nwhere there is either no intrinsic value, or no acceptant capacity,\nthere is no effectual value; that is to say, no wealth. A horse is no\nwealth to us if we cannot ride, nor a picture if we cannot see, _nor can\nany noble thing be wealth, except to a noble person_. As the aptness of\nthe user increases, the effectual value of the thing used increases; and\nin its entirety can co-exist only with perfect skill of use, and fitness\nof nature.\n\n15. Valuable material things may be conveniently referred to five heads:\n\n(i.) Land, with its associated air, water, and organisms.\n\n(ii.) Houses, furniture, and instruments.\n\n(iii.) Stored or prepared food, medicine, and articles of bodily luxury,\nincluding clothing.\n\n(iv.) Books.\n\n(v.) Works of art.\n\nThe conditions of value in these things are briefly as follows:--\n\n16. (i.) Land. Its value is twofold; first, as producing food and\nmechanical power; secondly, as an object of sight and thought, producing\nintellectual power.\n\nIts value, as a means of producing food and mechanical power, varies\nwith its form (as mountain or plain), with its substance (in soil or\nmineral contents), and with its climate. All these conditions of\nintrinsic value must be known and complied with by the men who have to\ndeal with it, in order to give effectual value; but at any given time\nand place, the intrinsic value is fixed: such and such a piece of land,\nwith its associated lakes and seas, rightly treated in surface and\nsubstance, can produce precisely so much food and power, and no more.\n\nThe second element of value in land being its beauty, united with such\nconditions of space and form as are necessary for exercise, and for\nfullness of animal life, land of the highest value in these respects\nwill be that lying in temperate climates, and boldly varied in form;\nremoved from unhealthy or dangerous influences (as of miasm or volcano);\nand capable of sustaining a rich fauna and flora. Such land, carefully\ntended by the hand of man, so far as to remove from it unsightlinesses\nand evidences of decay, guarded from violence, and inhabited, under\nman's affectionate protection, by every kind of living creature that can\noccupy it in peace, is the most precious \"property\" that human beings\ncan possess.\n\n17. (ii.) Buildings, furniture, and instruments.\n\nThe value of buildings consists, first, in permanent strength, with\nconvenience of form, of size, and of position; so as to render\nemployment peaceful, social intercourse easy, temperature and air\nhealthy. The advisable or possible magnitude of cities and mode of their\ndistribution in squares, streets, courts, &c.; the relative value of\nsites of land, and the modes of structure which are healthiest and most\npermanent, have to be studied under this head.\n\nThe value of buildings consists secondly in historical association, and\narchitectural beauty, of which we have to examine the influence on\nmanners and life.\n\nThe value of instruments consists, first, in their power of shortening\nlabour, or otherwise accomplishing what human strength unaided could\nnot. The kinds of work which are severally best accomplished by hand or\nby machine;--the effect of machinery in gathering and multiplying\npopulation, and its influence on the minds and bodies of such\npopulation; together with the conceivable uses of machinery on a\ncolossal scale in accomplishing mighty and useful works, hitherto\nunthought of, such as the deepening of large river channels;--changing\nthe surface of mountainous districts;--irrigating tracts of desert in\nthe torrid zone;--breaking up, and thus rendering capable of quicker\nfusion, edges of ice in the northern and southern Arctic seas, &c., so\nrendering parts of the earth habitable which hitherto have been\nlifeless, are to be studied under this head.\n\nThe value of instruments is, secondarily, in their aid to abstract\nsciences. The degree in which the multiplication of such instruments\nshould be encouraged, so as to make them, if large, easy of access to\nnumbers (as costly telescopes), or so cheap as that they might, in a\nserviceable form, become a common part of the furniture of households,\nis to be considered under this head.[12]\n\n18. (iii.) Food, medicine, and articles of luxury. Under this head we\nshall have to examine the possible methods of obtaining pure food in\nsuch security and equality of supply as to avoid both waste and famine:\nthen the economy of medicine and just range of sanitary law: finally the\neconomy of luxury, partly an aesthetic and partly an ethical question.\n\n19. (iv.) Books. The value of these consists,\n\nFirst, in their power of preserving and communicating the knowledge of\nfacts.\n\nSecondly, in their power of exciting vital or noble emotion and\nintellectual action. They have also their corresponding negative powers\nof disguising and effacing the memory of facts, and killing the noble\nemotions, or exciting base ones. Under these two heads we have to\nconsider the economical and educational value, positive and negative, of\nliterature;--the means of producing and educating good authors, and the\nmeans and advisability of rendering good books generally accessible, and\ndirecting the reader's choice to them.\n\n20. (v.) Works of art. The value of these is of the same nature as that\nof books; but the laws of their production and possible modes of\ndistribution are very different, and require separate examination.\n\n\n21. II.--MONEY. Under this head, we shall have to examine the laws of\ncurrency and exchange; of which I will note here the first principles.\n\n\nMoney has been inaccurately spoken of as merely a means of exchange. But\nit is far more than this. It is a documentary expression of legal claim.\nIt is not wealth, but a documentary claim to wealth, being the sign of\nthe relative quantities of it, or of the labour producing it, to which,\nat a given time, persons, or societies, are entitled.\n\nIf all the money in the world, notes and gold, were destroyed in an\ninstant, it would leave the world neither richer nor poorer than it was.\nBut it would leave the individual inhabitants of it in different\nrelations.\n\nMoney is, therefore, correspondent in its nature to the title-deed of an\nestate. Though the deed be burned, the estate still exists, but the\nright to it has become disputable.\n\n22. The real worth of money remains unchanged, as long as the proportion\nof the quantity of existing money to the quantity of existing wealth or\navailable labour remains unchanged.\n\nIf the wealth increases, but not the money, the worth of the money\nincreases; if the money increases, but not the wealth, the worth of the\nmoney diminishes.\n\n23. Money, therefore, cannot be arbitrarily multiplied, any more than\ntitle-deeds can. So long as the existing wealth or available labour is\nnot fully represented by the currency, the currency may be increased\nwithout diminution of the assigned worth of its pieces. But when the\nexisting wealth, or available labour is once fully represented, every\npiece of money thrown into circulation diminishes the worth of every\nother existing piece, in the proportion it bears to the number of them,\nprovided the new piece be received with equal credit; if not, the\ndepreciation of worth takes place, according to the degree of its\ncredit.\n\n24. When, however, new money, composed of some substance of supposed\nintrinsic value (as of gold), is brought into the market, or when new\nnotes are issued which are supposed to be deserving of credit, the\ndesire to obtain the money will, under certain circumstances, stimulate\nindustry: an additional quantity of wealth is immediately produced, and\nif this be in proportion to the new claims advanced, the value of the\nexisting currency is undepreciated. If the stimulus given be so great as\nto produce more goods than are proportioned to the additional coinage,\nthe worth of the existing currency will be raised.\n\nArbitrary control and issues of currency affect the production of\nwealth, by acting on the hopes and fears of men, and are, under certain\ncircumstances, wise. But the issue of additional currency to meet the\nexigencies of immediate expense, is merely one of the disguised forms of\nborrowing or taxing. It is, however, in the present low state of\neconomical knowledge, often possible for governments to venture on an\nissue of currency, when they could not venture on an additional loan or\ntax, because the real operation of such issue is not understood by the\npeople, and the pressure of it is irregularly distributed, and with an\nunperceived gradation.\n\n25. The use of substances of intrinsic value as the materials of a\ncurrency, is a barbarism;--a remnant of the conditions of barter, which\nalone render commerce possible among savage nations. It is, however,\nstill necessary, partly as a mechanical check on arbitrary issues;\npartly as a means of exchanges with foreign nations. In proportion to\nthe extension of civilization, and increase of trustworthiness in\nGovernments, it will cease. So long as it exists, the phenomena of the\ncost and price of the articles used for currency are mingled with those\nproper to currency itself, in an almost inextricable manner: and the\nmarket worth of bullion is affected by multitudinous accidental\ncircumstances, which have been traced, with more or less success, by\nwriters on commercial operations: but with these variations the true\npolitical economist has no more to do than an engineer, fortifying a\nharbour of refuge against Atlantic tide, has to concern himself with the\ncries or quarrels of children who dig pools with their fingers for its\nstreams among the sand.\n\n26. III.--RICHES. According to the various industry, capacity, good\nfortune, and desires of men, they obtain greater or smaller share of,\nand claim upon, the wealth of the world.\n\nThe inequalities between these shares, always in some degree just and\nnecessary, may be either restrained by law or circumstance within\ncertain limits; or may increase indefinitely.\n\nWhere no moral or legal restraint is put upon the exercise of the will\nand intellect of the stronger, shrewder, or more covetous men, these\ndifferences become ultimately enormous. But as soon as they become so\ndistinct in their extremes as that, on one side, there shall be manifest\nredundance of possession, and on the other manifest pressure of\nneed,--the terms \"riches\" and \"poverty\" are used to express the opposite\nstates; being contrary only as the terms \"warmth\" and \"cold\" are\ncontraries, of which neither implies an actual degree, but only a\nrelation to other degrees, of temperature.\n\n27. Respecting riches, the economist has to inquire, first, into the\nadvisable modes of their collection; secondly, into the advisable modes\nof their administration.\n\nRespecting the collection of national riches, he has to inquire, first,\nwhether he is justified in calling the nation rich, if the quantity of\nwealth it possesses relatively to the wealth of other nations, be large;\nirrespectively of the manner of its distribution. Or does the mode of\ndistribution in any wise affect the nature of the riches? Thus, if the\nking alone be rich--suppose Croesus or Mausolus--are the Lydians or\nCarians therefore a rich nation? Or if a few slave-masters are rich, and\nthe nation is otherwise composed of slaves, is it to be called a rich\nnation? For if not, and the ideas of a certain mode of distribution or\noperation in the riches, and of a certain degree of freedom in the\npeople, enter into our idea of riches as attributed to a people, we\nshall have to define the degree of fluency, or circulative character\nwhich is essential to the nature of common wealth; and the degree of\nindependence of action required in its possessors. Questions which look\nas if they would take time in answering.[13]\n\n28. And farther. Since the inequality, which is the condition of riches,\nmay be established in two opposite modes--namely, by increase of\npossession on the one side, and by decrease of it on the other--we have\nto inquire, with respect to any given state of riches, precisely in what\nmanner the correlative poverty was produced: that is to say, whether by\nbeing surpassed only, or being depressed also; and if by being\ndepressed, what are the advantages, or the contrary, conceivable in the\ndepression. For instance, it being one of the commonest advantages of\nbeing rich to entertain a number of servants, we have to inquire, on the\none side, what economical process produced the riches of the master; and\non the other, what economical process produced the poverty of the\npersons who serve him; and what advantages each, on his own side,\nderives from the result.\n\n29. These being the main questions touching the collection of riches,\nthe next, or last, part of the inquiry is into their administration.\n\nTheir possession involves three great economical powers which require\nseparate examination: namely, the powers of selection, direction, and\nprovision.\n\nThe power of SELECTION relates to things of which the supply is limited\n(as the supply of best things is always). When it becomes matter of\nquestion to whom such things are to belong, the richest person has\nnecessarily the first choice, unless some arbitrary mode of distribution\nbe otherwise determined upon. The business of the economist is to show\nhow this choice may be a wise one.\n\nThe power of DIRECTION arises out of the necessary relation of rich men\nto poor, which ultimately, in one way or another, involves the\ndirection of, or authority over, the labour of the poor; and this nearly\nas much over their mental as their bodily labour. The business of the\neconomist is to show how this direction may be a Just one.\n\nThe power of PROVISION is dependent upon the redundance of wealth, which\nmay of course by active persons be made available in preparation for\nfuture work or future profit; in which function riches have generally\nreceived the name of capital; that is to say, of head-, or\nsource-material. The business of the economist is to show how this\nprovision may be a Distant one.\n\n30. The examination of these three functions of riches will embrace\nevery final problem of political economy;--and, above, or before all,\nthis curious and vital problem,--whether, since the wholesome action of\nriches in these three functions will depend (it appears), on the Wisdom,\nJustice, and Farsightedness of the holders; and it is by no means to be\nassumed that persons primarily rich, must therefore be just and\nwise,--it may not be ultimately possible so, or somewhat so, to arrange\nmatters, as that persons primarily just and wise, should therefore be\nrich?\n\nSuch being the general plan of the inquiry before us, I shall not limit\nmyself to any consecutive following of it, having hardly any good hope\nof being able to complete so laborious a work as it must prove to me;\nbut from time to time, as I have leisure, shall endeavour to carry\nforward this part or that, as may be immediately possible; indicating\nalways with accuracy the place which the particular essay will or should\ntake in the completed system.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[10] _See_ Appendix I.\n\n[11] Observe these definitions,--they are of much importance,--and\nconnect with them the sentences in italics on this and the next page.\n\n[12] [I cannot now recast these sentences, pedantic in their\ngeneralization, and intended more for index than statement, but I must\nguard the reader from thinking that I ever wish for cheapness by bad\nquality. A poor boy need not always learn mathematics; but, if you set\nhim to do so, have the farther kindness to give him good compasses, not\ncheap ones, whose points bend like lead.]\n\n[13] [I regret the ironical manner in which this passage, one of great\nimportance in the matter of it, was written. The gist of it is, that the\nfirst of all inquiries respecting the wealth of any nation is not, how\nmuch it has; but whether it is in a form that can be used, and in the\npossession of persons who can use it.]\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nSTORE-KEEPING.\n\n\n31. The first chapter having consisted of little more than definition of\nterms, I purpose, in this, to expand and illustrate the given\ndefinitions.\n\nThe view which has here been taken of the nature of wealth, namely, that\nit consists in an intrinsic value developed by a vital power, is\ndirectly opposed to two nearly universal conceptions of wealth. In the\nassertion that value is primarily intrinsic, it opposes the idea that\nanything which is an object of desire to numbers, and is limited in\nquantity, so as to have rated worth in exchange, may be called, or\nvirtually become, wealth. And in the assertion that value is,\nsecondarily, dependent upon power in the possessor, it opposes the idea\nthat the worth of things depends on the demand for them, instead of on\nthe use of them. Before going farther, we will make these two positions\nclearer.\n\n32. I. First. All wealth is intrinsic, and is not constituted by the\njudgment of men. This is easily seen in the case of things affecting the\nbody; we know, that no force of fantasy will make stones nourishing, or\npoison innocent; but it is less apparent in things affecting the mind.\nWe are easily--perhaps willingly--misled by the appearance of beneficial\nresults obtained by industries addressed wholly to the gratification of\nfanciful desire; and apt to suppose that whatever is widely coveted,\ndearly bought, and pleasurable in possession, must be included in our\ndefinition of wealth. It is the more difficult to quit ourselves of this\nerror because many things which are true wealth in moderate use, become\nfalse wealth in immoderate; and many things are mixed of good and\nevil,--as mostly, books, and works of art,--out of which one person Will\nget the good, and another the evil; so that it seems as if there were\nno fixed good or evil in the things themselves, but only in the view\ntaken, and use made of them.\n\nBut that is not so. The evil and good are fixed; in essence, and in\nproportion. And in things in which evil depends upon excess, the point\nof excess, though indefinable, is fixed; and the power of the thing is\non the hither side for good, and on the farther side for evil. And in\nall cases this power is inherent, not dependent on opinion or choice.\nOur thoughts of things neither make, nor mar their eternal force;\nnor--which is the most serious point for future consideration--can they\nprevent the effect of it (within certain limits) upon ourselves.\n\n33. Therefore, the object of any special analysis of wealth will be not\nso much to enumerate what is serviceable, as to distinguish what is\ndestructive; and to show that it is inevitably destructive; that to\nreceive pleasure from an evil thing is not to escape from, or alter the\nevil of it, but to be _altered by_ it; that is, to suffer from it to the\nutmost, having our own nature, in that degree, made evil also. And it\nmay be shown farther, that, through whatever length of time or\nsubtleties of connexion the harm is accomplished, (being also less or\nmore according to the fineness and worth of the humanity on which it is\nwrought), still, nothing _but_ harm ever comes of a bad thing.\n\n34. So that, in sum, the term wealth is never to be attached to the\n_accidental object of a morbid_ desire, but only to the _constant object\nof a legitimate one_.[14] By the fury of ignorance, and fitfulness of\ncaprice, large interests may be continually attached to things\nunserviceable or hurtful; if their nature could be altered by our\npassions, the science of Political Economy would remain, what it has\nbeen hitherto among us, the weighing of clouds, and the portioning out\nof shadows. But of ignorance there is no science; and of caprice no law.\nTheir disturbing forces interfere with the operations of faithful\nEconomy, but have nothing in common with them: she, the calm arbiter of\nnational destiny, regards only essential power for good in all that she\naccumulates, and alike disdains the wanderings[15] of imagination, and\nthe thirsts of disease.\n\n35. II. Secondly. The assertion that wealth is not _only_ intrinsic, but\ndependent, in order to become effectual, on a given degree of vital\npower in its possessor, is opposed to another popular view of\nwealth;--namely, that though it may always be constituted by caprice, it\nis, when so constituted, a substantial thing, of which given quantities\nmay be counted as existing here, or there, and exchangeable at rated\nprices.\n\nIn this view there are three errors. The first and chief is the\noverlooking the fact that all exchangeableness of commodity, or\neffective demand for it, depends on the sum of capacity for its use\nexisting, here or elsewhere. The book we cannot read, or picture we take\nno delight in, may indeed be called part of our wealth, in so far as we\nhave power of exchanging either for something we like better. But our\npower of effecting such exchange, and yet more, of effecting it to\nadvantage, depends absolutely on the number of accessible persons who\ncan understand the book, or enjoy the painting, and who will dispute the\npossession of them. Thus the actual worth of either, even to us, depends\nno more on their essential goodness than on the capacity existing\nsomewhere for the perception of it; and it is vain in any completed\nsystem of production to think of obtaining one without the other. So\nthat, though the true political economist knows that co-existence of\ncapacity for use with temporary possession cannot be always secured, the\nfinal fact, on which he bases all action and administration, is that, in\nthe whole nation, or group of nations, he has to deal with, for every\natom of intrinsic value produced he must with exactest chemistry produce\nits twin atom of acceptant digestion, or understanding capacity; or, in\nthe degree of his failure, he has no wealth. Nature's challenge to us\nis, in earnest, as the Assyrians mock; \"I will give thee two thousand\nhorses, if thou be able on thy part to set riders upon them.\" Bavieca's\npaces are brave, if the Cid backs him; but woe to us, if we take the\ndust of capacity, wearing the armour of it, for capacity itself, for so\nall procession, however goodly in the show of it, is to the tomb.\n\n36. The second error in this popular view of wealth is, that in giving\nthe name of wealth to things which we cannot use, we in reality confuse\nwealth with money. The land we have no skill to cultivate, the book\nwhich is sealed to us, or dress which is superfluous, may indeed be\nexchangeable, but as such are nothing more than a cumbrous form of\nbank-note, of doubtful or slow convertibility. As long as we retain\npossession of them, we merely keep our bank-notes in the shape of gravel\nor clay, of book-leaves, or of embroidered tissue. Circumstances may,\nperhaps, render such forms the safest, or a certain complacency may\nattach to the exhibition of them; into both these advantages we shall\ninquire afterwards; I wish the reader only to observe here, that\nexchangeable property which we cannot use is, to us personally, merely\none of the forms of money, not of wealth.\n\n37. The third error in the popular view is the confusion of Guardianship\nwith Possession; the real state of men of property being, too commonly,\nthat of curators, not possessors, of wealth.\n\nA man's power over his property is at the widest range of it, fivefold;\nit is power of Use, for himself, Administration, to others, Ostentation,\nDestruction, or Bequest: and possession is in use only, which for each\nman is sternly limited; so that such things, and so much of them as he\ncan use, are, indeed, well for him, or Wealth; and more of them, or any\nother things, are ill for him, or Illth.[16] Plunged to the lips in\nOrinoco, he shall drink to his thirst measure; more, at his peril: with\na thousand oxen on his lands, he shall eat to his hunger measure; more,\nat his peril. He cannot live in two houses at once; a few bales of silk\nor wool will suffice for the fabric of all the clothes he can ever wear,\nand a few books will probably hold all the furniture good for his brain.\nBeyond these, in the best of us but narrow, capacities, we have but the\npower of administering, or _mal_-administering, wealth: (that is to say,\ndistributing, lending, or increasing it);--of exhibiting it (as in\nmagnificence of retinue or furniture),--of destroying, or, finally, of\nbequeathing it. And with multitudes of rich men, administration\ndegenerates into curatorship; they merely hold their property in charge,\nas Trustees, for the benefit of some person or persons to whom it is to\nbe delivered upon their death; and the position, explained in clear\nterms, would hardly seem a covetable one. What would be the probable\nfeelings of a youth, on his entrance into life, to whom the career hoped\nfor him was proposed in terms such as these: \"You must work\nunremittingly, and with your utmost intelligence, during all your\navailable years, you will thus accumulate wealth to a large amount; but\nyou must touch none of it, beyond what is needful for your support.\nWhatever sums you gain, beyond those required for your decent and\nmoderate maintenance, and whatever beautiful things you may obtain\npossession of, shall be properly taken care of by servants, for whose\nmaintenance you will be charged, and whom you will have the trouble of\nsuperintending, and on your deathbed you shall have the power of\ndetermining to whom the accumulated property shall belong, or to what\npurposes be applied.\"\n\n38. The labour of life, under such conditions, would probably be neither\nzealous nor cheerful; yet the only difference between this position and\nthat of the ordinary capitalist is the power which the latter supposes\nhimself to possess, and which is attributed to him by others, of\nspending his money at any moment. This pleasure, taken _in the\nimagination of power to part with that with which we have no intention\nof parting_, is one of the most curious, though commonest forms of the\nEidolon, or Phantasm of Wealth. But the political economist has nothing\nto do with this idealism, and looks only to the practical issue of\nit--namely, that the holder of wealth, in such temper, may be regarded\nsimply as a mechanical means of collection; or as a money-chest with a\nslit in it, not only receptant but suctional, set in the public\nthoroughfare;--chest of which only Death has the key, and evil Chance\nthe distribution of the contents. In his function of Lender (which,\nhowever, is one of administration, not use, as far as he is himself\nconcerned), the capitalist takes, indeed, a more interesting aspect; but\neven in that function, his relations with the state are apt to\ndegenerate into a mechanism for the convenient contraction of debt;--a\nfunction the more mischievous, because a nation invariably appeases its\nconscience with respect to an unjustifiable expense, by meeting it with\nborrowed funds, expresses its repentance of a foolish piece of business,\nby letting its tradesmen wait for their money, and always leaves its\ndescendants to pay for the work which will be of the least advantage to\nthem.[17]\n\n39. Quit of these three sources of misconception, the reader will have\nlittle farther difficulty in apprehending the real nature of Effectual\nvalue. He may, however, at first not without surprise, perceive the\nconsequences involved in his acceptance of the definition. For if the\nactual existence of wealth be dependent on the power of its possessor,\nit follows that the sum of wealth held by the nation, instead of being\nconstant, or calculable, varies hourly, nay, momentarily, with the\nnumber and character of its holders! and that in changing hands, it\nchanges in quantity. And farther, since the worth of the currency is\nproportioned to the sum of material wealth which it represents, if the\nsum of the wealth changes, the worth of the currency changes. And thus\nboth the sum of the property, and power of the currency, of the state,\nvary momentarily as the character and number of the holders. And not\nonly so, but different rates and kinds of variation are caused by the\ncharacter of the holders of different kinds of wealth. The transitions\nof value caused by the character of the holders of land differ in mode\nfrom those caused by character in holders of works of art; and these\nagain from those caused by character in holders of machinery or other\nworking capital. But we cannot examine these special phenomena of any\nkind of wealth until we have a clear idea of the way in which true\ncurrency expresses them; and of the resulting modes in which the cost\nand price of any article are related to its value. To obtain this we\nmust approach the subject in its first elements.\n\n40. Let us suppose a national store of wealth, composed of material\nthings either useful, or believed to be so, taken charge of by the\nGovernment,[18] and that every workman, having produced any article\ninvolving labour in its production, and for which he has no immediate\nuse, brings it to add to this store, receiving from the Government, in\nexchange, an order either for the return of the thing itself, or of its\nequivalent in other things, such as he may choose out of the store, at\nany time when he needs them. The question of equivalence itself (how\nmuch wine a man is to receive in return for so much corn, or how much\ncoal in return for so much iron) is a quite separate one, which we will\nexamine presently. For the time, let it be assumed that this equivalence\nhas been determined, and that the Government order, in exchange for a\nfixed weight of any article (called, suppose _a_), is either for the\nreturn of that weight of the article itself, or of another fixed weight\nof the article _b_, or another of the article _c_, and so on.\n\nNow, supposing that the labourer speedily and continually presents these\ngeneral orders, or, in common language, \"spends the money,\" he has\nneither changed the circumstances of the nation, nor his own, except in\nso far as he may have produced useful and consumed useless articles, or\n_vice versa_. But if he does not use, or uses in part only, the orders\nhe receives, and lays aside some portion of them; and thus every day\nbringing his contribution to the national store, lays by some\nper-centage of the orders received in exchange for it, he increases the\nnational wealth daily by as much as he does not use of the received\norder, and to the same amount accumulates a monetary claim on the\nGovernment. It is, of course, always in his power, as it is his legal\nright, to bring forward this accumulation of claim, and at once to\nconsume, destroy, or distribute, the sum of his wealth. Supposing he\nnever does so, but dies, leaving his claim to others, he has enriched\nthe State during his life by the quantity of wealth over which that\nclaim extends, or has, in other words, rendered so much additional life\npossible in the State, of which additional life he bequeaths the\nimmediate possibility to those whom he invests with his claim. Supposing\nhim to cancel the claim, he would distribute this possibility of life\namong the nation at large.\n\n41. We hitherto consider the Government itself as simply a conservative\npower, taking charge of the wealth entrusted to it.\n\nBut a Government may be more or less than a conservative power. It may\nbe either an improving, or destructive one.\n\nIf it be an improving power, using all the wealth entrusted to it to the\nbest advantage, the nation is enriched in root and branch at once, and\nthe Government is enabled, for every order presented, to return a\nquantity of wealth greater than the order was written for, according to\nthe fructification obtained in the interim. This ability may be either\nconcealed, in which case the currency does not completely represent the\nwealth of the country, or it may be manifested by the continual payment\nof the excess of value on each order, in which case there is\n(irrespectively, observe, of collateral results afterwards to be\nexamined) a perpetual rise in the worth of the currency, that is to say,\na fall in the price of all articles represented by it.\n\n42. But if the Government be destructive, or a consuming power, it\nbecomes unable to return the value received on the presentation of the\norder.\n\nThis inability may either be concealed by meeting demands to the full,\nuntil it issue in bankruptcy, or in some form of national debt;--or it\nmay be concealed during oscillatory movements between destructiveness\nand productiveness, which result on the whole in stability;--or it may\nbe manifested by the consistent return of less than value received on\neach presented order, in which case there is a consistent fall in the\nworth of the currency, or rise in the price of the things represented by\nit.\n\n43. Now, if for this conception of a central Government, we substitute\nthat of a body of persons occupied in industrial pursuits, of whom each\nadds in his private capacity to the common store, we at once obtain an\napproximation to the actual condition of a civilized mercantile\ncommunity, from which approximation we might easily proceed into still\ncompleter analysis. I purpose, however, to arrive at every result by the\ngradual expansion of the simpler conception; but I wish the reader to\nobserve, in the meantime, that both the social conditions thus supposed\n(and I will by anticipation say also, all possible social conditions),\nagree in two great points; namely, in the primal importance of the\nsupposed national store or stock, and in its destructibility or\nimproveability by the holders of it.\n\n44. I. Observe that in both conditions, that of central\nGovernment-holding, and diffused private-holding, the quantity of stock\nis of the same national moment. In the one case, indeed, its amount may\nbe known by examination of the persons to whom it is confided; in the\nother it cannot be known but by exposing the private affairs of every\nindividual. But, known or unknown, its significance is the same under\neach condition. The riches of the nation consist in the abundance, and\ntheir wealth depends on the nature, of this store.\n\n45. II. In the second place, both conditions, (and all other possible\nones) agree in the destructibility or improveability of the store by its\nholders. Whether in private hands, or under Government charge, the\nnational store may be daily consumed, or daily enlarged, by its\npossessors; and while the currency remains apparently unaltered, the\nproperty it represents may diminish or increase.\n\n46. The first question, then, which we have to put under our simple\nconception of central Government, namely, \"What store has it?\" is one of\nequal importance, whatever may be the constitution of the State; while\nthe second question--namely, \"Who are the holders of the store?\"\ninvolves the discussion of the constitution of the State itself.\n\nThe first inquiry resolves itself into three heads:\n\n1. What is the nature of the store?\n\n2. What is its quantity in relation to the population?\n\n3. What is its quantity in relation to the currency?\n\nThe second inquiry into two:\n\n1. Who are the Holders of the store, and in what proportions?\n\n2. Who are the Claimants of the store, (that is to say, the holders of\nthe currency,) and in what proportions?\n\nWe will examine the range of the first three questions in the present\npaper; of the two following, in the sequel.\n\n47. I. QUESTION FIRST. What is the nature of the store? Has the nation\nhitherto worked for and gathered the right thing or the wrong? On that\nissue rest the possibilities of its life.\n\nFor example, let us imagine a society, of no great extent, occupied in\nprocuring and laying up store of corn, wine, wool, silk, and other such\npreservable materials of food and clothing; and that it has a currency\nrepresenting them. Imagine farther, that on days of festivity, the\nsociety, discovering itself to derive satisfaction from pyrotechnics,\ngradually turns its attention more and more to the manufacture of\ngunpowder; so that an increasing number of labourers, giving what time\nthey can spare to this branch of industry, bring increasing quantities\nof combustibles into the store, and use the general orders received in\nexchange to obtain such wine, wool, or corn, as they may have need of.\nThe currency remains the same, and represents precisely the same amount\nof material in the store, and of labour spent in producing it. But the\ncorn and wine gradually vanish, and in their place, as gradually, appear\nsulphur and saltpetre, till at last the labourers who have consumed corn\nand supplied nitre, presenting on a festal morning some of their\ncurrency to obtain materials for the feast, discover that no amount of\ncurrency will command anything Festive, except Fire. The supply of\nrockets is unlimited, but that of food, limited, in a quite final\nmanner; and the whole currency in the hands of the society represents an\ninfinite power of detonation, but none of existence.\n\n48. This statement, caricatured as it may seem, is only exaggerated in\nassuming the persistence of the folly to extremity, unchecked, as in\nreality it would be, by the gradual rise in price of food. But it falls\nshort of the actual facts of human life in expression of the depth and\nintensity of the folly itself. For a great part (the reader would not\nbelieve how great until he saw the statistics in detail) of the most\nearnest and ingenious industry of the world is spent in producing\nmunitions of war; gathering, that is to say the materials, not of\nfestive, but of consuming fire; filling its stores with all power of the\ninstruments of pain, and all affluence of the ministries of death. It\nwas no true _Trionfo della Morte_[19] which men have seen and feared\n(sometimes scarcely feared) so long; wherein he brought them rest from\ntheir labours. We see, and share, another and higher form of his triumph\nnow. Task-master, instead of Releaser, he rules the dust of the arena no\nless than of the tomb; and, content once in the grave whither man went,\nto make his works to cease and his devices to vanish,--now, in the busy\ncity and on the serviceable sea, makes his work to increase, and his\ndevices to multiply.\n\n49. To this doubled loss, or negative power of labour, spent in\nproducing means of destruction, we have to add, in our estimate of the\nconsequences of human folly, whatever more insidious waste of toil there\nis in production of unnecessary luxury. Such and such an occupation (it\nis said) supports so many labourers, because so many obtain wages in\nfollowing it; but it is never considered that unless there be a\nsupporting power in the product of the occupation, the wages given to\none man are merely withdrawn from another. We cannot say of any trade\nthat it maintains such and such a number of persons, unless we know how\nand where the money, now spent in the purchase of its produce, would\nhave been spent, if that produce had not been manufactured. The\npurchasing funds truly support a number of people in making This; but\n(probably) leave unsupported an equal number who are making, or could\nhave made That. The manufacturers of small watches thrive at Geneva;--it\nis well;--but where would the money spent on small watches have gone,\nhad there been no small watches to buy?\n\n50. If the so frequently uttered aphorism of mercantile economy--\"labour\nis limited by capital,\" were true, this question would be a definite\none. But it is untrue; and that widely. Out of a given quantity of funds\nfor wages, more or less labour is to be had, according to the quantity\nof will with which we can inspire the workman; and the true limit of\nlabour is only in the limit of this moral stimulus of the will, and of\nthe bodily power. In an ultimate, but entirely unpractical sense, labour\nis limited by capital, as it is by matter--that is to say, where there\nis no material, there can be no work,--but in the practical sense,\nlabour is limited only by the great original capital of head, heart, and\nhand. Even in the most artificial relations of commerce, labour is to\ncapital as fire to fuel: out of so much fuel, you _can_ have only so\nmuch fire; but out of so much fuel, you _shall_ have so much fire,--not\nin proportion to the mass of combustible, but to the force of wind that\nfans and water that quenches; and the appliance of both. And labour is\nfurthered, as conflagration is, not so much by added fuel, as by\nadmitted air.[20]\n\n51. For which reasons, I had to insert, in Sec. 49, the qualifying\n\"probably;\" for it can never be said positively that the purchase-money,\nor wages fund of any trade is withdrawn from some other trade. The\nobject itself may be the stimulus of the production of the money which\nbuys it; that is to say, the work by which the purchaser obtained the\nmeans of buying it, would not have been done by him unless he had wanted\nthat particular thing. And the production of any article not\nintrinsically (nor in the process of manufacture) injurious, is useful,\nif the desire of it causes productive labour in other directions.\n\n52. In the national store, therefore, the presence of things\nintrinsically valueless does not imply an entirely correlative absence\nof things valuable. We cannot be certain that all the labour spent on\nvanity has been diverted from reality, and that for every bad thing\nproduced, a precious thing has been lost. In great measure, the vain\nthings represent the results of roused indolence; they have been carved,\nas toys, in extra time; and, if they had not been made, nothing else\nwould have been made. Even to munitions of war this principle applies;\nthey partly represent the work of men who, if they had not made spears,\nwould never have made pruning hooks, and who are incapable of any\nactivities but those of contest.\n\n53. Thus then, finally, the nature of the store has to be considered\nunder two main lights; the one, that of its immediate and actual\nutility; the other, that of the past national character which it\nsignifies by its production, and future character which it must develop\nby its use. And the issue of this investigation will be to show us that.\n\nEconomy does not depend merely on principles of \"demand and supply,\" but\nprimarily on what is demanded, and what is supplied; which I will beg of\nyou to observe, and take to heart.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n54. II. QUESTION SECOND.--What is the quantity of the store, in relation\nto the population?\n\nIt follows from what has been already stated that the accurate form in\nwhich this question has to be put is--\"What quantity of each article\ncomposing the store exists in proportion to the real need for it by the\npopulation?\" But we shall for the time assume, in order to keep all our\nterms at the simplest, that the store is wholly composed of useful\narticles, and accurately proportioned to the several needs for them.\n\nNow it cannot be assumed, because the store is large in proportion to\nthe number of the people, that the people must be in comfort; nor\nbecause it is small, that they must be in distress. An active and\neconomical race always produces more than it requires, and lives (if it\nis permitted to do so) in competence on the produce of its daily labour.\nThe quantity of its store, great or small, is therefore in many respects\nindifferent to it, and cannot be inferred from its aspect. Similarly an\ninactive and wasteful population, which cannot live by its daily labour,\nbut is dependent, partly or wholly, on consumption of its store, may be\n(by various difficulties, hereafter to be examined, in realizing or\ngetting at such store) retained in a state of abject distress, though\nits possessions may be immense. But the results always involved in the\nmagnitude of store are, the commercial power of the nation, its\nsecurity, and its mental character. Its commercial power, in that\naccording to the quantity of its store, may be the extent of its\ndealings; its security, in that according to the quantity of its store\nare its means of sudden exertion or sustained endurance; and its\ncharacter, in that certain conditions of civilization cannot be attained\nwithout permanent and continually accumulating store, of great intrinsic\nvalue, and of peculiar nature.[21]\n\n55. Now, seeing that these three advantages arise from largeness of\nstore in proportion to population, the question arises immediately,\n\"Given the store--is the nation enriched by diminution of its numbers?\nAre a successful national speculation, and a pestilence, economically\nthe same thing?\"\n\nThis is in part a sophistical question; such as it would be to ask\nwhether a man was richer when struck by disease which must limit his\nlife within a predicable period, than he was when in health. He is\nenabled to enlarge his current expenses, and has for all purposes a\nlarger sum at his immediate disposal (for, given the fortune, the\nshorter the life, the larger the annuity); yet no man considers himself\nricher because he is condemned by his physician.\n\n56. The logical reply is that, since Wealth is by definition only the\nmeans of life, a nation cannot be enriched by its own mortality. Or in\nshorter words, the life is more than the meat; and existence itself,\nmore wealth than the means of existence. Whence, of two nations who have\nequal store, the more numerous is to be considered the richer, provided\nthe type of the inhabitant be as high (for, though the relative bulk of\ntheir store be less, its relative efficiency, or the amount of effectual\nwealth, must be greater). But if the type of the population be\ndeteriorated by increase of its numbers, we have evidence of poverty in\nits worst influence; and then, to determine whether the nation in its\ntotal may still be justifiably esteemed rich, we must set or weigh, the\nnumber of the poor against that of the rich.\n\nTo effect which piece of scale-work, it is of course necessary to\ndetermine, first, who are poor and who are rich; nor this only, but also\nhow poor and how rich they are. Which will prove a curious\nthermometrical investigation; for we shall have to do for gold and for\nsilver, what we have done for quicksilver;--determine, namely, their\nfreezing-point, their zero, their temperate and fever-heat points;\nfinally, their vaporescent point, at which riches, sometimes\nexplosively, as lately in America, \"make to themselves wings:\"--and\ncorrespondently, the number of degrees _below_ zero at which poverty,\nceasing to brace with any wholesome cold, burns to the bone.[22]\n\n57. For the performance of these operations, in the strictest sense\nscientific, we will first look to the existing so-called \"science\" of\nPolitical Economy; we will ask it to define for us the comparatively and\nsuperlatively rich, and the comparatively and superlatively poor; and on\nits own terms--if any terms it can pronounce--examine, in our prosperous\nEngland, how many rich and how many poor people there are; and whether\nthe quantity and intensity of the poverty is indeed so overbalanced by\nthe quantity and intensity of wealth, that we may permit ourselves a\nluxurious blindness to it, and call ourselves, complacently, a rich\ncountry. And if we find no clear definition in the existing science, we\nwill endeavour for ourselves to fix the true degrees of the scale, and\nto apply them.[23]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n58. QUESTION THIRD. What is the quantity of the store in relation to the\nCurrency?\n\nWe have seen that the real worth of the currency, so far as dependent on\nits relation to the magnitude of the store, may vary, within certain\nlimits, without affecting its worth in exchange. The diminution or\nincrease of the represented wealth may be unperceived, and the currency\nmay be taken either for more or less than it is truly worth. Usually it\nis taken for much more; and its power in exchange, or credit-power, is\nthus increased up to a given strain upon its relation to existing\nwealth. This credit-power is of chief importance in the thoughts,\nbecause most sharply present to the experience, of a mercantile\ncommunity: but the conditions of its stability[24] and all other\nrelations of the currency to the material store are entirely simple in\nprinciple, if not in action. Far other than simple are the relations of\nthe currency to the available labour which it also represents. For this\nrelation is involved not only with that of the magnitude of the store to\nthe number, but with that of the magnitude of the store to the mind, of\nthe population. Its proportion to their number, and the resulting worth\nof currency, are calculable; but its proportion to their will for labour\nis not. The worth of the piece of money which claims a given quantity of\nthe store is, in exchange, less or greater according to the facility of\nobtaining the same quantity of the same thing without having recourse to\nthe store. In other words it depends on the immediate Cost and Price of\nthe thing. We must now, therefore, complete the definition of these\nterms.\n\n59. All cost and price are counted in Labour. We must know first,\ntherefore, what is to be counted _as_ Labour.\n\nI have already defined labour to be the Contest of the life of man with\nan opposite. Literally, it is the quantity of \"Lapse,\" loss, or failure\nof human life, caused by any effort. It is usually confused with effort\nitself, or the application of power (opera); but there is much effort\nwhich is merely a mode of recreation, or of pleasure. The most beautiful\nactions of the human body, and the highest results of the human\nintelligence, are conditions, or achievements, of quite\nunlaborious,--nay, of recreative,--effort. But labour is the _suffering_\nin effort. It is the negative quantity, or quantity of de-feat, which\nhas to be counted against every Feat, and of de-fect which has to be\ncounted against every Fact, or Deed of men. In brief, it is \"that\nquantity of our toil which we die in.\"\n\nWe might, therefore, _a priori_, conjecture (as we shall ultimately\nfind), that it cannot be bought, nor sold. Everything else is bought and\nsold for Labour, but labour itself cannot be bought nor sold for\nanything, being priceless.[25] The idea that it is a commodity to be\nbought or sold, is the alpha and omega of Politico-Economic fallacy.\n\n60. This being the nature of labour, the \"Cost\" of anything is the\nquantity of labour necessary to obtain it;--the quantity for which, or\nat which, it \"stands\" (constant). It is literally the \"Constancy\" of the\nthing;--you shall win it--move it--come at it, for no less than this.\n\nCost is measured and measurable (using the accurate Latin terms) only in\n\"labour,\" not in \"opera.\"[26] It does not matter how much _work_ a thing\nneeds to produce it; it matters only how much _distress_. Generally the\nmore the power it requires, the less the distress; so that the noblest\nworks of man cost less than the meanest.\n\nTrue labour, or spending of life, is either of the body, in fatigue or\npain; of the temper or heart (as in perseverance of search for\nthings,--patience in waiting for them,--fortitude or degradation in\nsuffering for them, and the like), or of the intellect. All these kinds\nof labour are supposed to be included in the general term, and the\nquantity of labour is then expressed by the time it lasts. So that a\nunit of labour is \"an hour's work\" or a day's work, as we may\ndetermine.[27]\n\n61. Cost, like value, is both intrinsic and effectual. Intrinsic cost is\nthat of getting the thing in the right way; effectual cost is that of\ngetting the thing in the way we set about it. But intrinsic cost cannot\nbe made a subject of analytical investigation, being only partially\ndiscoverable, and that by long experience. Effectual cost is all that\nthe political Economist can deal with; that is to say, the cost of the\nthing under existing circumstances, and by known processes.\n\nCost, being dependent much on application of method, varies with the\nquantity of the thing wanted, and with the number of persons who work\nfor it. It is easy to get a little of some things, but difficult to get\nmuch; it is impossible to get some things with few hands, but easy to\nget them with many.\n\n62. The cost and value of things, however difficult to determine\naccurately, are thus both dependent on ascertainable physical\ncircumstances.[28]\n\nBut their _price_ is dependent on the human will.\n\nSuch and such a thing is demonstrably good for so much. And it may\ndemonstrably be had for so much.\n\nBut it remains questionable, and in all manner of ways questionable,\nwhether I choose to give so much.[29]\n\nThis choice is always a relative one. It is a choice to give a price for\nthis, rather than for that;--a resolution to have the thing, if getting\nit does not involve the loss of a better thing. Price depends,\ntherefore, not only on the cost of the commodity itself, but on its\nrelation to the cost of every other attainable thing.\n\nFarther. The _power_ of choice is also a relative one. It depends not\nmerely on our own estimate of the thing, but on everybody else's\nestimate; therefore on the number and force of the will of the\nconcurrent buyers, and on the existing quantity of the thing in\nproportion to that number and force.\n\nHence the price of anything depends on four variables.\n\n(1.) Its cost.\n\n(2.) Its attainable quantity at that cost.\n\n(3.) The number and power of the persons who want it.\n\n(4.) The estimate they have formed of its desirableness.\n\nIts value only affects its price so far as it is contemplated in this\nestimate; perhaps, therefore, not at all.\n\n63. Now, in order to show the manner in which price is expressed in\nterms of a currency, we must assume these four quantities to be known,\nand the \"estimate of desirableness,\" commonly called the Demand, to be\ncertain. We will take the number of persons at the lowest. Let A and B\nbe two labourers who \"demand,\" that is to say, have resolved to labour\nfor, two articles, _a_ and _b_. Their demand for these articles (if the\nreader likes better, he may say their need) is to be conceived as\nabsolute, their existence depending on the getting these two things.\nSuppose, for instance, that they are bread and fuel, in a cold country,\nand let a represent the least quantity of bread, and _b_ the least\nquantity of fuel, which will support a man's life for a day. Let _a_ be\nproducible by an hour's labour, but _b_ only by two hours' labour.\n\nThen the _cost of a_ is one hour, and of _b_ two (cost, by our\ndefinition, being expressible in terms of time). If, therefore, each man\nworked both for his corn and fuel, each would have to work three hours a\nday. But they divide the labour for its greater ease.[30] Then if A\nworks three hours, he produces 3 _a_, which is one a more than both the\nmen want. And if B works three hours, he produces only 1-1/2 _b_, or\nhalf of _b_ less than both want. But if A work three hours and B six, A\nhas 3 _a_, and B has 3 _b_, a maintenance in the right proportion for\nboth for a day and half; so that each might take half a day's rest. But\nas B has worked double time, the whole of this day's rest belongs in\nequity to him. Therefore the just exchange should be, A giving two _a_\nfor one _b_, has one _a_ and one _b_;--maintenance for a day. B giving\none _b_ for two _a_, has two _a_ and two _b_; maintenance for two days.\n\nBut B cannot rest on the second day, or A would be left without the\narticle which B produces. Nor is there any means of making the exchange\njust, unless a third labourer is called in. Then one workman, A,\nproduces _a_, and two, B and C, produce _b_:--A, working three hours,\nhas three _a_;--B, three hours, 1-1/2 _b_;--C, three hours, 1-1/2 _b_. B\nand C each give half of _b_ for _a_, and all have their equal daily\nmaintenance for equal daily work.\n\nTo carry the example a single step farther, let three articles, _a_,\n_b_, and _c_ be needed.\n\nLet _a_ need one hour's work, _b_ two, and _c_ four; then the day's work\nmust be seven hours, and one man in a day's work can make 7 _a_, or\n3-1/2 _b_, or 1-3/4 _c_.\n\nTherefore one A works for _a_, producing 7 _a_; two B's work for _b_,\nproducing 7 _b_; four C's work for _c_, producing 7 _c_.\n\nA has six _a_ to spare, and gives two _a_ for one _b_, and four _a_ for\none _c_. Each B has 2-1/2 _b_ to spare, and gives 1/2 _b_ for one _a_,\nand two _b_ for one _c_.\n\nEach C has 3/4 of _c_ to spare, and gives 1/2 _c_ for one _b_, and 1/4\nof _c_ for one _a_.\n\nAnd all have their day's maintenance.\n\nGenerally, therefore, it follows that if the demand is constant,[31] the\nrelative prices of things are as their costs, or as the quantities of\nlabour involved in production.\n\n64. Then, in order to express their prices in terms of a currency, we\nhave only to put the currency into the form of orders for a certain\nquantity of any given article (with us it is in the form of orders for\ngold), and all quantities of other articles are priced by the relation\nthey bear to the article which the currency claims.\n\nBut the worth of the currency itself is not in the slightest degree\nfounded more on the worth of the article which it either claims or\nconsists in (as gold) than on the worth of every other article for which\nthe gold is exchangeable. It is just as accurate to say, \"so many pounds\nare worth an acre of land,\" as \"an acre of land is worth so many\npounds.\" The worth of gold, of land, of houses, and of food, and of all\nother things, depends at any moment on the existing quantities and\nrelative demands for all and each; and a change in the worth of, or\ndemand for, any one, involves an instantaneously correspondent change in\nthe worth of, and demand for, all the rest;--a change as inevitable and\nas accurately balanced (though often in its process as untraceable) as\nthe change in volume of the outflowing river from some vast lake, caused\nby change in the volume of the inflowing streams, though no eye can\ntrace, nor instrument detect, motion, either on its surface, or in the\ndepth.\n\n65. Thus, then, the real working power or worth of the currency is\nfounded on the entire sum of the relative estimates formed by the\npopulation of its possessions; a change in this estimate in any\ndirection (and therefore every change in the national character),\ninstantly alters the value of money, in its second great function of\ncommanding labour. But we must always carefully and sternly distinguish\nbetween this worth of currency, dependent on the conceived or\nappreciated value of what it represents, and the worth of it, dependent\non the _existence_ of what it represents. A currency is _true, or\nfalse_, in proportion to the security with which it gives claim to the\npossession of land, house, horse, or picture; but a currency is _strong\nor weak_,[32] worth much, or worth little, in proportion to the degree\nof estimate in which the nation holds the house, horse, or picture which\nis claimed. Thus the power of the English currency has been, till of\nlate, largely based on the national estimate of horses and of wine: so\nthat a man might always give any price to furnish choicely his stable,\nor his cellar; and receive public approval therefor: but if he gave the\nsame sum to furnish his library, he was called mad or a biblio-maniac.\nAnd although he might lose his fortune by his horses, and his health or\nlife by his cellar, and rarely lost either by his books, he was yet\nnever called a Hippo-maniac nor an Oino-maniac; but only Biblio-maniac,\nbecause the current worth of money was understood to be legitimately\nfounded on cattle and wine, but not on literature. The prices lately\ngiven at sales for pictures and MSS. indicate some tendency to change in\nthe national character in this respect, so that the worth of the\ncurrency may even come in time to rest, in an acknowledged manner,\nsomewhat on the state and keeping of the Bedford missal, as well as on\nthe health of Caractacus or Blink Bonny; and old pictures be considered\nproperty, no less than old port. They might have been so before now, but\nthat it is more difficult to choose the one than the other.\n\n66. Now, observe, all these sources of variation in the power of the\ncurrency exist, wholly irrespective of the influences of vice,\nindolence, and improvidence. We have hitherto supposed, throughout the\nanalysis, every professing labourer to labour honestly, heartily, and in\nharmony with his fellows. We have now to bring farther into the\ncalculation the effects of relative industry, honour, and forethought;\nand thus to follow out the bearings of our second inquiry: Who are the\nholders of the Store and Currency, and in what proportions?\n\nThis, however, we must reserve for our next paper--noticing here only\nthat, however distinct the several branches of the subject are,\nradically, they are so interwoven in their issues that we cannot rightly\ntreat any one, till we have taken cognizance of all. Thus the need of\nthe currency in proportion to number of population is materially\ninfluenced by the probable number of the holders in proportion to the\nnon-holders; and this again, by the number of holders of goods, or\nwealth, in proportion to the non-holders of goods. For as, by\ndefinition, the currency is a claim to goods which are not possessed,\nits quantity indicates the number of claimants in proportion to the\nnumber of holders; and the force and complexity of claim. For if the\nclaims be not complex, currency as a means of exchange may be very small\nin quantity. A sells some corn to B, receiving a promise from B to pay\nin cattle, which A then hands over to C, to get some wine. C in due time\nclaims the cattle from B; and B takes back his promise. These exchanges\nhave, or might have been, all effected with a single coin or promise;\nand the proportion of the currency to the store would in such\ncircumstances indicate only the circulating vitality of it--that is to\nsay, the quantity and convenient divisibility of that part of the store\nwhich the _habits_ of the nation keep in circulation. If a cattle\nbreeder is content to live with his household chiefly on meat and milk,\nand does not want rich furniture, or jewels, or books--if a wine and\ncorn grower maintains himself and his men chiefly on grapes and\nbread;--if the wives and daughters of families weave and spin the\nclothing of the household, and the nation, as a whole, remains content\nwith the produce of its own soil and the work of its own hands, it has\nlittle occasion for circulating media. It pledges and promises little\nand seldom; exchanges only so far as exchange is necessary for life. The\nstore belongs to the people in whose hands it is found, and money is\nlittle needed either as an expression of right, or practical means of\ndivision and exchange.\n\n67. But in proportion as the habits of the nation become complex and\nfantastic (and they may be both, without therefore being civilized), its\ncirculating medium must increase in proportion to its store. If every\none wants a little of everything,--if food must be of many kinds, and\ndress of many fashions,--if multitudes live by work which, ministering\nto fancy, has its pay measured by fancy, so that large prices will be\ngiven by one person for what is valueless to another,--if there are\ngreat inequalities of knowledge, causing great inequalities of\nestimate,--and, finally, and worst of all, if the currency itself, from\nits largeness, and the power which the possession of it implies, becomes\nthe sole object of desire with large numbers of the nation, so that the\nholding of it is disputed among them as the main object of life:--in\neach and all of these cases, the currency necessarily enlarges in\nproportion to the store; and as a means of exchange and division, as a\nbond of right, and as an object of passion, has a more and more\nimportant and malignant power over the nation's dealings, character, and\nlife.\n\nAgainst which power, when, as a bond of Right, it becomes too\nconspicuous and too burdensome, the popular voice is apt to be raised in\na violent and irrational manner, leading to revolution instead of\nremedy. Whereas all possibility of Economy depends on the clear\nassertion and maintenance of this bond of right, however burdensome. The\nfirst necessity of all economical government is to secure the\nunquestioned and unquestionable working of the great law of\nProperty--that a man who works for a thing shall be allowed to get it,\nkeep it, and consume it, in peace; and that he who does not eat his cake\nto-day, shall be seen, without grudging, to have his cake to-morrow.\nThis, I say, is the first point to be secured by social law; without\nthis, no political advance, nay, no political existence, is in any sort\npossible. Whatever evil, luxury, iniquity, may seem to result from it,\nthis is nevertheless the first of all Equities; and to the enforcement\nof this, by law and by police-truncheon, the nation must always\nprimarily set its mind--that the cupboard door may have a firm lock to\nit, and no man's dinner be carried off by the mob, on its way home from\nthe baker's. Which, thus fearlessly asserting, we shall endeavour in\nnext paper to consider how far it may be practicable for the mob itself,\nalso, in due breadth of dish, to have dinners to carry home.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[14] Remember carefully this statement, that Wealth consists only in the\nthings which the nature of humanity has rendered in all ages, and must\nrender in all ages to come, (that is what I meant by \"constant\") the\nobjects of legitimate desire. And see Appendix II.\n\n[15] The _Wanderings_, observe, not the Right goings, of Imagination.\nShe is very far from despising these.\n\n[16] _See_ Appendix III.\n\n[17] I would beg the reader's very close attention to these 37th and\n38th paragraphs. It would be well if a dogged conviction could be\nenforced on nations, as on individuals, that, with few exceptions, what\nthey cannot at present pay for, they should not at present have.\n\n[18] _See_ Appendix IV.\n\n[19] I little thought, what _Trionfo della Morte_ would be, for this\nvery cause, and in literal fulfilment of the closing words of the 47th\nparagraph, over the fields and houses of Europe, and over its fairest\ncity--within seven years from the day I wrote it.\n\n[20] The meaning of which is, that you may spend a great deal of money,\nand get very little work for it, and that little bad; but having good\n\"air\" or \"spirit,\" to put life into it, with very little money, you may\nget a great deal of work, and all good; which, observe, is an\narithmetical, not at all a poetical or visionary circumstance.\n\n[21] More especially, works of great art.\n\n[22] The meaning of that, in plain English, is, that we must find out\nhow far poverty and riches are good or bad for people, and what is the\ndifference between being miserably poor--so as, perhaps, to be driven to\ncrime, or to pass life in suffering--and being blessedly poor, in the\nsense meant in the Sermon on the Mount. For I suppose the people who\nbelieve that sermon, do not think (if they ever honestly ask themselves\nwhat they do think), either that Luke vi. 24. is a merely poetical\nexclamation, or that the Beatitude of Poverty has yet been attained in\nSt. Martin's Lane and other back streets of London.\n\n[23] Large plans!--Eight years are gone, and nothing done yet. But I\nkeep my purpose of making one day this balance, or want of balance,\nvisible, in those so seldom used scales of Justice.\n\n[24] These are nearly all briefly represented by the image used for the\nforce of money by Dante, of mast and sail:--\n\n    Quali dal vento le gonfiate vele\n    Caggiono avvolte, poi che l'alber fiacca\n    Tal cadde a terra la fiera crudele.\n\nThe image may be followed out, like all of Dante's, into as close detail\nas the reader chooses. Thus the stress of the sail must be proportioned\nto the strength of the mast, and it is only in unforeseen danger that a\nskilful seaman ever carries all the canvas his spars will bear, states\nof mercantile languor are like the flap of the sail in a calm; of\nmercantile precaution, like taking in reefs; and mercantile ruin is\ninstant on the breaking of the mast.\n\n[I mean by credit-power, the general impression on the national mind\nthat a sovereign, or any other coin, is worth so much bread and\ncheese--so much wine--so much horse and carriage--or so much fine art:\nit may be really worth, when tried, less or more than is thought: the\nthought of it is the credit-power.]\n\n[25] The object of Political Economy is not to buy, nor to sell labour,\nbut to spare it. Every attempt to buy or sell it is, in the outcome,\nineffectual; so far as successful, it is not sale, but Betrayal; and the\npurchase-money is a part of that thirty pieces which bought, first the\ngreatest of labours, and afterwards the burial-field of the Stranger;\nfor this purchase-money, being in its very smallness or vileness the\nexactly measured opposite of the \"vilis annona amicorum,\" makes all men\nstrangers to each other.\n\n[26] Cicero's distinction, \"sordidi quaestus, quorum operae, non quorum\nartes emuntur,\" admirable in principle, is inaccurate in expression,\nbecause Cicero did not practically know how much operative dexterity is\nnecessary in all the higher arts; but the cost of this dexterity is\nincalculable. Be it great or small, the \"cost\" of the mere perfectness\nof touch in a hammer-stroke of Donatello's, or a pencil-touch of\nCorreggio's, is inestimable by any ordinary arithmetic.\n\n[Old notes, these, more embarrassing I now perceive, than elucidatory;\nbut right, and worth retaining.]\n\n[27] Only observe, as some labour is more destructive of life than other\nlabour, the hour or day of the more destructive toil is supposed to\ninclude proportionate rest. Though men do not, or cannot, usually take\nsuch rest, except in death.\n\n[28] There is, therefore, observe, no such thing as cheapness (in the\ncommon use of that term), without some error or injustice. A thing is\nsaid to be cheap, not because it is common, but because it is supposed\nto be sold under its worth. Everything has its proper and true worth at\nany given time, in relation to everything else; and at that worth should\nbe bought and sold. If sold under it, it is cheap to the buyer by\nexactly so much as the seller loses, and no more. Putrid meat, at\ntwopence a pound, is not \"cheaper\" than wholesome meat at sevenpence a\npound; it is probably much dearer; but if, by watching your opportunity,\nyou can get the wholesome meat for sixpence a pound, it is cheaper to\nyou by a penny, which you have gained, and the seller has lost. The\npresent rage for cheapness is either, therefore, simply and literally a\nrage for badness of all commodities, or it is an attempt to find persons\nwhose necessities will force them to let you have more than you should\nfor your money. It is quite easy to produce such persons, and in large\nnumbers; for the more distress there is in a nation, the more cheapness\nof this sort you can obtain, and your boasted cheapness is thus merely a\nmeasure of the extent of your national distress.\n\nThere is, indeed, a condition of apparent cheapness, which we have some\nright to be triumphant in; namely, the real reduction in cost of\narticles by right application of labour. But in this case the article is\nonly cheap with reference to its _former_ price; the so-called cheapness\nis only our expression for the sensation of contrast between its former\nand existing prices. So soon as the new methods of producing the article\nare established, it ceases to be esteemed either cheap or dear, at the\nnew price, as at the old one, and is felt to be cheap only when accident\nenables it to be purchased beneath this new value. And it is no\nadvantage to produce the article more easily, except as it enables you\nto multiply your population. Cheapness of this kind is merely the\ndiscovery that more men can be maintained on the same ground; and the\nquestion how many you will maintain in proportion to your additional\nmeans, remains exactly in the same terms that it did before.\n\nA form of immediate cheapness results, however, in many cases, without\ndistress, from the labour of a population where food is redundant, or\nwhere the labour by which the food is produced leaves much idle time on\ntheir hands, which may be applied to the production of \"cheap\" articles.\n\nAll such phenomena indicate to the political economist places where the\nlabour is unbalanced. In the first case, the just balance is to be\neffected by taking labourers from the spot where pressure exists, and\nsending them to that where food is redundant. In the second, the\ncheapness is a local accident, advantageous to the local purchaser,\ndisadvantageous to the local producer. It is one of the first duties of\ncommerce to extend the market, and thus give the local producer his full\nadvantage.\n\nCheapness caused by natural accidents of harvest, weather, &c., is\nalways counterbalanced, in due time, by natural scarcity, similarly\ncaused. It is the part of wise government, and healthy commerce, so to\nprovide in times and places of plenty for times and places of dearth, as\nthat there shall never be waste, nor famine.\n\nCheapness caused by gluts of the market is merely a disease of clumsy\nand wanton commerce.\n\n[29] Price has been already defined (p. 9) to be the quantity of labour\nwhich the possessor of a thing is willing to take for it. It is best to\nconsider the price to be that fixed by the possessor, because the\npossessor has absolute power of refusing sale, while the purchaser has\nno absolute power of compelling it; but the effectual or market price is\nthat at which their estimates coincide.\n\n[30] This \"greater ease\" ought to be allowed for by a diminution in the\ntimes of the divided work; but as the proportion of times would remain\nthe same, I do not introduce this unnecessary complexity into the\ncalculation.\n\n[31] Compare _Unto this Last_, p. 115, _et seq._\n\n[32] [That is to say, the love of money is founded first on the\nintenseness of desire for given things; a youth will rob the till,\nnow-a-days, for pantomime tickets and cigars; the \"strength\" of the\ncurrency being irresistible to him, in consequence of his desire for\nthose luxuries.]\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nCOIN-KEEPING.\n\n\n68. It will be seen by reference to the last chapter that our present\ntask is to examine the relation of holders of store to holders of\ncurrency; and of both to those who hold neither. In order to do this, we\nmust determine on which side we are to place substances such as gold,\ncommonly known as bases of currency. By aid of previous definitions the\nreader will now be able to understand closer statements than have yet\nbeen possible.\n\n69. _The currency of any country consists of every document\nacknowledging debt, which is transferable in the country._[33]\n\nThis transferableness depends upon its intelligibility and credit. Its\nintelligibility depends chiefly on the difficulty of forging anything\nlike it;--its credit much on national character, but ultimately _always\non the existence of substantial means of meeting its demand_.[34]\n\nAs the degrees of transferableness are variable, (some documents passing\nonly in certain places, and others passing, if at all, for less than\ntheir inscribed value), both the mass, and, so to speak, fluidity, of\nthe currency, are variable. True or perfect currency flows freely, like\na pure stream; it becomes sluggish or stagnant in proportion to the\nquantity of less transferable matter which mixes with it, adding to its\nbulk, but diminishing its purity. [Articles of commercial value, on\nwhich bills are drawn, increase the currency indefinitely; and\nsubstances of intrinsic value if stamped or signed without restriction\nso as to become acknowledgments of debt, increase it indefinitely also.]\nEvery bit of gold found in Australia, so long as it remains uncoined, is\nan article offered for sale like any other; but as soon as it is coined\ninto pounds, it diminishes the value of every pound we have now in our\npockets.\n\n70. Legally authorized or national currency, in its perfect condition,\nis a form of public acknowledgment of debt, so regulated and divided\nthat any person presenting a commodity of tried worth in the public\nmarket, shall, if he please, receive in exchange for it a document\ngiving him claim to the return of its equivalent, (1) in any place, (2)\nat any time, and (3) in any kind.\n\nWhen currency is quite healthy and vital, the persons entrusted with its\nmanagement are always able to give on demand either,\n\nA. The assigning document for the assigned quantity of goods. Or,\n\nB. The assigned quantity of goods for the assigning document.\n\nIf they cannot give document for goods, the national exchange is at\nfault.\n\nIf they cannot give goods for document, the national credit is at fault.\n\nThe nature and power of the document are therefore to be examined under\nthe three relations it bears to Place, Time, and Kind.\n\n71. (1.) It gives claim to the return of equivalent wealth in any\n_Place_. Its use in this function is to save carriage, so that parting\nwith a bushel of corn in London, we may receive an order for a bushel of\ncorn at the Antipodes, or elsewhere. To be perfect in this use, the\nsubstance of currency must be to the maximum portable, credible, and\nintelligible. Its non-acceptance or discredit results always from some\nform of ignorance or dishonour: so far as such interruptions rise out\nof differences in denomination, there is no ground for their continuance\namong civilized nations. It may be convenient in one country to use\nchiefly copper for coinage, in another silver, and in another\ngold,--reckoning accordingly in centimes, francs, or zecchins: but that\na franc should be different in weight and value from a shilling, and a\nzwanziger vary from both, is wanton loss of commercial power.\n\n72. (2.) It gives claim to the return of equivalent wealth at any\n_Time_. In this second use, currency is the exponent of accumulation: it\nrenders the laying-up of store at the command of individuals unlimitedly\npossible;--whereas, but for its intervention, all gathering would be\nconfined within certain limits by the bulk of property, or by its decay,\nor the difficulty of its guardianship. \"I will pull down my barns and\nbuild greater,\" cannot be a daily saying; and all material investment is\nenlargement of care. The national currency transfers the guardianship of\nthe store to many; and preserves to the original producer the right of\nre-entering on its possession at any future period.\n\n73. (3.) It gives claim (practical, though not legal) to the return of\nequivalent wealth in any _Kind_. It is a transferable right, not merely\nto this or that, but to anything; and its power in this function is\nproportioned to the range of choice. If you give a child an apple or a\ntoy, you give him a determinate pleasure, but if you give him a penny,\nan indeterminate one, proportioned to the range of selection offered by\nthe shops in the village. The power of the world's currency is similarly\nin proportion to the openness of the world's fair, and, commonly,\nenhanced by the brilliancy of external aspect, rather than solidity of\nits wares.\n\n74. We have said that the currency consists of orders for equivalent\ngoods. If equivalent, their quality must be guaranteed. The kinds of\ngoods chosen for specific claim must, therefore, be capable of test,\nwhile, also, that a store may be kept in hand to meet the call of the\ncurrency, smallness of bulk, with great relative value, is desirable;\nand indestructibility, over at least a certain period, essential.\n\nSuch indestructibility, and facility of being tested, are united in\ngold; its intrinsic value is great, and its imaginary value greater; so\nthat, partly through indolence, partly through necessity and want of\norganization, most nations have agreed to take gold for the only basis\nof their currencies;--with this grave disadvantage, that its portability\nenabling the metal to become an active part of the medium of exchange,\nthe stream of the currency itself becomes opaque with gold--half\ncurrency and half commodity, in unison of functions which partly\nneutralize, partly enhance each other's force.\n\n75. They partly neutralize, since in so far as the gold is commodity, it\nis bad currency, because liable to sale; and in so far as it is\ncurrency, it is bad commodity, because its exchange value interferes\nwith its practical use. Especially its employment in the higher branches\nof the arts becomes unsafe on account of its liability to be melted down\nfor exchange.\n\nAgain. They partly enhance, since in so far as the gold has acknowledged\nintrinsic value, it is good currency, because everywhere acceptable; and\nin so far as it has legal exchangeable value, its worth as a commodity\nis increased. We want no gold in the form of dust or crystal; but we\nseek for it coined, because in that form it will pay baker and butcher.\nAnd this worth in exchange not only absorbs a large quantity in that\nuse,[35] but greatly increases the effect on the imagination of the\nquantity used in the arts. Thus, in brief, the force of the functions is\nincreased, but their precision blunted, by their unison.\n\n76. These inconveniences, however, attach to gold as a basis of currency\non account of its portability and preciousness. But a far greater\ninconvenience attaches to it as the only legal basis of currency.\nImagine gold to be only attainable in masses weighing several pounds\neach, and its value, like that of malachite or marble, proportioned to\nits largeness of bulk;--it could not then get itself confused with the\ncurrency in daily use, but it might still remain as its basis; and this\nsecond inconvenience would still affect it, namely, that its\nsignificance as an expression of debt varies, as that of every other\narticle would, with the popular estimate of its desirableness, and with\nthe quantity offered in the market. My power of obtaining other goods\nfor gold depends always on the strength of public passion for gold, and\non the limitation of its quantity, so that when either of two things\nhappen--that the world esteems gold less, or finds it more easily--_my\nright of claim is in that degree effaced_; and it has been even gravely\nmaintained that a discovery of a mountain of gold would cancel the\nNational Debt; in other words, that men may be paid for what costs much\nin what costs nothing. Now, it is true that there is little chance of\nsudden convulsion in this respect; the world will not so rapidly\nincrease in wisdom as to despise gold on a sudden; and perhaps may [for\na little time] desire it more eagerly the more easily it is obtained;\nnevertheless, the right of debt ought not to rest on a basis of\nimagination; nor should the frame of a national currency vibrate with\nevery miser's panic, and every merchant's imprudence.\n\n77. There are two methods of avoiding this insecurity, which would have\nbeen fallen upon long ago, if, instead of calculating the conditions of\nthe supply of gold, men had only considered how the world might live and\nmanage its affairs without gold at all.[36] One is, to base the currency\non substances of truer intrinsic value; the other, to base it on\nseveral substances instead of one. If I can only claim gold, the\ndiscovery of a golden mountain starves me; but if I can claim bread, the\ndiscovery of a continent of corn-fields need not trouble me. If,\nhowever, I wish to exchange my bread for other things, a good harvest\nwill for the time limit my power in this respect; but if I can claim\neither bread, iron, or silk at pleasure, the standard of value has three\nfeet instead of one, and will be proportionately firm. Thus, ultimately,\nthe steadiness of currency depends upon the breadth of its base; but the\ndifficulty of organization increasing with this breadth, the discovery\nof the condition at once safest and most convenient[37] can only be by\nlong analysis, which must for the present be deferred. Gold or\nsilver[38] may always be retained in limited use, as a luxury of coinage\nand questionless standard, of one weight and alloy among all nations,\nvarying only in the die. The purity of coinage, when metallic, is\nclosely indicative of the honesty of the system of revenue, and even of\nthe general dignity of the State.[39]\n\n78. Whatever the article or articles may be which the national currency\npromises to pay, a premium on that article indicates bankruptcy of the\ngovernment in that proportion, the division of its assets being\nrestrained only by the remaining confidence of the holders of notes in\nthe return of prosperity to the firm. Currencies of forced acceptance,\nor of unlimited issue, are merely various modes of disguising taxation,\nand delaying its pressure, until it is too late to interfere with the\ncause of pressure. To do away with the possibility of such disguise\nwould have been among the first results of a true economical science,\nhad any such existed; but there have been too many motives for the\nconcealment, so long as it could by any artifices be maintained, to\npermit hitherto even the founding of such a science.\n\n79. And indeed, it is only through evil conduct, wilfully persisted in,\nthat there is any embarrassment, either in the theory or working of\ncurrency. No exchequer is ever embarrassed, nor is any financial\nquestion difficult of solution, when people keep their practice honest,\nand their heads cool. But when governments lose all office of pilotage,\nprotection, or scrutiny; and live only in magnificence of authorized\nlarceny, and polished mendacity; or when the people, choosing\nSpeculation (the s usually redundant in the spelling) instead of Toil,\nvisit no dishonesty with chastisement, that each may with impunity take\nhis dishonest turn;--there are no tricks of financial terminology that\nwill save them; all signature and mintage do but magnify the ruin they\nretard; and even the riches that remain, stagnant or current, change\nonly from the slime of Avernus to the sand of Phlegethon--_quick_sand at\nthe embouchure;--land fluently recommended by recent auctioneers as\n\"eligible for building leases.\"\n\n80. Finally, then, the power of true currency is fourfold.\n\n(1.) Credit power. Its worth in exchange, dependent on public opinion of\nthe stability and honesty of the issuer.\n\n(2.) Real worth. Supposing the gold, or whatever else the currency\nexpressly promises, to be required from the issuer, for all his notes;\nand that the call cannot be met in full. Then the actual worth of the\ndocument would be, and its actual worth at any moment is, therefore to\nbe defined as, what the division of the assets of the issuer would\nproduce for it.\n\n(3.) The exchange power, of its base. Granting that we can get five\npounds in gold for our note, it remains a question how much of other\nthings we can get for five pounds in gold. The more of other things\nexist, and the less gold, the greater this power.\n\n(4.) The power over labour, exercised by the given quantity of the base,\nor of the things to be got for it. The question in this case is, how\nmuch work, and (question of questions!) _whose_ work, is to be had for\nthe food which five pounds will buy. This depends on the number of the\npopulation, on their gifts, and on their dispositions, with which, down\nto their slightest humours, and up to their strongest impulses, the\npower of the currency varies.\n\n81. Such being the main conditions of national currency, we proceed to\nexamine those of the total currency, under the broad definition,\n\"transferable acknowledgment of debt;\"[40] among the many forms of\nwhich there are in effect only two, distinctly opposed; namely, the\nacknowledgments of debts which will be paid, and of debts which will\nnot. Documents, whether in whole or part, of bad debt, being to those of\ngood debt as bad money to bullion, we put for the present these forms of\nimposture aside (as in analysing a metal we should wash it clear of\ndross), and then range, in their exact quantities, the true currency of\nthe country on one side, and the store or property of the country on the\nother. We place gold, and all such substances, on the side of documents,\nas far as they operate by signature;--on the side of store as far as\nthey operate by value. Then the currency represents the quantity of debt\nin the country, and the store the quantity of its possession. The\nownership of all the property is divided between the holders of currency\nand holders of store, and whatever the claiming value of the currency is\nat any moment, that value is to be deducted from the riches of the\nstore-holders.\n\n82. Farther, as true currency represents by definition debts which will\nbe paid, it represents either the debtor's wealth, or his ability and\nwillingness; that is to say, either wealth existing in his hands\ntransferred to him by the creditor, or wealth which, as he is at some\ntime surely to return it, he is either increasing, or, if diminishing,\nhas the will and strength to reproduce. A sound currency therefore, as\nby its increase it represents enlarging debt, represents also enlarging\nmeans; but in this curious way, that a certain quantity of it marks the\ndeficiency of the wealth of the country from what it would have been if\nthat currency had not existed.[41] In this respect it is like the\ndetritus of a mountain; assume that it lies at a fixed angle, and the\nmore the detritus, the larger must be the mountain; but it would have\nbeen larger still, had there been none.\n\n83. Farther, though, as above stated, every man possessing money has\nusually also some property beyond what is necessary for his immediate\nwants, and men possessing property usually also hold currency beyond\nwhat is necessary for their immediate exchanges, it mainly determines\nthe class to which they belong, whether in their eyes the money is an\nadjunct of the property, or the property of the money. In the first case\nthe holder's pleasure is in his possessions, and in his money\nsubordinately, as the means of bettering or adding to them. In the\nsecond, his pleasure is in his money, and in his possessions only as\nrepresenting it. (In the first case the money is as an atmosphere\nsurrounding the wealth, rising from it and raining back upon it; but in\nthe second, it is as a deluge, with the wealth floating, and for the\nmost part perishing in it.[42]) The shortest distinction between the men\nis that the one wishes always to buy, and the other to sell.\n\n84. Such being the great relations of the classes, their several\ncharacters are of the highest importance to the nation; for on the\ncharacter of the store-holders chiefly depend the preservation, display,\nand serviceableness of its wealth; on that of the currency-holders, its\ndistribution; on that of both, its reproduction.\n\nWe shall, therefore, ultimately find it to be of incomparably greater\nimportance to the nation in whose hands the thing is put, than how much\nof it is got; and that the character of the holders may be conjectured\nby the quality of the store; for such and such a man always asks for\nsuch and such a thing; nor only asks for it, but if it can be bettered,\nbetters it: so that possession and possessor reciprocally act on each\nother, through the entire sum of national possession. The base nation,\nasking for base things, sinks daily to deeper vileness of nature and\nweakness in use; while the noble nation, asking for noble things, rises\ndaily into diviner eminence in both; the tendency to degradation being\nsurely marked by \"[Greek: ataxia];\" that is to say, (expanding the Greek\nthought), by carelessness as to the hands in which things are put,\nconsequent dispute for the acquisition of them, disorderliness in the\naccumulation of them, inaccuracy in the estimate of them, and bluntness\nin conception as to the entire nature of possession.\n\n85. The currency-holders always increase in number and influence in\nproportion to the bluntness of nature and clumsiness of the\nstore-holders; for the less use people can make of things, the more they\nwant of them, and the sooner weary of them, and want to change them for\nsomething else; and all frequency of change increases the quantity and\npower of currency. The large currency-holder himself is essentially a\nperson who never has been able to make up his mind as to what he will\nhave, and proceeds, therefore, in vague collection and aggregation, with\nmore and more infuriate passion, urged by complacency in progress,\nvacancy in idea, and pride of conquest.\n\nWhile, however, there is this obscurity in the nature of possession of\ncurrency, there is a charm in the seclusion of it, which is to some\npeople very enticing. In the enjoyment of real property, others must\npartly share. The groom has some enjoyment of the stud, and the gardener\nof the garden; but the money is, or seems, shut up; it is wholly\nenviable. No one else can have part in any complacencies arising from\nit.\n\nThe power of arithmetical comparison is also a great thing to\nunimaginative people. They know always they are so much better than they\nwere, in money; so much better than others, in money; but wit cannot be\nso compared, nor character. My neighbour cannot be convinced that I am\nwiser than he is, but he can, that I am worth so much more; and the\nuniversality of the conviction is no less flattering than its clearness.\nOnly a few can understand,--none measure--and few will willingly adore,\nsuperiorities in other things; but everybody can understand money,\neverybody can count it, and most will worship it.\n\n86. Now, these various temptations to accumulation would be politically\nharmless if what was vainly accumulated had any fair chance of being\nwisely spent. For as accumulation cannot go on for ever, but must some\nday end in its reverse--if this reverse were indeed a beneficial\ndistribution and use, as irrigation from reservoir, the fever of\ngathering, though perilous to the gatherer, might be serviceable to the\ncommunity. But it constantly happens (so constantly, that it may be\nstated as a political law having few exceptions), that what is\nunreasonably gathered is also unreasonably spent by the persons into\nwhose hands it finally falls. Very frequently it is spent in war, or\nelse in a stupefying luxury, twice hurtful, both in being indulged by\nthe rich and witnessed by the poor. So that the _mal tener_ and _mal\ndare_ are as correlative as complementary colours; and the circulation\nof wealth, which ought to be soft, steady, strong, far-sweeping, and\nfull of warmth, like the Gulf stream, being narrowed into an eddy, and\nconcentrated at a point, changes into the alternate suction and\nsurrender of Charybdis. Which is indeed, I doubt not, the true meaning\nof that marvellous fable, \"infinite,\" as Bacon said of it, \"in matter of\nmeditation.\"[43]\n\n87. It is a strange habit of wise humanity to speak in enigmas only, so\nthat the highest truths and usefullest laws must be hunted for through\nwhole picture-galleries of dreams, which to the vulgar seem dreams only.\nThus Homer, the Greek tragedians, Plato, Dante, Chaucer, Shakspeare, and\nGoethe, have hidden all that is chiefly serviceable in their work, and\nin all the various literature they absorbed and re-embodied, under types\nwhich have rendered it quite useless to the multitude. What is worse,\nthe two primal declarers of moral discovery, Homer and Plato, are partly\nat issue; for Plato's logical power quenched his imagination, and he\nbecame incapable of understanding the purely imaginative element either\nin poetry or painting: he therefore somewhat overrates the pure\ndiscipline of passionate art in song and music, and misses that of\nmeditative art. There is, however, a deeper reason for his distrust of\nHomer. His love of justice, and reverently religious nature, made him\ndread, as death, every form of fallacy; but chiefly, fallacy respecting\nthe world to come (his own myths being only symbolic exponents of a\nrational hope). We shall perhaps now every day discover more clearly how\nright Plato was in this, and feel ourselves more and more wonderstruck\nthat men such as Homer and Dante (and, in an inferior sphere, Milton),\nnot to speak of the great sculptors and painters of every age, have\npermitted themselves, though full of all nobleness and wisdom, to coin\nidle imaginations of the mysteries of eternity, and guide the faiths of\nthe families of the earth by the courses of their own vague and\nvisionary arts: while the indisputable truths of human life and duty,\nrespecting which they all have but one voice, lie hidden behind these\nveils of phantasy, unsought, and often unsuspected. I will gather\ncarefully, out of Dante and Homer, what, in this kind, bears on our\nsubject, in its due place; the first broad intention of their symbols\nmay be sketched at once.\n\n88. The rewards of a worthy use of riches, subordinate to other ends,\nare shown by Dante in the fifth and sixth orbs of Paradise; for the\npunishment of their unworthy use, three places are assigned; one for the\navaricious and prodigal whose souls are lost, (_Hell_, canto 7); one for\nthe avaricious and prodigal whose souls are capable of purification,\n(_Purgatory_, canto 19); and one for the usurers, of whom _none_ can be\nredeemed (_Hell_, canto 17). The first group, the largest in all hell\n(\"gente piu che altrove troppa,\" compare Virgil's \"quae maxima turba\"),\nmeet in contrary currents, _as the_ _waves of Charybdis_, casting\nweights at each other from opposite sides. This weariness of contention\nis the chief element of their torture; so marked by the beautiful lines\nbeginning \"Or puoi, figliuol,\" &c.: (but the usurers, who made their\nmoney inactively, _sit_ on the sand, equally without rest, however. \"Di\nqua, di la, soccorrien,\" &c.) For it is not avarice, but _contention_\nfor riches, leading to this double misuse of them, which, in Dante's\nlight, is the unredeemable sin. The place of its punishment is guarded\nby Plutus, \"the great enemy,\" and \"la fiera crudele,\" a spirit quite\ndifferent from the Greek Plutus, who, though old and blind, is not\ncruel, and is curable, so as to become far-sighted. ([Greek: ou typhlos\nall' oxy blepon].--Plato's epithets in first book of the _Laws_.) Still\nmore does this Dantesque type differ from the resplendent Plutus of\nGoethe in the second part of _Faust_, who is the personified power of\nwealth for good or evil--not the passion for wealth; and again from the\nPlutus of Spenser, who is the passion of mere aggregation. Dante's\nPlutus is specially and definitely the Spirit of Contention and\nCompetition, or Evil Commerce; because, as I showed before, this kind of\ncommerce \"makes all men strangers;\" his speech is therefore\nunintelligible, and no single soul of all those ruined by him _has\nrecognizable features_.\n\nOn the other hand, the redeemable sins of avarice and prodigality are,\nin Dante's sight, those which are without deliberate or calculated\noperation. The lust, or lavishness, of riches can be purged, so long as\nthere has been no servile consistency of dispute and competition for\nthem. The sin is spoken of as that of degradation by the love of earth;\nit is purified by deeper humiliation--the souls crawl on their bellies;\ntheir chant is, \"my soul cleaveth unto the dust.\" But the spirits thus\ncondemned are all recognizable, and even the worst examples of the\nthirst for gold, which they are compelled to tell the histories of\nduring the night, are of men swept by the passion of avarice into\nviolent crime, but not sold to its steady work.\n\n89. The precept given to each of these spirits for its deliverance\nis--Turn thine eyes to the lucre (lure) which the Eternal King rolls\nwith the mighty wheels. Otherwise, the wheels of the \"Greater Fortune,\"\nof which the constellation is ascending when Dante's dream begins.\nCompare George Herbert--\n\n                  \"Lift up thy head;\n    Take stars for money; stars, not to be told\n    By any art, yet to be purchased.\"\n\nAnd Plato's notable sentence in the third book of the _Polity_.--\"Tell\nthem they have divine gold and silver in their souls for ever; that they\nneed no money stamped of men--neither may they otherwise than impiously\nmingle the gathering of the divine with the mortal treasure, _for\nthrough that which the law of the multitude has coined, endless crimes\nhave been done and suffered; but in their's is neither pollution nor\nsorrow_.\"\n\n90. At the entrance of this place of punishment an evil spirit is seen\nby Dante, quite other than the \"Gran Nemico.\" The great enemy is obeyed\nknowingly and willingly; but this spirit--feminine--and called a\nSiren--is the \"_Deceitfulness_ of riches,\" [Greek: apate ploutou] of the\nGospels, winning obedience by guile. This is the Idol of riches, made\ndoubly phantasmal by Dante's seeing her in a dream. She is lovely to\nlook upon, and enchants by her sweet singing, but her womb is loathsome.\nNow, Dante does not call her one of the Sirens carelessly, any more than\nhe speaks of Charybdis carelessly; and though he had got at the meaning\nof the Homeric fable only through Virgil's obscure tradition of it, the\nclue he has given us is quite enough. Bacon's interpretation, \"the\nSirens, _or pleasures_,\" which has become universal since his time, is\nopposed alike to Plato's meaning and Homer's. The Sirens are not\npleasures, but _Desires_: in the Odyssey they are the phantoms of vain\ndesire; but in Plato's Vision of Destiny, phantoms of divine desire;\nsinging each a different note on the circles of the distaff of\nNecessity, but forming one harmony, to which the three great Fates put\nwords. Dante, however, adopted the Homeric conception of them, which was\nthat they were demons of the Imagination, not carnal; (desire of the\neyes; not lust of the flesh); therefore said to be daughters of the\nMuses. Yet not of the Muses, heavenly or historical but of the Muse of\npleasure; and they are at first winged, because even vain hope excites\nand helps when first formed; but afterwards, contending for the\npossession of the imagination with the Muses themselves, they are\ndeprived of their wings.\n\n91. And thus we are to distinguish the Siren power from the power of\nCirce, who is no daughter of the Muses, but of the strong elements, Sun\nand Sea; her power is that of frank, and full vital pleasure, which, if\ngoverned and watched, nourishes men; but, unwatched, and having no\n\"moly,\" bitterness or delay, mixed with it, turns men into beasts, but\ndoes not slay them,--leaves them, on the contrary, power of revival. She\nis herself indeed an Enchantress;--pure Animal life; transforming--or\ndegrading--but always wonderful (she puts the stores on board the ship\ninvisibly, and is gone again, like a ghost); even the wild beasts\nrejoice and are softened around her cave; the transforming poisons she\ngives to men are mixed with no rich feast, but with pure and right\nnourishment,--Pramnian wine, cheese, and flour; that is, wine, milk, and\ncorn, the three great sustainers of life--it is their own fault if these\nmake swine of them; (see Appendix V.) and swine are chosen merely as the\ntype of consumption; as Plato's [Greek: hyon polis], in the second book\nof the _Polity_, and perhaps chosen by Homer with a deeper knowledge of\nthe likeness in variety of nourishment, and internal form of body.\n\n\"Et quel est, s'il vous plait, cet audacieux animal qui se permet d'etre\nbati au dedans comme une jolie petite fille?\"\n\n\"Helas! chere enfant, j'ai honte de le nommer, et il ne faudra pas m'en\nvouloir. C'est ... c'est le cochon. Ce n'est pas precisement flatteur\npour vous; mais nous en sommes tous la, et si cela vous contrarie par\ntrop, il faut aller vous plaindre au bon Dieu qui a voulu que les choses\nfussent arrangees ainsi: seulement le cochon, qui ne pense qu'a manger,\na l'estomac bien plus vaste que nous et c'est toujours une\nconsolation.\"--_(Histoire d'une Bouchee de Pain_, Lettre ix.)\n\n92. But the deadly Sirens are in all things opposed to the Circean\npower. They promise pleasure, but never give it. They nourish in no\nwise; but slay by slow death. And whereas they corrupt the heart and\nthe head, instead of merely betraying the senses, there is no recovery\nfrom their power; they do not tear nor scratch, like Scylla, but the men\nwho have listened to them are poisoned, and waste away. Note that the\nSirens' field is covered, not merely with the bones, but with the\n_skins_, of those who have been consumed there. They address themselves,\nin the part of the song which Homer gives, not to the passions of\nUlysses, but to his vanity, and the only man who ever came within\nhearing of them, and escaped untempted, was Orpheus, who silenced the\nvain imaginations by singing the praises of the gods.\n\n93. It is, then, one of these Sirens whom Dante takes as the phantasm or\ndeceitfulness of riches; but note further, that she says it was her song\nthat deceived Ulysses. Look back to Dante's account of Ulysses' death,\nand we find it was not the love of money, but pride of knowledge, that\nbetrayed him; whence we get the clue to Dante's complete meaning: that\nthe souls whose love of wealth is pardonable have been first deceived\ninto pursuit of it by a dream of its higher uses, or by ambition. His\nSiren is therefore the Philotime of Spenser, daughter of Mammon--\n\n    \"Whom all that folk with such contention\n    Do flock about, my deare, my daughter is--\n    Honour and dignitie from her alone\n    Derived are.\"\n\nBy comparing Spenser's entire account of this Philotime with Dante's of\nthe Wealth-Siren, we shall get at the full meaning of both poets; but\nthat of Homer lies hidden much more deeply. For his Sirens are\nindefinite; and they are desires of any evil thing; power of wealth is\nnot specially indicated by him, until, escaping the 'harmonious danger\nof imagination, Ulysses has to choose between two practical ways of\nlife, indicated by the two _rocks_ of Scylla and Charybdis. The monsters\nthat haunt them are quite distinct from the rocks themselves, which,\nhaving many other subordinate significations, are in the main Labour and\nIdleness, or getting and spending; each with its attendant monster, or\nbetraying demon. The rock of gaining has its summit in the clouds,\ninvisible, and not to be climbed; that of spending is low, but marked by\nthe cursed fig-tree, which has leaves, but no fruit. We know the type\nelsewhere; and there is a curious lateral allusion to it by Dante when\nJacopo di Sant' Andrea, who had ruined himself by profusion and\ncommitted suicide, scatters the leaves of the bush of Lotto degli Agli,\nendeavouring to hide himself among them. We shall hereafter examine the\ntype completely; here I will only give an approximate rendering of\nHomer's words, which have been obscured more by translation than even by\ntradition.\n\n94. \"They are overhanging rocks. The great waves of blue water break\nround them; and the blessed Gods call them the Wanderers.\n\n\"By one of them no winged thing can pass--not even the wild doves that\nbring ambrosia to their father Jove--but the smooth rock seizes its\nsacrifice of them.\" (Not even ambrosia to be had without Labour. The\nword is peculiar--as a part of anything is offered for Sacrifice;\nespecially used of heave-offering.) \"It reaches the wide heaven with its\ntop, and a dark blue cloud rests on it, and never passes; neither does\nthe clear sky hold it, in summer nor in harvest. Nor can any man climb\nit--not if he had twenty feet and hands, for it is smooth as though it\nwere hewn.\n\n\"And in the midst of it is a cave which is turned the way of hell. And\ntherein dwells Scylla, whining for prey: her cry, indeed, is no louder\nthan that of a newly-born whelp: but she herself is an awful thing--nor\ncan any creature see her face and be glad; no, though it were a god that\nrose against her. For she has twelve feet, all fore-feet, and six necks,\nand terrible heads on them; and each has three rows of teeth, full of\nblack death.\n\n\"But the opposite rock is lower than this, though but a bow-shot\ndistant; and upon it there is a great fig-tree, full of leaves; and\nunder it the terrible Charybdis sucks down the black water. Thrice in\nthe day she sucks it down, and thrice; casts it up again: be not thou\nthere when she sucks down, for Neptune himself could not save thee.\"\n\n[Thus far went my rambling note, in _Fraser's Magazine_. The Editor sent\nme a compliment on it--of which I was very proud; what the Publisher\nthought of it, I am not informed; only I know that eventually he stopped\nthe papers. I think a great deal of it myself, now, and have put it all\nin large print accordingly, and should like to write more; but will, on\nthe contrary, self-denyingly, and in gratitude to any reader who has got\nthrough so much, end my chapter.]\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[33] Remember this definition: it is of great importance as opposed to\nthe imperfect ones usually given. When first these essays were\npublished, I remember one of their reviewers asking contemptuously, \"Is\nhalf-a-crown a document?\" it never having before occurred to him that a\ndocument might be stamped as well as written, and stamped on silver as\nwell as on parchment.\n\n[34] I do not mean the demand of the holder of a five-pound note for\nfive pounds, but the demand of the holder of a pound for a pound's worth\nof something good.\n\n[35] [Read and think over, the following note very carefully.] The waste\nof labour in obtaining the gold, though it cannot be estimated by help\nof any existing data, may be understood in its bearing on entire economy\nby supposing it limited to transactions between two persons. If two\nfarmers in Australia have been exchanging corn and cattle with each\nother for years, keeping their accounts of reciprocal debt in any simple\nway, the sum of the possessions of either would not be diminished,\nthough the part of it which was lent or borrowed were only reckoned by\nmarks on a stone, or notches on a tree; and the one counted himself\naccordingly, so many scratches, or so many notches, better than the\nother. But it would soon be seriously diminished if, discovering gold in\ntheir fields, each resolved only to accept golden counters for a\nreckoning; and accordingly, whenever he wanted a sack of corn or a cow,\nwas obliged to go and wash sand for a week before he could get the means\nof giving a receipt for them.\n\n[36] It is difficult to estimate the curious futility of discussions\nsuch as that which lately occupied a section of the British Association,\non the absorption of gold, while no one can produce even the simplest of\nthe data necessary for the inquiry. To take the first occurring\none,--What means have we of ascertaining the weight of gold employed\nthis year in the toilettes of the women of Europe (not to speak of\nAsia); and, supposing it known, what means of conjecturing the weight by\nwhich, next year, their fancies, and the changes of style among their\njewellers, will diminish or increase it?\n\n[37] See, in Pope's epistle to Lord Bathurst, his sketch of the\ndifficulties and uses of a currency literally \"pecuniary\"--(consisting\nof herds of cattle).\n\n    \"His Grace will game--to White's a bull be led,\" &c.\n\n[38] Perhaps both; perhaps silver only. It may be found expedient\nultimately to leave gold free for use in the arts. As a means of\nreckoning, the standard might be, and in some cases has already been,\nentirely ideal.--_See_ Mill's _Political Economy_, book iii. chap. VII.\nat beginning.\n\n[39] The purity of the drachma and zecchin were not without significance\nof the state of intellect, art, and policy, both in Athens and\nVenice;--a fact first impressed upon me ten years ago, when, in taking\ndaguerreotypes at Venice, I found no purchaseable gold pure enough to\ngild them with, except that of the old Venetian zecchin.\n\n[40] Under which term, observe, we include all documents of debt, which,\nbeing honest, might be transferable, though they practically are not\ntransferred; while we exclude all documents which are in reality\nworthless, though in fact transferred temporarily, as bad money is. The\ndocument of honest debt, not transferred, is merely to paper currency as\ngold withdrawn from circulation is to that of bullion. Much confusion\nhas crept into the reasoning on this subject from the idea that the\nwithdrawal from circulation is a definable state, whereas it is a\ngraduated state, and indefinable. The sovereign in my pocket is\nwithdrawn from circulation as long as I choose to keep it there. It is\nno otherwise withdrawn if I bury it, nor even if I choose to make it,\nand others, into a golden cup, and drink out of them; since a rise in\nthe price of the wine, or of other things, may at any time cause me to\nmelt the cup and throw it back into currency; and the bullion operates\non the prices of the things in the market as directly, though not as\nforcibly, while it is in the form of a cup as it does in the form of a\nsovereign. No calculation can be founded on my humour in either case. If\nI like to handle rouleaus, and therefore keep a quantity of gold, to\nplay with, in the form of jointed basaltic columns, it is all one in its\neffect on the market as if I kept it in the form of twisted filigree,\nor, steadily \"amicus lamnae,\" beat the narrow gold pieces into broad\nones, and dined off them. The probability is greater that I break the\nrouleau than that I melt the plate; but the increased probability is not\ncalculable. Thus, documents are only withdrawn from the currency when\ncancelled, and bullion when it is so effectually lost as that the\nprobability of finding it is no greater than of finding new gold in the\nmine.\n\n[41] For example, suppose an active peasant, having got his ground into\ngood order and built himself a comfortable house, finding time still on\nhis hands, sees one of his neighbours little able to work, and\nill-lodged, and offers to build him also a house, and to put his land in\norder, on condition of receiving for a given period rent for the\nbuilding and tithe of the fruits. The offer is accepted, and a document\ngiven promissory of rent and tithe. This note is money. It can only be\ngood money if the man who has incurred the debt so far recovers his\nstrength as to be able to take advantage of the help he has received,\nand meet the demand of the note; if he lets his house fall to ruin, and\nhis field to waste, his promissory note will soon be valueless: but the\nexistence of the note at all is a consequence of his not having worked\nso stoutly as the other. Let him gain as much as to be able to pay back\nthe entire debt; the note is cancelled, and we have two rich\nstore-holders and no currency.\n\n[42] [You need not trouble yourself to make out the sentence in\nparenthesis, unless you like, but do not think it is mere metaphor. It\nstates a fact which I could not have stated so shortly, _but_ by\nmetaphor.]\n\n[43] [What follows, to the end of the chapter, was a note only, in the\nfirst printing; but for after service, it is of more value than any\nother part of the book, so I have put it into the main text.]\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nCOMMERCE.\n\n\n95. As the currency conveys right of choice out of many things in\nexchange for one, so Commerce is the agency by which the power of choice\nis obtained; so that countries producing only timber can obtain for\ntheir timber silk and gold; or, naturally producing only jewels and\nfrankincense, can obtain for them cattle and corn. In this function,\ncommerce is of more importance to a country in proportion to the\nlimitations of its products, and the restlessness of its\nfancy;--generally of greater importance towards Northern latitudes.\n\n96. Commerce is necessary, however, not only to exchange local products,\nbut local skill. Labour requiring the agency of fire can only be given\nabundantly in cold countries; labour requiring suppleness of body and\nsensitiveness of touch, only in warm ones; labour involving accurate\nvivacity of thought only in temperate ones; while peculiar imaginative\nactions are produced by extremes of heat and cold, and of light and\ndarkness. The production of great art is limited to climates warm enough\nto admit of repose in the open air, and cool enough to render such\nrepose delightful. Minor variations in modes of skill distinguish every\nlocality. The labour which at any place is easiest, is in that place\ncheapest; and it becomes often desirable that products raised in one\ncountry should be wrought in another. Hence have arisen discussions on\n\"International values\" which will be one day remembered as highly\ncurious exercises of the human mind. For it will be discovered, in due\ncourse of tide and time, that international value is regulated just as\ninter-provincial or inter-parishional value is. Coals and hops are\nexchanged between Northumberland and Kent on absolutely the same\nprinciples as iron and wine between Lancashire and Spain. The greater\nbreadth of an arm of the sea increases the cost, but does not modify the\nprinciple of exchange; and a bargain written in two languages will have\nno other economical results than a bargain written in one. The distances\nof nations are measured, not by seas, but by ignorances; and their\ndivisions determined, not by dialects, but by enmities.[44]\n\n97. Of course, a system of international values may always be\nconstructed if we assume a relation of moral law to physical geography;\nas, for instance, that it is right to cheat or rob across a river,\nthough not across a road; or across a sea, though not across a river,\n&c.;--again, a system of such values may be constructed by assuming\nsimilar relations of taxation to physical geography; as, for instance,\nthat an article should be taxed in crossing a river, but not in crossing\na road; or in being carried fifty miles, but not in being carried five,\n&c.; such positions are indeed not easily maintained when once put in\nlogical form; but _one_ law of international value is maintainable in\nany form: namely, that the farther your neighbour lives from you, and\nthe less he understands you, _the more you are bound to be true in your\ndealings with him_; because your power over him is greater in proportion\nto his ignorance, and his remedy more difficult in proportion to his\ndistance.[45]\n\n98. I have just said the breadth of sea increases the cost of exchange.\nNow note that exchange, or commerce, _in itself_, is always costly; the\nsum of the value of the goods being diminished by the cost of their\nconveyance, and by the maintenance of the persons employed in it; so\nthat it is only when there is advantage to both producers (in getting\nthe one thing for the other) greater than the loss in conveyance, that\nthe exchange is expedient. And it can only be justly conducted when the\nporters kept by the producers (commonly called merchants) expect _mere_\npay, and not profit.[46] For in just commerce there are but three\nparties--the two persons or societies exchanging, and the agent or\nagents of exchange; the value of the things to be exchanged is known by\nboth the exchangers, and each receives equal value, neither gaining nor\nlosing (for whatever one gains the other loses). The intermediate agent\nis paid a known per-centage by both, partly for labour in conveyance,\npartly for care, knowledge, and risk; every attempt at concealment of\nthe amount of the pay indicates either effort on the part of the agent\nto obtain unjust profit, or effort on the part of the exchangers to\nrefuse him just pay. But for the most part it is the first, namely, the\neffort on the part of the merchant to obtain larger profit (so-called)\nby buying cheap and selling dear. Some part, indeed, of this larger gain\nis deserved, and might be openly demanded, because it is the reward of\nthe merchant's knowledge, and foresight of probable necessity; but the\ngreater part of such gain is unjust; and unjust in this most fatal way,\nthat it depends, first, on keeping the exchangers ignorant of the\nexchange value of the articles; and, secondly, on taking advantage of\nthe buyer's need and the seller's poverty. It is, therefore, one of the\nessential, and quite the most fatal, forms of usury; for usury means\nmerely taking an exorbitant[47] sum for the use of anything; and it is\nno matter whether the exorbitance is on loan or exchange, on rent or on\nprice--the essence of the usury being that it is obtained by advantage\nof opportunity or necessity, and not as due reward for labour. All the\ngreat thinkers, therefore, have held it to be unnatural and impious, in\nso far as it feeds on the distress of others, or their folly.[48]\nNevertheless, attempts to repress it by law must for ever be\nineffective; though Plato, Bacon, and the First Napoleon--all three of\nthem men who knew somewhat more of humanity than the \"British merchant\"\nusually does--tried their hands at it, and have left some (probably)\ngood moderative forms of law, which we will examine in their place. But\nthe only final check upon it must be radical purifying of the national\ncharacter, for being, as Bacon calls it, \"concessum propter duritiem\ncordis,\" it is to be done away with by touching the heart only; not,\nhowever, without medicinal law--as in the case of the other permission,\n\"propter duritiem.\" But in this more than in anything (though much in\nall, and though in this he would not himself allow of their application,\nfor his own laws against usury are sharp enough), Plato's words in the\nfourth book of the Polity are true, that neither drugs, nor charms, nor\nburnings, will touch a deep-lying political sore, any more than a deep\nbodily one; but only right and utter change of constitution: and that\n\"they do but lose their labour who think that by any tricks of law they\ncan get the better of these mischiefs of commerce, and see not that they\nhew at a Hydra.\"\n\n99. And indeed this Hydra seems so unslayable, and sin sticks so fast\nbetween the joinings of the stones of buying and selling, that \"to\ntrade\" in things, or literally \"cross-give\" them, has warped itself, by\nthe instinct of nations, into their worst word for fraud; for, because\nin trade there cannot but be trust, and it seems also that there cannot\nbut also be injury in answer to it, what is merely fraud between enemies\nbecomes treachery among friends: and \"trader,\" \"traditor,\" and \"traitor\"\nare but the same word. For which simplicity of language there is more\nreason than at first appears: for as in true commerce there is no\n\"profit,\" so in true commerce there is no \"sale.\" The idea of sale is\nthat of an interchange between enemies respectively endeavouring to get\nthe better one of another; but commerce is an exchange between friends;\nand there is no desire but that it should be just, any more than there\nwould be between members of the same family.[49] The moment there is a\nbargain over the pottage, the family relation is dissolved:--typically,\n\"the days of mourning for my father are at hand.\" Whereupon follows the\nresolve, \"then will I slay my brother.\"\n\n100. This inhumanity of mercenary commerce is the more notable because\nit is a fulfilment of the law that the corruption of the best is the\nworst. For as, taking the body natural for symbol of the body politic,\nthe governing and forming powers may be likened to the brain, and the\nlabouring to the limbs, the mercantile, presiding over circulation and\ncommunication of things in changed utilities, is symbolized by the\nheart; and, if that hardens, all is lost. And this is the ultimate\nlesson which the leader of English intellect meant for us, (a lesson,\nindeed, not all his own, but part of the old wisdom of humanity), in the\ntale of the _Merchant of Venice_; in which the true and incorrupt\nmerchant,--_kind and free beyond every other Shakspearian conception of\nmen_,--is opposed to the corrupted merchant, or usurer; the lesson being\ndeepened by the expression of the strange hatred which the corrupted\nmerchant bears to the pure one, mixed with intense scorn,--\n\n\"This is the fool that lent out money gratis; look to him, jailer,\" (as\nto lunatic no less than criminal) the enmity, observe, having its\nsymbolism literally carried out by being aimed straight at the heart,\nand finally foiled by a literal appeal to the great moral law that flesh\nand blood cannot be weighed, enforced by \"Portia\"[50] (\"Portion\"), the\ntype of divine Fortune, found, not in gold, nor in silver, but in lead,\nthat is to say, in endurance and patience, not in splendour; and finally\ntaught by her lips also, declaring, instead of the law and quality of\n\"merces,\" the greater law and quality of mercy, which is not strained,\nbut drops as the rain, blessing him that gives and him that takes. And\nobserve that this \"mercy\" is not the mean \"Misericordia,\" but the mighty\n\"Gratia,\" answered by Gratitude, (observe Shylock's leaning on the, to\nhim detestable, word, _gratis_, and compare the relations of Grace to\nEquity given in the second chapter of the second book of the\n_Memorabilia_;) that is to say, it is the gracious or loving, instead of\nthe strained, or competing manner, of doing things, answered, not only\nwith \"merces\" or pay, but with \"merci\" or thanks. And this is indeed the\nmeaning of the great benediction \"Grace, mercy, and peace,\" for there\ncan be no peace without grace, (not even by help of rifled cannon), nor\neven without triplicity of graciousness, for the Greeks, who began but\nwith one Grace, had to open their scheme into three before they had\ndone.\n\n101. With the usual tendency of long repeated thought, to take the\nsurface for the deep, we have conceived these goddesses as if they only\ngave loveliness to gesture; whereas their true function is to give\ngraciousness to deed, the other loveliness arising naturally out of\nthat. In which function Charis becomes Charitas;[51] and has a name and\npraise even greater than that of Faith or Truth, for these may be\nmaintained sullenly and proudly; but Charis is in her countenance always\ngladdening (Aglaia), and in her service instant and humble; and the true\nwife of Vulcan, or Labour. And it is not until her sincerity of function\nis lost, and her mere beauty contemplated instead of her patience, that\nshe is born again of the foam flake, and becomes Aphrodite; and it is\nthen only that she becomes capable of joining herself to war and to the\nenmities of men, instead of to labour and their services. Therefore the\nfable of Mars and Venus is chosen by Homer, picturing himself as\nDemodocus, to sing at the games in the court of Alcinous. Phaeacia is the\nHomeric island of Atlantis; an image of noble and wise government,\nconcealed, (how slightly!) merely by the change of a short vowel for a\nlong one in the name of its queen; yet misunderstood by all later\nwriters, (even by Horace, in his \"pinguis, Phaeaxque\"). That fable\nexpresses the perpetual error of men in thinking that grace and dignity\ncan only be reached by the soldier, and never by the artisan; so that\ncommerce and the useful arts have had the honour and beauty taken away,\nand only the Fraud and Pain left to them, with the lucre. Which is,\nindeed, one great reason of the continual blundering about the offices\nof government with respect to commerce. The higher classes are ashamed\nto employ themselves in it; and though ready enough to fight for (or\noccasionally against) the people,--to preach to them,--or judge them,\nwill not break bread for them; the refined upper servant who has\nwillingly looked after the burnishing of the armoury and ordering of the\nlibrary, not liking to set foot in the larder.\n\n102. Farther still. As Charis becomes Charitas on the one side, she\nbecomes--better still--Chara, Joy, on the other; or rather this is her\nvery mother's milk and the beauty of her childhood; for God brings no\nenduring Love, nor any other good, out of pain; nor out of contention;\nbut out of joy and harmony. And in this sense, human and divine, music\nand gladness, and the measures of both, come into her name; and Cher\nbecomes full-vowelled Cheer, and Cheerful; and Chara opens into Choir\nand Choral.[52]\n\n103. And lastly. As Grace passes into Freedom of action, Charis becomes\nEleutheria, or Liberality; a form of liberty quite curiously and\nintensely different from the thing usually understood by \"Liberty\" in\nmodern language: indeed, much more like what some people would call\nslavery: for a Greek always understood, primarily, by liberty,\ndeliverance from the law of his own passions (or from what the Christian\nwriters call bondage of corruption), and this a complete liberty: not\nbeing merely safe from the Siren, but also unbound from the mast, and\nnot having to resist the passion, but making it fawn upon, and follow\nhim--(this may be again partly the meaning of the fawning beasts about\nthe Circean cave; so, again, George Herbert--\n\n    Correct thy passion's spite,\n    Then may the beasts draw thee to happy light)--\n\nAnd it is only in such generosity that any man becomes capable of so\ngoverning others as to take true part in any system of national economy.\nNor is there any other eternal distinction between the upper and lower\nclasses than this form of liberty, Eleutheria, or benignity, in the one,\nand its opposite of slavery, Douleia, or malignity, in the other; the\nseparation of these two orders of men, and the firm government of the\nlower by the higher, being the first conditions of possible wealth and\neconomy in any state,--the Gods giving it no greater gift than the power\nto discern its true freemen, and \"malignum spernere vulgus.\"\n\n104. While I have traced the finer and higher laws of this matter for\nthose whom they concern, I have also to note the material law--vulgarly\nexpressed in the proverb, \"Honesty is the best policy.\" That proverb is\nindeed wholly inapplicable to matters of private interest. It is not\ntrue that honesty, as far as material gain is concerned, profits\nindividuals. A clever and cruel knave will in a mixed society always be\nricher than an honest person can be. But Honesty is the best \"policy,\"\nif policy mean practice of State. For fraud gains nothing in a State. It\nonly enables the knaves in it to live at the expense of honest people;\nwhile there is for every act of fraud, however small, a loss of wealth\nto the community. Whatever the fraudulent person gains, some other\nperson loses, as fraud produces nothing; and there is, _besides_, the\nloss of the time and thought spent in accomplishing the fraud, and of\nthe strength otherwise obtainable by mutual help (not to speak of the\nfevers of anxiety and jealousy in the blood, which are a heavy physical\nloss, as I will show in due time). Practically, when the nation is\ndeeply corrupt cheat answers to cheat; every one is in turn imposed\nupon, and there is to the body politic the dead loss of the ingenuity,\ntogether with the incalculable mischief of the injury to each defrauded\nperson, producing collateral effect unexpectedly. My neighbour sells me\nbad meat: I sell him in return flawed iron. We neither of us get one\natom of pecuniary advantage on the whole transaction, but we both suffer\nunexpected inconvenience; my men get scurvy, and his cattle-truck runs\noff the rails.\n\n105. The examination of this form of Charis must, therefore, lead us\ninto the discussion of the principles of government in general, and\nespecially of that of the poor by the rich, discovering how the\nGraciousness joined with the Greatness, or Love with Majestas, is the\ntrue Dei Gratia, or Divine Right, of every form and manner of King; _i.\ne._, specifically, of the thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, and\npowers of the earth:--of the thrones, stable, or \"ruling,\" literally\nright-doing powers (\"rex eris, recte si facies\"):--of the\ndominations--lordly, edifying, dominant and harmonious powers; chiefly\ndomestic, over the \"built thing,\" domus, or house; and inherently\ntwofold, Dominus and Domina; Lord and Lady:--of the Princedoms,\npre-eminent, incipient, creative, and demonstrative powers; thus poetic\nand mercantile, in the \"princeps carmen deduxisse\" and the\nmerchant-prince:--of the Virtues or Courages; militant, guiding, or\nDucal powers:--and finally of the Strengths, or Forces pure; magistral\npowers, of the More over the less, and the forceful and free over the\nweak and servile elements of life.\n\nSubject enough for the next paper, involving \"economical\" principles of\nsome importance, of which, for theme, here is a sentence, which I do not\ncare to translate, for it would sound harsh in English,[53] though,\ntruly, it is one of the tenderest ever uttered by man; which may be\nmeditated over, or rather _through_, in the meanwhile, by any one who\nwill take the pains:--\n\n[Greek: Ar oun, hosper Hippos to anepistemoni men encheirounti de\nchresthai zemia estin, houto kai adelphos, otan tis auto me epistamenos\nencheir chresthai, zemia esti];\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[44] I have repeated the substance of this and the next paragraph so\noften since, that I am ashamed and weary. The thing is too true, and too\nsimple, it seems, for anybody ever to believe. Meantime, the theories of\n\"international values,\" as explained by Modern Political Economy, have\nbrought about last year's pillage of France by Germany, and the\naffectionate relations now existing in consequence between the\ninhabitants of the right and left banks of the Rhine.\n\n[45] I wish some one would examine and publish accurately the late\ndealings of the Governors of the Cape with the Caffirs.\n\n[46] By \"pay,\" I mean wages for labour or skill; by \"profit,\" gain\ndependent on the state of the market.\n\n[47] Since I wrote this, I have worked out the question of interest of\nmoney, which always, until lately, had embarrassed and defeated me; and\nI find that the payment of interest of any amount whatever is real\n\"usury,\" and entirely unjustifiable. I was shown this chiefly by the\npamphlets issued by Mr. W. C. Sillar, though I greatly regret the\nimpatience which causes Mr. Sillar to regard usury as the radical crime\nin political economy. There are others worse, that act with it.\n\n[48] Hence Dante's companionship of Cahors, _Inf._, canto xi., supported\nby the view taken of the matter throughout the middle ages, in common\nwith the Greeks.\n\n[49] I do not wonder when I re-read this, that people talk about my\n\"sentiment.\" But there is no sentiment whatever in the matter. It is a\nhard and bare commercial fact, that if two people deal together who\ndon't try to cheat each other, they will in a given time, make more\nmoney out of each other than if they do. See Sec. 104.\n\n[50] Shakspeare would certainly never have chosen this name had he been\nforced to retain the Roman spelling. Like Perdita, \"lost lady,\" or\nCordelia, \"heart-lady,\" Portia is \"fortune\" lady. The two great relative\ngroups of words, Fortuna, fero, and fors--Portio, porto, and pars (with\nthe lateral branch, op-portune, im-portune, opportunity, &c.), are of\ndeep and intricate significance; their various senses of bringing,\nabstracting, and sustaining being all centralized by the wheel (which\nbears and moves at once), or still better, the ball (spera) of\nFortune,--\"Volve sua spera, e beata si gode:\" the motive power of this\nwheel distinguishing its goddess from the fixed majesty of Necessitas\nwith her iron nails; or [Greek: ananke], with her pillar of fire and\niridescent orbits, _fixed_ at the centre. Portus and porta, and gate in\nits connexion with gain, form another interesting branch group; and\nMors, the concentration of delaying, is always to be remembered with\nFors, the concentration of bringing and bearing, passing on into Fortis\nand Fortitude.\n\n[This note is literally a mere memorandum for the future work which I am\nnow completing in _Fors Clavigera_; it was printed partly in vanity, but\nalso with real desire to get people to share the interest I found in the\ncareful study of the leading words in noble languages. Compare the next\nnote.]\n\n[51] As Charis becomes Charitas, the word \"Cher,\" or \"Dear,\" passes from\nShylock's sense of it (to buy cheap and sell dear) into Antonio's sense\nof it: emphasized with the final _i_ in tender \"Cheri,\" and hushed to\nEnglish calmness in our noble \"Cherish.\" The reader must not think that\nany care can be misspent in tracing the connexion and power of the words\nwhich we have to use in the sequel. (See Appendix VI.) Much education\nsums itself in making men economize their words, and understand them.\nNor is it possible to estimate the harm which has been done, in matters\nof higher speculation and conduct, by loose verbiage, though we may\nguess at it by observing the dislike which people show to having\nanything about their religion said to them in simple words, because then\nthey understand it. Thus congregations meet weekly to invoke the\ninfluence of a Spirit of Life and Truth; yet if any part of that\ncharacter were intelligibly expressed to them by the formulas of the\nservice, they would be offended. Suppose, for instance, in the closing\nbenediction, the clergyman were to give vital significance to the vague\nword \"Holy,\" and were to say, \"the fellowship of the Helpful and Honest\nGhost be with you, and remain with you always,\" what would be the horror\nof many, first at the irreverence of so intelligible an expression; and\nsecondly, at the discomfortable occurrence of the suspicion that while\nthroughout the commercial dealings of the week they had denied the\npropriety of Help, and possibility of Honesty, the Person whose company\nthey had been now asking to be blessed with could have no fellowship\nwith cruel people or knaves.\n\n[52] \"[Greek: ta men oun alla zoa ouk echein aisthesin ton en tais\nkinesesi taxeon oude ataxion ois de rythmos unoma kai haomonia emin de\nous eipomen tous Theous] (Apollo, the Muses, and Bacchus--the grave\nBacchus, that is--ruling the choir of age; or Bacchus restraining; 'saeva\n_tene_, cum Berecyntio cornu tympana,' &c.) [Greek: synchoreutas\ndedosthai, toutous einai kai tous dedokotas ten enrythmon te kai\nenarmonion aisthesin meth' edones ... chorous te onomakenai para tes\ncharas emphyton onoma].\" \"Other animals have no perception of order nor\nof disorder in motion; but for us, Apollo and Bacchus and the Muses are\nappointed to mingle in our dances; and there are they who have given us\nthe sense of delight in rhythm and harmony. And the name of choir,\nchoral dance, (we may believe,) came from chara (delight).\"--Laws, book\nii.\n\n[53] [My way now, is to say things plainly, if I can, whether they sound\nharsh or not;--this is the translation--\"Is it possible, then, that as a\nhorse is only a mischief to any one who attempts to use him without\nknowing how, so also our brother, if we attempt to use him without\nknowing how, may be a mischief to us?\"]\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\nGOVERNMENT.\n\n\n106. It remains for us, as I stated in the close of the last chapter, to\nexamine first the principles of government in general, and then those of\nthe government of the Poor by the Rich.\n\nThe government of a state consists in its customs, laws, and councils,\nand their enforcements.\n\n\nI. CUSTOMS.\n\nAs one person primarily differs from another by fineness of nature, and,\nsecondarily, by fineness of training, so also, a polite nation differs\nfrom a savage one, first, by the refinement of its nature, and secondly\nby the delicacy of its customs.\n\nIn the completeness of custom, which is the nation's self-government,\nthere are three stages--first, fineness in method of doing or of\nbeing;--called the manner or moral of acts; secondly, firmness in\nholding such method after adoption, so that it shall become a habit in\nthe character: _i. e._, a constant \"having\" or \"behaving;\" and, lastly,\nethical power in performance and endurance, which is the skill following\non habit, and the ease reached by frequency of right doing.\n\nThe sensibility of the nation is indicated by the fineness of its\ncustoms; its courage, continence, and self-respect by its persistence in\nthem.\n\nBy sensibility I mean its natural perception of beauty, fitness, and\nrightness; or of what is lovely, decent, and just: faculties dependent\nmuch on race, and the primal signs of fine breeding in man; but\ncultivable also by education, and necessarily perishing without it. True\neducation has, indeed, no other function than the development of these\nfaculties, and of the relative will. It has been the great error of\nmodern intelligence to mistake science for education. You do not educate\na man by telling him what he knew not, but by making him what he was\nnot.\n\nAnd making him what he will remain for ever: for no wash of weeds will\nbring back the faded purple. And in that dyeing there are two\nprocesses--first, the cleansing and wringing-out, which is the baptism\nwith water; and then the infusing of the blue and scarlet colours,\ngentleness and justice, which is the baptism with fire.\n\n107.[54] The customs and manners of a sensitive and highly-trained race\nare always Vital: that is to say, they are orderly manifestations of\nintense life, like the habitual action of the fingers of a musician. The\ncustoms and manners of a vile and rude race, on the contrary, are\nconditions of decay: they are not, properly speaking, habits, but\nincrustations; not restraints, or forms, of life; but gangrenes,\nnoisome, and the beginnings of death.\n\nAnd generally, so far as custom attaches itself to indolence instead of\naction, and to prejudice instead of perception, it takes this deadly\ncharacter, so that thus\n\n    Custom hangs upon us with a weight\n    Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life.\n\nBut that weight, if it become impetus, (living instead of dead weight)\nis just what gives value to custom, when it works _with_ life, instead\nof against it.\n\n108. The high ethical training of a nation implies perfect Grace,\nPitifulness, and Peace; it is irreconcilably inconsistent with filthy or\nmechanical employments,--with the desire of money,--and with mental\nstates of anxiety, jealousy, or indifference to pain. The present\ninsensibility of the upper classes of Europe to the surrounding aspects\nof suffering, uncleanness, and crime, binds them not only into one\nresponsibility with the sin, but into one dishonour with the foulness,\nwhich rot at their thresholds. The crimes daily recorded in the\npolice-courts of London and Paris (and much more those which are\n_un_recorded) are a disgrace to the whole body politic;[55] they are, as\nin the body natural, stains of disease on a face of delicate skin,\nmaking the delicacy itself frightful. Similarly, the filth and poverty\npermitted or ignored in the midst of us are as dishonourable to the\nwhole social body, as in the body natural it is to wash the face, but\nleave the hands and feet foul. Christ's way is the only true one: begin\nat the feet; the face will take care of itself.\n\n109. Yet, since necessarily, in the frame of a nation, nothing but the\nhead can be of gold, and the feet, for the work they have to do, must be\npart of iron, part of clay;--foul or mechanical work is always reduced\nby a noble race to the minimum in quantity; and, even then, performed\nand endured, not without sense of degradation, as a fine temper is\nwounded by the sight of the lower offices of the body. The highest\nconditions of human society reached hitherto have cast such work to\nslaves; but supposing slavery of a politically defined kind to be done\naway with, mechanical and foul employment must, in all highly organized\nstates, take the aspect either of punishment or probation. All criminals\nshould at once be set to the most dangerous and painful forms of it,\nespecially to work in mines and at furnaces,[56] so as to relieve the\ninnocent population as far as possible: of merely rough (not mechanical)\nmanual labour, especially agricultural, _a large portion should be done\nby the upper classes_;--_bodily health, and sufficient contrast and\nrepose for the mental functions, being unattainable without it_; what\nnecessarily inferior labour remains to be done, as especially in\nmanufactures, should, and always will, when the relations of society are\nreverent and harmonious, fall to the lot of those who, for the time, are\nfit for nothing better. For as, whatever the perfectness of the\neducational system, there must remain infinite differences between the\nnatures and capacities of men; and these differing natures are generally\nrangeable under the two qualities of lordly, (or tending towards rule,\nconstruction, and harmony), and servile (or tending towards misrule,\ndestruction, and discord); and since the lordly part is only in a state\nof profitableness while ruling, and the servile only in a state of\nredeemableness while serving, the whole health of the state depends on\nthe manifest separation of these two elements of its mind; for, if the\nservile part be not separated and rendered visible in service, it mixes\nwith, and corrupts, the entire body of the state; and if the lordly part\nbe not distinguished, and set to rule, it is crushed and lost, being\nturned to no account, so that the rarest qualities of the nation are all\ngiven to it in vain.[57]\n\n\nII. LAWS.\n\n110. These are the definitions and bonds of custom, or of what the\nnation desires should become custom.\n\nLaw is either archic,[58] (of direction), meristic, (of division), or\ncritic, (of judgment).\n\nArchic law is that of appointment and precept: it defines what is and is\nnot to be _done_.\n\nMeristic law is that of balance and distribution: it defines what is and\nis not to be _possessed_.\n\nCritic law is that of discernment and award: it defines what is and is\nnot to be _suffered_.\n\n\n111. A. ARCHIC LAW. If we choose to unite the laws of precept and\ndistribution under the head of \"statutes,\" all law is simply either of\nstatute or judgment; that is, first the establishment of ordinance, and,\nsecondly, the assignment of the reward, or penalty, due to its\nobservance or violation.\n\nTo some extent these two forms of law must be associated, and, with\nevery ordinance, the penalty of disobedience to it be also determined.\nBut since the degrees and guilt of disobedience vary, the determination\nof due reward and punishment must be modified by discernment of special\nfact, which is peculiarly the office of the judge, as distinguished from\nthat of the lawgiver and law-sustainer, or king; not but that the two\noffices are always theoretically, and in early stages, or limited\nnumbers, of society, are often practically, united in the same person or\npersons.\n\n112. Also, it is necessary to keep clearly in view the distinction\nbetween these two kinds of law, because the possible range of law is\nwider in proportion to their separation. There are many points of\nconduct respecting which the nation may wisely express its will by a\nwritten precept or resolve, yet not enforce it by penalty:[59] and the\nexpedient degree of penalty is always quite a separate consideration\nfrom the expedience of the statute; for the statute may often be better\nenforced by mercy than severity, and is also easier in the bearing, and\nless likely to be abrogated. Farther, laws of precept have reference\nespecially to youth, and concern themselves with training; but laws of\njudgment to manhood, and concern themselves with remedy and reward.\nThere is a highly curious feeling in the English mind against\neducational law: we think no man's liberty should be interfered with\ntill he has done irrevocable wrong; whereas it is then just too late for\nthe only gracious and kingly interference, which is to hinder him from\ndoing it. Make your educational laws strict, and your criminal ones may\nbe gentle; but, leave youth its liberty and you will have to dig\ndungeons for age. And it is good for a man that he \"wear the yoke in his\nyouth:\" for the reins may then be of silken thread; and with sweet chime\nof silver bells at the bridle; but, for the captivity of age, you must\nforge the iron fetter, and cast the passing bell.\n\n113. Since no law can be, in a final or true sense, established, but by\nright, (all unjust laws involving the ultimate necessity of their own\nabrogation), the law-giving can only become a law-sustaining power in so\nfar as it is Royal, or \"right doing;\"--in so far, that is, as it rules,\nnot misrules, and orders, not dis-orders, the things submitted to it.\nThroned on this rock of justice, the kingly power becomes established\nand establishing; \"[Greek: theios],\" or divine, and, therefore, it is\nliterally true that no ruler can err, so long as he is a ruler, or\n[Greek: archon oudeis amartanei tote hotan archon e]; perverted by\ncareless thought, which has cost the world somewhat, into--\"the king can\ndo no wrong.\"\n\n114. B. MERISTIC LAW,[60] or that of the tenure of property, first\ndetermines what every individual possesses by right, and secures it to\nhim; and what he possesses by wrong, and deprives him of it. But it has\na far higher provisory function: it determines what every man _should_\npossess, and puts it within his reach on due conditions; and what he\nshould _not_ possess, and puts this out of his reach, conclusively.\n\n115. Every article of human wealth has certain conditions attached to\nits merited possession; when these are unobserved, possession becomes\nrapine. And the object of meristic law is not only to secure to every\nman his rightful share (the share, that is, which he has worked for,\nproduced, or received by gift from a rightful owner), but to enforce the\ndue conditions of possession, as far as law may conveniently reach; for\ninstance, that land shall not be wantonly allowed to run to waste, that\nstreams shall not be poisoned by the persons through whose properties\nthey pass, nor air be rendered unwholesome beyond given limits. Laws of\nthis kind exist already in rudimentary degree, but need large\ndevelopment; the just laws respecting the possession of works of art\nhave not hitherto been so much as conceived, and the daily loss of\nnational wealth, and of its use, in this respect, is quite incalculable.\nAnd these laws need revision quite as much respecting property in\nnational as in private hands. For instance: the public are under a vague\nimpression that, because they have paid for the contents of the British\nMuseum, every one has an equal right to see and to handle them. But the\npublic have similarly paid for the contents of Woolwich arsenal; yet do\nnot expect free access to it, or handling of its contents. The British\nMuseum is neither a free circulating library, nor a free school: it is a\nplace for the safe preservation, and exhibition on due occasion, of\nunique books, unique objects of natural history, and unique works of\nart; its books can no more be used by everybody than its coins can be\nhandled, or its statues cast. There ought to be free libraries in every\nquarter of London, with large and complete reading-rooms attached; so\nalso free educational museums should be open in every quarter of London,\nall day long, until late at night, well lighted, well catalogued, and\nrich in contents both of art and natural history. But neither the\nBritish Museum nor National Gallery is a school; they are _treasuries_;\nand both should be severely restricted in access and in use. Unless some\norder of this kind is made, and that soon, for the MSS. department of\nthe Museum, (its superintendents have sorrowfully told me this, and\nrepeatedly), the best MSS. in the collection will be destroyed,\nirretrievably, by the careless and continual handling to which they are\nnow subjected.\n\nFinally, in certain conditions of a nation's progress, laws limiting\naccumulation of any kind of property may be found expedient.\n\n116. C. CRITIC LAW determines questions of injury, and assigns due\nrewards and punishments to conduct.\n\nTwo curious economical questions arise laterally with respect to this\nbranch of law, namely, the cost of crime, and the cost of judgment. The\ncost of crime is endured by nations ignorantly, that expense being\nnowhere stated in their budgets; the cost of judgment, patiently,\n(provided only it can be had pure for the money), because the science,\nor perhaps we ought rather to say the art, of law, is felt to found a\nnoble profession and discipline; so that civilized nations are usually\nglad that a number of persons should be supported by exercise in oratory\nand analysis. But it has not yet been calculated what the practical\nvalue might have been, in other directions, of the intelligence now\noccupied in deciding, through courses of years, what might have been\ndecided as justly, had the date of judgment been fixed, in as many\nhours. Imagine one half of the funds which any great nation devotes to\ndispute by law, applied to the determination of physical questions in\nmedicine, agriculture, and theoretic science; and calculate the probable\nresults within the next ten years!\n\nI say nothing yet of the more deadly, more lamentable loss, involved in\nthe use of purchased, instead of personal, justice--[Greek: \"epakto par\nallon--aporia oikeion.\"]\n\n117. In order to true analysis of critic law, we must understand the\nreal meaning of the word \"injury.\"\n\nWe commonly understand by it, any kind of harm done by one man to\nanother; but we do not define the idea of harm: sometimes we limit it to\nthe harm which the sufferer is conscious of; whereas much the worst\ninjuries are those he is unconscious of; and, at other times, we limit\nthe idea to violence, or restraint; whereas much the worse forms of\ninjury are to be accomplished by indolence, and the withdrawal of\nrestraint.\n\n118. \"Injury\" is then simply the refusal, or violation of, any man's\nright or claim upon his fellows: which claim, much talked of in modern\ntimes, under the term \"right,\" is mainly resolvable into two branches: a\nman's claim not to be hindered from doing what he should; and his claim\nto be hindered from doing what he should not; these two forms of\nhindrance being intensified by reward, help, and fortune, or Fors, on\none side, and by punishment, impediment, and even final arrest, or Mors,\non the other.\n\n119. Now, in order to a man's obtaining these two rights, it is clearly\nneedful that the _worth_ of him should be approximately known; as well\nas the _want_ of worth, which has, unhappily, been usually the principal\nsubject of study for critic law, careful hitherto only to mark degrees\nof de-merit, instead of merit;--assigning, indeed, to the _De_ficiencies\n(not always, alas! even to these) just estimate, fine, or penalty; but\nto the _Ef_ficiencies, on the other side, which are by much the more\ninteresting, as well as the only profitable part of its subject,\nassigning neither estimate nor aid.\n\n120. Now, it is in this higher and perfect function of critic law,\n_en_abling instead of _dis_abling, that it becomes truly Kingly, instead\nof Draconic: (what Providence gave the great, wrathful legislator his\nname?): that is, it becomes the law of man and of life, instead of the\nlaw of the worm and of death--both of these laws being set in changeless\npoise one against another, and the enforcement of both being the eternal\nfunction of the lawgiver, and true claim of every living soul: such\nclaim being indeed strong to be mercifully hindered, and even, if need\nbe, abolished, when longer existence means only deeper destruction, but\nstronger still to be mercifully helped, and recreated, when longer\nexistence and new creation mean nobler life. So that reward and\npunishment will be found to resolve themselves mainly[61] into help and\nhindrance; and these again will issue naturally from time recognition of\ndeserving, and the just reverence and just wrath which follow\ninstinctively on such recognition.\n\n121. I say, \"follow,\" but, in reality, they are part of the recognition.\nReverence is as instinctive as anger;--both of them instant on true\nvision: it is sight and understanding that we have to teach, and these\n_are_ reverence. Make a man perceive worth, and in its reflection he\nsees his own relative unworth, and worships thereupon inevitably, not\nwith stiff courtesy, but rejoicingly, passionately, and, best of all,\n_restfully_: for the inner capacity of awe and love is infinite in man,\nand only in finding these, can we find peace. And the common insolences\nand petulances of the people, and their talk of equality, are not\nirreverence in them in the least, but mere blindness, stupefaction, and\nfog in the brains,[62] the first sign of any cleansing away of which is,\nthat they gain some power of discerning, and some patience in submitting\nto, their true counsellors and governors. In the mode of such\ndiscernment consists the real \"constitution\" of the state, more than in\nthe titles or offices of the discerned person; for it is no matter, save\nin degree of mischief, to what office a man is appointed, if he cannot\nfulfil it.\n\n122. III. GOVERNMENT BY COUNCIL.\n\nThis is the determination, by living authority, of the national conduct\nto be observed under existing circumstances; and the modification or\nenlargement, abrogation or enforcement, of the code of national law\naccording to present needs or purposes. This government is necessarily\nalways by council, for though the authority of it may be vested in one\nperson, that person cannot form any opinion on a matter of public\ninterest but by (voluntarily or involuntarily) submitting himself to the\ninfluence of others.\n\nThis government is always twofold--visible and invisible.\n\nThe visible government is that which nominally carries on the national\nbusiness; determines its foreign relations, raises taxes, levies\nsoldiers, orders war or peace, and otherwise becomes the arbiter of the\nnational fortune. The invisible government is that exercised by all\nenergetic and intelligent men, each in his sphere, regulating the inner\nwill and secret ways of the people, essentially forming its character,\nand preparing its fate.\n\nVisible governments are the toys of some nations, the diseases of\nothers, the harness of some, the burdens of more the necessity of all.\nSometimes their career is quite distinct from that of the people, and to\nwrite it, as the national history, is as if one should number the\naccidents which befall a man's weapons and wardrobe, and call the list\nhis biography. Nevertheless, a truly noble and wise nation necessarily\nhas a noble and wise visible government, for its wisdom issues in that\nconclusively.\n\n123. Visible governments are, in their agencies, capable of three pure\nforms, and of no more than three.\n\nThey are either monarchies, where the authority is vested in one person;\noligarchies, when it is vested in a minority; or democracies, when\nvested in a majority.\n\nBut these three forms are not only, in practice, variously limited and\ncombined, but capable of infinite difference in character and use,\nreceiving specific names according to their variations; which names,\nbeing nowise agreed upon, nor consistently used, either in thought or\nwriting, no man can at present tell, in speaking of any kind of\ngovernment, whether he is understood; nor, in hearing, whether he\nunderstands. Thus we usually call a just government by one person a\nmonarchy, and an unjust or cruel one, a tyranny: this might be\nreasonable if it had reference to the divinity of true government; but\nto limit the term \"oligarchy\" to government by a few rich people, and to\ncall government by a few wise or noble people \"aristocracy,\" is\nevidently absurd, unless it were proved that rich people never could be\nwise, or noble people rich; and farther absurd, because there are other\ndistinctions in character, as well as riches or wisdom (greater purity\nof race, or strength of purpose, for instance), which may give the power\nof government to the few. So that if we had to give names to every group\nor kind of minority, we should have verbiage enough. But there is only\none right name--\"oligarchy.\"\n\n124. So also the terms \"republic\" and \"democracy\"[63] are confused,\nespecially in modern use; and both of them are liable to every sort of\nmisconception. A republic means, properly, a polity in which the state,\nwith its all, is at every man's service, and every man, with his all, at\nthe state's service--(people are apt to lose sight of the last\ncondition), but its government may nevertheless be oligarchic (consular,\nor decemviral, for instance), or monarchic (dictatorial). But a\ndemocracy means a state in which the government rests directly with the\nmajority of the citizens. And both these conditions have been judged\nonly by such accidents and aspects of them as each of us has had\nexperience of; and sometimes both have been confused with anarchy, as it\nis the fashion at present to talk of the \"failure of republican\ninstitutions in America,\" when there has never yet been in America any\nsuch thing as an institution, but only defiance of institution; neither\nany such thing as a _res-publica_, but only a multitudinous\n_res-privata_; every man for himself. It is not republicanism which\nfails now in America; it is your model science of political economy,\nbrought to its perfect practice. There you may see competition, and the\n\"law of demand and supply\" (especially in paper), in beautiful and\nunhindered operation.[64] Lust of wealth, and trust in it; vulgar faith\nin magnitude and multitude, instead of nobleness; besides that\nfaith natural to backwoodsmen--\"lucum ligna,\"[65]--perpetual\nself-contemplation, issuing in passionate vanity; total ignorance of the\nfiner and higher arts, and of all that they teach and bestow; and the\ndiscontent of energetic minds unoccupied, frantic with hope of\nuncomprehended change, and progress they know not whither;[66]--these\nare the things that have \"failed\" in America; and yet not altogether\nfailed--it is not collapse, but collision; the greatest railroad\naccident on record, with fire caught from the furnace, and Catiline's\nquenching \"non aqua, sed ruina.\"[67] But I see not, in any of our talk\nof them, justice enough done to their erratic strength of purpose, nor\nany estimate taken of the strength of endurance of domestic sorrow, in\nwhat their women and children suppose a righteous cause. And out of that\nendurance and suffering, its own fruit will be born with time; [_not_\nabolition of slavery, however. See Sec. 130.] and Carlyle's prophecy of\nthem (June, 1850), as it has now come true in the first clause, will, in\nthe last:--\n\n\"America, too, will find that caucuses, divisionalists, stump-oratory,\nand speeches to Buncombe will not carry men to the immortal gods; that\nthe Washington Congress, and constitutional battle of Kilkenny cats is\nthere, as here, naught for such objects; quite incompetent for such;\nand, in fine, that said sublime constitutional arrangement will require\nto be (with terrible throes, and travail such as few expect yet)\nremodelled, abridged, extended, suppressed, torn asunder, put together\nagain--not without heroic labour and effort, quite other than that of\nthe stump-orator and the revival preacher, one day.\"\n\n125.[68] Understand, then, once for all, that no form of government,\nprovided it be a government at all, is, as such, to be either condemned\nor praised, or contested for in anywise, but by fools. But all forms of\ngovernment are good just so far as they attain this one vital necessity\nof policy--_that the wise and kind, few or many, shall govern the unwise\nand unkind_; and they are evil so far as they miss of this, or reverse\nit. Not does the form, in any case, signify one whit, but its\n_firmness_, and adaptation to the need; for if there be many foolish\npersons in a state, and few wise, then it is good that the few govern;\nand if there be many wise, and few foolish, then it is good that the\nmany govern; and if many be wise, yet one wiser, then it is good that\none should govern; and so on. Thus, we may have \"the ant's republic, and\nthe realm of bees,\" both good in their kind; one for groping, and the\nother for building; and nobler still, for flying;--the Ducal\nmonarchy[69] of those\n\n    Intelligent of seasons, that set forth\n    The aery caravan, high over seas.\n\n126. Nor need we want examples, among the inferior creatures, of\ndissoluteness, as well as resoluteness, in government. I once saw\ndemocracy finely illustrated by the beetles of North Switzerland, who by\nuniversal suffrage, and elytric acclamation, one May twilight, carried\nit, that they would fly over the Lake of Zug; and flew _short_, to the\ngreat disfigurement of the Lake of Zug,--[Greek: Kantharon limen]--over\nsome leagues square, and to the close of the cockchafer democracy for\nthat year. Then, for tyranny, the old fable of the frogs and the stork\nfinely touches one form of it; but truth will image it more closely than\nfable, for tyranny is not complete when it is only over the idle, but\nwhen it is over the laborious and the blind. This description of\npelicans and climbing perch, which I find quoted in one of our popular\nnatural histories, out of Sir Emerson Tennant's _Ceylon_, comes as near\nas may be to the true image of the thing:--\n\n\"Heavy rains came on, and as we stood on the high ground, we observed a\npelican on the margin of the shallow pool gorging himself; our people\nwent towards him, and raised a cry of 'Fish, fish!' We hurried down, and\nfound numbers of fish struggling upward through the grass, in the rills\nformed by the trickling of the rain. There was scarcely water to cover\nthem, but nevertheless they made rapid progress up the bank, on which\nour followers collected about two baskets of them. They were forcing\ntheir way up the knoll, and had they not been interrupted, first by the\npelican, and afterwards by ourselves, they would in a few minutes have\ngained the highest point, and descended on the other side into a pool\nwhich formed another portion of the tank. In going this distance,\nhowever, they must have used muscular exertion enough to have taken them\nhalf a mile on level ground; for at these places all the cattle and wild\nanimals of the neighbourhood had latterly come to drink, so that the\nsurface was everywhere indented with footmarks, in addition to the\ncracks in the surrounding baked mud, into which the fish tumbled in\ntheir progress. In those holes, which were deep, and the sides\nperpendicular, they remained to die, and were carried off by kites and\ncrows.\"[70]\n\n127. But whether governments be bad or good, one general disadvantage\nseems to attach to them in modern times--that they are all _costly_.[71]\nThis, however, is not essentially the fault of the governments. If\nnations choose to play at war, they will always find their governments\nwilling to lead the game, and soon coming under that term of\nAristophanes, \"[Greek: kapeloi aspidon],\" \"shield-sellers.\" And when\n([Greek: pem epi pemati])[72] the shields take the form of iron ships,\nwith apparatus \"for defence against liquid fire,\"--as I see by latest\naccounts they are now arranging the decks in English dockyards--they\nbecome costly biers enough for the grey convoy of chief mourner waves,\nwreathed with funereal foam, to bear back the dead upon; the massy\nshoulders of those corpse-bearers being intended for quite other work,\nand to bear the living, and food for the living, if we would let them.\n\n128. Nor have we the least right to complain of our governments being\nexpensive, so long as we set the government _to do precisely the work\nwhich brings no return_. If our present doctrines of political economy\nbe just, let us trust them to the utmost; take that war business out of\nthe government's hands, and test therein the principles of supply and\ndemand. Let our future sieges of Sebastopol be done by contract--no\ncapture, no pay--(I admit that things might sometimes go better so); and\nlet us sell the commands of our prospective battles, with our vicarages,\nto the lowest bidder; so may we have cheap victories, and divinity. On\nthe other hand, if we have so much suspicion of our science that we dare\nnot trust it on military or spiritual business, would it not be but\nreasonable to try whether some authoritative handling may not prosper in\nmatters utilitarian? If we were to set our governments to do useful\nthings instead of mischievous, possibly even the apparatus itself might\nin time come to be less costly. The machine, applied to the building of\nthe house, might perhaps pay, when it seems not to pay, applied to\npulling it down. If we made in our dockyards ships to carry timber and\ncoals, instead of cannon, and with provision for the brightening of\ndomestic solid culinary fire, instead of for the scattering of liquid\nhostile fire, it might have some effect on the taxes. Or suppose that we\ntried the experiment on land instead of water carriage; already the\ngovernment, not unapproved, carries letters and parcels for us; larger\npackages may in time follow;--even general merchandise--why not, at\nlast, ourselves? Had the money spent in local mistakes and vain private\nlitigation, on the railroads of England, been laid out, instead, under\nproper government restraint, on really useful railroad work, and had no\nabsurd expense been incurred in ornamenting stations, we might already\nhave had,--what ultimately it will be found we must have,--quadruple\nrails, two for passengers, and two for traffic, on every great line; and\nwe might have been carried in swift safety, and watched and warded by\nwell-paid pointsmen, for half the present fares. [For, of course, a\nrailroad company is merely an association of turnpike-keepers, who make\nthe tolls as high as they can, not to mend the roads with, but to\npocket. The public will in time discover this, and do away with\nturnpikes on railroads, as on all other public-ways.]\n\n129. Suppose it should thus turn out, finally, that a true government\nset to true work, instead of being a costly engine, was a paying one?\nthat your government, rightly organized, instead of itself subsisting by\nan income-tax, would produce its subjects some subsistence in the shape\nof an income dividend?--police, and judges duly paid besides, only with\nless work than the state at present provides for them.\n\nA true government set to true work!--Not easily to be imagined, still\nless obtained; but not beyond human hope or ingenuity. Only you will\nhave to alter your election systems somewhat, first. Not by universal\nsuffrage, nor by votes purchasable with beer, is such government to be\nhad. That is to say, not by universal _equal_ suffrage. Every man\nupwards of twenty, who has been convicted of no legal crime, should have\nhis say in this matter; but afterwards a louder voice, as he grows\nolder, and approves himself wiser. If he has one vote at twenty, he\nshould have two at thirty, four at forty, ten at fifty. For every single\nvote which he has with an income of a hundred a year, he should have ten\nwith an income of a thousand, (provided you first see to it that wealth\nis, as nature intended it to be, the reward of sagacity and\nindustry--not of good luck in a scramble or a lottery). For every single\nvote which he had as subordinate in any business, he should have two\nwhen he became a master; and every office and authority nationally\nbestowed, implying trustworthiness and intellect, should have its known\nproportional number of votes attached to it. But into the detail and\nworking of a true system in these matters we cannot now enter; we are\nconcerned as yet with definitions only, and statements of first\nprinciples, which will be established now sufficiently for our purposes\nwhen we have examined the nature of that form of government last on the\nlist in Sec. 105,--the purely \"Magistral,\" exciting at present its full\nshare of public notice, under its ambiguous title of \"slavery.\"\n\n130. I have not, however, been able to ascertain in definite terms, from\nthe declaimers against slavery, what they understand by it. If they mean\nonly the imprisonment or compulsion of one person by another, such\nimprisonment or compulsion being in many cases highly expedient,\nslavery, so defined, would be no evil in itself, but only in its abuse;\nthat is, when men are slaves, who should not be, or masters, who should\nnot be, or even the fittest characters for either state, placed in it\nunder conditions which should not be. It is not, for instance, a\nnecessary condition of slavery, nor a desirable one, that parents should\nbe separated from children, or husbands from wives; but the institution\nof war, against which people declaim with less violence, effects such\nseparations,--not unfrequently in a very permanent manner. To press a\nsailor, seize a white youth by conscription for a soldier, or carry off\na black one for a labourer, may all be right acts, or all wrong ones,\naccording to needs and circumstances. It is wrong to scourge a man\nunnecessarily. So it is to shoot him. Both must be done on occasion; and\nit is better and kinder to flog a man to his work, than to leave him\nidle till he robs, and flog him afterwards. The essential thing for all\ncreatures is to be made to do right; how they are made to do it--by\npleasant promises, or hard necessities, pathetic oratory, or the\nwhip--is comparatively immaterial.[73] To be deceived is perhaps as\nincompatible with human dignity as to be whipped; and I suspect the last\nmethod to be not the worst, for the help of many individuals. The Jewish\nnation throve under it, in the hand of a monarch reputed not unwise; it\nis only the change of whip for scorpion which is inexpedient; and that\nchange is as likely to come to pass on the side of license as of law.\nFor the true scorpion whips are those of the nation's pleasant vices,\nwhich are to it as St. John's locusts--crown on the head, ravin in the\nmouth, and sting in the tail. If it will not bear the rule of Athena and\nApollo, who shepherd without smiting ([Greek: ou plege nemontes]),\nAthena at last calls no more in the corners of the streets; and then\nfollows the rule of Tisiphone, who smites without shepherding.\n\n131. If, however, by slavery, instead of absolute compulsion, is meant\n_the purchase, by money, of the right of compulsion_, such purchase is\nnecessarily made whenever a portion of any territory is transferred, for\nmoney, from one monarch to another: which has happened frequently enough\nin history, without its being supposed that the inhabitants of the\ndistricts so transferred became therefore slaves. In this, as in the\nformer case, the dispute seems about the fashion of the thing, rather\nthan the fact of it. There are two rocks in mid-sea, on each of which,\nneglected equally by instructive and commercial powers, a handful of\ninhabitants live as they may. Two merchants bid for the two properties,\nbut not in the same terms. One bids for the people, buys _them_, and\nsets them to work, under pain of scourge; the other bids for the rock,\nbuys _it_, and throws the inhabitants into the sea. The former is the\nAmerican, the latter the English method, of slavery; much is to be said\nfor, and something against, both, which I hope to say in due time and\nplace.[74]\n\n132. If, however, slavery mean not merely the purchase of the right of\ncompulsion, but _the purchase of the body and soul of the creature\nitself for money_, it is not, I think, among the black races that\npurchases of this kind are most extensively made, or that separate souls\nof a fine make fetch the highest price. This branch of the inquiry we\nshall have occasion also to follow out at some length, for in the worst\ninstances of the selling of souls, we are apt to get, when we ask if the\nsale is valid, only Pyrrhon's answer[75]--\"None can know.\"\n\n133. The fact is that slavery is not a political institution at all,\n_but an inherent, natural, and eternal inheritance_ of a large portion\nof the human race--to whom, the more you give of their own free will,\nthe more slaves they will make themselves. In common parlance, we idly\nconfuse captivity with slavery, and are always thinking of the\ndifference between pine-trunks (Ariel in the pine), and cowslip-bells\n(\"in the cowslip-bell I lie\"), or between carrying wood and drinking\n(Caliban's slavery and freedom), instead of noting the far more serious\ndifferences between Ariel and Caliban themselves, and the means by\nwhich, practically, that difference may be brought about or diminished.\n\n134.[76] Plato's slave, in the _Polity_, who, well dressed and washed,\naspires to the hand of his master's daughter, corresponds curiously to\nCaliban attacking Prospero's cell; and there is an undercurrent of\nmeaning throughout, in the _Tempest_ as well as in the _Merchant of\nVenice_; referring in this case to government, as in that to commerce.\nMiranda[77] (\"the wonderful,\" so addressed first by Ferdinand, \"Oh, you\nwonder!\") corresponds to Homer's Arete: Ariel and Caliban are\nrespectively the spirits of faithful and imaginative labour, opposed to\nrebellious, hurtful and slavish labour. Prospero (\"for hope\"), a true\ngovernor, is opposed to Sycorax, the mother of slavery, her name\n\"Swine-raven,\" indicating at once brutality and deathfulness; hence the\nline--\n\n    \"As wicked dew as e'er my mother brushed, with _raven's feather_,\"--&c.\n\nFor all these dreams of Shakespeare, as those of true and strong men\nmust be, are \"[Greek: phantasmata theia, kai skiai ton onton]\"--divine\nphantasms, and shadows of things that are. We hardly tell our children,\nwillingly, a fable with no purport in it; yet we think God sends his\nbest messengers only to sing fairy tales to us, fond and empty. The\n_Tempest_ is just like a grotesque in a rich missal, \"clasped where\npaynims pray.\" Ariel is the spirit of generous and free-hearted service,\nin early stages of human society oppressed by ignorance and wild\ntyranny: venting groans as fast as mill-wheels strike; in shipwreck of\nstates, dreadful; so that \"all but mariners plunge in the brine, and\nquit the vessel, then all afire with _me_,\" yet having in itself the\nwill and sweetness of truest peace, whence that is especially called\n\"Ariel's\" song, \"Come unto these yellow sands, and there, _take hands_,\"\n\"courtesied when you have, and kissed, the wild waves whist:\" (mind, it\nis \"cortesia,\" not \"curtsey,\") and read \"quiet\" for \"whist,\" if you want\nthe full sense. Then you may indeed foot it featly, and sweet spirits\nbear the burden for you--with watch in the night, and call in early\nmorning. The _vis viva_ in elemental transformation follows--\"Full\nfathom five thy father lies, of his bones are coral made.\" Then, giving\nrest _after_ labour, it \"fetches dew from the still vext Bermoothes,\nand, with a charm joined to their suffered labour, leaves men asleep.\"\nSnatching away the feast of the cruel, it seems to them as a harpy;\nfollowed by the utterly vile, who cannot see it in any shape, but to\nwhom it is the picture of nobody, it still gives shrill harmony to their\nfalse and mocking catch, \"Thought is free;\" but leads them into briers\nand foul places, and at last hollas the hounds upon them. Minister of\nfate against the great criminal, it joins itself with the \"incensed seas\nand shores \"--the sword that layeth at it cannot hold, and may \"with\nbemocked-at stabs as soon kill the still-closing waters, as diminish one\ndowle that is in its plume.\" As the guide and aid of true love, it is\nalways called by Prospero \"fine\" (the French \"fine,\" not the English),\nor \"delicate\"--another long note would be needed to explain all the\nmeaning in this word. Lastly, its work done, and war, it resolves itself\ninto the elements. The intense significance of the last song, \"Where the\nbee sucks,\" I will examine in its due place.\n\nThe types of slavery in Caliban are more palpable, and need not be dwelt\non now: though I will notice them also, severally, in their proper\nplaces;--the heart of his slavery is in his worship: \"That's a brave\ngod, and bears celestial--liquor.\" But, in illustration of the sense in\nwhich the Latin \"benignus\" and \"malignus\" are to be coupled with\nEleutheria and Douleia, note that Caliban's torment is always the\nphysical reflection of his own nature--\"cramps\" and \"side stiches that\nshall pen thy breath up; thou shalt be pinched, as thick as honeycombs:\"\nthe whole nature of slavery being one cramp and cretinous contraction.\nFancy this of Ariel! You may fetter him, but you set no mark on him; you\nmay put him to hard work and far journey, but you cannot give him a\ncramp.\n\n135. I should dwell, even in these prefatory papers, at more length on\nthis subject of slavery, had not all I would say been said already, in\nvain, (not, as I hope, ultimately in vain), by Carlyle, in the first of\nthe _Latter-day Pamphlets_, which I commend to the reader's gravest\nreading; together with that as much neglected, and still more\nimmediately needed, on model prisons, and with the great chapter on\n\"Permanence\" (fifth of the last section of \"Past and Present\"), which\nsums what is known, and foreshadows, or rather forelights, all that is\nto be learned of National Discipline. I have only here farther to\nexamine the nature of one world-wide and everlasting form of slavery,\nwholesome in use, as deadly in abuse;--the service of the rich by the\npoor.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[54] [Think over this paragraph carefully; it should have been much\nexpanded to be quite intelligible; but it contains all that I want it to\ncontain.]\n\n[55] \"The ordinary brute, who flourishes in the very centre of ornate\nlife, tells us of unknown depths on the verge of which we totter, being\nbound to thank our stars every day we live that there is not a general\noutbreak, and a revolt from the yoke of civilization.\"--_Times_ leader,\nDec. 25, 1862. Admitting that our stars are to be thanked for our\nsafety, whom are we to thank for the danger?\n\n[56] Our politicians, even the best of them, regard only the distress\ncaused by the _failure_ of mechanical labour. The degradation caused by\nits excess is a far more serious subject of thought, and of future fear.\nI shall examine this part of our subject at length hereafter. There can\nhardly be any doubt, at present, cast on the truth of the above\npassages, as all the great thinkers are unanimous on the matter. Plato's\nwords are terrific in their scorn and pity whenever he touches on the\nmechanical arts. He calls the men employed in them not even human, but\npartially and diminutively human, \"[Greek: anthropiskoi,]\" and opposes\nsuch work to noble occupations, not merely as prison is opposed to\nfreedom but as a convict's dishonoured prison is to the temple (escape\nfrom them being like that of a criminal to the sanctuary); and the\ndestruction caused by them being of soul no less than body.--_Rep._ vi.\n9. Compare _Laws_, v. 11. Xenophon dwells on the evil of occupations at\nthe furnace and especially their \"[Greek: ascholia], want of\nleisure.\"--_Econ._ i. 4. (Modern England, with all its pride of\neducation, has lost that first sense of the word \"school;\" and till it\nrecover that, it will find no other rightly.) His word for the harm to\nthe soul is to \"break\" it, as we say of the heart.--_Econ._ i. 6. And\nherein, also, is the root of the scorn, otherwise apparently most\nstrange and cruel, with which Homer, Dante, and Shakspeare always speak\nof the populace; for it is entirely true that, in great states, the\nlower orders are low by nature as well as by task, being precisely that\npart of the commonwealth which has been thrust down for its coarseness\nor unworthiness (by coarseness I mean especially insensibility and\nirreverence--the \"profane\" of Horace); and when this ceases to be so,\nand the corruption and profanity are in the higher instead of the lower\norders, there arises, first, helpless confusion, then, if the lower\nclasses deserve power, ensues swift revolution, and they get it; but if\nneither the populace nor their rulers deserve it, there follows mere\ndarkness and dissolution, till, out of the putrid elements, some new\ncapacity of order rises, like grass on a grave; if not, there is no more\nhope, nor shadow of turning, for that nation. Atropos has her way with\nit.\n\nSo that the law of national health is like that of a great lake or sea,\nin perfect but slow circulation, letting the dregs fall continually to\nthe lowest place, and the clear water rise; yet so as that there shall\nbe no neglect of the lower orders, but perfect supervision and sympathy,\nso that if one member suffer, all members shall suffer with it.\n\n[57] \"[Greek: oliges, kai allos gignomenes].\" (Little, and that little\nborn in vain.) The bitter sentence never was so true as at this day.\n\n[58] [This following note is a mere cluster of memoranda, but I keep it\nfor reference.] Thetic, or Thesmic, would perhaps be a better term than\narchic; but liable to be confused with some which we shall want relating\nto Theoria. The administrators of the three great divisions of law are\nseverally Archons, Merists, and Dicasts. The Archons are the true\nprinces, or beginners of things; or leaders (as of an orchestra). The\nMerists are properly the Domini, or Lords of houses and nations. The\nDicasts, properly, the judges, and that with Olympian justice, which\nreaches to heaven and hell. The violation of archic law is [Greek:\nhamartia] (error), [Greek: poneria] (failure), or [Greek: plemmeleia]\n(discord). The violation of meristic law is [Greek: anomia] (iniquity).\nThe violation of critic law is [Greek: adikia] (injury). Iniquity is the\ncentral generic term; for all law is _fatal_; it is the division to men\nof their fate; as the fold of their pasture, it is [Greek: nomos]; as\nthe assigning of their portion, [Greek: moira].\n\n[59] [This is the only sentence which, in revising these essays, I am\nnow inclined to question; but the point is one of extreme difficulty.\nThere might be a law, for instance, of curfew, that candles should be\nput out, unless for necessary service, at such and such an hour, the\nidea of \"necessary service\" being quite indefinable, and no penalty\npossible; yet there would be a distinct consciousness of illegal conduct\nin young ladies' minds who danced by candlelight till dawn.]\n\n[60] [Read this and the next paragraph with attention; they contain\nclear statements, which I cannot mend, of things most necessary.]\n\n[61] [Mainly; not altogether. Conclusive reward of high virtue is loving\nand crowning, not helping; and conclusive punishment of deep vice is\nhating and crushing, not merely hindering.]\n\n[62] Compare Chaucer's \"villany\" (clownishness).\n\n    Full foul and chorlishe seemed she,\n    And eke villanous for to be,\n    And little coulde of norture\n    To worship any creature.\n\n[63] [I leave this paragraph, in every syllable, as it was written,\nduring the rage of the American war; it was meant to refer, however,\nchiefly to the Northerns: what modifications its hot and partial terms\nrequire I will give in another place: let it stand now as it stood.]\n\n[64] Supply and demand! Alas! for what noble work was there ever any\naudible \"demand\" in that poor sense (Past and Present)? Nay, the demand\nis not loud, even for ignoble work. _See_ \"Average Earnings of Betty\nTaylor,\" in _Times_ of 4th February of this year [1863]: \"Worked from\nMonday morning at 8 A.M. to Friday night at 5.30 P.M. for 1_s._\n5-1/2_d._\"--_Laissez faire._ [This kind of slavery finds no\nAbolitionists that I hear of.]\n\n[65] [\"That the sacred grove is nothing but logs.\"]\n\n[66] Ames, by report of Waldo Emerson, says \"that a monarchy is a\nmerchantman, which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and\ngo to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft, which would never sink,\nbut then your feet are always in the water.\" Yes, that is comfortable;\nand though your raft cannot sink (being too worthless for that), it may\ngo to pieces, I suppose, when the four winds (your only pilots) steer\ncompetitively from its four corners, and carry it, [Greek: os oporinos\nBorees phoreesin akanthas], and then more than your feet will be in the\nwater.\n\n[67] [\"Not with water, but with ruin.\" The worst ruin being that which\nthe Americans chiefly boast of. They sent all their best and honestest\nyouths, Harvard University men and the like, to that accursed war; got\nthem nearly all shot; wrote pretty biographies (to the ages of 17, 18,\n19) and epitaphs for them; and so, having washed all the salt out of the\nnation in blood, left themselves to putrefaction, and the morality of\nNew York.]\n\n[68] [This paragraph contains the gist of all that precede.]\n\n[69] [Whenever you are puzzled by any apparently mistaken use of words\nin these essays, take your dictionary, remembering I had to fix terms,\nas well as principles. A Duke is a \"dux\" or \"leader;\" the flying wedge\nof cranes is under a \"ducal monarch\"--a very different personage from a\nqueen bee. The Venetians, with a beautiful instinct, gave the name to\ntheir King of the Sea.]\n\n[70] [This is a perfect picture of the French under the tyrannies of\ntheir Pelican Kings, before the Revolution. But they must find other\nthan Pelican Kings--or rather, Pelican Kings of the Divine brood, that\nfeed their children, and with their best blood.]\n\n[71] [Read carefully, from this point; because here begins the statement\nof things requiring to be done, which I am now re-trying to make\ndefinite in _Fors Clavigera_.]\n\n[72] [\"Evil on the top of Evil.\" Delphic oracle, meaning iron on the\nanvil.]\n\n[73] [Permit me to enforce and reinforce this statement, with all\nearnestness. It is the sum of what needs most to be understood in the\nmatter of education.]\n\n[74] [A pregnant paragraph, meant against English and Scotch landlords\nwho drive their people off the land.]\n\n[75] [In Lucian's dialogue, \"The sale of lives.\"]\n\n[76] [I raise this analysis of the _Tempest_ into my text; but it is\nnothing but a hurried note, which I may never have time to expand. I\nhave retouched it here and there a little, however.]\n\n[77] Of Shakspeare's names I will afterwards speak at more length; they\nare curiously--often barbarously--much by Providence,--but assuredly not\nwithout Shakspeare's cunning purpose--mixed out of the various\ntraditions he confusedly adopted, and languages which he imperfectly\nknew. Three of the clearest in meaning have been already noticed.\nDesdemona, \"[Greek: dysdaimonia],\" \"miserable fortune,\" is also plain\nenough. Othello is, I believe, \"the careful;\" all the calamity of the\ntragedy arising from the single flaw and error in his magnificently\ncollected strength. Ophelia, \"serviceableness,\" the true lost wife of\nHamlet, is marked as having a Greek name by that of her brother,\nLaertes; and its signification is once exquisitely alluded to in that\nbrother's last word of her, where her gentle preciousness is opposed to\nthe uselessness of the churlish clergy--\"A _ministering_ angel shall my\nsister be, when thou liest howling.\" Hamlet is, I believe, connected in\nsome way with \"homely\" the entire event of the tragedy turning on\nbetrayal of home duty. Hermione ([Greek: erma]), \"pillar-like,\" ([Greek:\nhe eidos eche chryses 'Aphrodites]). Titania ([Greek: titene]), \"the\nqueen;\" Benedict and Beatrice, \"blessed and blessing;\" Valentine and\nProteus, enduring (or strong), (valens), and changeful. Iago and Iachimo\nhave evidently the same root--probably the Spanish Iago, Jacob, \"the\nsupplanter,\" Leonatus, and other such names, are interpreted, or played\nwith, in the plays themselves. For the interpretation of Sycorax, and\nreference to her raven's feather, I am indebted to Mr. John R. Wise.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\nMASTERSHIP.\n\n\n136. As in all previous discussions of our subject, we must study the\nrelation of the commanding rich to the obeying poor in its simplest\nelements, in order to reach its first principles.\n\nThe simplest state of it, then, is this:[78] a wise and provident person\nworks much, consumes little, and lays by a store; an improvident person\nworks little, consumes all his produce, and lays by no store. Accident\ninterrupts the daily work, or renders it less productive; the idle\nperson must then starve, or be supported by the provident one, who,\nhaving him thus at his mercy, may either refuse to maintain him\naltogether, or, which will evidently be more to his own interest, say to\nhim, \"I will maintain you, indeed, but you shall now work hard, instead\nof indolently, and instead of being allowed to lay by what you save, as\nyou might have done, had you remained independent, _I_ will take all the\nsurplus. You would not lay it up for yourself; it is wholly your own\nfault that has thrown you into my power, and I will force you to work,\nor starve; yet you shall have no profit of your work, only your daily\nbread for it; [and competition shall determine how much of that[79]].\"\nThis mode of treatment has now become so universal that it is supposed\nto be the only natural--nay, the only possible one; and the market wages\nare calmly defined by economists as \"the sum which will maintain the\nlabourer.\"\n\n137. The power of the provident person to do this is only checked by the\ncorrelative power of some neighbour of similarly frugal habits, who says\nto the labourer--\"I will give you a little more than this other\nprovident person: come and work for me.\"\n\nThe power of the provident over the improvident depends thus, primarily,\non their relative numbers; secondarily, on the modes of agreement of the\nadverse parties with each other. The accidental level of wages is a\nvariable function of the number of provident and idle persons in the\nworld, of the enmity between them as classes, and of the agreement\nbetween those of the same class. _It depends, from beginning to end, on\nmoral conditions._\n\n138. Supposing the rich to be entirely selfish, _it is always for their\ninterest that the poor should be as numerous as they can employ, and\nrestrain_. For, granting that the entire population is no larger than\nthe ground can easily maintain--that the classes are stringently\ndivided--and that there is sense or strength of hand enough with the\nrich to secure obedience; then, if nine-tenths of a nation are poor, the\nremaining tenth have the service of nine persons each;[80] but, if\neight-tenths are poor, only of four each; if seven-tenths are poor, of\ntwo and a third each; if six-tenths are poor, of one and a half each;\nand if five-tenths are poor, of only one each. But, practically, if the\nrich strive always to obtain more power over the poor, instead of to\nraise them--and if, on the other hand, the poor become continually more\nvicious and numerous, through neglect and oppression,--though the\n_range_ of the power of the rich increases, its _tenure_ becomes less\nsecure; until, at last the measure of iniquity being full, revolution,\ncivil war, or the subjection of the state to a healthier or stronger\none, closes the moral corruption, and industrial disease.[81]\n\n139. It is rarely, however, that things come to this extremity. Kind\npersons among the rich, and wise among the poor, modify the connexion of\nthe classes: the efforts made to raise and relieve on the one side, and\nthe success of honest toil on the other, bind and blend the orders of\nsociety into the confused tissue of half-felt obligation,\nsullenly-rendered obedience, and variously-directed, or mis-directed\ntoil, which form the warp of daily life. But this great law rules all\nthe wild design: that success (while society is guided by laws of\ncompetition) _signifies always so much victory over your neighbour_ as\nto obtain the direction of his work, and to take the profits of it.\n_This is the real source of all great riches._ No man can become largely\nrich by his personal toil.[82] The work of his own hands, wisely\ndirected, will indeed always maintain himself and his family, and make\nfitting provision for his age. _But it is only by the discovery of some\nmethod of taxing the labour of others that he can become opulent._ Every\nincrease of his capital enables him to extend this taxation more widely;\nthat is, to invest larger funds in the maintenance of labourers,--to\ndirect, accordingly, vaster and yet vaster masses of labour, and to\nappropriate its profits.\n\n140. There is much confusion of idea on the subject of this\nappropriation. It is, of course, the interest of the employer to\ndisguise it from the persons employed; and, for his own comfort and\ncomplacency, he often desires no less to disguise it from himself. And\nit is matter of much doubt with me, how far the foul and foolish\narguments used habitually on this subject are indeed the honest\nexpression of foul and foolish convictions;--or rather (as I am\nsometimes forced to conclude from the irritation with which they are\nadvanced) are resolutely dishonest, wilful, and malicious sophisms,\narranged so as to mask, to the last moment, the real laws of economy,\nand future duties of men. By taking a simple example, and working it\nthoroughly out, the subject may be rescued from all but such determined\nmisrepresentation.\n\n141. Let us imagine a society of peasants, living on a rivershore,\nexposed to destructive inundation at somewhat extended intervals; and\nthat each peasant possesses of this good, but imperilled, ground, more\nthan he needs to cultivate for immediate subsistence. We will assume\nfarther (and with too great probability of justice), that the greater\npart of them indolently keep in tillage just as much land as supplies\nthem with daily food;--that they leave their children idle, and take no\nprecautions against the rise of the stream. But one of them, (we will\nsay but one, for the sake of greater clearness) cultivates carefully\n_all_ the ground of his estate; makes his children work hard and\nhealthily; uses his spare time and theirs in building a rampart against\nthe river; and, at the end of some years, has in his storehouses large\nreserves of food and clothing,--in his stables a well-tended breed of\ncattle, and around his fields a wedge of wall against flood.\n\nThe torrent rises at last--sweeps away the harvests, and half the\ncottages of the careless peasants, and leaves them destitute. They\nnaturally come for help to the provident one, whose fields are unwasted,\nand whose granaries are full. He has the right to refuse it to them: no\none disputes this right.[83] But he will probably _not_ refuse it; it is\nnot his interest to do so, even were he entirely selfish and cruel. The\nonly question with him will be on what terms his aid is to be granted.\n\n142. Clearly, not on terms of mere charity. To maintain his neighbours\nin idleness would be not only his ruin, but theirs. He will require work\nfrom them, in exchange for their maintenance; and, whether in kindness\nor cruelty, all the work they can give. Not now the three or four hours\nthey were wont to spend on their own land, but the eight or ten hours\nthey ought to have spent.[84] But how will he apply this labour? The men\nare now his slaves;--nothing less, and nothing more. On pain of\nstarvation, he can force them to work in the manner, and to the end, he\nchooses. And it is by his wisdom in this choice that the worthiness of\nhis mastership is proved, or its unworthiness. Evidently, he must first\nset them to bank out the water in some temporary way, and to get their\nground cleansed and resown; else, in any case, their continued\nmaintenance will be impossible. That done, and while he has still to\nfeed them, suppose he makes them raise a secure rampart for their own\nground against all future flood, and rebuild their houses in safer\nplaces, with the best material they can find; being allowed time out of\ntheir working hours to fetch such material from a distance. And for the\nfood and clothing advanced, he takes security in land that as much shall\nbe returned at a convenient period.\n\n143. We may conceive this security to be redeemed, and the debt paid at\nthe end of a few years. The prudent peasant has sustained no loss; _but\nis no richer than he was, and has had all his trouble for nothing_. But\nhe has enriched his neighbours materially; bettered their houses,\nsecured their land, and rendered them, in worldly matters, equal to\nhimself. In all rational and final sense, he has been throughout their\ntrue Lord and King.\n\n144. We will next trace his probable line of conduct, presuming his\nobject to be exclusively the increase of his own fortune. After roughly\nrecovering and cleansing the ground, he allows the ruined peasantry only\nto build huts upon it, such as he thinks protective enough from the\nweather to keep them in working health. The rest of their time he\noccupies, first in pulling down, and rebuilding on a magnificent scale,\nhis own house, and in adding large dependencies to it. This done, in\nexchange for his continued supply of corn, he buys as much of his\nneighbours' land as he thinks he can superintend the management of; and\nmakes the former owners securely embank and protect the ceded portion.\nBy this arrangement, he leaves to a certain number of the peasantry only\nas much ground as will just maintain them in their existing numbers; as\nthe population increases, he takes the extra hands, who cannot be\nmaintained on the narrowed estates, for his own servants; employs some\nto cultivate the ground he has bought, giving them of its produce merely\nenough for subsistence; with the surplus, which, under his energetic and\ncareful superintendence, will be large, he maintains a train of servants\nfor state, and a body of workmen, whom he educates in ornamental arts.\nHe now can splendidly decorate his house, lay out its grounds\nmagnificently, and richly supply his table, and that of his household\nand retinue. And thus, without any abuse of right, we should find\nestablished all the phenomena of poverty and riches, which (it is\nsupposed necessarily) accompany modern civilization. In one part of the\ndistrict, we should have unhealthy land, miserable dwellings, and\nhalf-starved poor; in another, a well-ordered estate, well-fed servants,\nand refined conditions of highly educated and luxurious life.\n\n145. I have put the two cases in simplicity, and to some extremity. But\nthough in more complex and qualified operation, all the relations of\nsociety are but the expansion of these two typical sequences of conduct\nand result. I do not say, observe, that the first procedure is entirely\nrecommendable; or even entirely right; still less, that the second is\nwholly wrong. Servants, and artists, and splendour of habitation and\nretinue, have all their use, propriety, and office. But I am determined\nthat the reader shall understand clearly what they cost; and see that\nthe condition of having them is the subjection to us of a certain number\nof imprudent or unfortunate persons (or, it may be, more fortunate than\ntheir masters), over whose destinies we exercise a boundless control.\n\"Riches\" mean eternally and essentially this; and God send at last a\ntime when those words of our best-reputed economist shall be true, and\nwe _shall_ indeed \"all know what it is to be rich;\"[85] that it is to\nbe slave-master over farthest earth, and over all ways and thoughts of\nmen. Every operative you employ is your true servant: distant or near,\nsubject to your immediate orders, or ministering to your\nwidely-communicated caprice,--for the pay he stipulates, or the price he\ntempts,--all are alike under this great dominion of the gold. The\nmilliner who makes the dress is as much a servant (more so, in that she\nuses more intelligence in the service) as the maid who puts it on; the\ncarpenter who smooths the door, as the footman who opens it; the\ntradesmen who supply the table, as the labourers and sailors who supply\nthe tradesmen. Why speak of these lower services? Painters and singers\n(whether of note or rhyme,) jesters and storytellers, moralists,\nhistorians, priests,--so far as these, in any degree, paint, or sing, or\ntell their tale, or charm their charm, or \"perform\" their rite, _for\npay_,--in so far, they are all slaves; abject utterly, if the service be\nfor pay only; abject less and less in proportion to the degrees of love\nand of wisdom which enter into their duty, or _can_ enter into it,\naccording as their function is to do the bidding and the work of a manly\npeople;--or to amuse, tempt, and deceive, a childish one.\n\n146. There is always, in such amusement and temptation, to a certain\nextent, a government of the rich by the poor, as of the poor by the\nrich; but the latter is the prevailing and necessary one, and it\nconsists, when it is honourable, in the collection of the profits of\nlabour from those who would have misused them, and the administration of\nthose profits for the service either of the same persons in future, or\nof others; and when it is dishonourable, as is more frequently the case\nin modern times, it consists in the collection of the profits of labour\nfrom those who would have rightly used them, and their appropriation to\nthe service of the collector himself.\n\n147. The examination of these various modes of collection and use of\nriches will form the third branch of our future inquiries; but the key\nto the whole subject lies in the clear understanding of the difference\nbetween selfish and unselfish expenditure. It is not easy, by any\ncourse of reasoning, to enforce this on the generally unwilling hearer;\nyet the definition of unselfish expenditure is brief and simple. It is\nexpenditure which, if you are a capitalist, does not pay _you_, but pays\nsomebody else; and if you are a consumer, does not please _you_, but\npleases somebody else. Take one special instance, in further\nillustration of the general type given above. I did not invent that\ntype, but spoke of a real river, and of real peasantry, the languid and\nsickly race which inhabits, or haunts--for they are often more like\nspectres than living men--the thorny desolation of the banks of the Arve\nin Savoy. Some years ago, a society, formed at Geneva, offered to embank\nthe river for the ground which would have been recovered by the\noperation; but the offer was refused by the (then Sardinian) government.\nThe capitalists saw that this expenditure would have \"paid\" if the\nground saved from the river was to be theirs. But if, when the offer\nthat had this aspect of profit was refused, they had nevertheless\npersisted in the plan, and merely taking security for the return of\ntheir outlay, lent the funds for the work, and thus saved a whole race\nof human souls from perishing in a pestiferous fen (as, I presume, some\namong them would, at personal risk, have dragged any one drowning\ncreature out of the current of the stream, and not expected payment\ntherefor), such expenditure would have precisely corresponded to the use\nof his power made, in the first instance, by our supposed richer\npeasant--it would have been the king's, of grace, instead of the\nusurer's, for gain.\n\n148. \"Impossible, absurd, Utopian!\" exclaim nine-tenths of the few\nreaders whom these words may find.\n\nNo, good reader, _this_ is not Utopian: but I will tell you what would\nhave seemed, if we had not seen it, Utopian on the side of evil instead\nof good; that ever men should have come to value their money so much\nmore than their lives, that if you call upon them to become soldiers,\nand take chance of a bullet through their heart, and of wife and\nchildren being left desolate, for their pride's sake, they will do it\ngaily, without thinking twice; but if you ask them, for their country's\nsake, to spend a hundred pounds without security of getting back a\nhundred-and-five,[86] they will laugh in your face.\n\n149. Not but that also this game of life-giving and taking is, in the\nend, somewhat more costly than other forms of play might be. Rifle\npractice is, indeed, a not unhealthy pastime, and a feather on the top\nof the head is a pleasing appendage; but while learning the stops and\nfingering of the sweet instrument, does no one ever calculate the cost\nof an overture? What melody does Tityrus meditate on his tenderly spiral\npipe? The leaden seed of it, broadcast, true conical \"Dents de Lion\"\nseed--needing less allowance for the wind than is usual with that kind\nof herb--what crop are you likely to have of it? Suppose, instead of\nthis volunteer marching and countermarching, you were to do a little\nvolunteer ploughing and counter-ploughing? It is more difficult to do it\nstraight: the dust of the earth, so disturbed, is more grateful than for\nmerely rhythmic footsteps. Golden cups, also, given for good ploughing,\nwould be more suitable in colour: (ruby glass, for the wine which\n\"giveth his colour\" on the ground, might be fitter for the rifle prize\nin ladies' hands). Or, conceive a little volunteer exercise with the\nspade, other than such as is needed for moat and breastwork, or even\nfor the burial of the fruit of the leaden avena-seed, subject to the\nshrill Lemures' criticism--\n\n    Wer hat das Haus so schlecht gebauet?\n\nIf you were to embank Lincolnshire more stoutly against the sea? or\nstrip the peat of Solway, or plant Plinlimmon moors with larch--then, in\ndue season, some amateur reaping and threshing?\n\n     \"Nay, we reap and thresh by steam, in these advanced days.\"\n\nI know it, my wise and economical friends. The stout arms God gave you\nto win your bread by, you would fain shoot your neighbours, and God's\nsweet singers with;[87] then you invoke the fiends to your farm-service;\nand--\n\n    When young and old come forth to play\n    On a sulphurous holiday,\n    Tell how the darkling goblin sweat\n    (His feast of cinders duly set),\n    And, belching night, where breathed the morn,\n    His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn\n    That ten day-labourers could not end.\n\n150. Going back to the matter in hand, we will press the example closer.\nOn a green knoll above that plain of the Arve, between Cluse and\nBonneville, there was, in the year 1860, a cottage, inhabited by a\nwell-doing family--man and wife, three children, and the grandmother. I\ncall it a cottage, but in truth, it was a large chimney on the ground,\nwide at the bottom, so that the family might live round the fire;\nlighted by one small broken window, and entered by an unclosing door.\nThe family, I say, was \"well-doing;\" at least it was hopeful and\ncheerful; the wife healthy, the children, for Savoyards, pretty and\nactive, but the husband threatened with decline, from exposure under the\ncliffs of the Mont Vergi by day, and to draughts between every plank of\nhis chimney in the frosty nights.\n\n\"Why could he not plaster the chinks?\" asks the practical reader. For\nthe same reason that your child cannot wash its face and hands till you\nhave washed them many a day for it, and will not wash them when it can,\ntill you force it.\n\n151. I passed this cottage often in my walks, had its window and door\nmended; sometimes mended also a little the meal of sour bread and broth,\nand generally got kind greeting and smile from the face of young or old;\nwhich greeting this year, narrowed itself into the half-recognizing\nstare of the elder child, and the old woman's tears; for the father and\nmother were both dead,--one of sickness, the other of sorrow. It\nhappened that I passed not alone, but with a companion, a practised\nEnglish joiner, who, while these people were dying of cold, had been\nemployed from six in the morning to six in the evening, for two months,\nin fitting, without nails, the panels of a single door in a large house\nin London. Three days of his work taken, at the right time from\nfastening the oak panels with useless precision, and applied to fasten\nthe larch timbers with decent strength, would have saved these\nSavoyards' lives. _He_ would have been maintained equally; (I suppose\nhim equally paid for his work by the owner of the greater house, only\nthe work not consumed selfishly on his own walls;) and the two peasants,\nand eventually, probably their children, saved.\n\n152. There are, therefore,--let me finally enforce, and leave with the\nreader, this broad conclusion,--three things to be considered in\nemploying any poor person. It is not enough to give him employment. You\nmust employ him first to produce useful things; secondly, of the several\n(suppose equally useful) things he can equally well produce, you must\nset him to make that which will cause him to lead the healthiest life;\nlastly, of the things produced, it remains a question of wisdom and\nconscience how much you are to take yourself, and how much to leave to\nothers. A large quantity, remember, unless you destroy it, _must_ always\nbe so left at one time or another; the only questions you have to decide\nare, not _what_ you will give, but _when_, and _how_, and _to whom_, you\nwill give. The natural law of human life is, of course, that in youth a\nman shall labour and lay by store for his old age, and when age comes,\nshall use what he has laid by, gradually slackening his toil, and\nallowing himself more frank use of his store; taking care always to\nleave himself as much as will surely suffice for him beyond any possible\nlength of life. What he has gained, or by tranquil and unanxious toil\ncontinues to gain, more than is enough for his own need, he ought so to\nadminister, while he yet lives, as to see the good of it again\nbeginning, in other hands; for thus he has himself the greatest sum of\npleasure from it, and faithfully uses his sagacity in its control.\nWhereas most men, it appears, dislike the sight of their fortunes going\nout into service again, and say to themselves,--\"I can indeed nowise\nprevent this money from falling at last into the hands of others, nor\nhinder the good of it from becoming theirs, not mine; but at least let a\nmerciful death save me from being a witness of their satisfaction; and\nmay God so far be gracious to me as to let no good come of any of this\nmoney of mine before my eyes.\"\n\n153. Supposing this feeling unconquerable, the safest way of rationally\nindulging it would be for the capitalist at once to spend all his\nfortune on himself, which might actually, in many cases, be quite the\nrightest as well as the pleasantest thing to do, if he had just tastes\nand worthy passions. But, whether for himself only, or through the\nhands, and for the sake, of others also, the law of wise life is, that\nthe maker of the money shall also be the spender of it, and spend it,\napproximately, all, before he dies; so that his true ambition as an\neconomist should be, to die, not as rich, but as poor, as possible,[88]\ncalculating the ebb tide of possession in true and calm proportion to\nthe ebb tide of life. Which law, checking the wing of accumulative\ndesire in the mid-volley,[89] and leading to peace of possession and\nfulness of fruition in old age, is also wholesome, in that by the\nfreedom of gift, together with present help and counsel, it at once\nendears and dignifies age in the sight of youth, which then no longer\nstrips the bodies of the dead, but receives the grace of the living. Its\nchief use would (or will be, for men are indeed capable of attaining to\nthis much use of their reason), that some temperance and measure will be\nput to the acquisitiveness of commerce.[90] For as things stand, a man\nholds it his duty to be temperate in his food, and of his body, but for\nno duty to be temperate in his riches, and of his mind. He sees that he\nought not to waste his youth and his flesh for luxury; but he will waste\nhis age, and his soul, for money, and think he does no wrong, nor know\nthe _delirium tremens_ of the intellect for disease. But the law of life\nis, that a man should fix the sum he desires to make annually, as the\nfood he desires to eat daily; and stay when he has reached the limit,\nrefusing increase of business, and leaving it to others, so obtaining\ndue freedom of time for better thoughts.[91] How the gluttony of\nbusiness is punished, a bill of health for the principals of the richest\ncity houses, issued annually, would show in a sufficiently impressive\nmanner.\n\n154. I know, of course, that these statements will be received by the\nmodern merchant as an active border rider of the sixteenth century would\nhave heard of its being proper for men of the Marches to get their\nliving by the spade, instead of the spur. But my business is only to\nstate veracities and necessities; I neither look for the acceptance of\nthe one, nor hope for the nearness of the other. Near or distant, the\nday _will_ assuredly come when the merchants of a state shall be its\ntrue ministers of exchange, its porters, in the double sense of carriers\nand gate-keepers, bringing all lands into frank and faithful\ncommunication, and knowing for their master of guild, Hermes the herald,\ninstead of Mercury the gain-guarder.\n\n155. And now, finally, for immediate rule to all who will accept it.\n\nThe distress of any population means that they need food, house-room,\nclothes, and fuel. You can never, therefore, be wrong in employing any\nlabourer to produce food, house-room, clothes, or fuel; but you are\n_always_ wrong if you employ him to produce nothing, (for then some\nother labourer must be worked double time to feed him); and you are\ngenerally wrong, at present, if you employ him (unless he can do nothing\nelse) to produce works of art or luxuries; because modern art is mostly\non a false basis, and modern luxury is criminally great.[92]\n\n156. The way to produce more food is mainly to bring in fresh ground,\nand increase facilities of carriage;--to break rock, exchange earth,\ndrain the moist, and water the dry, to mend roads, and build harbours of\nrefuge. Taxation thus spent will annihilate taxation, but spent in war,\nit annihilates revenue.\n\n157. The way to produce house-room is to apply your force first to the\nhumblest dwellings. When your brick-layers are out of employ, do not\nbuild splendid new streets, but better the old ones; send your paviours\nand slaters to the poorest villages, and see that your poor are\nhealthily lodged, before you try your hand on stately architecture. You\nwill find its stateliness rise better under the trowel afterwards; and\nwe do do not yet build so well that we need hasten to display our skill\nto future ages. Had the labour which has decorated the Houses of\nParliament filled, instead, rents in walls and roofs throughout the\ncounty of Middlesex; and our deputies met to talk within massive walls\nthat would have needed no stucco for five hundred years,--the decoration\nmight have been afterwards, and the talk now. And touching even our\nhighly conscientious church building, it may be well to remember that in\nthe best days of church plans, their masons called themselves \"logeurs\ndu bon Dieu;\" and that since, according to the most trusted reports, God\nspends a good deal of His time in cottages as well as in churches, He\nmight perhaps like to be a little better lodged there also.\n\n158. The way to get more clothes is--not, necessarily, to get more\ncotton. There were words written twenty years ago[93] which would have\nsaved many of us some shivering, had they been minded in time. Shall we\nread them again?\n\n\"The Continental people, it would seem, are importing our machinery,\nbeginning to spin cotton, and manufacture for themselves; to cut us out\nof this market, and then out of that! Sad news, indeed; but\nirremediable. By no means the saddest news--the saddest news, is that we\nshould find our national existence, as I sometimes hear it said, depend\non selling manufactured cotton at a farthing an ell cheaper than any\nother people. A most narrow stand for a great nation to base itself on!\nA stand which, with all the Corn-law abrogations conceivable, I do not\nthink will be capable of enduring.\n\n\"My friends, suppose we quitted that stand; suppose we came honestly\ndown from it and said--'This is our minimum of cotton prices; we care\nnot, for the present, to make cotton any cheaper. Do you, if it seem so\nblessed to you, make cotton cheaper. Fill your lungs with cotton fur,\nyour heart with copperas fumes, with rage and mutiny; become ye the\ngeneral gnomes of Europe, slaves of the lamp!' I admire a nation which\nfancies it will die if it do not undersell all other nations to the end\nof the world. Brothers, we will cease to undersell them; we will be\ncontent to equal-sell them; to be happy selling equally with them! I do\nnot see the use of underselling them: cotton-cloth is already twopence a\nyard, or lower; and yet bare backs were never more numerous among us.\nLet inventive men cease to spend their existence incessantly contriving\nhow cotton can be made cheaper; and try to invent a little how cotton at\nits present cheapness could be somewhat justlier divided among us.\n\n\"Let inventive men consider--whether the secret of this universe does\nafter all consist in making money. With a hell which means--'failing to\nmake money,' I do not think there is any heaven possible that would suit\none well. In brief, all this Mammon gospel of supply-and-demand,\ncompetition _laissez faire_, and devil take the hindmost (foremost, is\nit not, rather, Mr. Carlyle?), 'begins to be one of the shabbiest\ngospels ever preached.'\"\n\n159. The way to produce more fuel[94] is first to make your coal mines\nsafer, by sinking more shafts; then set all your convicts to work in\nthem, and if, as is to be hoped, you succeed in diminishing the supply\nof that sort of labourer, consider what means there may be, first, of\ngrowing forest where its growth will improve climate; secondly, of\nsplintering the forests which now make continents of fruitful land\npathless and poisonous, into fagots for fire;--so gaining at once\ndominion icewards and sunwards. Your steam power has been given (you\nwill find eventually) for work such as that: and not for excursion\ntrains, to give the labourer a moment's breath, at the peril of his\nbreath for ever, from amidst the cities which it has crushed into masses\nof corruption. When you know how to build cities, and how to rule them,\nyou will be able to breathe in their streets, and the \"excursion\" will\nbe the afternoon's walk or game in the fields round them.\n\n160. \"But nothing of this work will pay?\"\n\nNo; no more than it pays to dust your rooms, or wash your doorsteps. It\nwill pay; not at first in currency, but in that which is the end and the\nsource of currency,--in life; (and in currency richly afterwards). It\nwill pay in that which is more than life,--in light, whose true price\nhas not yet been reckoned in any currency, and yet into the image of\nwhich, all wealth, one way or other, must be cast. For your riches must\neither be as the lightning, which,\n\n                Begot but in a cloud,\n    Though shining bright, and speaking loud,\n    Whilst it begins, concludes its violent race;\n    And, where it gilds, it wounds the place;--\n\nor else, as the lightning of the sacred sign, which shines from one part\nof the heaven to the other. There is no other choice; you must either\ntake dust for deity, spectre for possession, fettered dream for life,\nand for epitaph, this reversed verse of the great Hebrew hymn of economy\n(Psalm cxii.):--\"He hath gathered together, he hath stripped the poor,\nhis iniquity remaineth for ever:\"--or else, having the sun of justice to\nshine on you, and the sincere substance of good in your possession, and\nthe pure law and liberty of life within you, leave men to write this\nbetter legend over your grave:--\n\n\"He hath dispersed abroad. He hath given to the poor. His righteousness\nremaineth for ever.\"\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[78] In the present general examination, I concede so much to ordinary\neconomists as to ignore all _innocent_ poverty. I adapt my reasoning,\nfor once, to the modern English practical mind, by assuming poverty to\nbe always criminal; the conceivable exceptions we will examine\nafterwards.\n\n[79] [I have no terms of English, and can find none in Greek nor Latin,\nnor in any other strong language known to me, contemptuous enough to\nattach to the bestial idiotism of the modern theory that wages are to be\nmeasured by competition.]\n\n[80] I say nothing yet of the quality of the servants, which,\nnevertheless, is the gist of the business. Will you have Paul Veronese\nto paint your ceiling, or the plumber from over the way? Both will work\nfor the same money; Paul, if anything, a little the cheaper of the two,\nif you keep him in good humour; only you have to discern him first,\nwhich will need eyes.\n\n[81] [I have not altered a syllable in these three paragraphs, 137, 138,\n139, on revision; but have much italicised: the principles stated being\nas vital, as they are little known.]\n\n[82] By his art he may; but only when its produce, or the sight or\nhearing of it, becomes a subject of dispute, so as to enable the artist\nto tax the labour of multitudes highly, in exchange for his own.\n\n[83] [Observe this; the legal right to keep what you have worked for,\nand use it as you please, is the corner-stone of all economy: compare\nthe end of Chap. II.]\n\n[84] [I should now put the time of necessary labour rather under than\nover the third of the day.]\n\n[85] [See Preface to _Unto this Last_.]\n\n[86] I have not hitherto touched on the subject of interest of money; it\nis too complex, and must be reserved for its proper place in the body of\nthe work. The definition of interest (apart from compensation for risk)\nis, \"the exponent of the comfort of accomplished labour, separated from\nits power;\" the power being what is lent: and the French economists who\nhave maintained the entire illegality of interest are wrong; yet by no\nmeans so curiously or wildly wrong as the English and French ones\nopposed to them, whose opinions have been collected by Dr. Whewell at\npage 41 of his _Lectures_; it never seeming to occur to the mind of the\ncompiler, any more than to the writers whom he quotes, that it is quite\npossible, and even (according to Jewish proverb) prudent, for men to\nhoard as ants and mice do, for use, not usury; and lay by something for\nwinter nights, in the expectation of rather sharing than lending the\nscrapings. My Savoyard squirrels would pass a pleasant time of it under\nthe snow-laden pine branches, if they always declined to economize\nbecause no one would pay them interest on nuts.\n\n[I leave this note as it stood: but, as I have above stated, should now\nside wholly with the French economists spoken of, in asserting the\nabsolute illegality of interest.]\n\n[87] Compare Chaucer's feeling respecting birds (from Canace's falcon,\nto the nightingale, singing, \"Domine, labia--\" to the Lord of Love),\nwith the usual modern British sentiments on this subject. Or even\nCowley's:--\n\n    \"What prince's choir of music can excel\n    That which within this shade does dwell,\n    To which we nothing pay, or give,\n    They, like all other poets, live\n    Without reward, or thanks for their obliging pains!\n    'Tis well if they become not prey.\"\n\nYes; it Is better than well; particularly since the seed sown by the\nwayside has been protected by the peculiar appropriation of part of the\nchurch-rates in our country parishes. See the remonstrance from a\n\"Country parson,\" in _The Times_ of June 4th (or 5th; the letter is\ndated June 3rd,) 1862:--\"I have heard at a vestry meeting a good deal of\nhiggling over a few shillings' outlay in cleaning the church; but I have\nnever heard any dissatisfaction expressed on account of that part of the\nrate which is invested in 50 or 100 dozens of birds' heads.\"\n\n[If we could trace the innermost of all causes of modern war, I believe\nit would be found, not in the avarice nor ambition of nations, but in\nthe mere idleness of the upper classes. They have nothing to do but to\nteach the peasantry to kill each other.]\n\n[88] [See the _Life of Fenelon_. \"The labouring peasantry were at all\ntimes the objects of his tenderest care; his palace at Cambray, with all\nhis books and writings, being consumed by fire, he bore the misfortune\nwith unruffled calmness, and said it was better his palace should be\nburnt than the cottage of a poor peasant.\" (These thoroughly good men\nalways go too far, and lose their power over the mass.) He died\nexemplifying the mean he had always observed between prodigality and\navarice, leaving neither debts nor money.]\n\n[89] [Greek: kai penian hegoumenous einai me to ten ousian elatto poiein\nalla to tei aplestian pleio]. \"And thinking (wisely) that poverty\nconsists not in making one's possessions less, but one's avarice\nmore.\"--_Laws_, v. 8. Read the context, and compare. \"He who spends for\nall that is noble, and gains by nothing but what is just, will hardly be\nnotably wealthy, or distressfully poor.\"--_Laws_, v. 42.\n\n[90] The fury of modern trade arises chiefly out of the possibility of\nmaking sudden fortunes by largeness of transaction, and accident of\ndiscovery or contrivance. I have no doubt that the final interest of\nevery nation is to check the action of these commercial lotteries; and\nthat all great accidental gains or losses should be national,--not\nindividual. But speculation absolute, unconnected with commercial\neffort, is an unmitigated evil in a state, and the root of countless\nevils beside.\n\n[91] [I desire in the strongest terms to reinforce all that is contained\nin this paragraph.]\n\n[92] It is especially necessary that the reader should keep his mind\nfixed on the methods of consumption and destruction, as the true sources\nof national poverty. Men are apt to call every exchange \"expenditure,\"\nbut it is only consumption which is expenditure. A large number of the\npurchases made by the richer classes are mere forms of interchange of\nunused property, wholly without effect on national prosperity. It\nmatters nothing to the state whether, if a china pipkin be rated as\nworth a hundred pounds, A has the pipkin and B the pounds, or A the\npounds and B the pipkin. But if the pipkin is pretty, and A or B breaks\nit, there is national loss, not otherwise. So again, when the loss has\nreally taken place, no shifting of the shoulders that bear it will do\naway with the reality of it. There is an intensely ludicrous notion in\nthe public mind respecting the abolishment of debt by denying it. When a\ndebt is denied, the lender loses instead of the borrower, that is all;\nthe loss is precisely, accurately, everlastingly the same. The Americans\nborrow money to spend in blowing up their own houses. They deny their\ndebt, by one-third already [1863], gold being at fifty premium; and they\nwill probably deny it wholly. That merely means that the holders of the\nnotes are to be the losers instead of the issuers. The quantity of loss\nis precisely equal, and irrevocable; it is the quantity of human\nindustry spent in effecting the explosion, plus the quantity of goods\nexploded. Honour only decides _who_ shall pay the sum lost not whether\nit is to be paid or not. Paid it must be, and to the uttermost farthing.\n\n[93] [(_Past and Present._ Chap. IX. of Third Section.) To think that\nfor these twenty--now twenty-six--years, this one voice of Carlyle's has\nbeen the only faithful and useful utterance in all England, and has\nsounded through all these years in vain! See _Fors Clavigera_, Letter\nX.]\n\n[94] [We don't want to produce more fuel just now, but much less; and to\nuse what we get for cooking and warming ourselves, instead of for\nrunning from place to place.]\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDICES.\n\n\nI have brought together in these last pages a few notes, which were not\nproperly to be incorporated with the text, and which, at the bottom of\npages, checked the reader's attention to the main argument. They\ncontain, however, several statements to which I wish to be able to\nrefer, or have already referred, in other of my books, so that I think\nright to preserve them.\n\n\nAPPENDIX I.--(p. 22.)\n\nThe greatest of all economists are those most opposed to the doctrine of\n\"laissez faire,\" namely, the fortifying virtues, which the wisest men of\nall time have arranged under the general heads of Prudence, or\nDiscretion (the spirit which discerns and adopts rightly); Justice (the\nspirit which rules and divides rightly); Fortitude (the spirit which\npersists and endures rightly); and Temperance (the spirit which stops\nand refuses rightly). These cardinal and sentinel virtues are not only\nthe means of protecting and prolonging life itself, but they are the\nchief guards, or sources, of the material means of life, and the\ngoverning powers and princes of economy. Thus, precisely according to\nthe number of just men in a nation, is their power of avoiding either\nintestine or foreign war. All disputes may be peaceably settled, if a\nsufficient number of persons have been trained to submit to the\nprinciples of justice, while the necessity for war is in direct ratio to\nthe number of unjust persons who are incapable of determining a quarrel\nbut by violence. Whether the injustice take the form of the desire of\ndominion, or of refusal to submit to it, or of lust of territory, or\nlust of money, or of mere irregular passion and wanton will, the result\nis economically the same;--loss of the quantity of power and life\nconsumed in repressing the injustice, added to the material and moral\ndestruction caused by the fact of war. The early civil wars of England,\nand the existing[95] war in America, are curious examples--these under\nmonarchical, this under republican, institutions--of the results on\nlarge masses of nations of the want of education in principles of\njustice. But the mere dread or distrust resulting from the want of the\ninner virtues of Faith and Charity prove often no less costly than war\nitself. The fear which France and England have of each other costs each\nnation about fifteen millions sterling annually, besides various\nparalyses of commerce; that sum being spent in the manufacture of means\nof destruction instead of means of production. There is no more reason\nin the nature of things that France and England should be hostile to\neach other than that England and Scotland should be, or Lancashire and\nYorkshire; and the reciprocal terrors of the opposite sides of the\nEnglish Channel are neither more necessary, more economical, nor more\nvirtuous, than the old riding and reiving on the opposite flanks of the\nCheviots, or than England's own weaving for herself of crowns of thorn,\nfrom the stems of her Red and White roses.\n\n\nAPPENDIX II.--(p. 34.)\n\nFew passages of the book which at least some part of the nations at\npresent most advanced in civilization accept as an expression of final\ntruth, have been more distorted than those bearing on Idolatry. For the\nidolatry there denounced is neither sculpture, nor veneration of\nsculpture. It is simply the substitution of an \"Eidolon,\" phantasm, or\nimagination of Good, for that which is real and enduring; from the\nHighest Living Good, which gives life, to the lowest material good\nwhich ministers to it. The Creator, and the things created, which He is\nsaid to have \"seen good\" in creating, are in this their eternal goodness\nappointed always to be \"worshipped,\"--_i. e._, to have goodness and\nworth ascribed to them from the heart; and the sweep and range of\nidolatry extend to the rejection of any or all of these, \"calling evil\ngood, and good evil,--putting bitter for sweet, and sweet for\nbitter.\"[96] For in that rejection and substitution we betray the first\nof all Loyalties, to the fixed Law of life, and with resolute opposite\nloyalty serve our own imagination of good, which is the law, not of the\nHouse, but of the Grave, (otherwise called the law of \"mark missing,\"\nwhich we translate \"law of Sin\"); these \"two masters,\" between whose\nservices we have to choose, being otherwise distinguished as God and\nMammon, which Mammon, though we narrowly take it as the power of\nmoney only, is in truth the great evil Spirit of false and\nfond desire, or \"Covetousness, which is Idolatry.\" So that\nIconoclasm--_image_-breaking--is easy; but an Idol cannot be broken--it\nmust be forsaken; and this is not so easy, either to do, or persuade to\ndoing. For men may readily be convinced of the weakness of an image; but\nnot of the emptiness of an imagination.\n\n\nAPPENDIX III.--(p. 36.)\n\nI have not attempted to support, by the authority of other writers, any\nof the statements made in these papers; indeed, if such authorities were\nrightly collected, there would be no occasion for my writing at all.\nEven in the scattered passages referring to this subject in three books\nof Carlyle's--Sartor Resartus, Past and Present, and the Latter Day\nPamphlets,--all has been said that needs to be said, and far better than\nI shall ever say it again. But the habit of the public mind at present\nis to require everything to be uttered diffusely, loudly, and a hundred\ntimes over, before it will listen; and it has revolted against these\npapers of mine as if they contained things daring and new, when there\nis not one assertion in them of which the truth has not been for ages\nknown to the wisest, and proclaimed by the most eloquent of men. It\nwould be [I had written _will_ be; but have now reached a time of life\nfor which there is but one mood--the conditional,] a far greater\npleasure to me hereafter, to collect their words than to add to mine;\nHorace's clear rendering of the substance of the passages in the text\nmay be found room for at once,\n\n    Si quis emat citharas, emptas comportet in unum\n    Nec studio citharae, nec Musae deditus ulli;\n    Si scalpra et formas non sutor, nautica vela\n    Aversus mercaturis, delirus et amens\n    Undique dicatur merito. Qui discrepat istis\n    Qui nummos aurumque recondit, nescius uti\n    Compositis; metuensque velut contingere sacrum?\n\n[Which may be roughly thus translated:--\n\n     \"Were anybody to buy fiddles, and collect a number, being in\n     no wise given to fiddling, nor fond of music: or if, being\n     no cobbler, he collected awls and lasts, or, having no mind\n     for sea-adventure, bought sails, every one would call him a\n     madman, and deservedly. But what difference is there between\n     such a man and one who lays by coins and gold, and does not\n     know how to use, when he has got them?\"]\n\nWith which it is perhaps desirable also to give Xenophon's statement, it\nbeing clearer than any English one can be, owing to the power of the\ngeneral Greek term for wealth, \"useable things.\"\n\n[I have cut out the Greek because I can't be troubled to correct the\naccents, and am always nervous about them; here it is in English, as\nwell as I can do it:--\n\n\"This being so, it follows that things are only property to the man who\nknows how to use them; as flutes, for instance, are property to the man\nwho can pipe upon them respectably; but to one who knows not how to\npipe, they are no property, unless he can get rid of them\nadvantageously.... For if they are not sold, the flutes are no property\n(being serviceable for nothing); but, sold, they become property. To\nwhich Socrates made answer,--'and only then if he knows how to sell\nthem, for if he sell them to another man who cannot play on them, still\nthey are no property.'\"]\n\n\nAPPENDIX IV.--(p. 39.)\n\nThe reader is to include here in the idea of \"Government,\" any branch of\nthe Executive, or even any body of private persons, entrusted with the\npractical management of public interests unconnected directly with their\nown personal ones. In theoretical discussions of legislative\ninterference with political economy, it is usually, and of course\nunnecessarily, assumed that Government must be always of that form and\nforce in which we have been accustomed to see it;--that its abuses can\nnever be less, nor its wisdom greater, nor its powers more numerous.\nBut, practically, the custom in most civilized countries is, for every\nman to deprecate the interference of Government as long as things tell\nfor his personal advantage, and to call for it when they cease to do so.\nThe request of the Manchester Economists to be supplied with cotton by\nGovernment (the system of supply and demand having, for the time, fallen\nsorrowfully short of the expectations of scientific persons from it), is\nan interesting case in point. It were to be wished that less wide and\nbitter suffering, suffering, too, of the innocent, had been needed to\nforce the nation, or some part of it, to ask itself why a body of men,\nalready confessedly capable of managing matters both military and\ndivine, should not be permitted, or even requested, at need, to provide\nin some wise for sustenance as well as for defence; and secure, if it\nmight be,--(and it might, I think, even the _rather_ be),--purity of\nbodily, as well as of spiritual, aliment? Why, having made many roads\nfor the passage of armies, may they not make a few for the conveyance of\nfood; and after organizing, with applause, various schemes of\ntheological instruction for the Public, organize, moreover, some\nmethods of bodily nourishment for them? Or is the soul so much less\ntrustworthy in its instincts than the stomach, that legislation is\nnecessary for the one, but inapplicable to the other.\n\n\nAPPENDIX V.--(p. 70.)\n\nI debated with myself whether to make the note on Homer longer by\nexamining the typical meaning of the shipwreck of Ulysses, and his\nescape from Charybdis by help of her fig-tree; but as I should have had\nto go on to the lovely myth of Leucothea's veil, and did not care to\nspoil this by a hurried account of it, I left it for future examination;\nand, three days after the paper was published, observed that the\nreviewers, with their customary helpfulness, were endeavouring to throw\nthe whole subject back into confusion by dwelling on this single (as\nthey imagined) oversight. I omitted also a note on the sense of the word\n[Greek: lygron], with respect to the pharmacy of Circe, and herb-fields\nof Helen, (compare its use in Odyssey, xvii., 473, &c.), which would\nfarther have illustrated the nature of the Circean power. But, not to be\nled too far into the subtleties of these myths, observe respecting them\nall, that even in very simple parables, it is not always easy to attach\nindisputable meaning to every part of them. I recollect some years ago,\nthrowing an assembly of learned persons who had met to delight\nthemselves with interpretations of the parable of the prodigal son,\n(interpretations which had up to that moment gone very smoothly,) into\nmute indignation, by inadvertently asking who the _un_prodigal son was,\nand what was to be learned by _his_ example. The leading divine of the\ncompany, Mr. Molyneux, at last explained to me that the unprodigal son\nwas a lay figure, put in for dramatic effect, to make the story\nprettier, and that no note was to be taken of him. Without, however,\nadmitting that Homer put in the last escape of Ulysses merely to make\nhis story prettier, this is nevertheless true of all Greek myths, that\nthey have many opposite lights and shades; they are as changeful as\nopal, and like opal, usually have one colour by reflected, and another\nby transmitted light. But they are true jewels for all that, and full of\nnoble enchantment for those who can use them; for those who cannot, I am\ncontent to repeat the words I wrote four years ago, in the appendix to\nthe _Two Paths_--\n\n\"The entire purpose of a great thinker may be difficult to fathom, and\nwe may be over and over again more or less mistaken in guessing at his\nmeaning; but the real, profound, nay, quite bottomless and unredeemable\nmistake, is the fool's thought, that he had _no_ meaning.\"\n\n\nAPPENDIX VI.--(p. 84)\n\nThe derivation of words is like that of rivers: there is one real\nsource, usually small, unlikely, and difficult to find, far up among the\nhills; then, as the word flows on and comes into service, it takes in\nthe force of other words from other sources, and becomes quite another\nword--often much more than one word, after the junction--a word as it\nwere of many waters, sometimes both sweet and bitter. Thus the whole\nforce of our English \"charity\" depends on the guttural in \"charis\"\ngetting confused with the c of the Latin \"carus;\" thenceforward\nthroughout the middle ages, the two ideas ran on together, and both got\nconfused with St. Paul's [Greek: agape], which expresses a different\nidea in all sorts of ways; our \"charity\" having not only brought in the\nentirely foreign sense of alms-giving, but lost the essential sense of\ncontentment, and lost much more in getting too far away from the\n\"charis\" of the final Gospel benedictions. For truly it is fine\nChristianity we have come to, which, professing to expect the perpetual\ngrace or charity of its Founder, has not itself grace or charity enough\nto hinder it from overreaching its friends in sixpenny bargains; and\nwhich, supplicating evening and morning the forgiveness of its own\ndebts, goes forth at noon to take its fellow-servants by the throat,\nsaying,--not merely \"Pay me that thou owest,\" but \"Pay me that thou\nowest me _not_.\"\n\nIt is true that we sometimes wear Ophelia's rue with a difference, and\ncall it \"Herb o' grace o' Sundays,\" taking consolation out of the\noffertory with--\"Look, what he layeth out; it shall be paid him again.\"\nComfortable words indeed, and good to set against the old royalty of\nLargesse--\n\n    Whose moste joie was, I wis,\n    When that she gave, and said, \"Have this.\"\n\n[I am glad to end, for this time, with these lovely words of Chaucer. We\nhave heard only too much lately of \"Indiscriminate charity,\" with\nimplied reproval, not of the Indiscrimination merely, but of the Charity\nalso. We have partly succeeded in enforcing on the minds of the poor the\nidea that it is disgraceful to receive; and are likely, without much\ndifficulty, to succeed in persuading not a few of the rich that it is\ndisgraceful to give. But the political economy of a great state makes\nboth giving and receiving graceful; and the political economy of true\nreligion interprets the saying that \"it is more blessed to give than to\nreceive,\" not as the promise of reward in another life for mortified\nselfishness in this, but as pledge of bestowal upon us of that sweet and\nbetter nature, which does not mortify itself in giving.]\n\n    _Brantwood, Coniston,_\n    _5th October, 1871._\n\n\nTHE END\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[95] [Written in 1862. I little thought that when I next corrected my\ntype, the \"existing\" war best illustrative of the sentence would be\nbetween Frenchmen in the Elysian Fields of Paris.]\n\n[96] Compare the close of the Fourth Lecture in _Aratra Pentelici_.\n\n\n\n\nPRE-RAPHAELITISM\n\n    To\n    FRANCIS HAWKSWORTH FAWKES, ESQ\n    OF FARNLEY\n\n    THESE PAGES\n    WHICH OWE THEIR PRESENT FORM TO ADVANTAGES GRANTED\n    BY HIS KINDNESS\n    ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED\n    BY HIS OBLIGED FRIEND\n    JOHN RUSKIN\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nEight years ago, in the close of the first volume of \"Modern Painters,\"\nI ventured to give the following advice to the young artists of\nEngland:--\n\n\"They should go to nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her\nlaboriously and trustingly, having no other thought but how best to\npenetrate her meaning; rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and\nscorning nothing.\" Advice which, whether bad or good, involved infinite\nlabor and humiliation in the following it; and was therefore, for the\nmost part, rejected.\n\nIt has, however, at last been carried out, to the very letter, by a\ngroup of men who, for their reward, have been assailed with the most\nscurrilous abuse which I ever recollect seeing issue from the public\npress. I have, therefore, thought it due to them to contradict the\ndirectly false statements which have been made respecting their works;\nand to point out the kind of merit which, however deficient in some\nrespects, those works possess beyond the possibility of dispute.\n\n    Denmark Hill,\n\n    Aug. 1851.\n\n\n\n\nPRE-RAPHAELITISM.\n\n\nIt may be proved, with much certainty, that God intends no man to live\nin this world without working: but it seems to me no less evident that\nHe intends every man to be happy in his work. It is written, \"in the\nsweat of thy brow,\" but it was never written, \"in the breaking of thine\nheart,\" thou shalt eat bread; and I find that, as on the one hand,\ninfinite misery is caused by idle people, who both fail in doing what\nwas appointed for them to do, and set in motion various springs of\nmischief in matters in which they should have had no concern, so on the\nother hand, no small misery is caused by over-worked and unhappy people,\nin the dark views which they necessarily take up themselves, and force\nupon others, of work itself. Were it not so, I believe the fact of their\nbeing unhappy is in itself a violation of divine law, and a sign of some\nkind of folly or sin in their way of life. Now in order that people may\nbe happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit\nfor it: They must not do too much of it: and they must have a sense of\nsuccess in it--not a doubtful sense, such as needs some testimony of\nother people for its confirmation, but a sure sense, or rather\nknowledge, that so much work has been done well, and fruitfully done,\nwhatever the world may say or think about it. So that in order that a\nman may be happy, it is necessary that he should not only be capable of\nhis work, but a good judge of his work.\n\nThe first thing then that he has to do, if unhappily his parents or\nmasters have not done it for him, is to find out what he is fit for. In\nwhich inquiry a man may be very safely guided by his likings, if he be\nnot also guided by his pride. People usually reason in some such\nfashion as this: \"I don't seem quite fit for a head-manager in the firm\nof ---- & Co., therefore, in all probability, I am fit to be Chancellor\nof the Exchequer.\" Whereas, they ought rather to reason thus: \"I don't\nseem quite fit to be head-manager in the firm of ---- & Co., but I\ndaresay I might do something in a small green-grocery business; I used\nto be a good judge of peas;\" that is to say, always trying lower instead\nof trying higher, until they find bottom: once well set on the ground, a\nman may build up by degrees, safely, instead of disturbing every one in\nhis neighborhood by perpetual catastrophes. But this kind of humility is\nrendered especially difficult in these days, by the contumely thrown on\nmen in humble employments. The very removal of the massy bars which once\nseparated one class of society from another, has rendered it tenfold\nmore shameful in foolish people's, i. e. in most people's eyes, to\nremain in the lower grades of it, than ever it was before. When a man\nborn of an artisan was looked upon as an entirely different species of\nanimal from a man born of a noble, it made him no more uncomfortable or\nashamed to remain that different species of animal, than it makes a\nhorse ashamed to remain a horse, and not to become a giraffe. But now\nthat a man may make money, and rise in the world, and associate himself,\nunreproached, with people once far above him, not only is the natural\ndiscontentedness of humanity developed to an unheard-of extent, whatever\na man's position, but it becomes a veritable shame to him to remain in\nthe state he was born in, and everybody thinks it his _duty_ to try to\nbe a \"gentleman.\" Persons who have any influence in the management of\npublic institutions for charitable education know how common this\nfeeling has become. Hardly a day passes but they receive letters from\nmothers who want all their six or eight sons to go to college, and make\nthe grand tour in the long vacation, and who think there is something\nwrong in the foundations of society, because this is not possible. Out\nof every ten letters of this kind, nine will allege, as the reason of\nthe writers' importunity, their desire to keep their families in such\nand such a \"station of life.\" There is no real desire for the safety,\nthe discipline, or the moral good of the children, only a panic horror\nof the inexpressibly pitiable calamity of their living a ledge or two\nlower on the molehill of the world--a calamity to be averted at any cost\nwhatever, of struggle, anxiety, and shortening of life itself. I do not\nbelieve that any greater good could be achieved for the country, than\nthe change in public feeling on this head, which might be brought about\nby a few benevolent men, undeniably in the class of \"gentlemen,\" who\nwould, on principle, enter into some of our commonest trades, and make\nthem honorable; showing that it was possible for a man to retain his\ndignity, and remain, in the best sense, a gentleman, though part of his\ntime was every day occupied in manual labor, or even in serving\ncustomers over a counter. I do not in the least see why courtesy, and\ngravity, and sympathy with the feelings of others, and courage, and\ntruth, and piety, and what else goes to make up a gentleman's character,\nshould not be found behind a counter as well as elsewhere, if they were\ndemanded, or even hoped for, there.\n\nLet us suppose, then, that the man's way of life and manner of work have\nbeen discreetly chosen; then the next thing to be required is, that he\ndo not over-work himself therein. I am not going to say anything here\nabout the various errors in our systems of society and commerce, which\nappear (I am not sure if they ever do more than appear) to force us to\nover-work ourselves merely that we may live; nor about the still more\nfruitful cause of unhealthy toil--the incapability, in many men, of\nbeing content with the little that is indeed necessary to their\nhappiness. I have only a word or two to say about one special cause of\nover-work--the ambitious desire of doing great or clever things, and the\nhope of accomplishing them by immense efforts: hope as vain as it is\npernicious; not only making men over-work themselves, but rendering all\nthe work they do unwholesome to them. I say it is a vain hope, and let\nthe reader be assured of this (it is a truth all-important to the best\ninterests of humanity). _No great intellectual thing was ever done by\ngreat effort_; a great thing can only be done by a great man, and he\ndoes it _without_ effort. Nothing is, at present, less understood by us\nthan this--nothing is more necessary to be understood. Let me try to say\nit as clearly, and explain it as fully as I may.\n\nI have said no great _intellectual_ thing: for I do not mean the\nassertion to extend to things moral. On the contrary, it seems to me\nthat just because we are intended, as long as we live, to be in a state\nof intense moral effort, we are _not_ intended to be in intense physical\nor intellectual effort. Our full energies are to be given to the soul's\nwork--to the great fight with the Dragon--the taking the kingdom of\nheaven by force. But the body's work and head's work are to be done\nquietly, and comparatively without effort. Neither limbs nor brain are\never to be strained to their utmost; that is not the way in which the\ngreatest quantity of work is to be got out of them: they are never to be\nworked furiously, but with tranquillity and constancy. We are to follow\nthe plough from sunrise to sunset, but not to pull in race-boats at the\ntwilight: we shall get no fruit of that kind of work, only disease of\nthe heart.\n\nHow many pangs would be spared to thousands, if this great truth and law\nwere but once sincerely, humbly understood,--that if a great thing can\nbe done at all, it can be done easily; that, when it is needed to be\ndone, there is perhaps only one man in the world who can do it; but _he_\ncan do it without any trouble--without more trouble, that is, than it\ncosts small people to do small things; nay, perhaps, with less. And yet\nwhat truth lies more openly on the surface of all human phenomena? Is\nnot the evidence of Ease on the very front of all the greatest works in\nexistence? Do they not say plainly to us, not, \"there has been a great\n_effort_ here,\" but, \"there has been a great _power_ here\"? It is not\nthe weariness of mortality, but the strength of divinity, which we have\nto recognise in all mighty things; and that is just what we now _never_\nrecognise, but think that we are to do great things, by help of iron\nbars and perspiration:--alas! we shall do nothing that way but lose some\npounds of our own weight.\n\nYet, let me not be misunderstood, nor this great truth be supposed\nanywise resolvable into the favorite dogma of young men, that they need\nnot work if they have genius. The fact is, that a man of genius is\nalways far more ready to work than other people, and gets so much more\ngood from the work that he does, and is often so little conscious of the\ninherent divinity in himself, that he is very apt to ascribe all his\ncapacity to his work, and to tell those who ask how he came to be what\nhe is: \"If I _am_ anything, which I much doubt, I made myself so merely\nby labor.\" This was Newton's way of talking, and I suppose it would be\nthe general tone of men whose genius had been devoted to the physical\nsciences. Genius in the Arts must commonly be more self-conscious, but\nin whatever field, it will always be distinguished by its perpetual,\nsteady, well-directed, happy, and faithful labor in accumulating and\ndisciplining its powers, as well as by its gigantic, incommunicable\nfacility in exercising them. Therefore, literally, it is no man's\nbusiness whether he has genius or not: work he must, whatever he is, but\nquietly and steadily; and the natural and unforced results of such work\nwill be always the things that God meant him to do, and will be his\nbest. No agonies nor heart-rendings will enable him to do any better. If\nhe be a great man, they will be great things; if a small man, small\nthings; but always, if thus peacefully done, good and right; always, if\nrestlessly and ambitiously done, false, hollow, and despicable.\n\nThen the third thing needed was, I said, that a man should be a good\njudge of his work; and this chiefly that he may not be dependent upon\npopular opinion for the manner of doing it, but also that he may have\nthe just encouragement of the sense of progress, and an honest\nconsciousness of victory: how else can he become\n\n    \"That awful independent on to-morrow,\n    Whose yesterdays look backwards with a smile.\"\n\nI am persuaded that the real nourishment and help of such a feeling as\nthis is nearly unknown to half the workmen of the present day. For\nwhatever appearance of self-complacency there may be in their outward\nbearing, it is visible enough, by their feverish jealousy of each\nother, how little confidence they have in the sterling value of their\nseveral doings. Conceit may puff a man up, but never prop him up; and\nthere is too visible distress and hopelessness in men's aspects to admit\nof the supposition that they have any stable support of faith in\nthemselves.\n\nI have stated these principles generally, because there is no branch of\nlabor to which they do not apply: But there is one in which our\nignorance or forgetfulness of them has caused an incalculable amount of\nsuffering: and I would endeavor now to reconsider them with especial\nreference to it,--the branch of the Arts.\n\nIn general, the men who are employed in the Arts have freely chosen\ntheir profession, and suppose themselves to have special faculty for it;\nyet, as a body, they are not happy men. For which this seems to me the\nreason, that they are expected, and themselves expect, to make their\nbread _by being clever_--not by steady or quiet work; and are,\ntherefore, for the most part, trying to be clever, and so living in an\nutterly false state of mind and action.\n\nThis is the case, to the same extent, in no other profession or\nemployment. A lawyer may indeed suspect that, unless he has more wit\nthan those around him, he is not likely to advance in his profession;\nbut he will not be always thinking how he is to display his wit. He will\ngenerally understand, early in his career, that wit must be left to take\ncare of itself, and that it is hard knowledge of law and vigorous\nexamination and collation of the facts of every case entrusted to him,\nwhich his clients will mainly demand; this it is which he has to be paid\nfor; and this is healthy and measurable labor, payable by the hour. If\nhe happen to have keen natural perception and quick wit, these will come\ninto play in their due time and place, but he will not think of them as\nhis chief power; and if he have them not, he may still hope that\nindustry and conscientiousness may enable him to rise in his profession\nwithout them. Again in the case of clergymen: that they are sorely\ntempted to display their eloquence or wit, none who know their own\nhearts will deny, but then they _know_ this to _be_ a temptation: they\nnever would suppose that cleverness was all that was to be expected from\nthem, or would sit down deliberately to write a clever sermon: even the\ndullest or vainest of them would throw some veil over their vanity, and\npretend to some profitableness of purpose in what they did. They would\nnot openly ask of their hearers--Did you think my sermon ingenious, or\nmy language poetical? They would early understand that they were not\npaid for being ingenious, nor called to be so, but to preach truth; that\nif they happened to possess wit, eloquence, or originality, these would\nappear and be of service in due time, but were not to be continually\nsought after or exhibited: and if it should happen that they had them\nnot, they might still be serviceable pastors without them.\n\nNot so with the unhappy artist. No one expects any honest or useful work\nof him; but every one expects him to be ingenious. Originality,\ndexterity, invention, imagination, every thing is asked of him except\nwhat alone is to be had for asking--honesty and sound work, and the due\ndischarge of his function as a painter. What function? asks the reader\nin some surprise. He may well ask; for I suppose few painters have any\nidea what their function is, or even that they have any at all.\n\nAnd yet surely it is not so difficult to discover. The faculties, which\nwhen a man finds in himself, he resolves to be a painter, are, I\nsuppose, intenseness of observation and facility of imitation. The man\nis created an observer and an imitator; and his function is to convey\nknowledge to his fellow-men, of such things as cannot be taught\notherwise than ocularly. For a long time this function remained a\nreligious one: it was to impress upon the popular mind the reality of\nthe objects of faith, and the truth of the histories of Scripture, by\ngiving visible form to both. That function has now passed away, and none\nhas as yet taken its place. The painter has no profession, no purpose.\nHe is an idler on the earth, chasing the shadows of his own fancies.\n\nBut he was never meant to be this. The sudden and universal Naturalism,\nor inclination to copy ordinary natural objects, which manifested\nitself among the painters of Europe, at the moment when the invention of\nprinting superseded their legendary labors, was no false instinct. It\nwas misunderstood and misapplied, but it came at the right time, and has\nmaintained itself through all kinds of abuse; presenting in the recent\nschools of landscape, perhaps only the first fruits of its power. That\ninstinct was urging every painter in Europe at the same moment to his\ntrue duty--_the faithful representation of all objects of historical\ninterest, or of natural beauty existent at the period_; representations\nsuch as might at once aid the advance of the sciences, and keep faithful\nrecord of every monument of past ages which was likely to be swept away\nin the approaching eras of revolutionary change.\n\nThe instinct came, as I said, exactly at the right moment; and let the\nreader consider what amount and kind of general knowledge might by this\ntime have been possessed by the nations of Europe, had their painters\nunderstood and obeyed it. Suppose that, after disciplining themselves so\nas to be able to draw, with unerring precision, each the particular kind\nof subject in which he most delighted, they had separated into two great\narmies of historians and naturalists;--that the first had painted with\nabsolute faithfulness every edifice, every city, every battle-field,\nevery scene of the slightest historical interest, precisely and\ncompletely rendering their aspect at the time; and that their\ncompanions, according to their several powers, had painted with like\nfidelity the plants and animals, the natural scenery, and the\natmospheric phenomena of every country on the earth--suppose that a\nfaithful and complete record were now in our museums of every building\ndestroyed by war, or time, or innovation, during these last 200\nyears--suppose that each recess of every mountain chain of Europe had\nbeen penetrated, and its rocks drawn with such accuracy that the\ngeologist's diagram was no longer necessary--suppose that every tree of\nthe forest had been drawn in its noblest aspect, every beast of the\nfield in its savage life--that all these gatherings were already in our\nnational galleries, and that the painters of the present day were\nlaboring, happily and earnestly, to multiply them, and put such means of\nknowledge more and more within reach of the common people--would not\nthat be a more honorable life for them, than gaining precarious bread by\n\"bright effects?\" They think not, perhaps. They think it easy, and\ntherefore contemptible, to be truthful; they have been taught so all\ntheir lives. But it is not so, whoever taught it them. It is most\ndifficult, and worthy of the greatest men's greatest effort, to render,\nas it should be rendered, the simplest of the natural features of the\nearth; but also be it remembered, no man is confined to the simplest;\neach may look out work for himself where he chooses, and it will be\nstrange if he cannot find something hard enough for him. The excuse is,\nhowever, one of the lips only; for every painter knows that when he\ndraws back from the attempt to render nature as she is, it is oftener in\ncowardice than in disdain.\n\nI must leave the reader to pursue this subject for himself; I have not\nspace to suggest to him the tenth part of the advantages which would\nfollow, both to the painter from such an understanding of his mission,\nand to the whole people, in the results of his labor. Consider how the\nman himself would be elevated: how content he would become, how earnest,\nhow full of all accurate and noble knowledge, how free from\nenvy--knowing creation to be infinite, feeling at once the value of what\nhe did, and yet the nothingness. Consider the advantage to the people;\nthe immeasurably larger interest given to art itself; the easy,\npleasurable, and perfect knowledge conveyed by it, in every subject; the\nfar greater number of men who might be healthily and profitably occupied\nwith it as a means of livelihood; the useful direction of myriads of\ninferior talents, now left fading away in misery. Conceive all this, and\nthen look around at our exhibitions, and behold the \"cattle pieces,\" and\n\"sea pieces,\" and \"fruit pieces,\" and \"family pieces;\" the eternal brown\ncows in ditches, and white sails in squalls, and sliced lemons in\nsaucers, and foolish faces in simpers;--and try to feel what we are, and\nwhat we might have been.\n\nTake a single instance in one branch of archaeology. Let those who are\ninterested in the history of religion consider what a treasure we should\nnow have possessed, if, instead of painting pots, and vegetables, and\ndrunken peasantry, the most accurate painters of the seventeenth and\neighteenth centuries had been set to copy, line for line, the religious\nand domestic sculpture on the German, Flemish, and French cathedrals and\ncastles; and if every building destroyed in the French or in any other\nsubsequent revolution, had thus been drawn in all its parts with the\nsame precision with which Gerard Douw or Mieris paint bas-reliefs of\nCupids. Consider, even now, what incalculable treasure is still left in\nancient bas-reliefs, full of every kind of legendary interest, of subtle\nexpression, of priceless evidence as to the character, feelings habits,\nhistories, of past generations, in neglected and shattered churches and\ndomestic buildings, rapidly disappearing over the whole of\nEurope--treasure which, once lost, the labor of all men living cannot\nbring back again; and then look at the myriads of men, with skill\nenough, if they had but the commonest schooling, to record all this\nfaithfully, who are making their bread by drawing dances of naked women\nfrom academy models, or idealities of chivalry fitted out with Wardour\nStreet armor, or eternal scenes from Gil Blas, Don Quixote, and the\nVicar of Wakefield, or mountain sceneries with young idiots of Londoners\nwearing Highland bonnets and brandishing rifles in the foregrounds. Do\nbut think of these things in the breadth of their inexpressible\nimbecility, and then go and stand before that broken bas-relief in the\nsouthern gate of Lincoln Cathedral, and see if there is no fibre of the\nheart in you that will break too.\n\nBut is there to be no place left, it will be indignantly asked, for\nimagination and invention, for poetical power, or love of ideal beauty?\nYes; the highest, the noblest place--that which these only can attain\nwhen they are all used in the cause, and with the aid of truth. Wherever\nimagination and sentiment are, they will either show themselves without\nforcing, or, if capable of artificial development, the kind of training\nwhich such a school of art would give them would be the best they could\nreceive. The infinite absurdity and failure of our present training\nconsists mainly in this, that we do not rank imagination and invention\nhigh enough, and suppose that they _can_ be taught. Throughout every\nsentence that I ever have written, the reader will find the same rank\nattributed to these powers,--the rank of a purely divine gift, not to be\nattained, increased, or in any wise modified by teaching, only in\nvarious ways capable of being concealed or quenched. Understand this\nthoroughly; know once for all, that a poet on canvas is exactly the same\nspecies of creature as a poet in song, and nearly every error in our\nmethods of teaching will be done away with. For who among us now thinks\nof bringing men up to be poets?--of producing poets by any kind of\ngeneral recipe or method of cultivation? Suppose even that we see in\nyouth that which we hope may, in its development, become a power of this\nkind, should we instantly, supposing that we wanted to make a poet of\nhim, and nothing else, forbid him all quiet, steady, rational labor?\nShould we force him to perpetual spinning of new crudities out of his\nboyish brain, and set before him, as the only objects of his study, the\nlaws of versification which criticism has supposed itself to discover in\nthe works of previous writers? Whatever gifts the boy had, would much be\nlikely to come of them so treated? unless, indeed, they were so great as\nto break through all such snares of falsehood and vanity, and build\ntheir own foundation in spite of us; whereas if, as in cases numbering\nmillions against units, the natural gifts were too weak to do this,\ncould any thing come of such training but utter inanity and spuriousness\nof the whole man? But if we had sense, should we not rather restrain and\nbridle the first flame of invention in early youth, heaping material on\nit as one would on the first sparks and tongues of a fire which we\ndesired to feed into greatness? Should we not educate the whole\nintellect into general strength, and all the affections into warmth and\nhonesty, and look to heaven for the rest? This, I say, we should have\nsense enough to do, in order to produce a poet in words: but, it being\nrequired to produce a poet on canvas, what is our way of setting to\nwork? We begin, in all probability, by telling the youth of fifteen or\nsixteen, that Nature is full of faults, and that he is to improve her;\nbut that Raphael is perfection, and that the more he copies Raphael the\nbetter; that after much copying of Raphael, he is to try what he can do\nhimself in a Raphaelesque, but yet original, manner: that is to say, he\nis to try to do something very clever, all out of his own head, but yet\nthis clever something is to be properly subjected to Raphaelesque rules,\nis to have a principal light occupying one-seventh of its space, and a\nprinciple shadow occupying one-third of the same; that no two people's\nheads in the picture are to be turned the same way, and that all the\npersonages represented are to possess ideal beauty of the highest order,\nwhich ideal beauty consists partly in a Greek outline of nose, partly in\nproportions expressible in decimal fractions between the lips and chin;\nbut partly also in that degree of improvement which the youth of sixteen\nis to bestow upon God's work in general. This I say is the kind of\nteaching which through various channels, Royal Academy lecturings, press\ncriticisms, public enthusiasm, and not least by solid weight of gold, we\ngive to our young men. And we wonder we have no painters!\n\nBut we do worse than this. Within the last few years some sense\nof the real tendency of such teaching has appeared in some of\nour younger painters. It only _could_ appear in the younger ones,\nour older men having become familiarised with the false system,\nor else having passed through it and forgotten it, not well knowing\nthe degree of harm they had sustained. This sense appeared, among our\nyouths,--increased,--matured into resolute action. Necessarily, to exist\nat all, it needed the support both of strong instincts and of\nconsiderable self-confidence, otherwise it must at once have been borne\ndown by the weight of general authority and received canon law. Strong\ninstincts are apt to make men strange, and rude; self-confidence,\nhowever well founded, to give much of what they do or say the appearance\nof impertinence. Look at the self-confidence of Wordsworth, stiffening\nevery other sentence of his prefaces into defiance; there is no more of\nit than was needed to enable him to do his work, yet it is not a little\nungraceful here and there. Suppose this stubbornness and self-trust in\na youth, laboring in an art of which the executive part is confessedly\nto be best learnt from masters, and we shall hardly wonder that much of\nhis work has a certain awkwardness and stiffness in it, or that he\nshould be regarded with disfavor by many, even the most temperate, of\nthe judges trained in the system he was breaking through, and with utter\ncontempt and reprobation by the envious and the dull. Consider, farther,\nthat the particular system to be overthrown was, in the present case,\none of which the main characteristic was the pursuit of beauty at the\nexpense of manliness and truth; and it will seem likely, _a priori_,\nthat the men intended successfully to resist the influence of such a\nsystem should be endowed with little natural sense of beauty, and thus\nrendered dead to the temptation it presented. Summing up these\nconditions, there is surely little cause for surprise that pictures\npainted, in a temper of resistance, by exceedingly young men, of\nstubborn instincts and positive self-trust, and with little natural\nperception of beauty, should not be calculated, at the first glance, to\nwin us from works enriched by plagiarism, polished by convention,\ninvested with all the attractiveness of artificial grace, and\nrecommended to our respect by established authority.\n\nWe should, however, on the other hand, have anticipated, that in\nproportion to the strength of character required for the effort, and to\nthe absence of distracting sentiments, whether respect for precedent, or\naffection for ideal beauty, would be the energy exhibited in the pursuit\nof the special objects which the youths proposed to themselves, and\ntheir success in attaining them.\n\nAll this has actually been the case, but in a degree which it would have\nbeen impossible to anticipate. That two youths, of the respective ages\nof eighteen and twenty, should have conceived for themselves a totally\nindependent and sincere method of study, and enthusiastically persevered\nin it against every kind of dissuasion and opposition, is strange\nenough; that in the third or fourth year of their efforts they should\nhave produced works in many parts not inferior to the best of Albert\nDurer, this is perhaps not less strange. But the loudness and\nuniversality of the howl which the common critics of the press have\nraised against them, the utter absence of all generous help or\nencouragement from those who can both measure their toil and appreciate\ntheir success, and the shrill, shallow laughter of those who can do\nneither the one nor the other,--these are strangest of all--unimaginable\nunless they had been experienced.\n\nAnd as if these were not enough, private malice is at work against them,\nin its own small, slimy way. The very day after I had written my second\nletter to the Times in the defence of the Pre-Raphaelites, I received an\nanonymous letter respecting one of them, from some person apparently\nhardly capable of spelling, and about as vile a specimen of petty\nmalignity as ever blotted paper. I think it well that the public should\nknow this, and so get some insight into the sources of the spirit which\nis at work against these men--how first roused it is difficult to say,\nfor one would hardly have thought that mere eccentricity in young\nartists could have excited an hostility so determined and so\ncruel;--hostility which hesitated at no assertion, however impudent.\nThat of the \"absence of perspective\" was one of the most curious pieces\nof the hue and cry which began with the Times, and died away in feeble\nmaundering in the Art Union; I contradicted it in the Times--I here\ncontradict it directly for the second time. There was not a single error\nin perspective in three out of the four pictures in question. But if\notherwise, would it have been anything remarkable in them? I doubt, if\nwith the exception of the pictures of David Roberts, there were one\narchitectural drawing in perspective on the walls of the Academy; I\nnever met but with two men in my life who knew enough of perspective to\ndraw a Gothic arch in a retiring plane, so that its lateral dimensions\nand curvatures might be calculated to scale from the drawing. Our\narchitects certainly do not, and it was but the other day that, talking\nto one of the most distinguished among them, the author of several most\nvaluable works, I found he actually did not know how to draw a circle in\nperspective. And in this state of general science our writers for the\npress take it upon them to tell us, that the forest trees in Mr. Hunt's\n_Sylvia_, and the bunches of lilies in Mr. Collins's _Convent Thoughts_,\nare out of perspective.[97]\n\nIt might not, I think, in such circumstances, have been ungraceful or\nunwise in the Academicians themselves to have defended their young\npupils, at least by the contradiction of statements directly false\nrespecting them,[98] and the direction of the mind and sight of the\npublic to such real merit as they possess. If Sir Charles Eastlake,\nMulready, Edwin and Charles Landseer, Cope, and Dyce would each of them\nsimply state their own private opinion respecting their paintings, sign\nit and publish it, I believe the act would be of more service to English\nart than any thing the Academy has done since it was founded. But as I\ncannot hope for this, I can only ask the public to give their pictures\ncareful examination, and look at them at once with the indulgence and\nthe respect which I have endeavored to show they deserve.\n\nYet let me not be misunderstood. I have adduced them only as examples of\nthe kind of study which I would desire to see substituted for that of\nour modern schools, and of singular success in certain characters,\nfinish of detail, and brilliancy of color. What faculties, higher than\nimitative, may be in these men, I do not yet venture to say; but I do\nsay that if they exist, such faculties will manifest themselves in due\ntime all the more forcibly because they have received training so\nsevere.\n\nFor it is always to be remembered that no one mind is like another,\neither in its powers or perceptions; and while the main principles of\ntraining must be the same for all, the result in each will be as various\nas the kinds of truth which each will apprehend; therefore, also, the\nmodes of effort, even in men whose inner principles and final aims are\nexactly the same. Suppose, for instance, two men, equally honest,\nequally industrious, equally impressed with a humble desire to render\nsome part of what they saw in nature faithfully; and, otherwise trained\nin convictions such as I have above endeavored to induce. But one of\nthem is quiet in temperament, has a feeble memory, no invention, and\nexcessively keen sight. The other is impatient in temperament, has a\nmemory which nothing escapes, an invention which never rests, and is\ncomparatively near-sighted.\n\nSet them both free in the same field in a mountain valley. One sees\neverything, small and large, with almost the same clearness; mountains\nand grasshoppers alike; the leaves on the branches, the veins in the\npebbles, the bubbles in the stream: but he can remember nothing, and\ninvent nothing. Patiently he sets himself to his mighty task; abandoning\nat once all thoughts of seizing transient effects, or giving general\nimpressions of that which his eyes present to him in microscopical\ndissection, he chooses some small portion out of the infinite scene, and\ncalculates with courage the number of weeks which must elapse before he\ncan do justice to the intensity of his perceptions, or the fulness of\nmatter in his subject.\n\nMeantime, the other has been watching the change of the clouds, and the\nmarch of the light along the mountain sides; he beholds the entire scene\nin broad, soft masses of true gradation, and the very feebleness of his\nsight is in some sort an advantage to him, in making him more sensible\nof the aerial mystery of distance, and hiding from him the multitudes of\ncircumstances which it would have been impossible for him to represent.\nBut there is not one change in the casting of the jagged shadows along\nthe hollows of the hills, but it is fixed on his mind for ever; not a\nflake of spray has broken from the sea of cloud about their bases, but\nhe has watched it as it melts away, and could recall it to its lost\nplace in heaven by the slightest effort of his thoughts. Not only so,\nbut thousands and thousands of such images, of older scenes, remain\ncongregated in his mind, each mingling in new associations with those\nnow visibly passing before him, and these again confused with other\nimages of his own ceaseless, sleepless imagination, flashing by in\nsudden troops. Fancy how his paper will be covered with stray symbols\nand blots, and undecipherable shorthand:--as for his sitting down to\n\"draw from Nature,\" there was not one of the things which he wished to\nrepresent that stayed for so much as five seconds together: but none of\nthem escaped, for all that: they are sealed up in that strange\nstorehouse of his; he may take one of them out, perhaps, this day twenty\nyears, and paint it in his dark room, far away. Now, observe, you may\ntell both of these men, when they are young, that they are to be honest,\nthat they have an important function, and that they are not to care what\nRaphael did. This you may wholesomely impress on them both. But fancy\nthe exquisite absurdity of expecting either of them to possess any of\nthe qualities of the other.\n\nI have supposed the feebleness of sight in the last, and of invention in\nthe first painter, that the contrast between them might be more\nstriking; but, with very slight modification, both the characters are\nreal. Grant to the first considerable inventive power, with exquisite\nsense of color; and give to the second, in addition to all his other\nfaculties, the eye of an eagle; and the first is John Everett Millais,\nthe second Joseph Mallard William Turner.\n\nThey are among the few men who have defied all false teaching, and have,\ntherefore, in great measure, done justice to the gifts with which they\nwere entrusted. They stand at opposite poles, marking culminating points\nof art in both directions; between them, or in various relations to\nthem, we may class five or six more living artists who, in like manner,\nhave done justice to their powers. I trust that I may be pardoned for\nnaming them, in order that the reader may know how the strong innate\ngenius in each has been invariably accompanied with the same humility,\nearnestness, and industry in study.\n\nIt is hardly necessary to point out the earnestness or humility in the\nworks of William Hunt; but it may be so to suggest the high value they\npossess as records of English rural life, and _still_ life. Who is there\nwho for a moment could contend with him in the unaffected, yet humorous\ntruth with which he has painted our peasant children? Who is there who\ndoes not sympathize with him in the simple love with which he dwells on\nthe brightness and bloom of our summer fruit and flowers? And yet there\nis something to be regretted concerning him: why should he be allowed\ncontinually to paint the same bunches of hot-house grapes, and supply\nto the Water Color Society a succession of pineapples with the\nregularity of a Covent Garden fruiterer? He has of late discovered that\nprimrose banks are lovely; but there are other things grow wild besides\nprimroses: what undreamt-of loveliness might he not bring back to us, if\nhe would lose himself for a summer in Highland foregrounds; if he would\npaint the heather as it grows, and the foxglove and the harebell as they\nnestle in the clefts of the rocks, and the mosses and bright lichens of\nthe rocks themselves. And then, cross to the Jura, and bring back a\npiece of Jura pasture in spring; with the gentians in their earliest\nblue, and the soldanelle beside the fading snow! And return again, and\npaint a gray wall of Alpine crag, with budding roses crowning it like a\nwreath of rubies. That is what he was meant to do in this world; not to\npaint bouquets in china vases.\n\nI have in various other places expressed my sincere respect for the\nworks of Samuel Prout: his shortness of sight has necessarily prevented\ntheir possessing delicacy of finish or fulness of minor detail; but I\nthink that those of no other living artist furnish an example so\nstriking of innate and special instinct, sent to do a particular work at\nthe exact and only period when it was possible. At the instant when\npeace had been established all over Europe, but when neither national\ncharacter nor national architecture had as yet been seriously changed by\npromiscuous intercourse or modern \"improvement;\" when, however, nearly\nevery ancient and beautiful building had been long left in a state of\ncomparative neglect, so that its aspect of partial ruinousness, and of\nseparation from recent active life, gave to every edifice a peculiar\ninterest--half sorrowful, half sublime;--at that moment Prout was\ntrained among the rough rocks and simple cottages of Cornwall, until his\neye was accustomed to follow with delight the rents and breaks, and\nirregularities which, to another man, would have been offensive; and\nthen, gifted with infinite readiness in composition, but also with\ninfinite affection for the kind of subjects he had to portray, he was\nsent to preserve, in an almost innumerable series of drawings, _every\none made on the spot_, the aspect borne, at the beginning of the\nnineteenth century, by cities which, in a few years more, rekindled\nwars, or unexpected prosperities, were to ravage, or renovate, into\nnothingness.\n\nIt seems strange to pass from Prout to John Lewis; but there is this\nfellowship between them, that both seem to have been intended to\nappreciate the characters of foreign countries more than of their\nown--nay, to have been born in England chiefly that the excitement of\nstrangeness might enhance to them the interest of the scenes they had to\nrepresent. I believe John Lewis to have done more entire justice to all\nhis powers (and they are magnificent ones) than any other man amongst\nus. His mission was evidently to portray the comparatively animal life\nof the southern and eastern families of mankind. For this he was\nprepared in a somewhat singular way--by being led to study, and endowed\nwith altogether peculiar apprehension of, the most sublime characters of\nanimals themselves. Rubens, Rembrandt, Snyders, Tintoret, and Titian,\nhave all, in various ways, drawn wild beasts magnificently; but they\nhave in some sort humanized or demonized them, making them either\nravenous fiends or educated beasts, that would draw cars, and had\nrespect for hermits. The sullen isolation of the brutal nature; the\ndignity and quietness of the mighty limbs; the shaggy mountainous power,\nmingled with grace, as of a flowing stream; the stealthy restraint of\nstrength and wrath in every soundless motion of the gigantic frame; all\nthis seems never to have been seen, much less drawn, until Lewis drew\nand himself engraved a series of animal subjects, now many years ago.\nSince then, he has devoted himself to the portraiture of those European\nand Asiatic races, among whom the refinements of civilization exist\nwithout its laws or its energies, and in whom the fierceness, indolence,\nand subtlety of animal nature are associated with brilliant imagination\nand strong affections. To this task he has brought not only intense\nperception of the kind of character, but powers of artistical\ncomposition like those of the great Venetians, displaying, at the same\ntime, a refinement of drawing almost miraculous, and appreciable only,\nas the minutiae of nature itself are appreciable, by the help of the\nmicroscope. The value, therefore, of his works, as records of the aspect\nof the scenery and inhabitants of the south of Spain and of the East, in\nthe earlier part of the nineteenth century, is quite above all estimate.\n\nI hardly know how to speak of Mulready: in delicacy and completion of\ndrawing, and splendor of color, he takes place beside John Lewis and the\npre-Raphaelites; but he has, throughout his career, displayed no\ndefiniteness in choice of subject. He must be named among the painters\nwho have studied with industry, and have made themselves great by doing\nso; but having obtained a consummate method of execution, he has thrown\nit away on subjects either altogether uninteresting, or above his\npowers, or unfit for pictorial representation. \"The Cherry Woman,\"\nexhibited in 1850, may be named as an example of the first kind; the\n\"Burchell and Sophia\" of the second (the character of Sir William\nThornhill being utterly missed); the \"Seven Ages\" of the third; for this\nsubject cannot be painted. In the written passage, the thoughts are\nprogressive and connected; in the picture they must be co-existent, and\nyet separate; nor can all the characters of the ages be rendered in\npainting at all. One may represent the soldier at the cannon's mouth,\nbut one cannot paint the \"bubble reputation\" which he seeks. Mulready,\ntherefore, while he has always produced exquisite pieces of painting,\nhas failed in doing anything which can be of true or extensive use. He\nhas, indeed, understood how to discipline his genius, but never how to\ndirect it.\n\nEdwin Landseer is the last painter but one whom I shall name: I need not\npoint out to any one acquainted with his earlier works, the labor, or\nwatchfulness of nature which they involve, nor need I do more than\nallude to the peculiar faculties of his mind. It will at once be granted\nthat the highest merits of his pictures are throughout found in those\nparts of them which are least like what had before been accomplished;\nand that it was not by the study of Raphael that he attained his eminent\nsuccess, but by a healthy love of Scotch terriers.\n\nNone of these painters, however, it will be answered, afford examples\nof the rise of the highest imaginative power out of close study of\nmatters of fact. Be it remembered, however, that the imaginative power,\nin its magnificence, is not to be found every day. Lewis has it in no\nmean degree; but we cannot hope to find it at its highest more than once\nin an age. We _have_ had it once, and must be content.\n\nTowards the close of the last century, among the various drawings\nexecuted, according to the quiet manner of the time, in greyish blue,\nwith brown foregrounds, some began to be noticed as exhibiting rather\nmore than ordinary diligence and delicacy, signed W. Turner.[99] There\nwas nothing, however, in them at all indicative of genius, or even of\nmore than ordinary talent, unless in some of the subjects a large\nperception of space, and excessive clearness and decision in the\narrangement of masses. Gradually and cautiously the blues became mingled\nwith delicate green, and then with gold; the browns in the foreground\nbecame first more positive, and then were slightly mingled with other\nlocal colors; while the touch, which had at first been heavy and broken,\nlike that of the ordinary drawing masters of the time, grew more and\nmore refined and expressive, until it lost itself in a method of\nexecution often too delicate for the eye to follow, rendering, with a\nprecision before unexampled, both the texture and the form of every\nobject. The style may be considered as perfectly formed about the year\n1800, and it remained unchanged for twenty years.\n\nDuring that period the painter had attempted, and with more or less\nsuccess had rendered, every order of landscape subject, but always on\nthe same principle, subduing the colors of nature into a harmony of\nwhich the key-notes are greyish green and brown; pure blues and delicate\ngolden yellows being admitted in small quantity, as the lowest and\nhighest limits of shade and light: and bright local colors in extremely\nsmall quantity in figures or other minor accessories.\n\nPictures executed on such a system are not, properly speaking, works in\n_color_ at all; they are studies of light and shade, in which both the\nshade and the distance are rendered in the general hue which best\nexpresses their attributes of coolness and transparency; and the lights\nand the foreground are executed in that which best expresses their\nwarmth and solidity. This advantage may just as well be taken as not, in\nstudies of light and shadow to be executed with the hand: but the use of\ntwo, three, or four colors, always in the same relations and places,\ndoes not in the least constitute the work a study of color, any more\nthan the brown engravings of the Liber Studiorum; nor would the idea of\ncolor be in general more present to the artist's mind, when he was at\nwork on one of these drawings, than when he was using pure brown in the\nmezzotint engraving. But the idea of space, warmth, and freshness being\nnot successfully expressible in a single tint, and perfectly expressible\nby the admission of three or four, he allows himself this advantage when\nit is possible, without in the least embarrassing himself with the\nactual color of the objects to be represented. A stone in the fore\nground might in nature have been cold grey, but it will be drawn\nnevertheless of a rich brown, because it is in the foreground; a hill in\nthe distance might in nature be purple with heath, or golden with furze;\nbut it will be drawn nevertheless of a cool grey, because it is in the\ndistance.\n\nThis at least was the general theory,--carried out with great severity\nin many, both of the drawings and pictures executed by him during the\nperiod: in others more or less modified by the cautious introduction of\ncolor, as the painter felt his liberty increasing; for the system was\nevidently never considered as final, or as anything more than a means of\nprogress: the conventional, easily manageable color, was visibly\nadopted, only that his mind might be at perfect liberty to address\nitself to the acquirement of the first and most necessary knowledge in\nall art--that of form. But as form, in landscape, implies vast bulk and\nspace, the use of the tints which enabled him best to express them, was\nactually auxiliary to the mere drawing; and, therefore, not only\npermissible, but even necessary, while more brilliant or varied tints\nwere never indulged in, except when they might be introduced without\nthe slightest danger of diverting his mind for an instant from his\nprincipal object. And, therefore, it will be generally found in the\nworks of this period, that exactly in proportion to the importance and\ngeneral toil of the composition, is the severity of the tint; and that\nthe play of color begins to show itself first in slight and small\ndrawings, where he felt that he could easily secure all that he wanted\nin form.\n\nThus the \"Crossing the Brook,\" and such other elaborate and large\ncompositions, are actually painted in nothing but grey, brown, and blue,\nwith a point or two of severe local color in the figures; but in the\nminor drawings, tender passages of complicated color occur not\nunfrequently in easy places; and even before the year 1800 he begins to\nintroduce it with evident joyfulness and longing in his rude and simple\nstudies, just as a child, if it could be supposed to govern itself by a\nfully developed intellect, would cautiously, but with infinite pleasure,\nadd now and then a tiny dish of fruit or other dangerous luxury to the\nsimple order of its daily fare. Thus, in the foregrounds of his most\nsevere drawings, we not unfrequently find him indulging in the luxury of\na peacock; and it is impossible to express the joyfulness with which he\nseems to design its graceful form, and deepen with soft pencilling the\nbloom of its blue, after he has worked through the stern detail of his\nalmost colorless drawing. A rainbow is another of his most frequently\npermitted indulgences; and we find him very early allowing the edges of\nhis evening clouds to be touched with soft rose-color or gold; while,\nwhenever the hues of nature in anywise fall into his system, and can be\ncaught without a dangerous departure from it, he instantly throws his\nwhole soul into the faithful rendering of them. Thus the usual brown\ntones of his foreground become warmed into sudden vigor, and are varied\nand enhanced with indescribable delight, when he finds himself by the\nshore of a moorland stream, where they truly express the stain of its\ngolden rocks, and the darkness of its clear, Cairngorm-like pools, and\nthe usual serenity of his aerial blue is enriched into the softness and\ndepth of the sapphire, when it can deepen the distant slumber of some\nHighland lake, or temper the gloomy shadows of the evening upon its\nhills.\n\nThe system of his color being thus simplified, he could address all the\nstrength of his mind to the accumulation of facts of form; his choice of\nsubject, and his methods of treatment, are therefore as various as his\ncolor is simple; and it is not a little difficult to give the reader who\nis unacquainted with his works, an idea either of their infinitude of\naims, on the one hand, or of the kind of feeling which prevades them\nall, on the other. No subject was too low or too high for him; we find\nhim one day hard at work on a cock and hen, with their family of\nchickens in a farm-yard; and bringing all the refinement of his\nexecution into play to express the texture of the plumage; next day, he\nis drawing the Dragon of Colchis. One hour he is much interested in a\ngust of wind blowing away an old woman's cap; the next he is painting\nthe fifth plague of Egypt. Every landscape painter before him had\nacquired distinction by confining his efforts to one class of subject.\nHobbima painted oaks; Ruysdael, waterfalls and copses; Cuyp, river or\nmeadow scenes in quiet afternoons; Salvator and Poussin, such kind of\nmountain scenery as people could conceive, who lived in towns in the\nseventeenth century. But I am well persuaded that if all the works of\nTurner, up to the year 1820, were divided into classes (as he has\nhimself divided them in the Liber Studiorum), no preponderance could be\nassigned to one class over another. There is architecture, including a\nlarge number of formal \"gentlemen's seats,\" I suppose drawings\ncommissioned by the owners; then lowland pastoral scenery of every kind,\nincluding nearly all farming operations,--ploughing, harrowing, hedging\nand ditching, felling trees, sheep-washing, and I know not what else;\nthen all kinds of town life--court-yards of inns, starting of mail\ncoaches, interiors of shops, house-buildings, fairs, elections, &c.;\nthen all kinds of inner domestic life--interiors of rooms, studies of\ncostumes, of still life, and heraldry, including multitudes of\nsymbolical vignettes; then marine scenery of every kind, full of local\nincident; every kind of boat and method of fishing for particular fish,\nbeing specifically drawn, round the whole coast of England;--pilchard\nfishing at St. Ives, whiting fishing at Margate, herring at Loch Fyne;\nand all kinds of shipping, including studies of every separate part of\nthe vessels, and many marine battle-pieces, two in particular of\nTrafalgar, both of high importance,--one of the Victory after the\nbattle, now in Greenwich Hospital; another of the Death of Nelson, in\nhis own gallery; then all kinds of mountain scenery, some idealised into\ncompositions, others of definite localities; together with classical\ncompositions, Romes and Carthages and such others, by the myriad, with\nmythological, historical, or allegorical figures,--nymphs, monsters, and\nspectres; heroes and divinities.[100]\n\nWhat general feeling, it may be asked incredulously, can possibly\npervade all this? This, the greatest of all feelings--an utter\nforgetfulness of self. Throughout the whole period with which we are at\npresent concerned, Turner appears as a man of sympathy absolutely\ninfinite--a sympathy so all-embracing, that I know nothing but that of\nShakespeare comparable with it. A soldier's wife resting by the roadside\nis not beneath it; Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, watching the dead\nbodies of her sons, not above it. Nothing can possibly be so mean as\nthat it will not interest his whole mind, and carry away his whole\nheart; nothing so great or solemn but that he can raise himself into\nharmony with it; and it is impossible to prophesy of him at any moment,\nwhether, the next, he will be in laughter or in tears.\n\nThis is the root of the man's greatness; and it follows as a matter of\ncourse that this sympathy must give him a subtle power of expression,\neven of the characters of mere material things, such as no other painter\never possessed. The man who can best feel the difference between\nrudeness and tenderness in humanity, perceives also more difference\nbetween the branches of an oak and a willow than any one else would; and\ntherefore, necessarily the most striking character of the drawings\nthemselves is the speciality of whatever they represent--the thorough\nstiffness of what is stiff, and grace of what is graceful, and vastness\nof what is vast; but through and beyond all this, the condition of the\nmind of the painter himself is easily enough discoverable by comparison\nof a large number of the drawings. It is singularly serene and peaceful:\nin itself quite passionless, though entering with ease into the external\npassion which it contemplates. By the effort of its will it sympathises\nwith tumult or distress, even in their extremes, but there is no tumult,\nno sorrow in itself, only a chastened and exquisitely peaceful\ncheerfulness, deeply meditative; touched without loss of its own perfect\nbalance, by sadness on the one side, and stooping to playfulness upon\nthe other. I shall never cease to regret the destruction, by fire, now\nseveral years ago, of a drawing which always seemed to me to be the\nperfect image of the painter's mind at this period,--the drawing of\nBrignal Church near Rokeby, of which a feeble idea may still be gathered\nfrom the engraving (in the Yorkshire series). The spectator stands on\nthe \"Brignal banks,\" looking down into the glen at twilight; the sky is\nstill full of soft rays, though the sun is gone; and the Greta glances\nbrightly in the valley, singing its evening-song; two white clouds,\nfollowing each other, move without wind through the hollows of the\nravine, and others lie couched on the far away moorlands; every leaf of\nthe woods is still in the delicate air; a boy's kite, incapable of\nrising, has become entangled in their branches, he is climbing to\nrecover it; and just behind it in the picture, almost indicated by it,\nthe lowly church is seen in its secluded field between the rocks and the\nstream; and around it the low churchyard wall, and the few white stones\nwhich mark the resting places of those who can climb the rocks no more,\nnor hear the river sing as it passes.\n\nThere are many other existing drawings which indicate the same character\nof mind, though I think none so touching or so beautiful; yet they are\nnot, as I said above, more numerous than those which express his\nsympathy with sublimer or more active scenes; but they are almost always\nmarked by a tenderness of execution, and have a look of being beloved in\nevery part of them, which shows them to be the truest expression of his\nown feelings.\n\nOne other characteristic of his mind at this period remains to be\nnoticed--its reverence for talent in others. Not the reverence which\nacts upon the practices of men as if they were the laws of nature, but\nthat which is ready to appreciate the power, and receive the assistance,\nof every mind which has been previously employed in the same direction,\nso far as its teaching seems to be consistent with the great text-book\nof nature itself. Turner thus studied almost every preceding landscape\npainter, chiefly Claude, Poussin, Vandevelde, Loutherbourg, and Wilson.\nIt was probably by the Sir George Beaumonts and other feeble\nconventionalists of the period, that he was persuaded to devote his\nattention to the works of these men; and his having done so will be\nthought, a few scores of years hence, evidence of perhaps the greatest\nmodesty ever shown by a man of original power. Modesty at once admirable\nand unfortunate, for the study of the works of Vandevelde and Claude was\nproductive of unmixed mischief to him; he spoiled many of his marine\npictures, as for instance Lord Ellesmere's, by imitation of the former;\nand from the latter learned a false ideal, which confirmed by the\nnotions of Greek art prevalent in London in the beginning of this\ncentury, has manifested itself in many vulgarities in his composition\npictures, vulgarities which may perhaps be best expressed by the general\nterm \"Twickenham Classicism,\" as consisting principally in conceptions\nof ancient or of rural life such as have influenced the erection of most\nof our suburban villas. From Nicolo Poussin and Loutherbourg he seems to\nhave derived advantage; perhaps also from Wilson; and much in his\nsubsequent travels from far higher men, especially Tintoret and Paul\nVeronese. I have myself heard him speaking with singular delight of the\nputting in of the beech leaves in the upper right-hand corner of\nTitian's Peter Martyr. I cannot in any of his works trace the slightest\ninfluence of Salvator; and I am not surprised at it, for though Salvator\nwas a man of far higher powers than either Vandevelde or Claude, he was\na wilful and gross caricaturist. Turner would condescend to be helped by\nfeeble men, but could not be corrupted by false men. Besides, he had\nnever himself seen classical life, and Claude was represented to him as\ncompetent authority for it. But he _had_ seen mountains and torrents,\nand knew therefore that Salvator could not paint them.\n\nOne of the most characteristic drawings of this period fortunately bears\na date, 1818, and brings us within two years of another dated drawing,\nno less characteristic of what I shall henceforward call Turner's Second\nperiod. It is in the possession of Mr. Hawkesworth Fawkes of Farnley,\none of Turner's earliest and truest friends; and bears the inscription,\nunusually conspicuous, heaving itself up and down over the eminences of\nthe foreground--\"PASSAGE OF MONT CENIS. J. M. W. TURNER, January 15th,\n1820.\"\n\nThe scene is on the summit of the pass close to the hospice, or what\nseems to have been a hospice at that time,--I do not remember such at\npresent,--a small square-built house, built as if partly for a fortress,\nwith a detached flight of stone steps in front of it, and a kind of\ndrawbridge to the door. This building, about 400 or 500 yards off, is\nseen in a dim, ashy grey against the light, which by help of a violent\nblast of mountain wind has broken through the depth of clouds which\nhangs upon the crags. There is no sky, properly so called, nothing but\nthis roof of drifting cloud; but neither is there any weight of\ndarkness--the high air is too thin for it,--all savage, howling, and\nluminous with cold, the massy bases of the granite hills jutting out\nhere and there grimly through the snow wreaths. There is a\ndesolate-looking refuge on the left, with its number 16, marked on it in\nlong ghastly figures, and the wind is drifting the snow off the roof and\nthrough its window in a frantic whirl; the near ground is all wan with\nhalf-thawed, half-trampled snow; a diligence in front, whose horses,\nunable to face the wind, have turned right round with fright, its\npassengers struggling to escape, jammed in the window; a little farther\non is another carriage off the road, some figures pushing at its wheels,\nand its driver at the horses' heads, pulling and lashing with all his\nstrength, his lifted arm stretched out against the light of the\ndistance, though too far off for the whip to be seen.\n\nNow I am perfectly certain that any one thoroughly accustomed to the\nearlier works of the painter, and shown this picture for the first time,\nwould be struck by two altogether new characters in it.\n\nThe first, a seeming enjoyment of the excitement of the scene, totally\ndifferent from the contemplative philosophy with which it would formerly\nhave been regarded. Every incident of motion and of energy is seized\nupon with indescribable delight, and every line of the composition\nanimated with a force and fury which are now no longer the mere\nexpression of a contemplated external truth, but have origin in some\ninherent feeling in the painter's mind.\n\nThe second, that although the subject is one in itself almost incapable\nof color, and although, in order to increase the wildness of the\nimpression, all brilliant local color has been refused even where it\nmight easily have been introduced, as in the figures; yet in the low\nminor key which has been chosen, the melodies of color have been\nelaborated to the utmost possible pitch, so as to become a leading,\ninstead of a subordinate, element in the composition; the subdued warm\nhues of the granite promontories, the dull stone color of the walls of\nthe buildings, clearly opposed, even in shade, to the grey of the snow\nwreaths heaped against them, and the faint greens and ghastly blues of\nthe glacier ice, being all expressed with delicacies of transition\nutterly unexampled in any previous drawings.\n\nThese, accordingly, are the chief characteristics of the works of\nTurner's second period, as distinguished from the first,--a new energy\ninherent in the mind of the painter, diminishing the repose and exalting\nthe force and fire of his conceptions, and the presence of Color, as at\nleast an essential, and often a principal, element of design.\n\nNot that it is impossible, or even unusual, to find drawings of serene\nsubject, and perfectly quiet feeling, among the compositions of this\nperiod; but the repose is in them, just as the energy and tumult were in\nthe earlier period, an external quality, which the painter images by an\neffort of the will: it is no longer a character inherent in himself. The\n\"Ulleswater,\" in the England series, is one of those which are in most\nperfect peace: in the \"Cowes,\" the silence is only broken by the dash\nof the boat's oars, and in the \"Alnwick\" by a stag drinking; but in at\nleast nine drawings out of ten, either sky, water, or figures are in\nrapid motion, and the grandest drawings are almost always those which\nhave even violent action in one or other, or in all: e. g. high force of\nTees, Coventry, Llanthony, Salisbury, Llanberis, and such others.\n\nThe color is, however, a more absolute distinction; and we must return\nto Mr. Fawkes's collection in order to see how the change in it was\neffected. That such a change would take place at one time or other was\nof course to be securely anticipated, the conventional system of the\nfirst period being, as above stated, merely a means of Study. But the\nimmediate cause was the journey of the year 1820. As might be guessed\nfrom the legend on the drawing above described, \"Passage of Mont Cenis,\nJanuary 15th, 1820,\" that drawing represents what happened on the day in\nquestion to the painter himself. He passed the Alps then in the winter\nof 1820; and either in the previous or subsequent summer, but on the\nsame journey, he made a series of sketches on the Rhine, in body color,\nnow in Mr. Fawkes's collection. Every one of those sketches is the\nalmost instantaneous record of an _effect_ of color or atmosphere, taken\nstrictly from nature, the drawing and the details of every subject being\ncomparatively subordinate, and the color nearly as principal as the\nlight and shade had been before,--certainly the leading feature, though\nthe light and shade are always exquisitely harmonized with it. And\nnaturally, as the color becomes the leading object, those times of day\nare chosen in which it is most lovely; and whereas before, at least five\nout of six of Turner's drawings represented ordinary daylight, we now\nfind his attention directed constantly to the evening: and, for the\nfirst time, we have those rosy lights upon the hills, those gorgeous\nfalls of sun through flaming heavens, those solemn twilights, with the\nblue moon rising as the western sky grows dim, which have ever since\nbeen the themes of his mightiest thoughts.\n\nI have no doubt, that the _immediate_ reason of this change was the\nimpression made upon him by the colors of the continental skies. When\nhe first travelled on the Continent (1800), he was comparatively a young\nstudent; not yet able to draw form as he wanted, he was forced to give\nall his thoughts and strength to this primary object. But now he was\nfree to receive other impressions; the time was come for perfecting his\nart, and the first sunset which he saw on the Rhine taught him that all\nprevious landscape art was vain and valueless, that in comparison with\nnatural color, the things that had been called paintings were mere ink\nand charcoal, and that all precedent and all authority must be cast away\nat once, and trodden under foot. He cast them away: the memories of\nVandevelde and Claude were at once weeded out of the great mind they had\nencumbered; they and all the rubbish of the schools together with them;\nthe waves of the Rhine swept them away for ever; and a new dawn rose\nover the rocks of the Siebengebirge.\n\nThere was another motive at work, which rendered the change still more\ncomplete. His fellow artists were already conscious enough of his\nsuperior power in drawing, and their best hope was, that he might not be\nable to color. They had begun to express this hope loudly enough for it\nto reach his ears. The engraver of one of his most important marine\npictures told me, not long ago, that one day about the period in\nquestion, Turner came into his room to examine the progress of the\nplate, not having seen his own picture for several months. It was one of\nhis dark early pictures, but in the foreground was a little piece of\nluxury, a pearly fish wrought into hues like those of an opal. He stood\nbefore the picture for some moments; then laughed, and pointed joyously\nto the fish;--\"They say that Turner can't color!\" and turned away.\n\nUnder the force of these various impulses the change was total. _Every\nsubject thenceforth was primarily conceived in color_; and no engraving\never gave the slightest idea of any drawing of this period.\n\nThe artists who had any perception of the truth were in despair; the\nBeaumontites, classicalists, and \"owl species\" in general, in as much\nindignation as their dulness was capable of. They had deliberately\nclosed their eyes to all nature, and had gone on inquiring, \"Where do\nyou put your brown tree?\" A vast revelation was made to them at once,\nenough to have dazzled any one; but to _them_, light unendurable as\nincomprehensible. They \"did to the moon complain,\" in one vociferous,\nunanimous, continuous \"Tu whoo.\" Shrieking rose from all dark places at\nthe same instant, just the same kind of shrieking that is now raised\nagainst the Pre-Raphaelites. Those glorious old Arabian Nights, how true\nthey are! Mocking and whispering, and abuse loud and low by turns, from\nall the black stones beside the road, when one living soul is toiling up\nthe hill to get the golden water. Mocking and whispering, that he may\nlook back, and become a black stone like themselves.\n\nTurner looked not back, but he went on in such a temper as a strong man\nmust be in, when he is forced to walk with his fingers in his ears. He\nretired into himself; he could look no longer for help, or counsel, or\nsympathy from any one; and the spirit of defiance in which he was forced\nto labor led him sometimes into violences, from which the slightest\nexpression of sympathy would have saved him. The new energy that was\nupon him, and the utter isolation into which he was driven, were both\nalike dangerous, and many drawings of the time show the evil effects of\nboth; some of them being hasty, wild, or experimental, and others little\nmore than magnificent expressions of defiance of public opinion.\n\nBut all have this noble virtue--they are in everything his own: there\nare no more reminiscences of dead masters, no more trials of skill in\nthe manner of Claude or Poussin; every faculty of his soul is fixed upon\nnature only, as he saw her, or as he remembered her.\n\nI have spoken above of his gigantic memory: it is especially necessary\nto notice this, in order that we may understand the kind of grasp which\na man of real imagination takes of all things that are once brought\nwithin his reach--grasp thenceforth not to be relaxed for ever.\n\nOn looking over any catalogues of his works, or of particular series of\nthem, we shall notice the recurrence of the same subject two, three, or\neven many times. In any other artist this would be nothing remarkable.\nProbably most modern landscape painters multiply a favorite subject\ntwenty, thirty, or sixty fold, putting the shadows and the clouds in\ndifferent places, and \"inventing,\" as they are pleased to call it, a new\n\"effect\" every time. But if we examine the successions of Turner's\nsubjects, we shall find them either the records of a succession of\nimpressions actually perceived by him at some favorite locality, or else\nrepetitions of one impression received in early youth, and again and\nagain realised as his increasing powers enabled him to do better justice\nto it. In either case we shall find them records of _seen facts_;\n_never_ compositions in his room to fill up a favorite outline.\n\nFor instance, every traveller, at least every traveller of thirty years'\nstanding, must love Calais, the place where he first felt himself in a\nstrange world. Turner evidently loved it excessively. I have never\ncatalogued his studies of Calais, but I remember, at this moment, five:\nthere is first the \"Pas de Calais,\" a very large oil painting, which is\nwhat he saw in broad daylight as he crossed over, when he got near the\nFrench side. It is a careful study of French fishing boats running for\nthe shore before the wind, with the picturesque old city in the\ndistance. Then there is the \"Calais Harbor\" in the Liber Studiorum: that\nis what he saw just as he was going into the harbor,--a heavy brig\nwarping out, and very likely to get in his way, or run against the pier,\nand bad weather coming on. Then there is the \"Calais Pier,\" a large\npainting, engraved some years ago by Mr. Lupton:[101] that is what he\nsaw when he had landed, and ran back directly to the pier to see what\nhad become of the brig. The weather had got still worse, the fishwomen\nwere being blown about in a distressful manner on the pier head, and\nsome more fishing boats were running in with all speed. Then there is\nthe \"Fortrouge,\" Calais: that is what he saw after he had been home to\nDessein's, and dined, and went out again in the evening to walk on the\nsands, the tide being down. He had never seen such a waste of sands\nbefore, and it made an impression on him. The shrimp girls were all\nscattered over them too, and moved about in white spots on the wild\nshore; and the storm had lulled a little, and there was a sunset--such a\nsunset,--and the bars of Fortrouge seen against it, skeleton-wise.\n\nHe did not paint that directly; thought over it,--painted it a long\nwhile afterwards.\n\nThen there is the vignette in the illustrations to Scott. That is what\nhe saw as he was going home, meditatively; and the revolving lighthouse\ncame blazing out upon him suddenly, and disturbed him. He did not like\nthat so much; made a vignette of it, however, when he was asked to do a\nbit of Calais, twenty or thirty years afterwards, having already done\nall the rest.\n\nTurner never told me all this, but any one may see it if he will compare\nthe pictures. They might, possibly, not be impressions of a single day,\nbut of two days or three; though in all human probability they were seen\njust as I have stated them;[102] but they _are_ records of successive\nimpressions, as plainly written as ever traveller's diary. All of them\npure veracities. Therefore immortal.\n\nI could multiply these series almost indefinitely from the rest of his\nworks. What is curious, some of them have a kind of private mark running\nthrough all the subjects. Thus I know three drawings of Scarborough, and\nall of them have a starfish in the foreground: I do not remember any\nothers of his marine subjects which have a starfish.\n\nThe other kind of repetition--the recurrence to one early impression--is\nhowever still more remarkable. In the collection of F. H. Bale, Esq.,\nthere is a small drawing of Llanthony Abbey. It is in his boyish manner,\nits date probably about 1795; evidently a sketch from nature, finished\nat home. It had been a showery day; the hills were partially concealed\nby the rain, and gleams of sunshine breaking out at intervals. A man was\nfishing in the mountain stream. The young Turner sought a place of some\nshelter under the bushes; made his sketch, took great pains when he got\nhome to imitate the rain, as he best could; added his child's luxury of\na rainbow; put in the very bush under which he had taken shelter, and\nthe fisherman, a somewhat ill-jointed and long-legged fisherman, in the\ncourtly short breeches which were the fashion of the time.\n\nSome thirty years afterwards, with all his powers in their strongest\ntraining, and after the total change in his feelings and principles\nwhich I have endeavored to describe, he undertook the series of \"England\nand Wales,\" and in that series introduced the subject of Llanthony\nAbbey. And behold, he went back to his boy's sketch, and boy's thought.\nHe kept the very bushes in their places, but brought the fisherman to\nthe other side of the river, and put him, in somewhat less courtly\ndress, under their shelter, instead of himself. And then he set all his\ngained strength and new knowledge at work on the well-remembered shower\nof rain, that had fallen thirty years before, to do it better. The\nresultant drawing[103] is one of the very noblest of his second period.\n\nAnother of the drawings of the England series, Ulleswater, is the\nrepetition of one in Mr. Fawkes's collection, which, by the method of\nits execution, I should conjecture to have been executed about the year\n1808, or 1810: at all events, it is a very quiet drawing of the first\nperiod. The lake is quite calm; the western hills in grey shadow, the\neastern massed in light. Helvellyn rising like a mist between them, all\nbeing mirrored in the calm water. Some thin and slightly evanescent cows\nare standing in the shallow water in front; a boat floats motionless\nabout a hundred yards from the shore: the foreground is of broken rocks,\nwith lovely pieces of copse on the right and left.\n\nThis was evidently Turner's record of a quiet evening by the shore of\nUlleswater, but it was a feeble one. He could not at that time render\nthe sunset colors: he went back to it therefore in the England series,\nand painted it again with his new power. The same hills are there, the\nsame shadows, the same cows,--they had stood in his mind, on the same\nspot, for twenty years,--the same boat, the same rocks, only the copse\nis cut away--it interfered with the masses of his color: some figures\nare introduced bathing, and what was grey, and feeble gold in the first\ndrawing, becomes purple, and burning rose-color in the last.\n\nBut perhaps one of the most curious examples is in the series of\nsubjects from Winchelsea. That in the Liber Studiorum, \"Winchelsea,\nSussex,\" bears date 1812, and its figures consist of a soldier speaking\nto a woman, who is resting on the bank beside the road. There is another\nsmall subject, with Winchelsea in the distance, of which the engraving\nbears date 1817. It has _two_ women with bundles, and _two_ soldiers\ntoiling along the embankment in the plain, and a baggage waggon in the\ndistance. Neither of these seems to have satisfied him, and at last he\ndid another for the England series, of which the engraving bears date\n1830. There is now a regiment on the march; the baggage waggon is there,\nhaving got no further on in the thirteen years, but one of the women is\ntired, and has fainted on the bank; another is supporting her against\nher bundle, and giving her drink; a third sympathetic woman is added,\nand the two soldiers have stopped, and one is drinking from his canteen.\n\nNor is it merely of entire scenes, or of particular incidents, that\nTurner's memory is thus tenacious. The slightest passages of color or\narrangement that have pleased him--the fork of a bough, the casting of a\nshadow, the fracture of a stone--will be taken up again and again, and\nstrangely worked into new relations with other thoughts. There is a\nsingle sketch from nature in one of the portfolios at Farnley, of a\ncommon wood-walk on the estate, which has furnished passages to no fewer\nthan three of the most elaborate compositions in the Liber Studiorum.\n\nI am thus tedious in dwelling on Turner's powers of memory, because I\nwish it to be thoroughly seen how all his greatness, all his infinite\nluxuriance of invention, depends on his taking possession of everything\nthat he sees,--on his grasping all, and losing hold of nothing,--on his\nforgetting himself, and forgetting nothing else. I wish it to be\nunderstood how every great man paints what he sees or did see, his\ngreatness being indeed little else than his intense sense of fact. And\nthus Pre-Raphaelitism and Raphaelitism, and Turnerism, are all one and\nthe same, so far as education can influence them. They are different in\ntheir choice, different in their faculties, but all the same in this,\nthat Raphael himself, so far as he was great, and all who preceded or\nfollowed him who ever were great, became so by painting the truths\naround them as they appeared to each man's own mind, not as he had been\ntaught to see them, except by the God who made both him and them.\n\nThere is, however, one more characteristic of Turner's second period, on\nwhich I have still to dwell, especially with reference to what has been\nabove advanced respecting the fallacy of overtoil; namely, the\nmagnificent ease with which all is done when it is _successfully_ done.\nFor there are one or two drawings of this time which are _not_ done\neasily. Turner had in these set himself to do a fine thing to exhibit\nhis powers; in the common phrase, to excel himself; so sure as he does\nthis, the work is a failure. The worst drawings that have ever come from\nhis hands are some of this second period, on which he has spent much\ntime and laborious thought; drawings filled with incident from one side\nto the other, with skies stippled into morbid blue, and warm lights set\nagainst them in violent contrast; one of Bamborough Castle, a large\nwater-color, may be named as an example. But the truly noble works are\nthose in which, without effort, he has expressed his thoughts as they\ncame, and forgotten himself; and in these the outpouring of invention is\nnot less miraculous than the swiftness and obedience of the mighty hand\nthat expresses it. Any one who examines the drawings may see the\nevidence of this facility, in the strange freshness and sharpness of\nevery touch of color; but when the multitude of delicate touches, with\nwhich all the aerial tones are worked, is taken into consideration, it\nwould still appear impossible that the drawing could have been completed\nwith _ease_, unless we had direct evidence in the matter: fortunately,\nit is not wanting. There is a drawing in Mr. Fawkes's collection of a\nman-of-war taking in stores: it is of the usual size of those of the\nEngland series, about sixteen inches by eleven: it does not appear one\nof the most highly finished, but is still farther removed from\nslightness. The hull of a first-rate occupies nearly one-half of the\npicture on the right, her bows towards the spectator, seen in sharp\nperspective from stem to stern, with all her portholes, guns, anchors,\nand lower rigging elaborately detailed; there are two other ships of the\nline in the middle distance, drawn with equal precision; a noble breezy\nsea dancing against their broad bows, full of delicate drawing in its\nwaves; a store-ship beneath the hull of the larger vessel, and several\nother boats, and a complicated cloudy sky. It might appear no small\nexertion of mind to draw the detail of all this shipping down to the\nsmallest ropes, from memory, in the drawing-room of a mansion in the\nmiddle of Yorkshire, even if considerable time had been given for the\neffort. But Mr. Fawkes sat beside the painter from the first stroke to\nthe last. Turner took a piece of blank paper one morning after\nbreakfast, outlined his ships, finished the drawing in three hours, and\nwent out to shoot.\n\nLet this single fact be quietly meditated upon by our ordinary painters,\nand they will see the truth of what was above asserted,--that if a great\nthing can be done at all, it can be done easily; and let them not\ntorment themselves with twisting of compositions this way and that, and\nrepeating, and experimenting, and scene-shifting. If a man can compose\nat all, he can compose at once, or rather he must compose in spite of\nhimself. And this is the reason of that silence which I have kept in\nmost of my works, on the subject of Composition. Many critics,\nespecially the architects, have found fault with me for not \"teaching\npeople how to arrange masses;\" for not \"attributing sufficient\nimportance to composition.\" Alas! I attribute far more importance to it\nthan they do;--so much importance, that I should just as soon think of\nsitting down to teach a man how to write a Divina Commedia, or King\nLear, as how to \"compose,\" in the true sense, a single building or\npicture. The marvellous stupidity of this age of lecturers is, that\nthey do not see that what they call \"principles of composition,\" are\nmere principles of common sense in everything, as well as in pictures\nand buildings;--A picture is to have a principal light? Yes; and so a\ndinner is to have a principal dish, and an oration a principal point,\nand an air of music a principal note, and every man a principal object.\nA picture is to have harmony of relation among its parts? Yes; and so is\na speech well uttered, and an action well ordered, and a company well\nchosen, and a ragout well mixed. Composition! As if a man were not\ncomposing every moment of his life, well or ill, and would not do it\ninstinctively in his picture as well as elsewhere, if he could.\nComposition of this lower or common kind is of exactly the same\nimportance in a picture that it is in any thing else,--no more. It is\nwell that a man should say what he has to say in good order and\nsequence, but the main thing is to say it truly. And yet we go on\npreaching to our pupils as if to have a principal light was every thing,\nand so cover our academy walls with Shacabac feasts, wherein the courses\nare indeed well ordered, but the dishes empty.\n\nIt is not, however, only in invention that men over-work themselves, but\nin execution also; and here I have a word to say to the Pre-Raphaelites\nspecially. They are working too hard. There is evidence in failing\nportions of their pictures, showing that they have wrought so long upon\nthem that their very sight has failed for weariness, and that the hand\nrefused any more to obey the heart. And, besides this, there are certain\nqualities of drawing which they miss from over-carefulness. For, let\nthem be assured, there is a great truth lurking in that common desire of\nmen to see things done in what they call a \"masterly,\" or \"bold,\" or\n\"broad,\" manner: a truth oppressed and abused, like almost every other\nin this world, but an eternal one nevertheless; and whatever mischief\nmay have followed from men's looking for nothing else but this facility\nof execution, and supposing that a picture was assuredly all right if\nonly it were done with broad dashes of the brush, still the truth\nremains the same:--that because it is not intended that men shall\ntorment or weary themselves with any earthly labor, it is appointed\nthat the noblest results should only be attainable by a certain ease and\ndecision of manipulation. I only wish people understood this much of\nsculpture, as well as of painting, and could see that the finely\nfinished statue is, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, a far more\nvulgar work than that which shows rough signs of the right hand laid to\nthe workman's hammer: but at all events, in painting it is felt by all\nmen, and justly felt. The freedom of the lines of nature can only be\nrepresented by a similar freedom in the hand that follows them; there\nare curves in the flow of the hair, and in the form of the features, and\nin the muscular outline of the body, which can in no wise be caught but\nby a sympathetic freedom in the stroke of the pencil. I do not care what\nexample is taken, be it the most subtle and careful work of Leonardo\nhimself, there will be found a play and power and ease in the outlines,\nwhich no _slow_ effort could ever imitate. And if the Pre-Raphaelites do\nnot understand how this kind of power, in its highest perfection, may be\nunited with the most severe rendering of all other orders of truth, and\nespecially of those with which they themselves have most sympathy, let\nthem look at the drawings of John Lewis.\n\nThese then are the principal lessons which we have to learn from Turner,\nin his second or central period of labor. There is one more, however, to\nbe received; and that is a warning; for towards the close of it, what\nwith doing small conventional vignettes for publishers, making showy\ndrawings from sketches taken by other people of places he had never\nseen, and touching up the bad engravings from his works submitted to him\nalmost every day,--engravings utterly destitute of animation, and which\nhad to be raised into a specious brilliancy by scratching them over with\nwhite, spotty lights, he gradually got inured to many conventionalities,\nand even falsities; and, having trusted for ten or twelve years almost\nentirely to his memory and invention, living I believe mostly in London,\nand receiving a new sensation only from the burning of the Houses of\nParliament, he painted many pictures between 1830 and 1840 altogether\nunworthy of him. But he was not thus to close his career.\n\nIn the summer either of 1840 or 1841, he undertook another journey into\nSwitzerland. It was then at least forty years since he had first seen\nthe Alps; (the source of the Arveron, in Mr. Fawkes's collection, which\ncould not have been painted till he had seen the thing itself, bears\ndate 1800,) and the direction of his journey in 1840 marks his fond\nmemory of that earliest one; for, if we look over the Swiss studies and\ndrawings executed in his first period, we shall be struck with his\nfondness for the pass of the St. Gothard; the most elaborate drawing in\nthe Farnley collection is one of the Lake of Lucerne from Fluelen; and,\ncounting the Liber Studiorum subjects, there are, to my knowledge, six\ncompositions taken at the same period from the pass of St. Gothard, and,\nprobably, several others are in existence. The valleys of Sallenche, and\nChamouni, and Lake of Geneva, are the only other Swiss scenes which seem\nto have made very profound impressions on him.\n\nHe returned in 1841 to Lucerne; walked up Mont Pilate on foot, crossed\nthe St. Gothard, and returned by Lausanne and Geneva. He made a large\nnumber of colored sketches on this journey, and realised several of them\non his return. The drawings thus produced are different from all that\nhad preceded them, and are the first which belong definitely to what I\nshall henceforth call his Third period.\n\nThe perfect repose of his youth had returned to his mind, while the\nfaculties of imagination and execution appeared in renewed strength; all\nconventionality being done away with by the force of the impression\nwhich he had received from the Alps, after his long separation from\nthem. The drawings are marked by a peculiar largeness and simplicity of\nthought: most of them by deep serenity, passing into melancholy; all by\na richness of color, such as he had never before conceived. They, and\nthe works done in following years, bear the same relation to those of\nthe rest of his life that the colors of sunset do to those of the day;\nand will be recognised, in a few years more, as the noblest landscapes\never yet conceived by human intellect.\n\nSuch has been the career of the greatest painter of this century. Many\na century may pass away before there rises such another; but what\ngreatness any among us may be capable of, will, at least, be best\nattained by following in his path; by beginning in all quietness and\nhopefulness to use whatever powers we may possess to represent the\nthings around us as we see and feel them; trusting to the close of life\nto give the perfect crown to the course of its labors, and knowing\nassuredly that the determination of the degree in which watchfulness is\nto be exalted into invention, rests with a higher will than our own.\nAnd, if not greatness, at least a certain good, is thus to be achieved;\nfor though I have above spoken of the mission of the more humble artist,\nas if it were merely to be subservient to that of the antiquarian or the\nman of science, there is an ulterior aspect in which it is not\nsubservient, but superior. Every archaeologist, every natural\nphilosopher, knows that there is a peculiar rigidity of mind brought on\nby long devotion to logical and analytical inquiries. Weak men, giving\nthemselves to such studies, are utterly hardened by them, and become\nincapable of understanding anything nobler, or even of feeling the value\nof the results to which they lead. But even the best men are in a sort\ninjured by them, and pay a definite price, as in most other matters, for\ndefinite advantages. They gain a peculiar strength, but lose in\ntenderness, elasticity, and impressibility. The man who has gone, hammer\nin hand, over the surface of a romantic country, feels no longer, in the\nmountain ranges he has so laboriously explored, the sublimity or mystery\nwith which they were veiled when he first beheld them, and with which\nthey are adorned in the mind of the passing traveller. In his more\ninformed conception, they arrange themselves like a dissected model:\nwhere another man would be awe-struck by the magnificence of the\nprecipice, he sees nothing but the emergence of a fossiliferous rock,\nfamiliarised already to his imagination as extending in a shallow\nstratum, over a perhaps uninteresting district; where the unlearned\nspectator would be touched with strong emotion by the aspect of the\nsnowy summits which rise in the distance, he sees only the culminating\npoints of a metamorphic formation, with an uncomfortable web of\nfan-like fissures radiating, in his imagination, through their\ncentres[104]. That in the grasp he has obtained of the inner relations\nof all these things to the universe, and to man, that in the views which\nhave been opened to him of natural energies such as no human mind would\nhave ventured to conceive, and of past states of being, each in some new\nway bearing witness to the unity of purpose and everlastingly consistent\nprovidence of the Maker of all things, he has received reward well\nworthy the sacrifice, I would not for an instant deny; but the sense of\nthe loss is not less painful to him if his mind be rightly constituted;\nand it would be with infinite gratitude that he would regard the man,\nwho, retaining in his delineation of natural scenery a fidelity to the\nfacts of science so rigid as to make his work at once acceptable and\ncredible to the most sternly critical intellect, should yet invest its\nfeatures again with the sweet veil of their daily aspect; should make\nthem dazzling with the splendor of wandering light, and involve them in\nthe unsearchableness of stormy obscurity; should restore to the divided\nanatomy its visible vitality of operation, clothe naked crags with soft\nforests, enrich the mountain ruins with bright pastures, and lead the\nthoughts from the monotonous recurrence of the phenomena of the physical\nworld, to the sweet interests and sorrows of human life and death.\n\n\nTHE END.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[97] It was not a little curious, that in the very number of the Art\nUnion which repeated this direct falsehood about the Pre-Raphaelite\nrejection of \"linear perspective\" (by-the-bye, the next time J. B. takes\nupon him to speak of any one connected with the Universities, he may as\nwell first ascertain the difference between a Graduate and an\nUnder-Graduate), the second plate given should have been of a picture of\nBonington's,--a professional landscape painter, observe,--for the want\nof _aerial_ perspective in which the Art Union itself was obliged to\napologise, and in which the artist has committed nearly as many blunders\nin _linear_ perspective as there are lines in the picture.\n\n[98] These false statements may be reduced to three principal heads, and\ndirectly contradicted in succession.\n\nThe first, the current fallacy of society as well as of the press, was,\nthat the Pre-Raphaelites imitated the _errors_ of early painters.\n\nA falsehood of this kind could not have obtained credence anywhere but\nin England, few English people, comparatively, having ever seen a\npicture of early Italian Masters. If they had, they would have known\nthat the Pre-Raphaelite pictures are just as superior to the early\nItalian in skill of manipulation, power of drawing, and knowledge of\neffect, as inferior to them in grace of design; and that in a word,\nthere is not a shadow of resemblance between the two styles. The\nPre-Raphaelites imitate no pictures: they paint from nature only. But\nthey have opposed themselves as a body to that kind of teaching above\ndescribed, which only began after Raphael's time: and they have opposed\nthemselves as sternly to the entire feeling of the Renaissance schools;\na feeling compounded of indolence, infidelity, sensuality, and shallow\npride. Therefore they have called themselves Pre-Raphaelites. If they\nadhere to their principles, and paint nature as it is around them, with\nthe help of modern science, with the earnestness of the men of the\nthirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they will, as I said, found a new\nand noble school in England. If their sympathies with the early artists\nlead them into mediaevalism or Romanism, they will of course come to\nnothing. But I believe there is no danger of this, at least for the\nstrongest among them. There may be some weak ones, whom the Tractarian\nheresies may touch; but if so, they will drop off like decayed branches\nfrom a strong stem. I hope all things from the school.\n\nThe second falsehood was, that the Pre-Raphaelites did not draw well.\nThis was asserted, and could have been asserted only by persons who had\nnever looked at the pictures.\n\nThe third falsehood was, that they had no system of light and shade. To\nwhich it may be simply replied that their system of light and shade is\nexactly the same as the Sun's; which is, I believe, likely to outlast\nthat of the Renaissance, however brilliant.\n\n[99] He did not use his full signature, J. M. W., until about the year\n1800.\n\n[100] I shall give a _catalogue raisonnee_ of all this in the third\nvolume of \"Modern Painters.\"\n\n[101] The plate was, however, never published.\n\n[102] And the more probably because Turner was never fond of staying\nlong at any place, and was least of all likely to make a pause of two or\nthree days at the beginning of his journey.\n\n[103] Vide Modern Painters, Part II. Sect. III. Chap. IV. Sec. 14.\n\n[104] This state of mind appears to have been the only one which\nWordsworth had been able to discern in men of science; and in disdain of\nwhich, he wrote that short-sighted passage in the Excursion, Book III.\nl. 165-190, which is, I think, the only one in the whole range of his\nworks which his true friends would have desired to see blotted out. What\nelse has been found fault with as feeble or superfluous, is not so in\nthe intense distinctive relief which it gives to his character. But\nthese lines are written in mere ignorance of the matter they treat; in\nmere want of sympathy with the men they describe; for, observe, though\nthe passage is put into the mouth of the Solitary, it is fully\nconfirmed, and even rendered more scornful, by the speech which follows.\n\n\n\n\nARATRA PENTELICI\n\nSIX LECTURES\n\nON THE ELEMENTS OF\n\nSCULPTURE\n\nGIVEN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD IN MICHAELMAS TERM, 1870\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nI must pray the readers of the following Lectures to remember that the\nduty at present laid on me at Oxford is of an exceptionally complex\ncharacter. Directly, it is to awaken the interest of my pupils in a\nstudy which they have hitherto found unattractive, and imagined to be\nuseless; but more imperatively, it is to define the principles by which\nthe study itself should be guided; and to vindicate their security\nagainst the doubts with which frequent discussion has lately encumbered\na subject which all think themselves competent to discuss. The\npossibility of such vindication is, of course, implied in the original\nconsent of the universities to the establishment of Art Professorships.\nNothing can be made an element of education of which it is impossible to\ndetermine whether it is ill done or well; and the clear assertion that\nthere is a canon law in formative Art is, at this time, a more important\nfunction of each University than the instruction of its younger members\nin any branch of practical skill. It matters comparatively little\nwhether few or many of our students learn to draw; but it matters much\nthat all who learn should be taught with accuracy. And the number who\nmay be justifiably advised to give any part of the time they spend at\ncollege to the study of painting or sculpture ought to depend, and\nfinally _must_ depend, on their being certified that painting and\nsculpture, no less than language or than reasoning, have grammar and\nmethod,--that they permit a recognizable distinction between scholarship\nand ignorance, and enforce a constant distinction between Right and\nWrong.\n\nThis opening course of Lectures on Sculpture is therefore restricted to\nthe statement, not only of first principles, but of those which were\nillustrated by the practice of one school, and by that practice in its\nsimplest branch, the analysis of which could be certified by easily\naccessible examples, and aided by the indisputable evidence of\nphotography.[105]\n\nThe exclusion of the terminal Lecture of the course from the series now\npublished, is in order to mark more definitely this limitation of my\nsubject; but in other respects the Lectures have been amplified in\narranging them for the press, and the portions of them trusted at the\ntime to extempore delivery, (not through indolence, but because\nexplanations of detail are always most intelligible when most familiar,)\nhave been in substance to the best of my power set down, and in what I\nsaid too imperfectly, completed.\n\nIn one essential particular I have felt it necessary to write what I\nwould not have spoken. I had intended to make no reference, in my\nUniversity Lectures, to existing schools of Art, except in cases where\nit might be necessary to point out some undervalued excellence. The\nobjects specified in the eleventh paragraph of my inaugural Lecture,\nmight, I hoped, have been accomplished without reference to any works\ndeserving of blame; but the Exhibition of the Royal Academy in the\npresent year showed me a necessity of departing from my original\nintention. The task of impartial criticism[106] is now, unhappily, no\nlonger to rescue modest skill from neglect; but to withstand the errors\nof insolent genius, and abate the influence of plausible mediocrity.\n\nThe Exhibition of 1871 was very notable in this important particular,\nthat it embraced some representation of the modern schools of nearly\nevery country in Europe; and I am well assured that looking back upon it\nafter the excitement of that singular interest has passed away, every\nthoughtful judge of Art will confirm my assertion, that it contained not\na single picture of accomplished merit; while it contained many that\nwere disgraceful to Art, and some that were disgraceful to humanity.\n\nIt becomes, under such circumstances, my inevitable duty to speak of the\nexisting conditions of Art with plainness enough to guard the youths\nwhose judgments I am entrusted to form, from being misled, either by\ntheir own naturally vivid interest in what represents, however\nunworthily, the scenes and persons of their own day, or by the cunningly\ndevised, and, without doubt, powerful allurements of Art which has long\nsince confessed itself to have no other object than to allure. I have,\ntherefore, added to the second of these Lectures such illustration of\nthe motives and course of modern industry as naturally arose out of its\nsubject, and shall continue in future to make similar applications;\nrarely, indeed, permitting myself, in the Lectures actually read before\nthe University, to introduce subjects of instant, and therefore too\nexciting, interest; but completing the addresses which I prepare for\npublication in these, and in any other particulars which may render them\nmore widely serviceable.\n\nThe present course of Lectures will be followed, if I am able to fulfil\nthe design of them, by one of a like elementary character on\nArchitecture; and that by a third series on Christian Sculpture: but, in\nthe meantime, my effort is to direct the attention of the resident\nstudents to Natural History, and to the higher branches of ideal\nLandscape: and it will be, I trust, accepted as sufficient reason for\nthe delay which has occurred in preparing the following sheets for the\npress, that I have not only been interrupted by a dangerous illness, but\nengaged, in what remained to me of the summer, in an endeavour to\ndeduce, from the overwhelming complexity of modern classification in the\nNatural Sciences, some forms capable of easier reference by Art\nstudents, to whom the anatomy of brutal and floral nature is often no\nless important than that of the human body.\n\nThe preparation of examples for manual practice, and the arrangement of\nstandards for reference, both in Painting and Sculpture, had to be\ncarried on meanwhile, as I was able. For what has already been done, the\nreader is referred to the _Catalogue of the Educational Series_,\npublished at the end of the Spring Term; of what remains to be done I\nwill make no anticipatory statement, being content to have ascribed to\nme rather the fault of narrowness in design, than of extravagance in\nexpectation.\n\n    DENMARK HILL,\n\n    _25th November, 1871._\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[105] Photography cannot exhibit the character of large and finished\nsculpture; but its audacity of shadow is in perfect harmony with the\nmore roughly picturesque treatment necessary in coins. For the rendering\nof all such frank relief, and for the better explanation of forms\ndisturbed by the lustre of metal or polished stone, the method employed\nin the plates of this volume will be found, I believe, satisfactory.\nCasts are first taken from the coins, in white plaster; these are\nphotographed, and the photograph printed by the heliotype process of\nMessrs. Edwards and Kidd. Plate XII. is exceptional, being a pure\nmezzotint engraving of the old school, excellently carried through by my\nassistant, Mr. Allen, who was taught, as a personal favour to myself, by\nmy friend, and Turner's fellow-worker, Thomas Lupton. Plate IV. was\nintended to be a photograph from the superb vase in the British Museum,\nNo. 564 in Mr. Newton's Catalogue; but its variety of colour defied\nphotography, and after the sheets had gone to press I was compelled to\nreduce Le Normand's plate of it, which is unsatisfactory, but answers my\nimmediate purpose.\n\nThe enlarged photographs for use in the Lecture Room were made for me\nwith most successful skill by Sergeant Spackman, of South Kensington;\nand the help throughout rendered to me by Mr. Burgess is acknowledged in\nthe course of the Lectures; though with thanks which must remain\ninadequate lest they should become tedious; for Mr. Burgess drew the\nsubjects of Plates III., X., and XIII.; drew and engraved every woodcut\nin the book; and printed all the plates with his own hand.\n\n[106] A pamphlet by the Earl of Southesk, \"_Britain's Art Paradise_,\"\n(Edmonston and Douglas, Edinburgh) contains an entirely admirable\ncriticism of the most faultful pictures of the 1871 Exhibition. It is to\nbe regretted that Lord Southesk speaks only to condemn; but indeed, in\nmy own three days' review of the rooms, I found nothing deserving of\nnotice otherwise, except Mr. Hook's always pleasant sketches from fisher\nlife, and Mr. Pettie's graceful and powerful, though too slightly\npainted, study from _Henry VI_.\n\n\n\n\nARATRA PENTELICI.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE I.\n\nOF THE DIVISION OF ARTS.\n\n_November, 1870._\n\n\n1. If, as is commonly believed, the subject of study which it is my\nspecial function to bring before you had no relation to the great\ninterests of mankind, I should have less courage in asking for your\nattention to-day, than when I first addressed you; though, even then, I\ndid not do so without painful diffidence. For at this moment, even\nsupposing that in other places it were possible for men to pursue their\nordinary avocations undisturbed by indignation or pity; here, at least,\nin the midst of the deliberative and religious influences of England,\nonly one subject, I am well assured, can seriously occupy your\nthoughts--the necessity, namely, of determining how it has come to pass,\nthat in these recent days, iniquity the most reckless and monstrous can\nbe committed unanimously, by men more generous than ever yet in the\nworld's history were deceived into deeds of cruelty; and that prolonged\nagony of body and spirit, such as we should shrink from inflicting\nwilfully on a single criminal, has become the appointed and accepted\nportion of unnumbered multitudes of innocent persons, inhabiting the\ndistricts of the world which, of all others, as it seemed, were best\ninstructed in the laws of civilization, and most richly invested with\nthe honour, and indulged in the felicity, of peace.\n\nBelieve me, however, the subject of Art--instead of being foreign to\nthese deep questions of social duty and peril,--is so vitally connected\nwith them, that it would be impossible for me now to pursue the line of\nthought in which I began these lectures, because so ghastly an emphasis\nwould be given to every sentence by the force of passing events. It is\nwell, then, that in the plan I have laid down for your study, we shall\nnow be led into the examination of technical details, or abstract\nconditions of sentiment; so that the hours you spend with me may be\ntimes of repose from heavier thoughts. But it chances strangely that, in\nthis course of minutely detailed study, I have first to set before you\nthe most essential piece of human workmanship, the plough, at the very\nmoment when--(you may see the announcement in the journals either of\nyesterday or the day before)--the swords of your soldiers have been sent\nfor _to be sharpened_, and not at all to be beaten into ploughshares. I\npermit myself, therefore, to remind you of the watchword of all my\nearnest writings--\"Soldiers of the Ploughshare, instead of Soldiers of\nthe Sword\"--and I know it my duty to assert to you that the work we\nenter upon to-day is no trivial one, but full of solemn hope; the hope,\nnamely, that among you there may be found men wise enough to lead the\nnational passions towards the arts of peace, instead of the arts of war.\n\nI say the work \"we enter upon,\" because the first four lectures I gave\nin the spring were wholly prefatory; and the following three only\ndefined for you methods of practice. To-day we begin the systematic\nanalysis and progressive study of our subject.\n\n2. In general, the three great, or fine, Arts of Painting, Sculpture,\nand Architecture, are thought of as distinct from the lower and more\nmechanical formative arts, such as carpentry or pottery. But we cannot,\neither verbally, or with any practical advantage, admit such\nclassification. How are we to distinguish painting on canvas from\npainting on china?--or painting on china from painting on glass?--or\npainting on glass from infusion of colour into any vitreous substance,\nsuch as enamel?--or the infusion of colour into glass and enamel from\nthe infusion of colour into wool or silk, and weaving of pictures in\ntapestry, or patterns in dress? You will find that although, in\nultimately accurate use of the word, painting must be held to mean only\nthe laying of a pigment on a surface with a soft instrument; yet, in\nbroad comparison of the functions of Art, we must conceive of one and\nthe same great artistic faculty, as governing _every mode of disposing\ncolours in a permanent relation on, or in, a solid substance_; whether\nit be by tinting canvas, or dyeing stuffs; inlaying metals with fused\nflint, or coating walls with coloured stone.\n\n3. Similarly the word \"Sculpture,\"--though in ultimate accuracy it is to\nbe limited to the development of form in hard substances by cutting away\nportions of their mass--in broad definition, must be held to signify\n_the reduction of any shapeless mass of solid matter into an intended\nshape_, whatever the consistence of the substance, or nature of the\ninstrument employed; whether we carve a granite mountain, or a piece of\nbox-wood, and whether we use, for our forming instrument axe, or hammer,\nor chisel, or our own hands, or water to soften, or fire to\nfuse;--whenever and however we bring a shapeless thing into shape, we do\nso under the laws of the one great Art of Sculpture.\n\n4. Having thus broadly defined painting and sculpture, we shall see that\nthere is, in the third place, a class of work separated from both, in a\nspecific manner, and including a great group of arts which neither, of\nnecessity, _tint_, nor for the sake of form merely, _shape_, the\nsubstances they deal with; but construct or arrange them with a view to\nthe resistance of some external force. We construct, for instance, a\ntable with a flat top, and some support of prop, or leg, proportioned in\nstrength to such weights as the table is intended to carry. We construct\na ship out of planks, or plates of iron, with reference to certain\nforces of impact to be sustained, and of inertia to be overcome; or we\nconstruct a wall or roof with distinct reference to forces of pressure\nand oscillation, to be sustained or guarded against; and therefore, in\nevery case, with especial consideration of the strength of our\nmaterials, and the nature of that strength, elastic, tenacious, brittle,\nand the like.\n\nNow although this group of arts nearly always involves the putting of\ntwo or more separate pieces together, we must not define it by that\naccident. The blade of an oar is not less formed with reference to\nexternal force than if it were made of many pieces; and the frame of a\nboat, whether hollowed out of a tree-trunk, or constructed of planks\nnailed together, is essentially the same piece of art; to be judged by\nits buoyancy and capacity of progression. Still, from the most wonderful\npiece of all architecture, the human skeleton, to this simple one,[107]\nthe ploughshare, on which it depends for its subsistence, _the putting\nof two or more pieces together_ is curiously necessary to the\nperfectness of every fine instrument; and the peculiar mechanical work\nof Daedalus,--inlaying,--becomes all the more delightful to us in\nexternal aspect, because, as in the jawbone of a Saurian, or the wood of\na bow, it is essential to the finest capacities of tension and\nresistance.\n\n5. And observe how unbroken the ascent from this, the simplest\narchitecture, to the loftiest. The placing of the timbers in a ship's\nstem, and the laying of the stones in a bridge buttress, are similar in\nart to the construction of the ploughshare, differing in no essential\npoint, either in that they deal with other materials, or because, of the\nthree things produced, one has to divide earth by advancing through it,\nanother to divide water by advancing through it, and the third to divide\nwater which advances against it. And again, the buttress of a bridge\ndiffers only from that of a cathedral in having less weight to sustain,\nand more to resist. We can find no term in the gradation, from the\nploughshare to the cathedral buttress, at which we can set a logical\ndistinction.\n\n6. Thus then we have simply three divisions of Art--one, that of giving\ncolours to substance; another, that of giving form to it without\nquestion of resistance to force; and the third, that of giving form or\nposition which will make it capable of such resistance. All the fine\narts are embraced under these three divisions. Do not think that it is\nonly a logical or scientific affectation to mass them together in this\nmanner; it is, on the contrary, of the first practical importance to\nunderstand that the painter's faculty, or masterhood over colour, being\nas subtle as a musician's over sound, must be looked to for the\ngovernment of every operation in which colour is employed; and that, in\nthe same manner, the appliance of any art whatsoever to minor objects\ncannot be right, unless under the direction of a true master of that\nart. Under the present system, you keep your Academician occupied only\nin producing tinted pieces of canvas to be shown in frames, and smooth\npieces of marble to be placed in niches; while you expect your builder\nor constructor to design coloured patterns in stone and brick, and your\nchina-ware merchant to keep a separate body of workwomen who can paint\nchina, but nothing else. By this division of labour, you ruin all the\narts at once. The work of the Academician becomes mean and effeminate,\nbecause he is not used to treat colour on a grand scale and in rough\nmaterials; and your manufactures become base because no well educated\nperson sets hand to them. And therefore it is necessary to understand,\nnot merely as a logical statement, but as a practical necessity, that\nwherever beautiful colour is to be arranged, you need a Master of\nPainting; and wherever noble form is to be given, a Master of Sculpture;\nand wherever complex mechanical force is to be resisted, a Master of\nArchitecture.\n\n7. But over this triple division there must rule another yet more\nimportant. Any of these three arts may be either imitative of natural\nobjects or limited to useful appliance. You may either paint a picture\nthat represents a scene, or your street door, to keep it from rotting;\nyou may mould a statue, or a plate; build the resemblance of a cluster\nof lotus stalks, or only a square pier. Generally speaking, Painting and\nSculpture will be imitative, and Architecture merely useful; but there\nis a great deal of Sculpture--as this crystal ball[108] for instance,\nwhich is not imitative, and a great deal of Architecture which, to some\nextent is so, as the so called foils of Gothic apertures; and for many\nother reasons you will find it necessary to keep distinction clear in\nyour minds between the arts--of whatever kind--which are imitative, and\nproduce a resemblance or image of something which is not present; and\nthose which are limited to the production of some useful reality, as the\nblade of a knife, or the wall of a house. You will perceive also, as we\nadvance, that sculpture and painting are indeed in this respect only one\nart; and that we shall have constantly to speak and think of them as\nsimply _graphic_, whether with chisel or colour, their principal\nfunction being to make us, in the words of Aristotle, \"[Greek:\ntheoretikoi tou peri ta somata kallous]\" (Polit. 8, 3.), \"having\ncapacity and habit of contemplation of the beauty that is in material\nthings;\" while Architecture, and its co-relative arts, are to be\npractised under quite other conditions of sentiment.\n\n8. Now it is obvious that so far as the fine arts consist either in\nimitation or mechanical construction, the right judgment of them must\ndepend on our knowledge of the things they imitate, and forces they\nresist: and my function of teaching here would (for instance) so far\nresolve itself, either into demonstration that this painting of a\npeach,[109] does resemble a peach, or explanation of the way in which\nthis ploughshare (for instance) is shaped so as to throw the earth aside\nwith least force of thrust. And in both of these methods of study,\nthough of course your own diligence must be your chief master, to a\ncertain extent your Professor of Art can always guide you securely, and\ncan show you, either that the image does truly resemble what it attempts\nto resemble, or that the structure is rightly prepared for the service\nit has to perform. But there is yet another virtue of fine art which is,\nperhaps, exactly that about which you will expect your Professor to\nteach you most, and which, on the contrary, is exactly that about which\nyou must teach yourselves all that it is essential to learn.\n\n9. I have here in my hand one of the simplest possible examples of the\nunion of the graphic and constructive powers,--one of my breakfast\nplates. Since all the finely architectural arts, we said, began in the\nshaping of the cup and the platter, we will begin, ourselves, with the\nplatter.\n\nWhy has it been made round? For two structural reasons: first, that the\ngreatest holding surface may be gathered into the smallest space; and\nsecondly, that in being pushed past other things on the table, it may\ncome into least contact with them.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 1.]\n\nNext, why has it a rim? For two other structural reasons; first, that it\nis convenient to put salt or mustard upon; but secondly and chiefly,\nthat the plate may be easily laid hold of. The rim is the simplest form\nof continuous handle.\n\nFarther, to keep it from soiling the cloth, it will be wise to put this\nridge beneath, round the bottom; for as the rim is the simplest possible\nform of continuous handle, so this is the simplest form of continuous\nleg. And we get the section given beneath the figure for the essential\none of a rightly made platter.\n\n10. Thus far our art has been strictly utilitarian having respect to\nconditions of collision, of carriage, and of support. But now, on the\nsurface of our piece of pottery, here are various bands and spots of\ncolour which are presumably set there to make it pleasanter to the eye.\nSix of the spots, seen closely, you discover are intended to represent\nflowers. These then have as distinctly a graphic purpose as the other\nproperties of the plate have an architectural one, and the first\ncritical question we have to ask about them is, whether they are like\nroses or not. I will anticipate what I have to say in subsequent\nlectures so far as to assure you that, if they are to be like roses at\nall, the liker they can be, the better. Do not suppose, as many people\nwill tell you, that because this is a common manufactured article, your\nroses on it are the better for being ill-painted, or half-painted. If\nthey had been painted by the same hand that did this peach, the plate\nwould have been all the better for it; but, as it chanced, there was no\nhand such as William Hunt's to paint them, and their graphic power is\nnot distinguished. In any case, however, that graphic power must have\nbeen subordinate to their effect as pink spots, while the band of\ngreen-blue round the plate's edge, and the spots of gold, pretend to no\ngraphic power at all, but are meaningless spaces of colour or metal.\nStill less have they any mechanical office: they add nowise to the\nserviceableness of the plate; and their agreeableness, if they possess\nany, depends, therefore, neither on any imitative, nor any structural,\ncharacter; but on some inherent pleasantness in themselves, either of\nmere colours to the eye (as of taste to the tongue), or in the placing\nof those colours in relations which obey some mental principle of order,\nor physical principle of harmony.\n\n11. These abstract relations and inherent pleasantnesses, whether in\nspace, number, or time, and whether of colours or sounds, form what we\nmay properly term the musical or harmonic element in every art; and the\nstudy of them is an entirely separate science. It is the branch of\nart-philosophy to which the word \"aesthetics\" should be strictly limited,\nbeing the inquiry into the nature of things that in themselves are\npleasant to the human senses or instincts, though they represent\nnothing, and serve for nothing, their only service _being_ their\npleasantness. Thus it is the province of aesthetics to tell you, (if you\ndid not know it before,) that the taste and colour of a peach are\npleasant, and to ascertain, if it be ascertainable, (and you have any\ncuriosity to know,) why they are so.\n\n12. The information would, I presume, to most of you, be gratuitous. If\nit were not, and you chanced to be in a sick state of body in which you\ndisliked peaches, it would be, for the time, to you false information,\nand, so far as it was true of other people, to you useless. Nearly the\nwhole study of aesthetics is in like manner either gratuitous or useless.\nEither you like the right things without being recommended to do so, or\nif you dislike them, your mind cannot be changed by lectures on the laws\nof taste. You recollect the story of Thackeray, provoked, as he was\nhelping himself to strawberries, by a young coxcomb's telling him that\n\"he never took fruit or sweets.\" \"That\" replied, or is said to have\nreplied, Thackeray, \"is because you are a sot, and a glutton.\" And the\nwhole science of aesthetics is, in the depth of it, expressed by one\npassage of Goethe's in the end of the 2nd part of Faust;--the notable\none that follows the song of the Lemures, when the angels enter to\ndispute with the fiends for the soul of Faust. They enter\nsinging--\"Pardon to sinners and life to the dust.\" Mephistopheles hears\nthem first, and exclaims to his troop, \"Discord I hear, and filthy\njingling\"--\"Mistoene hoere ich; garstiges Geklimper.\" This, you see, is\nthe extreme of bad taste in music. Presently the angelic host begin\nstrewing roses, which discomfits the diabolic crowd altogether.\nMephistopheles in vain calls to them--\"What do you duck and shrink\nfor--is that proper hellish behaviour? Stand fast, and let them\nstrew\"--\"Was duckt und zuckt ihr; ist das Hellen-brauch? So haltet\nstand, und lasst sie streuen.\" There you have, also, the extreme of bad\ntaste in sight and smell. And in the whole passage is a brief embodiment\nfor you of the ultimate fact that all aesthetics depend on the health of\nsoul and body, and the proper exercise of both, not only through years,\nbut generations. Only by harmony of both collateral and successive\nlives can the great doctrine of the Muses be received which enables men\n\"[Greek: chairein orthos],\" \"to have pleasures rightly;\" and there is no\nother definition of the beautiful, nor of any subject of delight to the\naesthetic faculty, than that it is what one noble spirit has created,\nseen and felt by another of similar or equal nobility. So much as there\nis in you of ox, or of swine, perceives no beauty, and creates none:\nwhat is human in you, in exact proportion to the perfectness of its\nhumanity, can create it, and receive.\n\n13. Returning now to the very elementary form in which the appeal to our\naesthetic virtue is made in our breakfast-plate, you notice that there\nare two distinct kinds of pleasantness attempted. One by hues of colour;\nthe other by proportions of space. I have called these the musical\nelements of the arts relating to sight; and there are indeed two\ncomplete sciences, one of the combinations of colour, and the other of\nthe combinations of line and form, which might each of them separately\nengage us in as intricate study as that of the science of music. But of\nthe two, the science of colour is, in the Greek sense, the more musical,\nbeing one of the divisions of the Apolline power; and it is so\npractically educational, that if we are not using the faculty for colour\nto discipline nations, they will infallibly use it themselves as a means\nof corruption. Both music and colour are naturally influences of peace;\nbut in the war trumpet, and the war shield, in the battle song and\nbattle standard, they have concentrated by beautiful imagination the\ncruel passions of men; and there is nothing in all the Divina Commedia\nof history more grotesque, yet more frightful, than the fact that, from\nthe almost fabulous period when the insanity and impiety of war wrote\nthemselves in the symbols of the shields of the Seven against Thebes,\ncolours have been the sign and stimulus of the most furious and fatal\npassions that have rent the nations: blue against green, in the decline\nof the Roman Empire; black against white, in that of Florence; red\nagainst white, in the wars of the Royal houses in England; and at this\nmoment, red against white, in the contest of anarchy and loyalty, in all\nthe world.\n\n14. On the other hand, the directly ethical influence of colour in the\nsky, the trees, flowers, and coloured creatures round us, and in our own\nvarious arts massed under the one name of painting, is so essential and\nconstant that we cease to recognize it, because we are never long enough\naltogether deprived of it to feel our need; and the mental diseases\ninduced by the influence of corrupt colour are as little suspected, or\ntraced to their true source, as the bodily weaknesses resulting from\natmospheric miasmata.\n\n15. The second musical science which belongs peculiarly to sculpture\n(and to painting, so far as it represents form), consists in the\ndisposition of beautiful masses. That is to say, beautiful surfaces\nlimited by beautiful lines. Beautiful _surfaces_, observe; and remember\nwhat is noted in my fourth lecture of the difference between a space and\na mass. If you have at any time examined carefully, or practised from,\nthe drawings of shells placed in your copying series, you cannot but\nhave felt the difference in the grace between the aspects of the same\nline, when enclosing a rounded or unrounded space. The exact science of\nsculpture is that of the relations between outline and the solid form it\nlimits; and it does not matter whether that relation be indicated by\ndrawing or carving, so long as the expression of solid form is the\nmental purpose; it is the science always of the beauty of relation in\nthree dimensions. To take the simplest possible line of continuous\nlimit--the circle: the flat disc enclosed by it may indeed be made an\nelement of decoration, though a very meagre one but its relative mass,\nthe ball, being gradated in three dimensions, is always delightful.\nHere[110] is at once the simplest, and in mere patient mechanism, the\nmost skilful, piece of sculpture I can possibly show you,--a piece of\nthe purest rock-crystal, chiselled, (I believe, by mere toil of hand,)\ninto a perfect sphere. Imitating nothing, constructing nothing;\nsculpture for sculpture's sake, of purest natural substance into\nsimplest primary form.\n\n16. Again. Out of the nacre of any mussel or oyster-shell you might cut,\nat your pleasure, any quantity of small flat circular discs of the\nprettiest colour and lustre. To some extent, such tinsel or foil of\nshell _is_ used pleasantly for decoration. But the mussel or oyster\nbecoming itself an unwilling modeller, agglutinates its juice into three\ndimensions, and the fact of the surface being now geometrically\ngradated, together with the savage instinct of attributing value to what\nis difficult to obtain, make the little boss so precious in men's sight\nthat wise eagerness of search for the kingdom of heaven can be likened\nto their eagerness of search for _it_; and the gates of Paradise can be\nno otherwise rendered so fair to their poor intelligence, as by telling\nthem that every several gate was of \"one pearl.\"\n\n17. But take note here. We have just seen that the sum of the perceptive\nfaculty is expressed in those words of Aristotle's \"to take pleasure\nrightly\" or straightly--[Greek: chairein orthos]. Now, it is not\npossible to do the direct opposite of that,--to take pleasure\niniquitously or obliquely--[Greek: chairein adikos] or [Greek:\nskolios]--more than you do in enjoying a thing because your neighbour\ncannot get it. You may enjoy a thing legitimately because it is rare,\nand cannot be seen often, (as you do a fine aurora, or a sunset, or an\nunusually lovely flower); that is Nature's way of stimulating your\nattention. But if you enjoy it because your neighbour cannot have\nit--and, remember, all value attached to pearls more than glass beads,\nis merely and purely for that cause,--then you rejoice through the worst\nof idolatries, covetousness; and neither arithmetic, nor writing, nor\nany other so-called essential of education, is now so vitally necessary\nto the population of Europe, as such acquaintance with the principles of\nintrinsic value, as may result in the iconoclasm of jewellery; and in\nthe clear understanding that we are not in that instinct, civilized, but\nyet remain wholly savage, so far as we care for display of this selfish\nkind.\n\nYou think, perhaps, I am quitting my subject, and proceeding, as it is\ntoo often with appearance of justice alleged against me, into irrelevant\nmatter. Pardon me; the end, not only of these lectures, but of my whole\nprofessorship, would be accomplished,--and far more than that,--if only\nthe English nation could be made to understand that the beauty which is\nindeed to be a joy for ever, must be a joy for all; and that though the\nidolatry may not have been wholly divine which sculptured gods, the\nidolatry is wholly diabolic, which, for vulgar display, sculptures\ndiamonds.\n\n18. To go back to the point under discussion. A pearl, or a glass bead,\nmay owe its pleasantness in some degree to its lustre as well as to its\nroundness. But a mere and simple ball of unpolished stone is enough for\nsculpturesque value. You may have noticed that the quatrefoil used in\nthe Ducal Palace of Venice owes its complete loveliness in distant\neffect to the finishing of its cusps. The extremity of the cusp is a\nmere ball of Istrian marble; and consider how subtle the faculty of\nsight must be, since it recognizes at any distance, and is gratified by,\nthe mystery of the termination of cusp obtained by the gradated light on\nthe ball.\n\nIn that Venetian tracery this simplest element of sculptured form is\nused sparingly, as the most precious that can be employed to finish the\nfacade. But alike in our own, and the French, central Gothic, the\nball-flower is lavished on every line--and in your St. Mary's spire, and\nthe Salisbury spire, and the towers of Notre Dame of Paris, the rich\npleasantness of decoration,--indeed, their so-called \"decorated\nstyle,\"--consists only in being daintily beset with stone balls. It is\ntrue the balls are modified into dim likeness of flowers; but do you\ntrace the resemblance to the rose in their distant, which is their\nintended effect?\n\n19. But farther, let the ball have motion; then the form it generates\nwill be that of a cylinder. You have, perhaps, thought that pure Early\nEnglish Architecture depended for its charm on visibility of\nconstruction. It depends for its charm altogether on the abstract\nharmony of groups of cylinders,[111] arbitrarily bent into mouldings,\nand arbitrarily associated as shafts, having no _real_ relation to\nconstruction whatsoever, and a theoretical relation so subtle that none\nof us had seen it, till Professor Willis worked it out for us.\n\n20. And now, proceeding to analysis of higher sculpture, you may have\nobserved the importance I have attached to the porch of San Zenone, at\nVerona, by making it, among your standards, the first of the group which\nis to illustrate the system of sculpture and architecture founded on\nfaith in a future life. That porch, fortunately represented in the\nphotograph, from which Plate I. has been engraved, under a clear and\npleasant light, furnishes you with examples of sculpture of every kind\nfrom the flattest incised bas-relief to solid statues, both in marble\nand bronze. And the two points I have been pressing upon you are\nconclusively exhibited here, namely,--(1). That sculpture is essentially\nthe production of a pleasant bossiness or roundness of surface; (2) that\nthe pleasantness of that bossy condition to the eye is irrespective of\nimitation on one side, and of structure on the other.\n\n21. (1.) Sculpture is essentially the production of a pleasant bossiness\nor roundness of surface.\n\nIf you look from some distance at these two engravings of Greek coins,\n(place the book open so that you can see the opposite plate three or\nfour yards off,) you will find the relief on each of them simplifies\nitself into a pearl-like portion of a sphere, with exquisitely gradated\nlight on its surface. When you look at them nearer, you will see that\neach smaller portion into which they are divided--cheek, or brow, or\nleaf, or tress of hair--resolves itself also into a rounded or\nundulated surface, pleasant by gradation of light. Every several surface\nis delightful in itself, as a shell, or a tuft of rounded moss, or the\nbossy masses of distant forest would be. That these intricately\nmodulated masses present some resemblance to a girl's face, such as the\nSyracusans imagined that of the water-goddess Arethusa, is entirely a\nsecondary matter; the primary condition is that the masses shall be\nbeautifully rounded, and disposed with due discretion and order.\n\n[Illustration: PLATE I.--PORCH OF SAN ZENONE. VERONA.]\n\n22. (2.) It is difficult for you, at first, to feel this order and\nbeauty of surface, apart from the imitation. But you can see there is a\npretty disposition of, and relation between, the projections of a\nfir-cone, though the studded spiral imitates nothing. Order exactly the\nsame in kind, only much more complex; and an abstract beauty of surface\nrendered definite by increase and decline of light--(for every curve of\nsurface has its own luminous law, and the light and shade on a parabolic\nsolid differs, specifically, from that on an elliptical or spherical\none)--it is the essential business of the sculptor to obtain; as it is\nthe essential business of a painter to get good colour, whether he\nimitates anything or not. At a distance from the picture, or carving,\nwhere the things represented become absolutely unintelligible, we must\nyet be able to say, at a glance, \"That is good painting, or good\ncarving.\"\n\nAnd you will be surprised to find, when you try the experiment, how much\nthe eye must instinctively judge in this manner. Take the front of San\nZenone for instance, Plate I. You will find it impossible without a\nlens, to distinguish in the bronze gates, and in great part of the wall,\nanything that their bosses represent. You cannot tell whether the\nsculpture is of men, animals, or trees; only you feel it to be composed\nof pleasant projecting masses; you acknowledge that both gates and wall\nare, somehow, delightfully roughened; and only afterwards, by slow\ndegrees, can you make out what this roughness means; nay, though here\n(Plate III.) I magnify[112] one of the bronze plates of the gate to a\nscale, which gives you the same advantage as if you saw it quite close,\nin the reality,--you may still be obliged to me for the information,\nthat _this_ boss represents the Madonna asleep in her little bed, and\nthis smaller boss, the Infant Christ in His; and this at the top, a\ncloud with an angel coming out of it, and these jagged bosses, two of\nthe Three Kings, with their crowns on, looking up to the star, (which is\nintelligible enough I admit); but what this straggling, three-legged\nboss beneath signifies, I suppose neither you nor I can tell, unless it\nbe the shepherd's dog, who has come suddenly upon the Kings with their\ncrowns on, and is greatly startled at them.\n\n23. Farther, and much more definitely, the pleasantness of the surface\ndecoration is independent of structure; that is to say, of any\narchitectural requirement of stability. The greater part of the\nsculpture here is exclusively ornamentation of a flat wall, or of door\npanelling; only a small portion of the church front is thus treated, and\nthe sculpture has no more to do with the form of the building than a\npiece of a lace veil would have, suspended beside its gates on a festal\nday; the proportions of shaft and arch might be altered in a hundred\ndifferent ways, without diminishing their stability; and the pillars\nwould stand more safely on the ground than on the backs of these carved\nanimals.\n\n24. I wish you especially to notice these points, because the false\ntheory that ornamentation should be merely decorated structure is so\npretty and plausible, that it is likely to take away your attention from\nthe far more important abstract conditions of design. Structure should\nnever be contradicted, and in the best buildings it is pleasantly\nexhibited and enforced; in this very porch the joints of every stone are\nvisible, and you will find me in the Fifth Lecture insisting on this\nclearness of its anatomy as a merit; yet so independent is the\nmechanical structure of the true design, that when I begin my Lectures\non Architecture, the first building I shall give you as a standard will\nbe one in which the structure is wholly concealed. It will be the\nBaptistry of Florence, which is, in reality, as much a buttressed chapel\nwith a vaulted roof, as the Chapter House of York--but round it, in\norder to conceal that buttressed structure, (not to decorate, observe,\nbut to _conceal_) a flat external wall is raised; simplifying the whole\nto a mere hexagonal box, like a wooden piece of Tunbridge ware, on the\nsurface of which the eye and intellect are to be interested by the\nrelations of dimension and curve between pieces of encrusting marble of\ndifferent colours, which have no more to do with the real make of the\nbuilding than the diaper of a Harlequin's jacket has to do with his\nbones.\n\n[Illustration: PLATE II.--THE ARETHUSA OF SYRACUSE.]\n\n[Illustration: PLATE III.--THE WARNING TO THE KINGS.\n\nSan Zenone. Verona.]\n\n25. The sense of abstract proportion, on which the enjoyment of such a\npiece of art entirely depends, is one of the aesthetic faculties which\nnothing can develop but time and education. It belongs only to\nhighly-trained nations; and, among them, to their most strictly refined\nclasses, though the germs of it are found, as part of their innate\npower, in every people capable of art. It has for the most part vanished\nat present from the English mind, in consequence of our eager desire for\nexcitement, and for the kind of splendour that exhibits wealth, careless\nof dignity; so that, I suppose, there are very few now even of our\nbest-trained Londoners who know the difference between the design of\nWhitehall and that of any modern club-house in Pall-mall. The order and\nharmony which, in his enthusiastic account of the Theatre of Epidaurus,\nPausanias insists on before beauty, can only be recognized by stern\norder and harmony in our daily lives; and the perception of them is as\nlittle to be compelled, or taught suddenly, as the laws of still finer\nchoice in the conception of dramatic incident which regulate poetic\nsculpture.\n\n26. And now, at last, I think, we can sketch out the subject before us\nin a clear light. We have a structural art, divine, and human, of which\nthe investigation comes under the general term, Anatomy; whether the\njunctions or joints be in mountains, or in branches of trees, or in\nbuildings, or in bones of animals. We have next a musical art, falling\ninto two distinct divisions--one using colours, the other masses, for\nits elements of composition; lastly, we have an imitative art, concerned\nwith the representation of the outward appearances of things. And, for\nmany reasons, I think it best to begin with imitative Sculpture; that\nbeing defined as _the art which, by the musical disposition of masses,\nimitates anything of which the imitation is justly pleasant to us; and\ndoes so in accordance with structural laws having due reference to the\nmaterials employed_.\n\nSo that you see our task will involve the immediate inquiry what the\nthings are of which the imitation is justly pleasant to us: what, in few\nwords,--if we are to be occupied in the making of graven images--we\nought to like to make images _of_. Secondly, after having determined its\nsubject, what degree of imitation or likeness we ought to desire in our\ngraven image; and lastly, under what limitations demanded by structure\nand material, such likeness may be obtained.\n\nThese inquiries I shall endeavour to pursue with you to some practical\nconclusion, in my next four lectures, and in the sixth, I will briefly\nsketch the actual facts that have taken place in the development of\nsculpture by the two greatest schools of it that hitherto have existed\nin the world.\n\n27. The tenor of our next lecture then must be an inquiry into the real\nnature of Idolatry; that is to say, the invention and service of Idols:\nand, in the interval, may I commend to your own thoughts this question,\nnot wholly irrelevant, yet which I cannot pursue; namely, whether the\nGod to whom we have so habitually prayed for deliverance \"from battle,\nmurder, and sudden death,\" _is_ indeed, seeing that the present state of\nChristendom is the result of a thousand years' praying to that effect,\n\"as the gods of the heathen who were but idols;\" or whether--(and\nobserve, one or other of these things _must_ be true)--whether our\nprayers to Him have been, by this much, worse than Idolatry;--that\nheathen prayer was true prayer to false gods; and our prayers have been\nfalse prayers to the True One.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[107] I had a real ploughshare on my lecture table; but it would\ninterrupt the drift of the statements in the text too long if I\nattempted here to illustrate by figures the relation of the coulter to\nthe share, and of the hard to the soft pieces of metal in the share\nitself.\n\n[108] A sphere of rock crystal, cut in Japan, enough imaginable by the\nreader, without a figure.\n\n[109] One of William Hunt's peaches; not, I am afraid, imaginable\naltogether, but still less representable by figure.\n\n[110] The crystal ball above mentioned.\n\n[111] All grandest effects in mouldings may be, and for the most part\nhave been, obtained by rolls and cavettos of circular (segmental)\nsection. More refined sections, as that of the fluting of a Doric shaft,\nare only of use near the eye and in beautiful stone; and the pursuit of\nthem was one of the many errors of later Gothic. The statement in the\ntext that the mouldings, even of best time, \"have no real relation to\nconstruction,\" is scarcely strong enough: they in fact contend with, and\ndeny the construction, their principal purpose seeming to be the\nconcealment of the joints of the voussoirs.\n\n[112] Some of the most precious work done for me by my assistant Mr.\nBurgess, during the course of these lectures, consisted in making\nenlarged drawings from portions of photographs. Plate III. is engraved\nfrom a drawing of his, enlarged from the original photograph of which\nPlate I. is a reduction.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE II.\n\nIDOLATRY.\n\n_November, 1870._\n\n\n28. Beginning with the simple conception of sculpture as the art of\nfiction in solid substance, we are now to consider what its subjects\nshould be. What--having the gift of imagery--should we by preference\nendeavour to image? A question which is, indeed, subordinate to the\ndeeper one--why we should wish to image anything at all.\n\n29. Some years ago, having been always desirous that the education of\nwomen should begin in learning how to cook, I got leave, one day, for a\nlittle girl of eleven years old to exchange, much to her satisfaction,\nher schoolroom for the kitchen. But as ill fortune would have it, there\nwas some pastry toward, and she was left unadvisedly in command of some\ndelicately rolled paste; whereof she made no pies, but an unlimited\nquantity of cats and mice.\n\nNow you may read the works of the gravest critics of art from end to\nend; but you will find, at last, they can give you no other true account\nof the spirit of sculpture than that it is an irresistible human\ninstinct for the making of cats and mice, and other imitable living\ncreatures, in such permanent form that one may play with the images at\nleisure.\n\nPlay with them, or love them, or fear them, or worship them. The cat may\nbecome the goddess Pasht, and the mouse, in the hand of the sculptured\nking, enforce his enduring words \"[Greek: es eme tis oreon eusebes\nesto];\" but the great mimetic instinct underlies all such purpose; and\nis zooplastic,--life-shaping,--alike in the reverent and the impious.\n\n30. Is, I say, and has been, hitherto; none of us dare say that it will\nbe. I shall have to show you hereafter that the greater part of the\ntechnic energy of men, as yet, has indicated a kind of childhood; and\nthat the race becomes, if not more wise, at least more manly,[113] with\nevery gained century. I can fancy that all this sculpturing and painting\nof ours may be looked back upon, in some distant time, as a kind of\ndoll-making, and that the words of Sir Isaac Newton may be smiled at no\nmore: only it will not be for stars that we desert our stone dolls, but\nfor men. When the day comes, as come it must, in which we no more deface\nand defile God's image in living clay, I am not sure that we shall any\nof us care so much for the images made of Him, in burnt clay.\n\n31. But, hitherto, the energy of growth in any people may be almost\ndirectly measured by their passion for imitative art; namely, for\nsculpture, or for the drama, which is living and speaking sculpture, or,\nas in Greece, for both; and in national as in actual childhood, it is\nnot merely the _making_, but the _making-believe_; not merely the acting\nfor the sake of the scene, but acting for the sake of acting, that is\ndelightful. And, of the two mimetic arts, the drama, being more\npassionate, and involving conditions of greater excitement and luxury,\nis usually in its excellence the sign of culminating strength in the\npeople; while fine sculpture, requiring always submission to severe law,\nis an unfailing proof of their being in early and active progress.\n_There is no instance of fine sculpture being produced by a nation\neither torpid, weak, or in decadence._ Their drama may gain in grace and\nwit; but their sculpture, in days of decline, is _always_ base.\n\n32. If my little lady in the kitchen had been put in command of colours,\nas well as of dough, and if the paste would have taken the colours, we\nmay be sure her mice would have been painted brown, and her cats\ntortoise-shell; and this, partly indeed for the added delight and\nprettiness of colour itself, but more for the sake of absolute\nrealization to her eyes and mind. Now all the early sculpture of the\nmost accomplished nations has been thus coloured, rudely or finely; and,\ntherefore, you see at once how necessary it is that we should keep the\nterm \"graphic\" for imitative art generally; since no separation can at\nfirst be made between carving and painting, with reference to the mental\npowers exerted in, or addressed by, them. In the earliest known art of\nthe world, a reindeer hunt may be scratched in outline on the flat side\nof a clean-picked bone, and a reindeer's head carved out of the end of\nit; both these are flint-knife work, and, strictly speaking, sculpture:\nbut the scratched outline is the beginning of drawing, and the carved\nhead of sculpture proper. When the spaces enclosed by the scratched\noutline are filled with colour, the colouring soon becomes a principal\nmeans of effect; so that, in the engraving of an Egyptian-colour\nbas-relief (S. 101), Rosellini has been content to miss the outlining\nincisions altogether, and represent it as a painting only. Its proper\ndefinition is, \"painting accented by sculpture;\" on the other hand, in\nsolid coloured statues,--Dresden china figures, for example,--we have\npretty sculpture accented by painting; the mental purpose in both kinds\nof art being to obtain the utmost degree of realization possible, and\nthe ocular impression being the same, whether the delineation is\nobtained by engraving or painting. For, as I pointed out to you in my\nfifth lecture, everything is seen by the eye as patches of colour, and\nof colour only; a fact which the Greeks knew well; so that when it\nbecomes a question in the dialogue of Minos, \"[Greek: tini onti te opsei\nhoratai ta hoomena],\" the answer is \"[Greek: aisthesei taute te dia ton\nophthalmon deloise hemin ta chromata].\"--\"What kind of power is the\nsight with which we see things? It is that sense which, through the\neyes, can reveal _colours_ to us.\"\n\n33. And now observe that while the graphic arts begin in the mere\nmimetic effort, they proceed, as they obtain more perfect realization,\nto act under the influence of a stronger and higher instinct. They begin\nby scratching the reindeer, the most interesting object of sight. But\npresently, as the human creature rises in scale of intellect, it\nproceeds to scratch, not the most interesting object of sight only, but\nthe most interesting object of imagination; not the reindeer, but the\nMaker and Giver of the reindeer. And the second great condition for the\nadvance of the art of sculpture is that the race should possess, in\naddition to the mimetic instinct, the realistic or idolizing instinct;\nthe desire to see as substantial the powers that are unseen, and bring\nnear those that are far off, and to possess and cherish those that are\nstrange. To make in some way tangible and visible the nature of the\ngods--to illustrate and explain it by symbols; to bring the immortals\nout of the recesses of the clouds, and make them Penates; to bring back\nthe dead from darkness, and make them Lares.\n\n34. Our conception of this tremendous and universal human passion has\nbeen altogether narrowed by the current idea that Pagan religious art\nconsisted only, or chiefly, in giving personality to the gods. The\npersonality was never doubted; it was visibility, interpretation, and\npossession that the hearts of men sought. Possession, first of all--the\ngetting hold of some hewn log of wild olive-wood that would fall on its\nknees if it was pulled from its pedestal--and, afterwards, slowly\nclearing manifestation; the exactly right expression is used in Lucian's\ndream,--[Greek: Pheidias edeixe ton Dia]; \"Showed[114] Zeus;\" manifested\nhim, nay, in a certain sense, brought forth, or created, as you have it,\nin Anacreon's ode to the Rose, of the birth of Athena herself--\n\n    [Greek: polemoklonon t' Athenen\n    koruphes edeiknye Zeus.]\n\nBut I will translate the passage from Lucian to you at length--it is in\nevery way profitable.\n\n35. \"There came to me, in the healing[115] night, a divine dream, so\nclear that it missed nothing of the truth itself; yes, and still after\nall this time, the shapes of what I saw remain in my sight, and the\nsound of what I heard dwells in my ears\"--note the lovely sense of\n[Greek: enaulos]--the sound being as of a stream passing always by in\nthe same channel,--\"so distinct was everything to me. Two women laid\nhold of my hands and pulled me, each towards herself, so violently, that\nI had like to have been pulled asunder; and they cried out against one\nanother,--the one, that she was resolved to have me to herself, being\nindeed her own, and the other that it was vain for her to claim what\nbelonged to others;--and the one who first claimed me for her own was\nlike a hard worker, and had strength as a man's; and her hair was dusty,\nand her hand full of horny places, and her dress fastened tight about\nher, and the folds of it loaded with white marble-dust, so that she\nlooked just as my uncle used to look when he was filing stones: but the\nother was pleasant in features, and delicate in form, and orderly in her\ndress; and so in the end, they left it to me to decide, after hearing\nwhat they had to say, with which of them I would go; and first the hard\nfeatured and masculine one spoke:--\n\n[Illustration: IV\n\nTHE NATIVITY OF ATHENA.]\n\n36. \"'Dear child, I am the Art of Image-sculpture, which yesterday you\nbegan to learn; and I am as one of your own people, and of your house,\nfor your grandfather,' (and she named my mother's father) 'was a\nstone-cutter; and both your uncles had good name through me: and if you\nwill keep yourself well clear of the sillinesses and fluent follies that\ncome from this creature,' (and she pointed to the other woman) 'and will\nfollow me, and live with me, first of all, you shall be brought up as a\nman should be, and have strong shoulders; and, besides that, you shall\nbe kept well quit of all restless desires, and you shall never be\nobliged to go away into any foreign places, leaving your own country and\nthe people of your house; _neither shall all men praise you for your\ntalk_.[116] And you must not despise this rude serviceableness of my\nbody, neither this meanness of my dusty dress; for, pushing on in their\nstrength from such things as these, that great Phidias revealed Zeus,\nand Polyclitus wrought out Hera, and Myron was praised, and Praxiteles\nmarvelled at: therefore are these men worshipped with the gods.'\"\n\n37. There is a beautiful ambiguity in the use of the preposition with\nthe genitive in this last sentence. \"Pushing on from these things\" means\nindeed, justly, that the sculptors rose from a mean state to a noble\none; but not as _leaving_ the mean state;--not as, from a hard life,\nattaining to a soft one,--but as being helped and strengthened by the\nrough life to do what was greatest. Again, \"worshipped with the gods\"\ndoes not mean that they are thought of as in any sense equal to, or like\nto, the gods, but as being on the side of the gods against what is base\nand ungodly; and that the kind of worth which is in them is therefore\nindeed worshipful, as having its source with the gods. Finally, observe\nthat every one of the expressions, used of the four sculptors, is\ndefinitely the best that Lucian could have chosen. Phidias carved like\none who had seen Zeus, and had only to _reveal_ him; Polyclitus, in\nlabour of intellect, completed his sculpture by just law, and _wrought_\nout Hera; Myron was of all most _praised_, because he did best what\npleased the vulgar; and Praxiteles, the most _wondered at_ or admired,\nbecause he bestowed utmost exquisiteness of beauty.\n\n38. I am sorry not to go on with the dream; the more refined lady, as\nyou may remember, is liberal or gentlemanly Education, and prevails at\nlast; so that Lucian becomes an author instead of a sculptor, I think to\nhis own regret, though to our present benefit. One more passage of his I\nmust refer you to, as illustrative of the point before us; the\ndescription of the temple of the Syrian Hieropolis, where he explains\nthe absence of the images of the sun and moon. \"In the temple itself,\"\nhe says, \"on the left hand as one goes in, there is set first the throne\nof the sun; but no form of him is thereon, for of these two powers\nalone, the sun and the moon, they show no carved images. And I also\nlearned why this is their law, for they say that it is permissible,\nindeed, to make of the other gods, graven images, since the forms of\nthem are not visible to all men. But Helios and Selenaia are everywhere\nclear-bright, and all men behold them; what need is there therefore for\nsculptured work of these, who appear in the air?\"\n\n39. This, then, is the second instinct necessary to sculpture; the\ndesire for the manifestation, description, and companionship of unknown\npowers; and for possession of a bodily substance--the \"bronze\nStrasbourg,\" which you can embrace, and hang immortelles on the head\nof--instead of an abstract idea. But if you get nothing more in the\ndepth of the national mind than these two feelings, the mimetic and\nidolizing instincts, there may be still no progress possible for the\narts except in delicacy of manipulation and accumulative caprice of\ndesign. You must have not only the idolizing instinct, but an [Greek:\nethos] which chooses the right thing to idolize! Else, you will get\nstates of art like those in China or India, non-progressive, and in\ngreat part diseased and frightful, being wrought under the influence of\nfoolish terror, or foolish admiration. So that a third condition,\ncompleting and confirming both the others, must exist in order to the\ndevelopment of the creative power.\n\n40. This third condition is that the heart of the nation shall be set on\nthe discovery of just or equal law, and shall be from day to day\ndeveloping that law more perfectly. The Greek school of sculpture is\nformed during, and in consequence of, the national effort to discover\nthe nature of justice; the Tuscan, during, and in consequence of, the\nnational effort to discover the nature of justification. I assert to you\nat present briefly, what will, I hope, be the subject of prolonged\nillustration hereafter.\n\n41. Now when a nation with mimetic instinct and imaginative longing is\nalso thus occupied earnestly in the discovery of Ethic law, that effort\ngradually brings precision and truth into all its manual acts; and the\nphysical progress of sculpture as in the Greek, so in the Tuscan,\nschool, consists in gradually _limiting_ what was before indefinite, in\n_verifying_ what was inaccurate, and in _humanizing_ what was monstrous.\nI might perhaps content you by showing these external phenomena, and by\ndwelling simply on the increasing desire of naturalness, which compels,\nin every successive decade of years, literally, in the sculptured\nimages, the mimicked bones to come together, bone to his bone; and the\nflesh to come up upon them, until from a flattened and pinched handful\nof clay, respecting which you may gravely question whether it was\nintended for a human form at all;--by slow degrees, and added touch to\ntouch, in increasing consciousness of the bodily truth,--at last the\nAphrodite of Melos stands before you, a perfect woman. But all that\nsearch for physical accuracy is merely the external operation, in the\narts, of the seeking for truth in the inner soul; it is impossible\nwithout that higher effort, and the demonstration of it would be worse\nthan useless to you, unless I made you aware at the same time of its\nspiritual cause.\n\n42. Observe farther; the increasing truth in representation is\nco-relative with increasing beauty in the thing to be represented. The\npursuit of justice which regulates the imitative effort, regulates also\nthe development of the race into dignity of person, as of mind; and\ntheir culminating art-skill attains the grasp of entire truth at the\nmoment when the truth becomes most lovely. And then, ideal sculpture may\ngo on safely into portraiture. But I shall not touch on the subject of\nportrait sculpture to-day; it introduces many questions of detail, and\nmust be a matter for subsequent consideration.\n\n43. These then are the three great passions which are concerned in true\nsculpture. I cannot find better, or, at least, more easily remembered,\nnames for them than \"the Instincts of Mimicry, Idolatry, and\nDiscipline;\" meaning, by the last, the desire of equity and wholesome\nrestraint, in all acts and works of life. Now of these, there is no\nquestion but that the love of Mimicry is natural and right, and the love\nof Discipline is natural and right. But it looks a grave question\nwhether the yearning for Idolatry, (the desire of companionship with\nimages,) is right. Whether, indeed, if such an instinct be essential to\ngood sculpture, the art founded on it can possibly be \"fine\" art.\n\n44. I must now beg for your close attention, because I have to point out\ndistinctions in modes of conception which will appear trivial to you,\nunless accurately understood; but of an importance in the history of art\nwhich cannot be overrated.\n\nWhen the populace of Paris adorned the statue of Strasbourg with\nimmortelles, none, even the simplest of the pious decorators, would\nsuppose that the city of Strasbourg itself, or any spirit or ghost of\nthe city, was actually there, sitting in the Place de la Concorde. The\nfigure was delightful to them as a visible nucleus for their fond\nthoughts about Strasbourg; but never for a moment supposed to _be_\nStrasbourg.\n\nSimilarly, they might have taken delight in a statue purporting to\nrepresent a river instead of a city,--the Rhine, or Garonne,\nsuppose,--and have been touched with strong emotion in looking at it, if\nthe real river were dear to them, and yet never think for an instant\nthat the statue _was_ the river.\n\nAnd yet again, similarly, but much more distinctly, they might take\ndelight in the beautiful image of a god, because it gathered and\nperpetuated their thoughts about that god; and yet never suppose, nor be\ncapable of being deceived by any arguments into supposing, that the\nstatue _was_ the god.\n\nOn the other hand, if a meteoric stone fell from the sky in the sight of\na savage, and he picked it up hot, he would most probably lay it aside\nin some, to him, sacred place, and believe _the stone itself_ to be a\nkind of god, and offer prayer and sacrifice to it.\n\nIn like manner, any other strange or terrifying object, such, for\ninstance, as a powerfully noxious animal or plant, he would be apt to\nregard in the same way; and very possibly also construct for himself\nfrightful idols of some kind, calculated to produce upon him a vague\nimpression of their being alive; whose imaginary anger he might\ndeprecate or avert with sacrifice, although incapable of conceiving in\nthem any one attribute of exalted intellectual or moral nature.\n\n45. If you will now refer to Sec. 52-59 of my Introductory Lectures, you\nwill find this distinction between a resolute conception, recognized for\nsuch, and an involuntary apprehension of spiritual existence, already\ninsisted on at some length. And you will see more and more clearly as we\nproceed, that the deliberate and intellectually commanded conception is\nnot idolatrous in any evil sense whatever, but is one of the grandest\nand wholesomest functions of the human soul; and that the essence of\nevil idolatry begins only in the idea or belief of a real presence of\nany kind, in a thing in which there is no such presence.\n\n46. I need not say that the harm of the idolatry must depend on the\ncertainty of the negative. If there be a real presence in a pillar of\ncloud, in an unconsuming flame, or in a still small voice, it is no sin\nto bow down before these.\n\nBut, as matter of historical fact, the idea of such presence has\ngenerally been both ignoble and false, and confined to nations of\ninferior race, who are often condemned to remain for ages in conditions\nof vile terror, destitute of thought. Nearly all Indian architecture and\nChinese design arise out of such a state: so also, though in a less\ngross degree, Ninevite and Phoenician art, early Irish, and\nScandinavian; the latter, however, with vital elements of high intellect\nmingled in it from the first.\n\nBut the greatest races are never grossly subject to such terror, even in\ntheir childhood, and the course of their minds is broadly divisible into\nthree distinct stages.\n\n47. (I.) In their infancy they begin to imitate the real animals about\nthem, as my little girl made the cats and mice, but with an undercurrent\nof partial superstition--a sense that there must be more in the\ncreatures than they can see; also they catch up vividly any of the\nfancies of the baser nations round them, and repeat these more or less\napishly, yet rapidly naturalizing and beautifying them. They then\nconnect all kinds of shapes together, compounding meanings out of the\nold chimeras, and inventing new ones with the speed of a running\nwild-fire; but always getting more of man into their images, and\nadmitting less of monster or brute; their own characters, meanwhile,\nexpanding and purging themselves, and shaking off the feverish fancy, as\nspringing flowers shake the earth off their stalks.\n\n48. (II.) In the second stage, being now themselves perfect men and\nwomen, they reach the conception of true and great gods as existent in\nthe universe; and absolutely cease to think of them as in any wise\npresent in statues or images; but they have now learned to make these\nstatues beautifully human, and to surround them with attributes that may\nconcentrate their thoughts of the gods. This is, in Greece, accurately\nthe Pindaric time, just a little preceding the Phidian; the Phidian is\nalready dimmed with a faint shadow of infidelity; still, the Olympic\nZeus may be taken as a sufficiently central type of a statue which was\nno more supposed to _be_ Zeus, than the gold or elephants' tusks it was\nmade of; but in which the most splendid powers of human art were\nexhausted in representing a believed and honoured God to the happy and\nholy imagination of a sincerely religious people.\n\n49. (III.) The third stage of national existence follows, in which, the\nimagination having now done its utmost, and being partly restrained by\nthe sanctities of tradition, which permit no farther change in the\nconceptions previously created, begins to be superseded by logical\ndeduction and scientific investigation. At the same moment, the elder\nartists having done all that is possible in realizing the national\nconceptions of the Gods, the younger ones, forbidden to change the\nscheme of existing representations, and incapable of doing anything\nbetter in that kind, betake themselves to refine and decorate the old\nideas with more attractive skill. Their aims are thus more and more\nlimited to manual dexterity, and their fancy paralyzed. Also, in the\ncourse of centuries, the methods of every art continually improving, and\nbeing made subjects of popular inquiry, praise is now to be got, for\neminence in these, from the whole mob of the nation; whereas\nintellectual design can never be discerned but by the few. So that in\nthis third aera, we find every kind of imitative and vulgar dexterity\nmore and more cultivated; while design and imagination are every day\nless cared for, and less possible.\n\n50. Meanwhile, as I have just said, the leading minds in literature and\nscience become continually more logical and investigative; and, once\nthat they are established in the habit of testing facts accurately, a\nvery few years are enough to convince all the strongest thinkers that\nthe old imaginative religion is untenable, and cannot any longer be\nhonestly taught in its fixed traditional form, except by ignorant\npersons. And at this point the fate of the people absolutely depends on\nthe degree of moral strength into which their hearts have been already\ntrained. If it be a strong, industrious, chaste, and honest race, the\ntaking its old gods, or at least the old forms of them, away from it,\nwill indeed make it deeply sorrowful and amazed; but will in no whit\nshake its will, nor alter its practice. Exceptional persons, naturally\ndisposed to become drunkards, harlots, and cheats, but who had been\npreviously restrained from indulging these dispositions by their fear of\nGod, will, of course, break out into open vice, when that fear is\nremoved. But the heads of the families of the people, instructed in the\npure habits and perfect delights of an honest life, and to whom the\nthought of a Father in heaven had been a comfort, not a restraint, will\nassuredly not seek relief from the discomfort of their orphanage by\nbecoming uncharitable and vile. Also the high leaders of their thought\ngather their whole strength together in the gloom; and at the first\nentrance of this valley of the Shadow of Death, look their new enemy\nfull in the eyeless face of him, and subdue him, and his terror, under\ntheir feet. \"Metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum,... strepitumque\nAcherontis avari.\" This is the condition of national soul expressed by\nthe art, and the words, of Holbein, Durer, Shakspeare, Pope, and Goethe.\n\n51. But if the people, at the moment when the trial of darkness\napproaches, be not confirmed in moral character, but are only\nmaintaining a superficial virtue by the aid of a spectral religion; the\nmoment the staff of their faith is broken, the character of the race\nfalls like a climbing plant cut from its hold: then all the earthliest\nvices attack it as it lies in the dust; every form of sensual and insane\nsin is developed, and half a century is sometimes enough to close, in\nhopeless shame, the career of the nation in literature, art, and war.\n\n52. Notably, within the last hundred years, all religion has perished\nfrom the practically active national mind of France and England. No\nstatesman in the senate of either country would dare to use a sentence\nout of their acceptedly divine Revelation, as having now a literal\nauthority over them for their guidance, or even a suggestive wisdom for\ntheir contemplation. England, especially, has cast her Bible full in the\nface of her former God; and proclaimed, with open challenge to Him, her\nresolved worship of His declared enemy, Mammon. All the arts, therefore,\nfounded on religion, and sculpture chiefly, are here in England effete\nand corrupt, to a degree which arts never were hitherto in the history\nof mankind: and it is possible to show you the condition of sculpture\nliving, and sculpture dead, in accurate opposition, by simply comparing\nthe nascent Pisan school in Italy with the existing school in England.\n\n53. You were perhaps surprised at my placing in your educational\nseries, as a type of original Italian sculpture, the pulpit by Niccola\nPisano in the Duomo of Siena. I would rather, had it been possible, have\ngiven the pulpit by Giovanni Pisano in the Duomo of Pisa; but that\npulpit is dispersed in fragments through the upper galleries of the\nDuomo, and the cloister of the Campo Santo; and the casts of its\nfragments now put together at Kensington are too coarse to be of use to\nyou. You may partly judge, however, of the method of their execution by\nthe eagle's head, which I have sketched from the marble in the Campo\nSanto (Edu., No. 113), and the lioness with her cubs, (Edu., No. 103,\nmore carefully studied at Siena); and I will get you other illustrations\nin due time. Meanwhile, I want you to compare the main purpose of the\nCathedral of Pisa, and its associated Bell Tower, Baptistery, and Holy\nField, with the main purpose of the principal building lately raised for\nthe people of London. In these days, we indeed desire no cathedrals; but\nwe have constructed an enormous and costly edifice, which, in claiming\neducational influence over the whole London populace, and middle class,\nis verily the Metropolitan cathedral of this century,--the Crystal\nPalace.\n\n54. It was proclaimed, at its erection, an example of a newly discovered\nstyle of architecture, greater than any hitherto known,--our best\npopular writers, in their enthusiasm, describing it as an edifice of\nFairyland. You are nevertheless to observe that this novel production of\nfairy enchantment is destitute of every kind of sculpture, except the\nbosses produced by the heads of nails and rivets; while the Duomo of\nPisa, in the wreathen work of its doors, in the foliage of its capitals,\ninlaid colour designs of its facade, embossed panels of its baptistery\nfont, and figure sculpture of its two pulpits, contained the germ of a\nschool of sculpture which was to maintain, through a subsequent period\nof four hundred years, the greatest power yet reached by the arts of the\nworld in description of Form, and expression of Thought.\n\n55. Now it is easy to show you the essential cause of the vast\ndiscrepancy in the character of these two buildings.\n\nIn the vault of the apse of the Duomo of Pisa, was a colossal image of\nChrist, in coloured mosaic, bearing to the temple, as nearly as\npossible, the relation which the statue of Athena bore to the Parthenon;\nand in the same manner, concentrating the imagination of the Pisan on\nthe attributes of the God in whom he believed.\n\nIn precisely the same position with respect to the nave of the building,\nbut of larger size, as proportioned to the three or four times greater\nscale of the whole, a colossal piece of sculpture was placed by English\ndesigners, at the extremity of the Crystal Palace, in preparation for\ntheir solemnities in honour of the birthday of Christ, in December, 1867\nor 1868.\n\nThat piece of sculpture was the face of the clown in a pantomime, some\ntwelve feet high from brow to chin, which face, being moved by the\nmechanism which is our pride, every half minute opened its mouth from\near to ear, showed its teeth, and revolved its eyes, the force of these\nperiodical seasons of expression being increased and explained by the\nilluminated inscription underneath \"Here we are again.\"\n\n56. When it is assumed, and with too good reason, that the mind of the\nEnglish populace is to be addressed, in the principal Sacred Festival of\nits year, by sculpture such as this, I need scarcely point out to you\nthat the hope is absolutely futile of advancing their intelligence by\ncollecting within this building, (itself devoid absolutely of every kind\nof art, and so vilely constructed that those who traverse it are\ncontinually in danger of falling over the cross-bars that bind it\ntogether) examples of sculpture filched indiscriminately from the past\nwork, bad and good, of Turks, Greeks, Romans, Moors, and Christians,\nmiscoloured, misplaced, and misinterpreted;[117] here thrust into\nunseemly corners, and there mortised together into mere confusion of\nheterogeneous obstacle; pronouncing itself hourly more intolerable in\nweariness, until any kind of relief is sought from it in steam\nwheelbarrows or cheap toy-shops; and most of all in beer and meat, the\ncorks and the bones being dropped through the chinks in the damp deal\nflooring of the English Fairy Palace.\n\n57. But you will probably think me unjust in assuming that a building\nprepared only for the amusement of the people can typically represent\nthe architecture or sculpture of modern England. You may urge, that I\nought rather to describe the qualities of the refined sculpture which is\nexecuted in large quantities for private persons belonging to the upper\nclasses, and for sepulchral and memorial purposes. But I could not now\ncriticise that sculpture with any power of conviction to you, because I\nhave not yet stated to you the principles of good sculpture in general.\nI will, however, in some points, tell you the facts by anticipation.\n\n58. We have much excellent portrait sculpture; but portrait sculpture,\nwhich is nothing more, is always third-rate work, even when produced by\nmen of genius;--nor does it in the least require men of genius to\nproduce it. To paint a portrait, indeed, implies the very highest gifts\nof painting; but any man, of ordinary patience and artistic feeling, can\ncarve a satisfactory bust.\n\n59. Of our powers in historical sculpture, I am, without question, just,\nin taking for sufficient evidence the monuments we have erected to our\ntwo greatest heroes by sea and land; namely, the Nelson Column, and the\nstatue of the Duke of Wellington opposite Apsley House. Nor will you, I\nhope, think me severe,--certainly, whatever you may think me, I am using\nonly the most temperate language, in saying of both these monuments,\nthat they are absolutely devoid of high sculptural merit. But, consider\nhow much is involved in the fact thus dispassionately stated, respecting\nthe two monuments in the principal places of our capital, to our two\ngreatest heroes.\n\n60. Remember that we have before our eyes, as subjects of perpetual\nstudy and thought, the art of all the world for three thousand years\npast: especially, we have the best sculpture of Greece, for example of\nbodily perfection; the best of Rome, for example of character in\nportraiture; the best of Florence, for example of romantic passion: we\nhave unlimited access to books and other sources of instruction; we have\nthe most perfect scientific illustrations of anatomy, both human and\ncomparative; and, we have bribes for the reward of success, large, in\nthe proportion of at least twenty to one, as compared with those offered\nto the artists of any other period. And with all these advantages, and\nthe stimulus also of fame carried instantly by the press to the remotest\ncorners of Europe, the best efforts we can make, on the grandest of\noccasions, result in work which it is impossible in any one particular\nto praise.\n\nNow consider for yourselves what an intensity of the negation of the\nfaculty of sculpture this implies in the national mind! What measures\ncan be assigned to the gulf of incapacity, which can deliberately\nswallow up in the gorge of it the teaching and example of three thousand\nyears, and produce as the result of that instruction, what it is\ncourteous to call \"nothing?\"\n\n61. That is the conclusion at which we arrive, on the evidence presented\nby our historical sculpture. To complete the measure of ourselves, we\nmust endeavour to estimate the rank of the two opposite schools of\nsculpture employed by us in the nominal service of religion, and in the\nactual service of vice.\n\nI am aware of no statue of Christ, nor of any apostle of Christ, nor of\nany scene related in the New Testament, produced by us within the last\nthree hundred years, which has possessed even superficial merit enough\nto attract public attention.\n\nWhereas the steadily immoral effect of the formative art which we learn,\nmore or less apishly, from the French schools, and employ, but too\ngladly, in manufacturing articles for the amusement of the luxurious\nclasses, must be ranked as one of the chief instruments used by joyful\nfiends and angry fates, for the ruin of our civilization.\n\nIf, after I have set before you the nature and principles of true\nsculpture, in Athens, Pisa, and Florence, you reconsider these\nfacts,--(which you will then at once recognize as such),--you will find\nthat they absolutely justify my assertion that the state of sculpture in\nmodern England, as compared with that of the great Ancients, is\nliterally one of corrupt and dishonourable death, as opposed to bright\nand fameful life.\n\n62. And now, will you bear with me, while I tell you finally why this is\nso?\n\nThe cause with which you are personally concerned is your own frivolity;\nthough essentially this is not your fault, but that of the system of\nyour early training. But the fact remains the same, that here, in\nOxford, you, a chosen body of English youth, in no wise care for the\nhistory of your country, for its present dangers, or its present duties.\nYou still, like children of seven or eight years old, are interested\nonly in bats, balls, and oars: nay, including with you the students of\nGermany and France, it is certain that the general body of modern\nEuropean youth have their minds occupied more seriously by the sculpture\nand painting of the bowls of their tobacco-pipes, than by all the\ndivinest workmanship and passionate imagination of Greece, Rome, and\nMediaeval Christendom.\n\n63. But the elementary causes, both of this frivolity in you, and of\nworse than frivolity in older persons, are the two forms of deadly\nIdolatry which are now all but universal in England.\n\nThe first of these is the worship of the Eidolon, or Phantasm of Wealth;\nworship of which you will find the nature partly examined in the 37th\nparagraph of my _Munera Pulveris_; but which is briefly to be defined as\nthe servile apprehension of an active power in Money, and the submission\nto it as the God of our life.\n\n64. The second elementary cause of the loss of our nobly imaginative\nfaculty, is the worship of the Letter, instead of the Spirit, in what we\nchiefly accept as the ordinance and teaching of Deity; and the\napprehension of a healing sacredness in the act of reading the Book\nwhose primal commands we refuse to obey.\n\nNo feather idol of Polynesia was ever a sign of a more shameful\nidolatry, than the modern notion in the minds of certainly the majority\nof English religious persons, that the Word of God, by which the heavens\nwere of old, and the earth, standing out of the water and in the\nwater,--the Word of God which came to the prophets, and comes still for\never to all who will hear it, (and to many who will forbear); and which,\ncalled Faithful and True, is to lead forth, in the judgment, the armies\nof heaven,--that this \"Word of God\" may yet be bound at our pleasure in\nmorocco, and carried about in a young lady's pocket, with tasselled\nribands to mark the passages she most approves of.\n\n65. Gentlemen, there has hitherto been seen no instance, and England is\nlittle likely to give the unexampled spectacle, of a country successful\nin the noble arts, yet in which the youths were frivolous, the maidens\nfalsely religious, the men, slaves of money, and the matrons, of vanity.\nNot from all the marble of the hills of Luni will such a people ever\nshape one statue that may stand nobly against the sky; not from all the\ntreasures bequeathed to them by the great dead, will they gather, for\ntheir own descendants, any inheritance but shame.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[113] Glance forward at once to Sec. 75, read it, and return to this.\n\n[114] There is a primary and vulgar sense of \"exhibited\" in Lucian's\nmind; but the higher meaning is involved in it.\n\n[115] In the Greek, \"ambrosial.\" Recollect always that ambrosia, as food\nof gods, is the continual restorer of strength; that all food is\nambrosial when it nourishes, and that the night is called \"ambrosial\"\nbecause it restores strength to the soul through its peace, as, in the\n23rd Psalm, the stillness of waters.\n\n[116] I have italicised this final promise of blessedness, given by the\nnoble Spirit of Workmanship. Compare Carlyle's 5th Latter-day pamphlet,\nthroughout; but especially pp. 12-14, in the first edition.\n\n[117] \"Falsely represented,\" would be the better expression. In the cast\nof the tomb of Queen Eleanor, for a single instance, the Gothic foliage\nof which one essential virtue is its change over every shield, is\nrepresented by a repetition of casts from one mould, of which the design\nitself is entirely conjectural.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE III.\n\nIMAGINATION.\n\n_November, 1870._\n\n\n66. The principal object of the preceding lecture (and I choose rather\nto incur your blame for tediousness in repeating, than for obscurity in\ndefining it), was to enforce the distinction between the ignoble and\nfalse phase of Idolatry, which consists in the attribution of a\nspiritual power to a material thing; and the noble and truth-seeking\nphase of it, to which I shall in these lectures[118] give the general\nterm of Imagination;--that is to say, the invention of material symbols\nwhich may lead us to contemplate the character and nature of gods,\nspirits, or abstract virtues and powers, without in the least implying\nthe actual presence of such Beings among us, or even their possession,\nin reality, of the forms we attribute to them.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 2.]\n\n67. For instance, in the ordinarily received Greek type of Athena, on\nvases of the Phidian time (sufficiently represented in the opposite\nwoodcut), no Greek would have supposed the vase on which this was\npainted to be itself Athena, nor to contain Athena inside of it, as the\nArabian fisherman's casket contained the genie; neither did he think\nthat this rude black painting, done at speed as the potter's fancy urged\nhis hand, represented anything like the form or aspect of the Goddess\nherself. Nor would he have thought so, even had the image been ever so\nbeautifully wrought. The goddess might, indeed, visibly appear under the\nform of an armed virgin, as she might under that of a hawk or a swallow,\nwhen it pleased her to give such manifestation of her presence; but it\ndid not, therefore, follow that she was constantly invested with any of\nthese forms, or that the best which human skill could, even by her own\naid, picture of her, was, indeed, a likeness of her. The real use, at\nall events, of this rude image, was only to signify to the eye and heart\nthe facts of the existence, in some manner, of a Spirit of wisdom,\nperfect in gentleness, irresistible in anger; having also physical\ndominion over the air which is the life and breadth of all creatures,\nand clothed, to human eyes, with aegis of fiery cloud, and raiment of\nfalling dew.\n\n68. In the yet more abstract conception of the Spirit of agriculture, in\nwhich the wings of the chariot represent the winds of spring, and its\ncrested dragons are originally a mere type of the seed with its twisted\nroot piercing the ground, and sharp-edged leaves rising above it; we are\nin still less danger of mistaking the symbol for the presumed form of an\nactual Person. But I must, with persistence, beg of you to observe that\nin all the noble actions of imagination in this kind, the distinction\nfrom idolatry consists, not in the denial of the being, or presence of\nthe Spirit, but only in the due recognition of our human incapacity to\nconceive the one, or compel the other.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 3.]\n\n69. Farther--and for this statement I claim your attention still more\nearnestly. As no nation has ever attained real greatness during periods\nin which it was subject to any condition of Idolatry, so no nation has\never attained or persevered in greatness, except in reaching and\nmaintaining a passionate Imagination of a spiritual estate higher than\nthat of men; and of spiritual creatures nobler than men, having a quite\nreal and personal existence, however imperfectly apprehended by us.\n\nAnd all the arts of the present age deserving to be included under the\nname of sculpture have been degraded by us, and all principles of just\npolicy have vanished from us,--and that totally,--for this double\nreason; that we are on one side, given up to idolatries of the most\nservile kind, as I showed you in the close of the last lecture,--while,\non the other hand, we have absolutely ceased from the exercise of\nfaithful imagination; and the only remnants of the desire of truth which\nremain in us have been corrupted into a prurient itch to discover the\norigin of life in the nature of the dust, and prove that the source of\nthe order of the universe is the accidental concurrence of its atoms.\n\n70. Under these two calamities of our time, the art of sculpture has\nperished more totally than any other, because the object of that art is\nexclusively the representation of form as the exponent of life. It is\nessentially concerned only with the human form, which is the exponent of\nthe highest life we know; and with all subordinate forms only as they\nexhibit conditions of vital power which have some certain relation to\nhumanity. It deals with the \"particula undique desecta\" of the animal\nnature, and itself contemplates, and brings forward for its disciples'\ncontemplation, all the energies of creation which transform the [Greek:\npelos], or lower still, the [Greek: borboros] of the _trivia_, by\nAthena's help, into forms of power;--([Greek: to men holon architekton\nautos en. syneirgazeto de toi kai e 'Athena empneousa ton pelon kai\nempsycha poiousa einai ta plasmata];)[119]--but it has nothing whatever\nto do with the representation of forms not living, however beautiful,\n(as of clouds or waves); nor may it condescend to use its perfect skill,\nexcept in expressing the noblest conditions of life.\n\nThese laws of sculpture, being wholly contrary to the practice of our\nday, I cannot expect you to accept on my assertion, nor do I wish you to\ndo so. By placing definitely good and bad sculpture before you, I do not\ndoubt but that I shall gradually prove to you the nature of all\nexcelling and enduring qualities; but to-day I will only confirm my\nassertions by laying before you the statement of the Greeks themselves\non the subject; given in their own noblest time, and assuredly\nauthoritative, in every point which it embraces, for all time to come.\n\n71. If any of you have looked at the explanation I have given of the\nmyth of Athena in my _Queen of the Air_, you cannot but have been\nsurprised that I took scarcely any note of the story of her birth. I did\nnot, because that story is connected intimately with the Apolline myths;\nand is told of Athena, not essentially as the goddess of the air, but as\nthe goddess of Art-Wisdom.\n\nYou have probably often smiled at the legend itself, or avoided thinking\nof it, as revolting. It is indeed, one of the most painful and childish\nof sacred myths; yet remember, ludicrous and ugly as it seems to us,\nthis story satisfied the fancy of the Athenian people in their highest\nstate; and if it did not satisfy--yet it was accepted by, all later\nmythologists: you may also remember I told you to be prepared to find\nthat, given a certain degree of national intellect, the ruder the\nsymbol, the deeper would be its purpose. And this legend of the birth of\nAthena is the central myth of all that the Greeks have left us\nrespecting the power of their arts; and in it they have expressed, as it\nseemed good to them, the most important things they had to tell us on\nthese matters. We may read them wrongly; but we must read them here, if\nanywhere.\n\n72. There are so many threads to be gathered up in the legend, that I\ncannot hope to put it before you in total clearness, but I will take\nmain points. Athena is born in the island of Rhodes; and that island is\nraised out of the sea by Apollo, after he had been left without\ninheritance among the gods. Zeus[120] would have cast the lot again, but\nApollo orders the golden-girdled Lachesis to stretch out her hands; and\nnot now by chance or lot, but by noble enchantment, the island rises out\nof the sea.\n\nPhysically, this represents the action of heat and light on chaos,\nespecially on the deep sea. It is the \"Fiat lux\" of Genesis, the first\nprocess in the conquest of Fate by Harmony. The island is dedicated to\nthe Nymph Rhodos, by whom Apollo has the seven sons who teach [Greek:\nsophotata noemata]; because the rose is the most beautiful organism\nexisting in matter not vital, expressive of the direct action of light\non the earth, giving lovely form and colour at once; (compare the use of\nit by Dante as the form of the sainted crowd in highest heaven) and\nremember that, therefore, the rose is in the Greek mind, essentially a\nDoric flower, expressing the worship of Light, as the Iris or Ion is an\nIonic one, expressing the worship of the Winds and Dew.\n\n73. To understand the agency of Hephaestus at the birth of Athena, we\nmust again return to the founding of the arts on agriculture by the\nhand. Before you can cultivate land you must clear it; and the\ncharacteristic weapon of Hephaestus,--which is as much his attribute as\nthe trident is of Poseidon, and the rhabdos of Hermes, is not, as you\nwould have expected, the hammer, but the clearing-axe--the doubled-edged\n[Greek: pelekys], the same that Calypso gives Ulysses with which to cut\ndown the trees for his home voyage; so that both the naval and\nagricultural strength of the Athenians are expressed by this weapon,\nwith which they had to hew out their fortune. And you must keep in mind\nthis agriculturally laborious character of Hephaestus, even when he is\nmost distinctly the god of serviceable fire; thus Horace's perfect\nepithet for him \"avidus\" expresses at once the devouring eagerness of\nfire, and the zeal of progressive labour, for Horace gives it to him\nwhen he is fighting against the giants. And this rude symbol of his\ncleaving the forehead of Zeus with the axe, and giving birth to Athena\nsignifies, indeed, physically the thrilling power of heat in the\nheavens, rending the clouds, and giving birth to the blue air; but far\nmore deeply it signifies the subduing of adverse Fate by true labour;\nuntil, out of the chasm, cleft by resolute and industrious fortitude,\nsprings the Spirit of Wisdom.\n\n74. Here (Fig. 4) is an early drawing of the myth, to which I shall have\nto refer afterwards in illustration of the childishness of the Greek\nmind at the time when its art-symbols were first fixed; but it is of\npeculiar value, because the physical character of Vulcan, as fire, is\nindicated by his wearing the [Greek: endromides] of Hermes, while the\nantagonism of Zeus, as the adverse chaos, either of cloud or of fate, is\nshown by his striking at Hephaestus with his thunderbolt. But Plate IV.\ngives you (as far as the light on the rounded vase will allow it to be\ndeciphered) a characteristic representation of the scene, as conceived\nin later art.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 4.]\n\n75. I told you in a former lecture of this course that the entire Greek\nintellect was in a childish phase as compared to that of modern times.\nObserve, however, childishness does not necessarily imply universal\ninferiority: there may be a vigorous, acute, pure, and solemn childhood,\nand there may be a weak, foul, and ridiculous condition of advanced\nlife; but the one is still essentially the childish, and the other the\nadult phase of existence.\n\n76. You will find, then, that the Greeks were the first people that were\nborn into complete humanity. All nations before them had been, and all\naround them still were, partly savage, bestial, clay-encumbered,\ninhuman; still semi-goat, or semi-ant, or semi-stone, or semi-cloud. But\nthe power of a new spirit came upon the Greeks, and the stones were\nfilled with breath, and the clouds clothed with flesh; and then came the\ngreat spiritual battle between the Centaurs and Lapithae; and the living\ncreatures became \"Children of Men.\" Taught, yet, by the Centaur--sown,\nas they knew, in the fang--from the dappled skin of the brute, from the\nleprous scale of the serpent, their flesh came again as the flesh of a\nlittle child, and they were clean.\n\nFix your mind on this as the very central character of the Greek\nrace--the being born pure and human out of the brutal misery of the\npast, and looking abroad, for the first time, with their children's\neyes, wonderingly open, on the strange and divine world.\n\n77. Make some effort to remember, so far as may be possible to you,\neither what you felt in yourselves when you were young, or what you have\nobserved in other children, of the action of thought and fancy. Children\nare continually represented as living in an ideal world of their own. So\nfar as I have myself observed, the distinctive character of a child is\nto live always in the tangible present, having little pleasure in\nmemory, and being utterly impatient and tormented by anticipation: weak\nalike in reflection and forethought, but having an intense possession of\nthe actual present, down to the shortest moments and least objects of\nit; possessing it, indeed, so intensely that the sweet childish days are\nas long as twenty days will be; and setting all the faculties of heart\nand imagination on little things, so as to be able to make anything out\nof them he chooses. Confined to a little garden, he does not imagine\nhimself somewhere else, but makes a great garden out of that; possessed\nof an acorn-cup, he will not despise it and throw it away, and covet a\ngolden one in its stead: it is the adult who does so. The child keeps\nhis acorn-cup as a treasure, and makes a golden one out of it in his\nmind; so that the wondering grown-up person standing beside him is\nalways tempted to ask concerning his treasures, not, \"What would you\nhave more than these?\" but \"What possibly can you see _in_ these?\" for,\nto the bystander, there is a ludicrous and incomprehensible\ninconsistency between the child's words and the reality. The little\nthing tells him gravely, holding up the acorn-cup, that \"this is a\nqueen's crown, or a fairy's boat,\" and, with beautiful effrontery,\nexpects him to believe the same. But observe--the acorn-cup must be\n_there_, and in his own hand. \"Give it me;\" then I will make more of it\nfor myself. That is the child's one word, always.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 5.]\n\n78. It is also the one word of the Greek--\"Give it me.\" Give me _any_\nthing definite here in my sight, then I will make more of it.\n\n[Illustration: PLATE V.--TOMB OF THE DOGES JACOPO AND LORENZO TIEPOLO.]\n\nI cannot easily express to you how strange it seems to me that I am\nobliged, here in Oxford, to take the position of an apologist for Greek\nart; that I find, in spite of all the devotion of the admirable scholars\nwho have so long maintained in our public schools the authority of Greek\nliterature, our younger students take no interest in the manual work of\nthe people upon whose thoughts the tone of their early intellectual life\nhas exclusively depended. But I am not surprised that the interest, if\nawakened, should not at first take the form of admiration. The\ninconsistency between an Homeric description of a piece of furniture or\narmour, and the actual rudeness of any piece of art approximating within\neven three or four centuries, to the Homeric period, is so great, that\nwe at first cannot recognize the art as elucidatory of, or in any way\nrelated to, the poetic language.\n\n79. You will find, however, exactly the same kind of discrepancy between\nearly sculpture, and the languages of deed and thought, in the second\nbirth, and childhood, of the world, under Christianity. The same fair\nthoughts and bright imaginations arise again; and similarly, the fancy\nis content with the rudest symbols by which they can be formalized to\nthe eyes. You cannot understand that the rigid figure (2) with chequers\nor spots on its breast, and sharp lines of drapery to its feet, could\nrepresent, to the Greek, the healing majesty of heaven: but can you any\nbetter understand how a symbol so haggard as this (Fig. 5) could\nrepresent to the noblest hearts of the Christian ages the power and\nministration of angels? Yet it not only did so, but retained in the rude\nundulatory and linear ornamentation of its dress, record of the thoughts\nintended to be conveyed by the spotted aegis and falling chiton of\nAthena, eighteen hundred years before. Greek and Venetian alike, in\ntheir noble childhood, knew with the same terror the coiling wind and\ncongealed hail in heaven--saw with the same thankfulness the dew shed\nsoftly on the earth, and on its flowers; and both recognized, ruling\nthese, and symbolized by them, the great helpful spirit of Wisdom, which\nleads the children of men to all knowledge, all courage, and all art.\n\n80. Read the inscription written on the sarcophagus (Plate V.), at the\nextremity of which this angel is sculptured. It stands in an open recess\nin the rude brick wall of the west front of the church of St. John and\nPaul at Venice, being the tomb of the two doges, father and son, Jacopo\nand Lorenzo Tiepolo. This is the inscription:--\n\n    \"Quos natura pares studiis, virtutibus, arte\n    Edidit, illustres genitor natusque, sepulti\n    Hac sub rupe Duces. Venetum charissima proles\n    Theupula collatis dedit hos celebranda triumphis.\n    Omnia presentis donavit predia templi\n    Dux Jacobus: valido fixit moderamine leges\n    Urbis, et ingratam redimens certamine Jadram\n    Dalmatiosque dedit patrie, post, Marte subactas\n    Graiorum pelago maculavit sanguine classes.\n    Suscipit oblatos princeps Laurentius Istros,\n    Et domuit rigidos, ingenti strage cadentes,\n    Bononie populos. Hinc subdita Cervia cessit.\n    Fundavere vias pacis; fortique relicta\n    Re, superos sacris petierunt mentibus ambo.\n\n    \"Dominus Jachobus hobiit[121] M.CCLI.\n     Dominus Laurentius hobiit M.CCLXXVIII.\"\n\nYou see, therefore, this tomb is an invaluable example of thirteenth\ncentury sculpture in Venice. In Plate VI., you have an example of the\n(coin) sculpture of the date accurately corresponding in Greece to the\nthirteenth century in Venice, when the meaning of symbols was everything\nand the workmanship comparatively nothing. The upper head is an Athena,\nof Athenian work in the seventh or sixth century--(the coin itself may\nhave been struck later, but the archaic type was retained). The two\nsmaller impressions below are the front and obverse of a coin of the\nsame age from Corinth, the head of Athena on one side, and Pegasus, with\nthe archaic Koppa, on the other. The smaller head is bare, the hair\nbeing looped up at the back and closely bound with an olive branch. You\nare to note this general outline of the head, already given in a more\nfinished type in Plate II., as a most important elementary form in the\nfinest sculpture, not of Greece only, but of all Christendom. In the\nupper head the hair is restrained still more closely by a round helmet,\nfor the most part smooth, but embossed with a single flower tendril,\nhaving one bud, one flower, and above it, two olive leaves. You have\nthus the most absolutely restricted symbol possible to human thought of\nthe power of Athena over the flowers and trees of the earth. An olive\nleaf by itself could not have stood for the sign of a tree, but the two\ncan, when set in position of growth.\n\n[Illustration: PLATE VI.--ARCHAIC ATHENA OF ATHENS AND CORINTH.]\n\nI would not give you the reverse of the coin on the same plate, because\nyou would have looked at it only, laughed at it, and not examined the\nrest; but here it is, wonderfully engraved for you (Fig. 6): of it we\nshall have more to say afterwards.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 6.]\n\n81. And now as you look at these rude vestiges of the religion of\nGreece, and at the vestiges, still ruder, on the Ducal tomb, of the\nreligion of Christendom, take warning against two opposite errors.\n\nThere is a school of teachers who will tell you that nothing but Greek\nart is deserving of study, and that all our work at this day should be\nan imitation of it.\n\nWhenever you feel tempted to believe them, think of these portraits of\nAthena and her owl, and be assured that Greek art is not in all respects\nperfect, nor exclusively deserving of imitation.\n\nThere is another school of teachers who will tell you that Greek art is\ngood for nothing; that the soul of the Greek was outcast, and that\nChristianity entirely superseded its faith, and excelled its works.\n\nWhenever you feel tempted to believe _them_, think of this angel on the\ntomb of Jacopo Tiepolo; and remember, that Christianity, after it had\nbeen twelve hundred years existent as an imaginative power on the earth,\ncould do no better work than this, though with all the former power of\nGreece to help it; nor was able to engrave its triumph in having stained\nits fleets in the seas of Greece with the blood of her people, but\nbetween barbarous imitations of the pillars which that people had\ninvented.\n\n82. Receiving these two warnings, receive also this lesson; In both\nexamples, childish though it be, this Heathen and Christian art is alike\nsincere, and alike vividly imaginative: the actual work is that of\ninfancy; the thoughts, in their visionary simplicity, are also the\nthoughts of infancy, but in their solemn virtue, they are the thoughts\nof men.\n\nWe, on the contrary, are now, in all that we do, absolutely without\nsincerity;--absolutely, therefore, without imagination, and without\nvirtue. Our hands are dexterous with the vile and deadly dexterity of\nmachines; our minds filled with incoherent fragments of faith, which we\ncling to in cowardice, without believing, and make pictures of in\nvanity, without loving. False and base alike, whether we admire or\nimitate, we cannot learn from the Heathen's art, but only pilfer it; we\ncannot revive the Christian's art, but only galvanize it; we are, in the\nsum of us, not human artists at all, but mechanisms of conceited clay,\nmasked in the furs and feathers of living creatures, and convulsed with\nvoltaic spasms, in mockery of animation.\n\n83. You think, perhaps, that I am using terms unjustifiable in violence.\nThey would, indeed, be unjustifiable, if, spoken from this chair, they\nwere violent at all. They are, unhappily, temperate and\naccurate,--except in shortcoming of blame. For we are not only impotent\nto restore, but strong to defile, the work of past ages. Of the\nimpotence, take but this one, utterly humiliatory, and, in the full\nmeaning of it, ghastly, example. We have lately been busy embanking, in\nthe capital of the country, the river which, of all its waters, the\nimagination of our ancestors had made most sacred, and the bounty of\nnature most useful. Of all architectural features of the metropolis,\nthat embankment will be, in future, the most conspicuous; and in its\nposition and purpose it was the most capable of noble adornment.\n\nFor that adornment, nevertheless, the utmost which our modern poetical\nimagination has been able to invent, is a row of gas-lamps. It has,\nindeed, farther suggested itself to our minds as appropriate to\ngas-lamps set beside a river, that the gas should come out of fishes'\ntails; but we have not ingenuity enough to cast so much as a smelt or a\nsprat for ourselves; so we borrow the shape of a Neapolitan marble,\nwhich has been the refuse of the plate and candlestick shops in every\ncapital of Europe for the last fifty years. We cast _that_ badly, and\ngive lustre to the ill-cast fish with lacquer in imitation of bronze. On\nthe base of their pedestals, towards the road, we put for\nadvertisement's sake, the initials of the casting firm; and, for farther\noriginality and Christianity's sake, the caduceus of Mercury; and to\nadorn the front of the pedestals towards the river, being now wholly at\nour wit's end, we can think of nothing better than to borrow the\ndoor-knocker which--again for the last fifty years--has disturbed and\ndecorated two or three millions of London street-doors; and magnifying\nthe marvellous device of it, a lion's head with a ring in its mouth\n(still borrowed from the Greek), we complete the embankment with a row\nof heads and rings, on a scale which enables them to produce, at the\ndistance at which only they can be seen, the exact effect of a row of\nsentry boxes.\n\n84. Farther. In the very centre of the city, and at the point where the\nEmbankment commands a view of Westminster Abbey on one side and of St.\nPaul's on the other--that is to say, at precisely the most important and\nstately moment of its whole course--it has to pass under one of the\narches of Waterloo Bridge, which, in the sweep of its curve, is as\nvast--it alone--as the Rialto at Venice, and scarcely less seemly in\nproportions. But over the Rialto, though of late and debased Venetian\nwork, there still reigns some power of human imagination: on the two\nflanks of it are carved the Virgin and the Angel of the Annunciation; on\nthe keystone the descending Dove. It is not, indeed, the fault of living\ndesigners that the Waterloo arch is nothing more than a gloomy and\nhollow heap of wedged blocks of blind granite. But just beyond the damp\nshadow of it, the new Embankment is reached by a flight of stairs, which\nare, in point of fact, the principal approach to it, a-foot, from\ncentral London; the descent from the very midst of the metropolis of\nEngland to the banks of the chief river of England; and for this\napproach, living designers _are_ answerable.\n\n85. The principal decoration of the descent is again a gas-lamp, but a\nshattered one, with a brass crown on the top of it or, rather,\nhalf-crown, and that turned the wrong way, the back of it to the river\nand causeway, its flame supplied by a visible pipe far wandering along\nthe wall; the whole apparatus being supported by a rough cross-beam.\nFastened to the centre of the arch above is a large placard, stating\nthat the Royal Humane Society's drags are in constant readiness, and\nthat their office is at 4, Trafalgar Square. On each side of the arch\nare temporary, but dismally old and battered boardings, across two\nangles capable of unseemly use by the British public. Above one of these\nis another placard, stating that this is the Victoria Embankment. The\nsteps themselves--some forty of them--descend under a tunnel, which the\nshattered gas-lamp lights by night, and nothing by day. They are covered\nwith filthy dust, shaken off from infinitude of filthy feet; mixed up\nwith shreds of paper, orange-peel, foul straw, rags, and cigar ends, and\nashes; the whole agglutinated, more or less, by dry saliva into slippery\nblotches and patches; or, when not so fastened, blown dismally by the\nsooty wind hither and thither, or into the faces of those who ascend and\ndescend. The place is worth your visit, for you are not likely to find\nelsewhere a spot which, either in costly and ponderous brutality of\nbuilding, or in the squalid and indecent accompaniment of it, is so far\nseparated from the peace and grace of nature, and so accurately\nindicative of the methods of our national resistance to the Grace,\nMercy, and Peace of Heaven.\n\n86. I am obliged always to use the English word \"Grace\" in two senses,\nbut remember that the Greek [Greek: charis] includes them both (the\nbestowing, that is to say of Beauty and Mercy); and especially it\nincludes these in the passage of Pindar's first ode, which gives us the\nkey to the right interpretation of the power of sculpture in Greece. You\nremember that I told you, in my Sixth Introductory Lecture (Sec. 151), that\nthe mythic accounts of Greek sculpture begin in the legends of the\nfamily of Tantalus; and especially in the most grotesque legend of them\nall, the inlaying of the ivory shoulder of Pelops. At that story Pindar\npauses--not, indeed, without admiration, nor alleging any impossibility\nin the circumstances themselves, but doubting the careless hunger of\nDemeter--and gives his own reading of the event, instead of the ancient\none. He justifies this to himself, and to his hearers, by the plea that\nmyths have, in some sort, or degree, ([Greek: pou ti]), led the mind of\nmortals beyond the truth: and then he goes on:--\n\n\"Grace, which creates everything that is kindly and soothing for\nmortals, adding honour, has often made things at first untrustworthy,\nbecome trustworthy through Love.\"\n\n87. I cannot, except in these lengthened terms, give you the complete\nforce of the passage; especially of the [Greek: apiston emesato\npioton]--\"made it trustworthy by passionate desire that it should be\nso\"--which exactly describes the temper of religious persons at the\npresent day, who are kindly and sincere, in clinging to the forms of\nfaith which either have long been precious to themselves, or which they\nfeel to have been without question instrumental in advancing the dignity\nof mankind. And it is part of the constitution of humanity--a part\nwhich, above others, you are in danger of unwisely contemning under the\nexisting conditions of our knowledge, that the things thus sought for\nbelief with eager passion, do, indeed, become trustworthy to us; that,\nto each of us, they verily become what we would have them; the force of\nthe [Greek: menis] and [Greek: mneme] with which we seek after them,\ndoes, indeed, make them powerful to us for actual good or evil; and it\nis thus granted to us to create not only with our hands things that\nexalt or degrade our sight, but with our hearts also, things that exalt\nor degrade our souls; giving true substance to all that we hoped for;\nevidence to things that we have not seen, but have desired to see; and\ncalling, in the sense of creating, things that are not, as though they\nwere.\n\n88. You remember that in distinguishing Imagination from Idolatry, I\nreferred you to the forms of passionate affection with which a noble\npeople commonly regards the rivers and springs of its native land. Some\nconception of personality or of spiritual power in the stream, is almost\nnecessarily involved in such emotion; and prolonged [Greek: charis] in\nthe form of gratitude, the return of Love for benefits continually\nbestowed, at last alike in all the highest and the simplest minds, when\nthey are honourable and pure, makes this untrue thing trustworthy;\n[Greek: apiston emesato piston], until it becomes to them the safe basis\nof some of the happiest impulses of their moral nature. Next to the\nmarbles of Verona, given you as a primal type of the sculpture of\nChristianity, moved to its best energy in adorning the entrance of its\ntemples, I have not unwillingly placed, as your introduction to the best\nsculpture of the religion of Greece, the forms under which it\nrepresented the personality of the fountain Arethusa. But, without\nrestriction to those days of absolute devotion, let me simply point out\nto you how this untrue thing, made true by Love, has intimate and\nheavenly authority even over the minds of men of the most practical\nsense, the most shrewd wit, and the most severe precision of moral\ntemper. The fair vision of Sabrina in _Comus_, the endearing and tender\npromise, \"Fies nobilium tu quoque fontium,\" and the joyful and proud\naffection of the great Lombard's address to the lakes of his enchanted\nland,--\n\n                 Te, Lari maxume, teque\n    Fluctibus et fremitu assurgens, Benace, marino,\n\nmay surely be remembered by you with regretful piety, when you stand by\nthe blank stones which at once restrain and disgrace your native river,\nas the final worship rendered to it by modern philosophy. But a little\nincident which I saw last summer on its bridge at Wallingford, may put\nthe contrast of ancient and modern feeling before you still more\nforcibly.\n\n89. Those of you who have read with attention (none of us can read with\ntoo much attention), Moliere's most perfect work, the _Misanthrope_,\nmust remember Celimene's description of her lovers, and her excellent\nreason for being unable to regard with any favour, \"notre grand flandrin\nde vicomte,--depuis que je l'ai vu, trois quarts d'heure durant, cracher\ndans un puits pour faire des ronds.\" That sentence is worth noting, both\nin contrast to the reverence paid by the ancients to wells and springs,\nand as one of the most interesting traces of the extension of the\nloathsome habit among the upper classes of Europe and America, which now\nrenders all external grace, dignity, and decency, impossible in the\nthoroughfares of their principal cities. In connection with that\nsentence of Moliere's you may advisably also remember this fact, which I\nchanced to notice on the bridge of Wallingford. I was walking from end\nto end of it, and back again, one Sunday afternoon of last May, trying\nto conjecture what had made this especial bend and ford of the Thames so\nimportant in all the Anglo-Saxon wars. It was one of the few sunny\nafternoons of the bitter spring, and I was very thankful for its light,\nand happy in watching beneath it the flow and the glittering of the\nclassical river, when I noticed a well-dressed boy, apparently just out\nof some orderly Sunday-school, leaning far over the parapet; watching,\nas I conjectured, some bird or insect on the bridge-buttress. I went up\nto him to see what he was looking at; but just as I got close to him, he\nstarted over to the opposite parapet, and put himself there into the\nsame position, his object being, as I then perceived, to spit from both\nsides upon the heads of a pleasure party who were passing in a boat\nbelow.\n\n90. The incident may seem to you too trivial to be noticed in this\nplace. To me, gentlemen, it was by no means trivial. It meant, in the\ndepth of it, such absence of all true [Greek: charis], reverence, and\nintellect, as it is very dreadful to trace in the mind of any human\ncreature, much more in that of a child educated with apparently every\nadvantage of circumstance in a beautiful English country town, within\nten miles of our University. Most of all, is it terrific when we regard\nit as the exponent (and this, in truth, it is), of the temper which, as\ndistinguished from former methods, either of discipline or recreation,\nthe present tenor of our general teaching fosters in the mind of\nyouth;--teaching which asserts liberty to be a right, and obedience a\ndegradation; and which, regardless alike of the fairness of nature and\nthe grace of behaviour, leaves the insolent spirit and degraded senses\nto find their only occupation in malice, and their only satisfaction in\nshame.\n\n91. You will, I hope, proceed with me, not scornfully any more, to\ntrace, in the early art of a noble heathen nation, the feeling of what\nwas at least a better childishness than this of ours; and the efforts to\nexpress, though with hands yet failing, and minds oppressed by ignorant\nphantasy, the first truth by which they knew that they lived; the birth\nof wisdom and of all her powers of help to man, as the reward of his\nresolute labour.\n\n92. \"[Greek: Aphaistou technaisi].\" Note that word of Pindar in the\nSeventh Olympic. This axe-blow of Vulcan's was to the Greek mind truly\nwhat Clytemnestra falsely asserts hers to have been \"[Greek: tes de\ndexias cheros ergon dikaias tektonos]\"; physically, it meant the opening\nof the blue through the rent clouds of heaven, by the action of local\nterrestrial heat of Hephaestus as opposed to Apollo, who shines on the\nsurface of the upper clouds, but cannot pierce them; and, spiritually,\nit meant the first birth of prudent thought out of rude labour, the\nclearing-axe in the hand of the woodman being the practical elementary\nsign of his difference from the wild animals of the wood. Then he goes\non, \"From the high head of her Father, Athenaia rushing forth, cried\nwith her great and exceeding cry; and the Heaven trembled at her, and\nthe Earth Mother.\" The cry of Athena, I have before pointed out,\nphysically distinguishes her, as the spirit of the air, from silent\nelemental powers; but in this grand passage of Pindar it is again the\nmythic cry of which he thinks; that is to say, the giving articulate\nwords, by intelligence, to the silence of Fate. \"Wisdom crieth aloud,\nshe uttereth her voice in the streets,\" and Heaven and Earth tremble at\nher reproof.\n\n93. Uttereth her voice in \"the streets.\" For all men, that is to say;\nbut to what work did the Greeks think that her voice was to call them?\nWhat was to be the impulse communicated by her prevailing presence; what\nthe sign of the people's obedience to her?\n\nThis was to be the sign--\"But she, the goddess herself, gave to them to\nprevail over the dwellers upon earth, _with best-labouring hands in\nevery art. And by their paths there were the likenesses of living and of\ncreeping things_; and the glory was deep. For to the cunning workman,\ngreater knowledge comes, undeceitful.\"\n\n94. An infinitely pregnant passage, this, of which to-day you are to\nnote mainly these three things: First, that Athena is the goddess of\nDoing, not at all of sentimental inaction. She is begotten, as it were,\nof the woodman's axe; her purpose is never in a word only, but in a word\nand a blow. She guides the hands that labour best, in every art.\n\n95. Secondly. The victory given by Wisdom, the worker, to the hands that\nlabour best, is that the streets and ways, [Greek: keleuthoi], shall be\nfilled by likenesses of living and creeping things?\n\nThings living, and creeping! Are the Reptile things not alive then? You\nthink Pindar wrote that carelessly? or that, if he had only known a\nlittle modern anatomy, instead of \"reptile\" things, he would have said\n\"monochondylous\" things? Be patient, and let us attend to the main\npoints first.\n\nSculpture, it thus appears, is the only work of wisdom that the Greeks\ncare to speak of; they think it involves and crowns every other.\nImage-making art; _this_ is Athena's, as queenliest of the arts.\nLiterature, the order and the strength of word, of course belongs to\nApollo and the Muses; under Athena are the Substances and the Forms of\nthings.\n\n96, Thirdly. By this forming of Images there is to be gained a\n\"deep\"--that is to say--a weighty, and prevailing, glory; not a floating\nnor fugitive one. For to the cunning workman, greater knowledge comes,\n\"undeceitful.\"\n\n\"[Greek: Daenti]\" I am forced to use two English words to translate that\nsingle Greek one. The \"cunning\" workman, thoughtful in experience,\ntouch, and vision of the thing to be done; no machine, witless, and of\nnecessary motion; yet not cunning only, but having perfect habitual\nskill of hand also; the confirmed reward of truthful doing. Recollect,\nin connection with this passage of Pindar, Homer's three verses about\ngetting the lines of ship-timber true, (_Il._ xv. 410)\n\n    [Greek:\n    \"All' oste stathme dory neion exithynei\n    tektonos en palamesi daemonos, hos ra te pases\n    ed eide sophies, upothemosynesin Athenes,\"]\n\nand the beautiful epithet of Persephone, \"[Greek: daeira],\" as the Tryer\nand Knower of good work; and remembering these, trust Pindar for the\ntruth of his saying, that to the cunning workman--(and let me solemnly\nenforce the words by adding--that to him _only_,) knowledge comes\nundeceitful.\n\n97. You may have noticed, perhaps, and with a smile, as one of the\nparadoxes you often hear me blamed for too fondly stating, what I told\nyou in the close of my Third Introductory Lecture, that \"so far from\nart's being immoral, little else except art is moral.\" I have now\nfarther to tell you, that little else, except art, is wise; that all\nknowledge, unaccompanied by a habit of useful action, is too likely to\nbecome deceitful, and that every habit of useful action must resolve\nitself into some elementary practice of manual labour. And I would, in\nall sober and direct earnestness advise you, whatever may be the aim,\npredilection, or necessity of your lives, to resolve upon this one thing\nat least, that you will enable yourselves daily to do actually with your\nhands, something that is useful to mankind. To do anything well with\nyour hands, useful or not;--to be, even in trifling, [Greek: palamesi\ndaemon] is already much;--when we come to examine the art of the middle\nages I shall be able to show you that the strongest of all influences of\nright then brought to bear upon character was the necessity for\nexquisite manual dexterity in the management of the spear and bridle;\nand in your own experience most of you will be able to recognize the\nwholesome effect, alike on body and mind, of striving, within proper\nlimits of time, to become either good batsmen, or good oarsmen. But the\nbat and the racer's oar are children's toys. Resolve that you will be\nmen in usefulness, as well as in strength; and you will find that then\nalso, but not till then, you can become men in understanding; and that\nevery fine vision and subtle theorem will present itself to you\nthenceforward undeceitfully, [Greek: hypothemosynesin Athenes].\n\n98. But there is more to be gathered yet from the words of Pindar. He is\nthinking, in his brief, intense way, at once of Athena's work on the\nsoul, and of her literal power on the dust of the Earth. His \"[Greek:\nkeleuthoi]\" is a wide word meaning all the paths of sea and land.\nConsider, therefore, what Athena's own work _actually is_--in the\nliteral fact of it. The blue, clear air _is_ the sculpturing power upon\nthe earth and sea. Where the surface of the earth is reached by that,\nand its matter and substance inspired with, and filled by that, organic\nform becomes possible. You must indeed have the sun, also, and moisture;\nthe kingdom of Apollo risen out of the sea: but the sculpturing of\nliving things, shape by shape, is Athena's, so that under the brooding\nspirit of the air, what was without form, and void brings forth the\nmoving creature that hath life.\n\n99. That is her work then--the giving of Form; then the separately\nApolline work is the giving of Light; or, more strictly, Sight: giving\nthat faculty to the retina to which we owe not merely the idea of light,\nbut the existence of it; for light is to be defined only as the\nsensation produced in the eye of an animal, under given conditions;\nthose same conditions being, to a stone, only warmth or chemical\ninfluence, but not light. And that power of seeing, and the other\nvarious personalities and authorities of the animal body, in pleasure\nand pain, have never, hitherto, been, I do not say, explained, but in\nany wise touched or approached by scientific discovery. Some of the\nconditions of mere external animal form and of muscular vitality have\nbeen shown; but for the most part that is true, even of external form,\nwhich I wrote six years ago. \"You may always stand by Form against\nForce. To a painter, the essential character of anything is the form of\nit, and the philosophers cannot touch that. They come and tell you, for\ninstance, that there is as much heat, or motion, or calorific energy (or\nwhatever else they like to call it), in a tea-kettle, as in a\ngier-eagle. Very good: that is so; and it is very interesting. It\nrequires just as much heat as will boil the kettle, to take the\ngier-eagle up to his nest, and as much more to bring him down again on a\nhare or a partridge. But we painters, acknowledging the equality and\nsimilarity of the kettle and the bird in all scientific respects,\nattach, for our part, our principal interest to the difference in their\nforms. For us, the primarily cognisable facts, in the two things, are,\nthat the kettle has a spout, and the eagle a beak; the one a lid on its\nback, the other a pair of wings; not to speak of the distinction also of\nvolition, which the philosophers may properly call merely a form or mode\nof force--but, then to an artist, the form or mode is the gist of the\nbusiness.\"\n\n100. As you will find that it is, not to the artist only, but to all of\nus. The laws under which matter is collected and constructed are the\nsame throughout the universe: the substance so collected, whether for\nthe making of the eagle, or the worm, may be analyzed into gaseous\nidentity; a diffusive vital force, apparently so closely related to\nmechanically measurable heat as to admit the conception of its being\nitself mechanically measurable, and unchanging in total quantity, ebbs\nand flows alike through the limbs of men, and the fibres of insects.\nBut, above all this, and ruling every grotesque or degraded accident of\nthis, are two laws of beauty in form, and of nobility in character,\nwhich stand in the chaos of creation between the Living and the Dead, to\nseparate the things that have in them a sacred and helpful, from those\nthat have in them an accursed and destroying, nature; and the power of\nAthena, first physically put forth in the sculpturing of these [Greek:\nzoa and erpeta], these living and reptile things, is put forth, finally,\nin enabling the hearts of men to discern the one from the other; to know\nthe unquenchable fires of the Spirit from the unquenchable fires of\nDeath; and to choose, not unaided, between submission to the Love that\ncannot end, or to the Worm that cannot die.\n\n101. The unconsciousness of their antagonism is the most notable\ncharacteristic of the modern scientific mind; and I believe no credulity\nor fallacy admitted by the weakness (or it may sometimes rather have\nbeen the strength) of early imagination, indicates so strange a\ndepression beneath the due scale of human intellect, as the failure of\nthe sense of beauty in form, and loss of faith in heroism of conduct,\nwhich have become the curses of recent science,[122] art, and policy.\n\n102. That depression of intellect has been alike exhibited in the mean\nconsternation confessedly felt on one side, and the mean triumph\napparently felt on the other, during the course of the dispute now\npending as to the origin of man. Dispute for the present, not to be\ndecided, and of which the decision is to persons in the modern temper of\nmind, wholly without significance: and I earnestly desire that you, my\npupils, may have firmness enough to disengage your energies from\ninvestigation so premature and so fruitless, and sense enough to\nperceive that it does not matter how you have been made, so long as you\nare satisfied with being what you are. If you are dissatisfied with\nyourselves, it ought not to console, but humiliate you, to imagine that\nyou were once seraphs; and if you are pleased with yourselves, it is not\nany ground of reasonable shame to you if, by no fault of your own, you\nhave passed through the elementary condition of apes.\n\n103. Remember, therefore, that it is of the very highest importance that\nyou should know what you _are_, and determine to be the best that you\nmay be; but it is of no importance whatever, except as it may contribute\nto that end, to know what you have been. Whether your Creator shaped you\nwith fingers, or tools, as a sculptor would a lump of clay, or gradually\nraised you to manhood through a series of inferior forms, is only of\nmoment to you in this respect--that in the one case you cannot expect\nyour children to be nobler creatures than you are yourselves--in the\nother, every act and thought of your present life may be hastening the\nadvent of a race which will look back to you, their fathers (and you\nought at least to have attained the dignity of desiring that it may be\nso), with incredulous disdain.\n\n104. But that you _are_ yourselves capable of that disdain and dismay;\nthat you are ashamed of having been apes, if you ever were so; that you\nacknowledge instinctively, a relation of better and worse, and a law\nrespecting what is noble and base, which makes it no question to you\nthat the man is worthier than the baboon--_this_ is a fact of infinite\nsignificance. This law of preference in your hearts is the true essence\nof your being, and the consciousness of that law is a more positive\nexistence than any dependent on the coherence or forms of matter.\n\n105. Now, but a few words more of mythology, and I have done. Remember\nthat Athena holds the weaver's shuttle, not merely as an instrument of\n_texture_, but as an instrument of _picture_; the ideas of clothing, and\nof the warmth of life, being thus inseparably connected with those of\ngraphic beauty and the brightness of life. I have told you that no art\ncould be recovered among us without perfectness in dress, nor without\nthe elementary graphic art of women, in divers colours of needlework.\nThere has been no nation of any art-energy, but has strenuously occupied\nand interested itself in this household picturing, from the web of\nPenelope to the tapestry of Queen Matilda, and the meshes of Arras and\nGobelins.\n\n106. We should then naturally ask what kind of embroidery Athena put on\nher own robe; \"[Greek: peplon heanon, poikilon hou r aute poiesato kai\nkame chersin].\"\n\nThe subject of that [Greek: poikilia] of hers, as you know, was the war\nof the giants and gods. Now the real name of these giants, remember, is\nthat used by Hesiod, \"[Greek: pelochonoi],\" \"mud-begotten,\" and the\nmeaning of the contest between these and Zeus, [Greek: pelogonon\nelater], is, again, the inspiration of life into the clay, by the\ngoddess of breath; and the actual confusion going on visibly before you,\ndaily, of the earth, heaping itself into cumbrous war with the powers\nabove it.\n\n107. Thus briefly, the entire material of Art, under Athena's hand, is\nthe contest of life with clay; and all my task in explaining to you the\nearly thought of both the Athenian and Tuscan schools will only be the\ntracing of this battle of the giants into its full heroic form, when,\nnot in tapestry only--but in sculpture--and on the portal of the Temple\nof Delphi itself, you have the \"[Greek: klonos en teichesi lainoisi\ngiganton],\" and their defeat hailed by the passionate cry of delight\nfrom the Athenian maids, beholding Pallas in her full power, \"[Greek:\nleusso Pallad' eman theon],\" my own goddess. All our work, I repeat,\nwill be nothing but the inquiry into the development of this the\nsubject, and the pressing fully home the question of Plato about that\nembroidery--\"And think you that there is verily war with each other\namong the Gods? and dreadful enmities and battle, such as the poets have\ntold, and such as our painters set forth in graven scripture, to adorn\nall our sacred rites and holy places; yes, and in the great Panathenaea\nthemselves, the Peplus, full of such wild picturing, is carried up into\nthe Acropolis--shall we say that these things are true, oh Euthuphron,\nright-minded friend?\"\n\n108. Yes, we say, and know, that these things are true; and true for\never: battles of the gods, not among themselves, but against the\nearth-giants. Battle prevailing age by age, in nobler life and lovelier\nimagery; creation, which no theory of mechanism, no definition of force,\ncan explain, the adoption and completing of individual form by\nindividual animation, breathed out of the lips of the Father of Spirits.\nAnd to recognize the presence in every knitted shape of dust, by which\nit lives and moves and has its being--to recognize it, revere, and show\nit forth, is to be our eternal Idolatry.\n\n\"Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them.\"\n\n\"Assuredly no,\" we answered once, in our pride; and through porch and\naisle, broke down the carved work thereof, with axes and hammers.\n\nWho would have thought the day so near when we should bow down to\nworship, not the creatures, but their atoms,--not the forces that form,\nbut those that dissolve them? Trust me, gentlemen, the command which is\nstringent against adoration of brutality, is stringent no less against\nadoration of chaos, nor is faith in an image fallen from heaven to be\nreformed by a faith only in the phenomenon of decadence. We have ceased\nfrom the making of monsters to be appeased by sacrifice;--it is\nwell,--if indeed we have also ceased from making them in our thoughts.\nWe have learned to distrust the adorning of fair phantasms, to which we\nonce sought for succour;--it is well, if we learn to distrust also the\nadorning of those to which we seek, for temptation; but the verity of\ngains like these can only be known by our confession of the divine seal\nof strength and beauty upon the tempered frame, and honour in the\nfervent heart, by which, increasing visibly, may yet be manifested to\nus the holy presence, and the approving love, of the Loving God, who\nvisits the iniquities of the Fathers upon the Children, unto the third\nand fourth generation of them that hate Him, and shows mercy unto\nthousands in them that love Him, and keep His Commandments.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[118] I shall be obliged in future lectures, as hitherto in my other\nwritings, to use the terms, Idolatry and Imagination in a more\ncomprehensive sense; but here I use them for convenience sake,\nlimitedly, to avoid the continual occurrence of the terms, noble and\nignoble, or false and true, with reference to modes of conception.\n\n[119] \"And in sum, he himself (Prometheus) was the master-maker, and\nAthena worked together with him, breathing into the clay, and caused the\nmoulded things to have soul (psyche) in them.\"--LUCIAN, PROMETHEUS.\n\n[120] His relations with the two great Titans, Themis and Mnemosyne,\nbelong to another group of myths. The father of Athena is the lower and\nnearer physical Zeus, from whom Metis, the mother of Athena, long\nwithdraws and disguises herself.\n\n[121] The Latin verses are of later date; the contemporary plain prose\nretains the Venetian gutturals and aspirates.\n\n[122] The best modern illustrated scientific works show perfect faculty\nof representing monkeys, lizards, and insects; absolute incapability of\nrepresenting either a man, a horse, or a lion.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE IV.\n\nLIKENESS.\n\n_November, 1870._\n\n\n109. You were probably vexed, and tired, towards the close of my last\nlecture, by the time it took us to arrive at the apparently simple\nconclusion, that sculpture must only represent organic form, and the\nstrength of life in its contest with matter. But it is no small thing to\nhave that \"[Greek: leusso Pallada]\" fixed in your minds, as the one\nnecessary sign by which you are to recognize right sculpture, and\nbelieve me you will find it the best of all things, if you can take for\nyourselves the saying from the lips of the Athenian maids, in its\nentirety, and say also--[Greek: leusso Pallad' eman theon]. I proceed\nto-day into the practical appliance of this apparently speculative, but\nin reality imperative, law.\n\n110. You observe, I have hitherto spoken of the power of Athena, as over\npainting no less than sculpture. But her rule over both arts is only so\nfar as they are zoographic;--representative, that is to say, of animal\nlife, or of such order and discipline among other elements, as may\ninvigorate and purify it. Now there is a speciality of the art of\npainting beyond this, namely, the representation of phenomena of colour\nand shadow, as such, without question of the nature of the things that\nreceive them. I am now accordingly obliged to speak of sculpture and\npainting as distinct arts, but the laws which bind sculpture, bind no\nless the painting of the higher schools which has, for its main purpose,\nthe showing beauty in human or animal form; and which is therefore\nplaced by the Greeks equally under the rule of Athena, as the Spirit,\nfirst, of Life, and then of Wisdom in conduct.\n\n111. First, I say, you are to \"see Pallas\" in all such work, as the\nQueen of Life; and the practical law which follows from this, is one of\nenormous range and importance, namely, that nothing must be represented\nby sculpture, external to any living form, which does not help to\nenforce or illustrate the conception of life. Both dress and armour may\nbe made to do this, by great sculptors, and are continually so used by\nthe greatest. One of the essential distinctions between the Athenian and\nFlorentine schools is dependent on their treatment of drapery in this\nrespect; an Athenian always sets it to exhibit the action of the body,\nby flowing with it, or over it, or from it, so as to illustrate both its\nform and gesture; a Florentine, on the contrary, always uses his drapery\nto conceal or disguise the forms of the body, and exhibit mental\nemotion: but both use it to enhance the life, either of the body or\nsoul; Donatello and Michael Angelo, no less than the sculptors of Gothic\nchivalry, ennoble armour in the same way; but base sculptors carve\ndrapery and armour for the sake of their folds and picturesqueness only,\nand forget the body beneath. The rule is so stern that all delight in\nmere incidental beauty, which painting often triumphs in, is wholly\nforbidden to sculpture;--for instance, in _painting_ the branch of a\ntree, you may rightly represent and enjoy the lichens and moss on it,\nbut a sculptor must not touch one of them: they are inessential to the\ntree's life,--he must give the flow and bending of the branch only, else\nhe does not enough \"see Pallas\" in it.\n\nOr to take a higher instance, here is an exquisite little painted poem,\nby Edward Frere; a cottage interior, one of the thousands which within\nthe last two months[123] have been laid desolate in unhappy France.\nEvery accessory in the painting is of value--the fireside, the tiled\nfloor, the vegetables lying upon it, and the basket hanging from the\nroof. But not one of these accessories would have been admissible in\nsculpture. You must carve nothing but what has life. \"Why\"? you probably\nfeel instantly inclined to ask me.--You see the principle we have got,\ninstead of being blunt or useless, is such an edged tool that you are\nstartled the moment I apply it. \"Must we refuse every pleasant accessory\nand picturesque detail, and petrify nothing but living creatures\"?--Even\nso: I would not assert it on my own authority. It is the Greeks who say\nit, but whatever they say of sculpture, be assured, is true.\n\n112. That then is the first law--you must see Pallas as the Lady of\nLife--the second is, you must see her as the Lady of Wisdom; or [Greek:\nsophia]--and this is the chief matter of all. I cannot but think, that\nafter the considerations into which we have now entered, you will find\nmore interest than hitherto in comparing the statements of Aristotle, in\nthe Ethics, with those of Plato in the Polity, which are authoritative\nas Greek definitions of goodness in art, and which you may safely hold\nauthoritative as constant definitions of it. You remember, doubtless,\nthat the [Greek: sophia] or [Greek: arete technes], for the sake of\nwhich Phidias is called [Greek: sophos] as a sculptor, and Polyclitus as\nan image-maker, Eth. 6. 7. (the opposition is both between ideal and\nportrait sculpture, and between working in stone and bronze) consists in\nthe \"[Greek: nous ton timiotaton te physei]\" \"the mental apprehension of\nthe things that are most honourable in their nature.\" Therefore what is,\nindeed, most lovely, the true image-maker will most love; and what is\nmost hateful, he will most hate, and in all things discern the best and\nstrongest part of them, and represent that essentially, or, if the\nopposite of that, then with manifest detestation and horror. That is his\nart wisdom; the knowledge of good and evil, and the love of good, so\nthat you may discern, even in his representation of the vilest thing,\nhis acknowledgment of what redemption is possible for it, or latent\npower exists in it; and, contrariwise, his sense of its present misery.\nBut for the most part, he will idolize, and force us also to idolize,\nwhatever is living, and virtuous, and victoriously right; opposing to it\nin some definite mode the image of the conquered [Greek: herpeton].\n\n113. This is generally true of both the great arts; but in severity and\nprecision, true of sculpture. To return to our illustration: this poor\nlittle girl was more interesting to Edward Frere, he being a painter,\nbecause she was poorly dressed, and wore these clumsy shoes, and old red\ncap, and patched gown. May we sculpture her so? No. We may sculpture her\nnaked, if we like; but not in rags.\n\nBut if we may not put her into marble in rags, may we give her a pretty\nfrock with ribands and flounces to it, and put her into marble in that?\nNo. We may put her simplest peasant's dress, so it be perfect and\norderly, into marble; anything finer than that would be more\ndishonourable in the eyes of Athena than rags. If she were a French\nprincess, you might carve her embroidered robe and diadem; if she were\nJoan of Arc you might carve her armour--for then these also would be\n\"[Greek: ton timiotaton],\" not otherwise.\n\n114. Is not this an edge-tool we have got hold of, unawares? and a\nsubtle one too; so delicate and scimitar-like in decision. For note,\nthat even Joan of Arc's armour must be only sculptured, _if she has it\non_; it is not the honourableness or beauty of it that are enough, but\nthe direct bearing of it by her body. You might be deeply, even\npathetically, interested by looking at a good knight's dinted coat of\nmail, left in his desolate hall. May you sculpture it where it hangs?\nNo; the helmet for his pillow, if you will--no more.\n\nYou see we did not do our dull work for nothing in last lecture. I\ndefine what we have gained once more, and then we will enter on our new\nground.\n\n115. The proper subject of sculpture, we have determined, is the\nspiritual power seen in the form of any living thing, and so represented\nas to give evidence that the sculptor has loved the good of it and hated\nthe evil.\n\n\"_So_ represented,\" we say; but how is that to be done? Why should it\nnot be represented, if possible, just as it is seen? What mode or limit\nof representation may we adopt? We are to carve things that have\nlife;--shall we try so to imitate them that they may indeed seem\nliving,--or only half living, and like stone instead of flesh?\n\nIt will simplify this question if I show you three examples of what the\nGreeks actually did: three typical pieces of their sculpture, in order\nof perfection.\n\n116. And now, observe that in all our historical work, I will endeavour\nto do, myself, what I have asked you to do in your drawing exercises;\nnamely, to outline firmly in the beginning, and then fill in the detail\nmore minutely. I will give you first, therefore, in a symmetrical form,\nabsolutely simple and easily remembered, the large chronology of the\nGreek school; within that unforgettable scheme we will place, as we\ndiscover them, the minor relations of arts and times.\n\nI number the nine centuries before Christ thus, upwards, and divide them\ninto three groups of three each.\n\n                          { 9\n    A. ARCHAIC.           { 8\n                          { 7\n                          ----\n                          { 6\n    B. BEST.              { 5\n                          { 4\n                          ----\n                          { 3\n    C. CORRUPT.           { 2\n                          { 1\n\nThen the ninth, eighth, and seventh centuries are the period of Archaic\nGreek Art, steadily progressive wherever it existed.\n\nThe sixth, fifth, and fourth are the period of central Greek Art; the\nfifth, or central century producing the finest. That is easily\nrecollected by the battle of Marathon. And the third, second, and first\ncenturies are the period of steady decline.\n\n[Illustration: PLATE VII.--ARCHAIC, CENTRAL AND DECLINING ART OF\nGREECE.]\n\nLearn this A B C thoroughly, and mark, for yourselves, what you, at\npresent, think the vital events in each century. As you know more, you\nwill think other events the vital ones; but the best historical\nknowledge only approximates to true thought in that matter; only be sure\nthat what is truly vital in the character which governs events, is\nalways expressed by the art of the century; so that if you could\ninterpret that art rightly, the better part of your task in reading\nhistory would be done to your hand.\n\n117. It is generally impossible to date with precision art of the\narchaic period--often difficult to date even that of the central three\nhundred years. I will not weary you with futile minor divisions of time;\nhere are three coins (Plate VII.) roughly, but decisively,\ncharacteristic of the three ages. The first is an early coin of\nTarentum. The city was founded as you know, by the Spartan Phalanthus,\nlate in the eighth century. I believe the head is meant for that of\nApollo Archegetes, it may however be Taras, the son of Poseidon; it is\nno matter to us at present whom it is meant for, but the fact that we\ncannot know, is itself of the greatest import. We cannot say, with any\ncertainty, unless by discovery of some collateral evidence, whether this\nhead is intended for that of a god, or demi-god, or a mortal warrior.\nOught not that to disturb some of your thoughts respecting Greek\nidealism? Farther, if by investigation we discover that the head is\nmeant for that of Phalanthus, we shall know nothing of the character of\nPhalanthus from the face; for there is no portraiture at this early\ntime.\n\n118. The second coin is of AEnus in Macedonia; probably of the fifth or\nearly fourth century, and entirely characteristic of the central period.\nThis we know to represent the face of a god--Hermes. The third coin is a\nking's, not a city's. I will not tell you, at this moment, what king's;\nbut only that it is a late coin of the third period, and that it is as\ndistinct in purpose as the coin of Tarentum is obscure. We know of this\ncoin, that it represents no god nor demi-god, but a mere mortal; and we\nknow precisely, from the portrait, what that mortal's face was like.\n\n119. A glance at the three coins, as they are set side by side, will now\nshow you the main differences in the three great Greek styles. The\narchaic coin is sharp and hard; every line decisive and numbered, set\nunhesitatingly in its place; nothing is wrong, though everything\nincomplete, and, to us who have seen finer art, ugly. The central coin\nis as decisive and clear in arrangement of masses, but its contours are\ncompletely rounded and finished. There is no character in its execution\nso prominent that you can give an epithet to the style. It is not hard,\nit is not soft, it is not delicate, it is not coarse, it is not\ngrotesque, it is not beautiful; and I am convinced, unless you had been\ntold that this is fine central Greek art, you would have seen nothing at\nall in it to interest you. Do not let yourselves be anywise forced into\nadmiring it; there is, indeed, nothing more here, than an approximately\ntrue rendering of a healthy youthful face, without the slightest attempt\nto give an expression of activity, cunning, nobility, or any other\nattribute of the Mercurial mind. Extreme simplicity, unpretending vigour\nof work, which claims no admiration either for minuteness or dexterity,\nand suggests no idea of effort at all; refusal of extraneous ornament,\nand perfectly arranged disposition of counted masses in a sequent order,\nwhether in the beads, or the ringlets of hair; this is all you have to\nbe pleased with; neither will you ever find, in the best Greek Art,\nmore. You might at first suppose that the chain of beads round the cap\nwas an extraneous ornament; but I have little doubt that it is as\ndefinitely the proper fillet for the head of Hermes, as the olive for\nZeus, or corn for Triptolemus. The cap or petasus cannot have expanded\nedges, there is no room for them on the coin; these must be understood,\ntherefore; but the nature of the cloud-petasus is explained by edging it\nwith beads, representing either dew or hail. The shield of Athena often\nbears white pellets for hail, in like manner.\n\n120. The third coin will, I think, at once strike you by what we moderns\nshould call its \"vigour of character.\" You may observe also that the\nfeatures are finished with great care and subtlety, but at the cost of\nsimplicity and breadth. But the _essential_ difference between it and\nthe central art, is its disorder in design--you see the locks of hair\ncannot be counted any longer--they are entirely dishevelled and\nirregular. Now the individual character may, or may not be, a sign of\ndecline; but the licentiousness, the casting loose of the masses in the\ndesign, is an infallible one. The effort at portraiture is good for art\nif the men to be portrayed are good men, not otherwise. In the instance\nbefore you, the head is that of Mithridates VI. of Pontus, who had,\nindeed, the good qualities of being a linguist and a patron of the arts;\nbut as you will remember, murdered, according to report, his mother,\ncertainly his brother, certainly his wives and sisters, I have not\ncounted how many of his children, and from a hundred to a hundred and\nfifty thousand persons besides; these last in a single day's massacre.\nThe effort to represent this kind of person is not by any means a method\nof study from life ultimately beneficial to art.\n\n121. This however is not the point I have to urge to-day. What I want\nyou to observe is that, though the master of the great time does not\nattempt portraiture, he _does_ attempt animation. And as far as his\nmeans will admit, he succeeds in making the face--you might almost\nthink--vulgarly animated; as like a real face, literally, \"as it can\nstare.\" Yes: and its sculptor meant it to be so; and that was what\nPhidias meant his Jupiter to be, if he could manage it. Not, indeed, to\nbe taken for Zeus himself; and yet, to be as like a living Zeus as art\ncould make it. Perhaps you think he tried to make it look living only\nfor the sake of the mob, and would not have tried to do so for\nconnoisseurs. Pardon me; for real connoisseurs, he would, and did; and\nherein consists a truth which belongs to all the arts, and which I will\nat once drive home in your minds, as firmly as I can.\n\n122. All second-rate artists--(and remember, the second-rate ones are a\nloquacious multitude, while the great come only one or two in a century;\nand then, silently)--all second-rate artists will tell you that the\nobject of fine art is not resemblance, but some kind of abstraction more\nrefined than reality. Put that out of your heads at once. The object of\nthe great Resemblant Arts is, and always has been, to resemble; and to\nresemble as closely as possible. It is the function of a good portrait\nto set the man before you in habit as he lived, and I would we had a few\nmore that did so. It is the function of a good landscape to set the\nscene before you in its reality, to make you, if it may be, think the\nclouds are flying, and the streams foaming. It is the function of the\nbest sculptor--the true Daedalus--to make stillness look like breathing,\nand marble look like flesh.\n\n123. And in all great times of art, this purpose is as naively expressed\nas it is steadily held. All the talk about abstraction belongs to\nperiods of decadence. In living times, people see something living that\npleases them; and they try to make it live for ever, or to make it\nsomething as like it as possible, that will last for ever. They paint\ntheir statues, and inlay the eyes with jewels, and set real crowns on\ntheir heads; they finish, in their pictures, every thread of embroidery,\nand would fain, if they could, draw every leaf upon the trees. And their\nonly verbal expression of conscious success is, that they have made\ntheir work \"look real.\"\n\n124. You think all that very wrong. So did I, once; but it was I that\nwas wrong. A long time ago, before ever I had seen Oxford, I painted a\npicture of the Lake of Como, for my father. It was not at all like the\nLake of Como; but I thought it rather the better for that. My father\ndiffered with me; and objected particularly to a boat with a red and\nyellow awning, which I had put into the most conspicuous corner of my\ndrawing. I declared this boat to be \"necessary to the composition.\" My\nfather not the less objected, that he had never seen such a boat, either\nat Como or elsewhere; and suggested that if I would make the lake look a\nlittle more like water, I should be under no necessity of explaining its\nnature by the presence of floating objects. I thought him at the time a\nvery simple person for his pains; but have since learned, and it is the\nvery gist of all practical matters, which, as professor of fine art, I\nhave now to tell you, that the great point in painting a lake is--to get\nit to look like water.\n\n125. So far, so good. We lay it down for a first principle, that our\ngraphic art, whether painting or sculpture, is to produce something\nwhich shall look as like Nature as possible. But now we must go one step\nfarther, and say that it is to produce what shall look like Nature to\npeople who know what Nature is like! You see this is at once a great\nrestriction, as well as a great exaltation of our aim. Our business is\nnot to deceive the simple; but to deceive the wise! Here, for instance,\nis a modern Italian print, representing, to the best of its power, St.\nCecilia, in a brilliantly realistic manner. And the fault of the work is\nnot in its earnest endeavour to show St. Cecilia in habit as she lived,\nbut in that the effort could only be successful with persons unaware of\nthe habit St. Cecilia lived in. And this condition of appeal only to the\nwise increases the difficulty of imitative resemblance so greatly, that,\nwith only average skill or materials, we must surrender all hope of it,\nand be content with an imperfect representation, true as far as it\nreaches, and such as to excite the imagination of a wise beholder to\ncomplete it; though falling very far short of what either he or we\nshould otherwise have desired. For instance, here is a suggestion, by\nSir Joshua Reynolds, of the general appearance of a British\nJudge--requiring the imagination of a very wise beholder indeed, to fill\nit up, or even at first to discover what it is meant for. Nevertheless,\nit is better art than the Italian St. Cecilia, because the artist,\nhowever little he may have done to represent his knowledge, does,\nindeed, know altogether what a Judge is like, and appeals only to the\ncriticism of those who know also.\n\n126. There must be, therefore, two degrees of truth to be looked for in\nthe good graphic arts; one, the commonest, which, by any partial or\nimperfect sign conveys to you an idea which you must complete for\nyourself; and the other, the finest, a representation so perfect as to\nleave you nothing to be farther accomplished by this independent\nexertion; but to give you the same feeling of possession and presence\nwhich you would experience from the natural object itself. For instance\nof the first, in this representation of a rainbow,[124] the artist has\nno hope that, by the black lines of engraving, he can deceive you into\nany belief of the rainbow's being there, but he gives indication enough\nof what he intends, to enable you to supply the rest of the idea\nyourself, providing always you know beforehand what a rainbow is like.\nBut in this drawing of the falls of Terni,[125] the painter has\nstrained his skill to the utmost to give an actually deceptive\nresemblance of the iris, dawning and fading among the foam. So far as he\nhas not actually deceived you, it is not because he would not have done\nso if he could; but only because his colours and science have fallen\nshort of his desire. They have fallen so little short that, in a good\nlight, you may all but believe the foam and the sunshine are drifting\nand changing among the rocks.\n\n127. And after looking a little while, you will begin to regret that\nthey are not so: you will feel that, lovely as the drawing is, you would\nlike far better to see the real place, and the goats skipping among the\nrocks, and the spray floating above the fall. And this is the true sign\nof the greatest art--to part voluntarily with its greatness;--to make\n_itself_ poor and unnoticed; but so to exalt and set forth its theme\nthat you may be fain to see the theme instead of it. So that you have\nnever enough admired a great workman's doing till you have begun to\ndespise it. The best homage that could be paid to the Athena of Phidias\nwould be to desire rather to see the living goddess; and the loveliest\nMadonnas of Christian art fall short of their due power, if they do not\nmake their beholders sick at heart to see the living Virgin.\n\n128. We have then, for our requirement of the finest art (sculpture, or\nanything else), that it shall be so like the thing it represents as to\nplease those who best know or can conceive the original; and, if\npossible, please them deceptively--its final triumph being to deceive\neven the wise; and (the Greeks thought) to please even the Immortals,\nwho were so wise as to be undeceivable. So that you get the Greek, thus\nfar entirely true, idea of perfectness in sculpture, expressed to you by\nwhat Phalaris says, at first sight of the bull of Perilaus, \"It only\nwanted motion and bellowing to seem alive; and as soon as I saw it, I\ncried out, it ought to be sent to the god.\" To Apollo, for only he, the\nundeceivable, could thoroughly understand such sculpture, and perfectly\ndelight in it.\n\n129. And with this expression of the Greek ideal of sculpture, I wish\nyou to join the early Italian, summed in a single line by Dante--\"non\nvide me' di me, chi vide 'l vero.\" Read the 12th canto of the\n\"Purgatory,\" and learn that whole passage by heart; and if ever you\nchance to go to Pistoja, look at La Robbia's coloured porcelain\nbas-reliefs of the seven works of Mercy on the front of the hospital\nthere; and note especially the faces of the two sick men--one at the\npoint of death, and the other in the first peace and long-drawn\nbreathing of health after fever--and you will know what Dante meant by\nthe preceding line, \"Morti li morti, e i vivi paren vivi.\"\n\n130. But now, may we not ask farther,--is it impossible for art such as\nthis, prepared for the wise, to please the simple also? Without entering\non the awkward questions of degree, how many the wise can be, or how\nmuch men should know, in order to be rightly called wise, may we not\nconceive an art to be possible, which would deceive _every_body, or\neverybody worth deceiving? I showed you at my first lecture, a little\nringlet of Japan ivory, as a type of elementary bas-relief touched with\ncolour; and in your rudimentary series you have a drawing by Mr.\nBurgess, of one of the little fishes enlarged, with every touch of the\nchisel facsimiled on the more visible scale; and showing the little\nblack bead inlaid for the eye, which in the original is hardly to be\nseen without a lens. You may, perhaps be surprised, when I tell you,\nthat (putting the question of _subject_ aside for the moment, and\nspeaking only of the mode of execution and aim at resemblance), you have\nthere a perfect example of the Greek ideal of method in sculpture. And\nyou will admit that, to the simplest person whom we could introduce as a\ncritic, that fish would be a satisfactory, nay, almost a deceptive fish;\nwhile to any one caring for subtleties of art, I need not point out that\nevery touch of the chisel is applied with consummate knowledge, and that\nit would be impossible to convey more truth and life with the given\nquantity of workmanship.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 7.]\n\n131. Here is, indeed, a drawing by Turner, (Edu. 131), in which with\nsome fifty times the quantity of labour, and far more highly educated\nfaculty of sight, the artist has expressed some qualities of lustre and\ncolour which only very wise persons indeed could perceive in a John\nDory; and this piece of paper contains, therefore, much more, and more\nsubtle, art, than the Japan ivory; but are we sure that it is therefore\n_greater_ art? or that the painter was better employed in producing this\ndrawing, which only one person can possess, and only one in a hundred\nenjoy, than he would have been in producing two or three pieces on a\nlarger scale, which should have been at once accessible to, and\nenjoyable by, a number of simpler persons? Suppose for instance, that\nTurner, instead of faintly touching this outline, on white paper, with\nhis camel's hair pencil, had struck the main forms of his fish into\nmarble, thus (Fig. 7): and instead of colouring the white paper so\ndelicately that, perhaps, only a few of the most keenly observant\nartists in England can see it at all, had, with his strong hand, tinted\nthe marble with a few colours, deceptive to the people, and harmonious\nto the initiated; suppose that he had even conceded so much to the\nspirit of popular applause as to allow of a bright glass bead being\ninlaid for the eye, in the Japanese manner; and that the enlarged,\ndeceptive, and popularly pleasing work had been carved on the outside of\na great building,--say Fishmongers' Hall,--where everybody commercially\nconnected with Billingsgate could have seen it, and ratified it with the\nwisdom of the market;--might not the art have been greater, worthier,\nand kinder in such use?\n\n132. Perhaps the idea does not once approve itself to you of having your\npublic buildings covered with ornaments like this; but pray, remember\nthat the choice of _subject_ is an ethical question, not now before us.\nAll I ask you to decide is whether the method is right, and would be\npleasant in giving the distinctiveness to pretty things, which it has\nhere given to what, I suppose it may be assumed, you feel to be an ugly\nthing. Of course, I must note parenthetically, such realistic work is\nimpossible in a country where the buildings are to be discoloured by\ncoal-smoke; but so is all fine sculpture, whatsoever; and the whiter,\nthe worse its chance. For that which is prepared for private persons, to\nbe kept under cover, will, of necessity, degenerate into the copyism of\npast work, or merely sensational and sensual forms of present life,\nunless there be a governing school addressing the populace, for their\ninstruction, on the outside of buildings. So that, as I partly warned\nyou in my third lecture, you can simply have _no_ sculpture in a coal\ncountry. Whether you like coals or carvings best, is no business of\nmine. I merely have to assure you of the fact that they are\nincompatible.\n\nBut, assuming that we are again, some day, to become a civilized and\ngoverning race, deputing ironmongery, coal-digging, and lucre-digging,\nto our slaves in other countries, it is quite conceivable that, with an\nincreasing knowledge of natural history, and desire for such knowledge,\nwhat is now done by careful, but inefficient, woodcuts, and in\nill-coloured engravings, might be put in quite permanent sculptures,\nwith inlay of variegated precious stones, on the outside of buildings,\nwhere such pictures would be little costly to the people; and in a more\npopular manner still, by Robbia ware and Palissy ware, and inlaid\nmajolica, which would differ from the housewives' present favourite\ndecoration of plates above her kitchen dresser, by being every piece of\nit various, instructive, and universally visible.\n\n133. You hardly know, I suppose, whether I am speaking in jest or\nearnest. In the most solemn earnest, I assure you; though such is the\nstrange course of our popular life that all the irrational arts of\ndestruction are at once felt to be earnest; while any plan for those of\ninstruction on a grand scale, sounds like a dream or jest. Still, I do\nnot absolutely propose to decorate our public buildings with sculpture\nwholly of this character; though beast, and fowl, and creeping things,\nand fishes, might all find room on such a building as the Solomon's\nHouse of a New Atlantis; and some of them might even become symbolic of\nmuch to us again. Passing through the Strand, only the other day, for\ninstance, I saw four highly finished and delicately coloured pictures of\ncock-fighting, which, for imitative quality, were nearly all that could\nbe desired, going far beyond the Greek cock of Himera; and they would\nhave delighted a Greek's soul, if they had meant as much as a Greek\ncock-fight; but they were only types of the \"[Greek: endomachas\nalektor],\" and of the spirit of home contest, which has been so fatal\nlately to the Bird of France; and not of the defence of one's own\nbarnyard, in thought of which the Olympians set the cock on the pillars\nof their chariot course; and gave it goodly alliance in its battle, as\nyou may see here, in what is left of the angle of mouldering marble in\nthe chair of the priest of Dionusos. The cast of it, from the centre of\nthe theatre under the Acropolis, is in the British Museum; and I wanted\nits spiral for you, and this kneeling Angel of Victory;--it is late\nGreek art, but nobly systematic flat bas-relief. So I set Mr. Burgess to\ndraw it; but neither he nor I for a little while, could make out what\nthe Angel of Victory was kneeling for. His attitude is an ancient and\ngrandly conventional one among the Egyptians; and I was tracing it back\nto a kneeling goddess of the greatest dynasty of the Pharaohs--a goddess\nof Evening, or Death, laying down the sun out of her right hand;--when,\none bright day, the shadows came out clear on the Athenian throne, and I\nsaw that my Angel of Victory was only backing a cock at a cock-fight.\n\n134. Still, as I have said, there is no reason why sculpture, even for\nsimplest persons, should confine itself to imagery of fish, or fowl, or\nfour-footed things.\n\nWe go back to our first principle: we ought to carve nothing but what is\nhonourable. And you are offended, at this moment, with my fish, (as I\nbelieve, when the first sculptures appeared on the windows of this\nmuseum, offence was taken at the unnecessary introduction of cats),\nthese dissatisfactions being properly felt by your \"[Greek: nous ton\ntimiotaton].\" For indeed, in all cases, our right judgment must depend\non our wish to give honour only to things and creatures that deserve it.\n\n135. And now I must state to you another principle of veracity, both in\nsculpture, and all following arts, of wider scope than any hitherto\nexamined. We have seen that sculpture is to be a true representation of\ntrue external form. Much more is it to be a representation of true\ninternal emotion. You must carve only what you yourself see as you see\nit; but, much more, you must carve only what you yourself feel, as you\nfeel it. You may no more endeavour to feel through other men's souls,\nthan to see with other men's eyes. Whereas generally now in Europe and\nAmerica, every man's energy is bent upon acquiring some false emotion,\nnot his own, but belonging to the past, or to other persons, because he\nhas been taught that such and such a result of it will be fine. Every\nattempted sentiment in relation to art is hypocritical; our notions of\nsublimity, of grace, or pious serenity, are all second hand; and we are\npractically incapable of designing so much as a bell-handle or a\ndoor-knocker without borrowing the first notion of it from those who are\ngone--where we shall not wake them with our knocking. I would we could.\n\n136. In the midst of this desolation we have nothing to count on for\nreal growth, but what we can find of honest liking and longing, in\nourselves and in others. We must discover, if we would healthily\nadvance, what things are verily [Greek: timiotata] among us; and if we\ndelight to honour the dishonourable, consider how, in future, we may\nbetter bestow our likings. Now it appears to me from all our popular\ndeclarations, that we, at present, honour nothing so much as liberty and\nindependence; and no person so much as the Free man and Self-made man,\nwho will be ruled by no one, and has been taught, or helped, by no one.\nAnd the reason I chose a fish for you as the first subject of sculpture,\nwas that in men who are free and self-made, you have the nearest\napproach, humanly possible, to the state of the fish, and finely\norganized [Greek: herpeton]. You get the exact phrase in Habakkuk, if\nyou take the Septuagint text.--\"[Greek: poieseis tous anthropous hos\ntous ichthyas tes thalasses, kai hos ta herpeta ta ouk echonta\nhegoumenon.\"] \"Thou wilt make men as the fishes of the sea, and as the\nreptile things, _that have no ruler over them_.\" And it chanced that as\nI was preparing this lecture, one of our most able and popular prints\ngave me a woodcut of the \"self-made man,\" specified as such, so\nvigorously drawn, and with so few touches, that Phidias or Turner\nhimself could scarcely have done it better; so that I had only to ask my\nassistant to enlarge it with accuracy, and it became comparable with my\nfish at once. Of course it is not given by the caricaturist as an\nadmirable face; only, I am enabled by his skill to set before you,\nwithout any suspicion of unfairness on _my_ part, the expression to\nwhich the life we profess to think most honourable, naturally leads. If\nwe were to take the hat off, you see how nearly the profile corresponds\nwith that of the typical fish.\n\n[Illustration: PLATE VIII.--THE APOLLO OF SYRACUSE AND THE SELF-MADE\nMAN.]\n\n137. Such, then, being the definition by your best popular art, of the\nideal of feature at which we are gradually arriving by self-manufacture;\nwhen I place opposite to it (in Plate VIII.) the profile of a man not in\nany wise self-made, neither by the law of his own will, nor by the love\nof his own interest--nor capable, for a moment, of any kind of\n\"Independence,\" or of the idea of independence; but wholly dependent\nupon, and subjected to, external influence of just law, wise teaching,\nand trusted love and truth, in his fellow-spirits;--setting before you,\nI say, this profile of a God-made instead of a self-made, man, I know\nthat you will feel, on the instant, that you are brought into contact\nwith the vital elements of human art; and that this, the sculpture of\nthe good, is indeed the only permissible sculpture.\n\n138. A God-made _man_, I say. The face, indeed, stands as a symbol of\nmore than man in its sculptor's mind. For as I gave you, to lead your\nfirst effort in the form of leaves, the sceptre of Apollo, so this,\nwhich I give you as the first type of rightness in the form of flesh, is\nthe countenance of the holder of that sceptre, the Sun-God of Syracuse.\nBut there is nothing in the face (nor did the Greek suppose there was)\nmore perfect than might be seen in the daily beauty of the creatures the\nSun-God shone upon, and whom his strength and honour animated. This is\nnot an ideal, but a quite literally true, face of a Greek youth; nay, I\nwill undertake to show you that it is not supremely beautiful, and even\nto surpass it altogether with the literal portrait of an Italian one. It\nis in verity no more than the form habitually taken by the features of a\nwell educated young Athenian or Sicilian citizen; and the one\nrequirement for the sculptors of to-day is not, as it has been thought,\nto invent the same ideal, but merely to see the same reality.\n\nNow, you know I told you in my fourth lecture, that the beginning of art\nwas in getting our country clean and our people beautiful, and you\nsupposed that to be a statement irrelevant to my subject; just as, at\nthis moment, you perhaps think, I am quitting the great subject of this\npresent lecture--the method of likeness-making--and letting myself\nbranch into the discussion of what things we are to make likeness of.\nBut you shall see hereafter that the method of imitating a beautiful\nthing must be different from the method of imitating an ugly one; and\nthat, with the change in subject from what is dishonourable to what is\nhonourable, there will be involved a parallel change in the management\nof tools, of lines, and of colours. So that before I can determine for\nyou _how_ you are to imitate, you must tell me what kind of face you\nwish to imitate. The best draughtsmen in the world could not draw this\nApollo in ten scratches, though he can draw the self-made man. Still\nless this nobler Apollo of Ionian Greece, (Plate IX.) in which the\nincisions are softened into a harmony like that of Correggio's painting.\nSo that you see the method itself,--the choice between black incision or\nfine sculpture, and perhaps, presently, the choice between colour or no\ncolour, will depend on what you have to represent. Colour may be\nexpedient for a glistening dolphin or a spotted fawn;--perhaps\ninexpedient for white Poseidon, and gleaming Dian. So that, before\ndefining the laws of sculpture, I am compelled to ask you, _what you\nmean to carve_; and that, little as you think it, is asking you how you\nmean to live, and what the laws of your State are to be, for _they_\ndetermine those of your statue. You can only have this kind of face to\nstudy from, in the sort of state that produced it. And you will find\nthat sort of state described in the beginning of the fourth book of the\nlaws of Plato; as founded, for one thing, on the conviction that of all\nthe evils that can happen to a state, quantity of money is the greatest!\n[Greek: meizon kakon, os epos eipein, polei ouden an gignoito, eis\ngennaion kai dikaion ethon ktesin], \"for, to speak shortly, no greater\nevil, matching each against each, can possibly happen to a city, as\nadverse to its forming just or generous character,\" than its being full\nof silver and gold.\n\n139. Of course, the Greek notion may be wrong, and ours right,\nonly--[Greek: os epos eipein]--you can have Greek sculpture only on that\nGreek theory: shortly expressed by the words put into the mouth of\nPoverty herself, in the Plutus of Aristophanes \"[Greek: Tou ploutou\nparecho beltionas andras, kai ten gnomen, kai ten idean],\" \"I deliver to\nyou better men than the God of Money can, both in imagination and\nfeature.\" So on the other hand, this ichthyoid, reptilian, or\nmono-chondyloid ideal of the self-made man can only be reached,\nuniversally, by a nation which holds that poverty, either of purse or\nspirit,--but especially the spiritual character of being [Greek: ptochoi\nto pneumati], is the lowest of degradations; and which believes that the\ndesire of wealth is the first of manly and moral sentiments. As I have\nbeen able to get the popular ideal represented by its own living art, so\nI can give you this popular faith in its own living words; but in words\nmeant seriously and not at all as caricature, from one of our leading\njournals, professedly aesthetic also in its very name, the _Spectator_,\nof August 6th, 1870.\n\n[Illustration: PLATE IX.--APOLLO CHRYSOCOMES OF CLAZOMENAE.]\n\n\"Mr. Ruskin's plan,\" it says, \"would make England poor, in order that\nshe might be cultivated, and refined and artistic. A wilder proposal was\nnever broached by a man of ability; and it might be regarded as a proof\nthat the assiduous study of art emasculates the intellect, _and even the\nmoral sense_. Such a theory almost warrants the contempt with which art\nis often regarded by essentially intellectual natures, like Proudhon\"\n(sic). \"Art is noble as the flower of life, and the creations of a\nTitian are a great heritage of the race; but if England could secure\nhigh art and Venetian glory of colour only by the sacrifice of her\nmanufacturing supremacy, and _by the acceptance of national poverty_,\nthen the pursuit of such artistic achievements would imply that we had\nceased to possess natures of manly strength, _or to know the meaning of\nmoral aims_. If we must choose between a Titian and a Lancashire cotton\nmill, then, in the name of manhood and of morality, give us the cotton\nmill. Only the dilettantism of the studio; that dilettantism which\nloosens the moral no less than the intellectual fibre, and which is as\nfatal to rectitude of action as to correctness of reasoning power, would\nmake a different choice.\"\n\nYou see also, by this interesting and most memorable passage, how\ncompletely the question is admitted to be one of ethics--the only real\npoint at issue being, whether this face or that is developed on the\ntruer moral principle.\n\n140. I assume, however, for the present, that this Apolline type is the\nkind of form you wish to reach and to represent. And now observe,\ninstantly, the whole question of manner of imitation is altered for us.\nThe fins of the fish, the plumes of the swan, and the flowing of the\nSun-God's hair are all represented by incisions--but the incisions do\nsufficiently represent the fin and feather,--they _in_sufficiently\nrepresent the hair. If I chose, with a little more care and labor, I\ncould absolutely get the surface of the scales and spines of the fish,\nand the expression of its mouth; but no quantity of labor would obtain\nthe real surface of a tress of Apollo's hair, and the full expression of\nhis mouth. So that we are compelled at once to call the imagination to\nhelp us, and say to it, _You_ know what the Apollo Chrysocomes must be\nlike; finish all this for yourself. Now, the law under which imagination\nworks, is just that of other good workers. \"You must give me clear\norders; show me what I have to do, and where I am to begin, and let me\nalone.\" And the orders can be given, quite clearly, up to a certain\npoint, in form; but they cannot be given clearly in color, now that the\nsubject is subtle. All beauty of this high kind depends on harmony; let\nbut the slightest discord come into it, and the finer the thing is, the\nmore fatal will be the flaw. Now, on a flat surface, I can command my\ncolor to be precisely what and where I mean it to be; on a round one I\ncannot. For all harmony depends, first, on the fixed proportion of the\ncolor of the light to that of the relative shadow; and therefore if I\nfasten my color, I must fasten my shade. But on a round surface the\nshadow changes at every hour of the day; and therefore all coloring\nwhich is expressive of form, is impossible; and if the form is fine,\n(and here there is nothing but what is fine,) you may bid farewell to\ncolor.\n\n141. Farewell to color; that is to say, if the thing is to be seen\ndistinctly, and you have only wise people to show it to; but if it is to\nbe seen indistinctly, at a distance, color may become explanatory; and\nif you have simple people to show it to, color may be necessary to\nexcite _their_ imaginations, though not to excite yours. And the art is\ngreat always by meeting its conditions in the straightest way; and if it\nis to please a multitude of innocent and bluntly-minded persons, must\nexpress itself in the terms that will touch them; else it is not good.\nAnd I have to trace for you through the history of the past, and\npossibilities of the future, the expedients used by great sculptors to\nobtain clearness, impressiveness, or splendor; and the manner of their\nappeal to the people, under various light and shadow, and with reference\nto different degrees of public intelligence: such investigation\nresolving itself again and again, as we proceed, into questions\nabsolutely ethical; as, for instance, whether color is to be bright or\ndull,--that is to say, for a populace cheerful or heartless;--whether it\nis to be delicate or strong,--that is to say, for a populace attentive\nor careless; whether it is to be a background like the sky, for a\nprocession of young men and maidens, because your populace revere\nlife--or the shadow of the vault behind a corpse stained with drops of\nblackened blood, for a populace taught to worship Death. Every critical\ndetermination of rightness depends on the obedience to some ethic law,\nby the most rational and, therefore, simplest means. And you see how it\ndepends most, of all things, on whether you are working for chosen\npersons, or for the mob; for the joy of the boudoir, or of the Borgo.\nAnd if for the mob, whether the mob of Olympia, or of St. Antoine.\nPhidias, showing his Jupiter for the first time, hides behind the temple\ndoor to listen, resolved afterwards \"[Greek: rhythmizein to agalma pros\nto tois pleistois dokoun, ou gar hegeito mikran einai symboulen demou\ntosoutou],\" and truly, as your people is, in judgment, and in multitude,\nso must your sculpture be, in glory. An elementary principle which has\nbeen too long out of mind.\n\n142. I leave you to consider it, since, for some time, we shall not\nagain be able to take up the inquiries to which it leads. But,\nultimately, I do not doubt that you will rest satisfied in these\nfollowing conclusions:\n\n1. Not only sculpture, but all the other fine arts, must be for the\npeople.\n\n2. They must be didactic to the people, and that as their chief end. The\nstructural arts, didactic in their manner; the graphic arts, in their\nmatter also.\n\n3. And chiefly the great representative and imaginative arts--that is to\nsay, the drama and sculpture--are to teach what is noble in past\nhistory, and lovely in existing human and organic life.\n\n4. And the test of right manner of execution in these arts, is that\nthey strike, in the most emphatic manner, the rank of popular minds\nto which they are addressed.\n\n5. And the test of utmost fineness in execution in these arts, is that\nthey make themselves be forgotten in what they represent; and so fulfil\nthe words of their greatest Master,\n\n    \"THE BEST, IN THIS KIND, ARE BUT SHADOWS.\"\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[123] See date of delivery of Lecture. The picture was of a peasant girl\nof eleven or twelve years old, peeling carrots by a cottage fire.\n\n[124] In Durer's \"Melencholia.\"\n\n[125] Turner's, in the Hakewill series.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE V.\n\nSTRUCTURE.\n\n_December, 1870._\n\n\n143. On previous occasions of addressing you, I have endeavoured to show\nyou, first, how sculpture is distinguished from other arts; then its\nproper subjects, then its proper method in the realization of these\nsubjects. To-day, we must, in the fourth place, consider the means at\nits command for the accomplishment of these ends; the nature of its\nmaterials; and the mechanical or other difficulties of their treatment.\n\nAnd however doubtful we may have remained, as to the justice of Greek\nideals, or propriety of Greek methods of representing them, we may be\ncertain that the example of the Greeks will be instructive in all\npractical matters relating to this great art, peculiarly their own. I\nthink even the evidence I have already laid before you is enough to\nconvince you, that it was by rightness and reality, not by idealism or\ndelightfulness only, that their minds were finally guided; and I am sure\nthat, before closing the present course, I shall be able so far to\ncomplete that evidence, as to prove to you that the commonly received\nnotions of classic art are, not only unfounded, but even in many\nrespects, directly contrary to the truth. You are constantly told that\nGreece idealized whatever she contemplated. She did the exact contrary:\nshe realized and verified it. You are constantly told she sought only\nthe beautiful. She sought, indeed, with all her heart; but she found,\nbecause she never doubted that the search was to be consistent with\npropriety and common sense. And the first thing you will always discern\nin Greek work is the first which you _ought_ to discern in all work;\nnamely, that the object of it has been rational, and has been obtained\nby simple and unostentatious means.\n\n144. \"That the object of the work has been rational!\" Consider how much\nthat implies. That it should be by all means seen to have been\ndetermined upon, and carried through, with sense and discretion; these\nbeing gifts of intellect far more precious than any knowledge of\nmathematics, or of the mechanical resources of art. Therefore, also,\nthat it should be a modest and temperate work, a structure fitted to the\nactual state of men; proportioned to their actual size, as animals,--to\ntheir average strength,--to their true necessities,--and to the degree\nof easy command they have over the forces and substances of nature.\n\n145. You see how much this law excludes! All that is fondly magnificent,\ninsolently ambitious, or vainly difficult. There is, indeed, such a\nthing as Magnanimity in design, but never unless it be joined also with\nmodesty and _Equ_animity. Nothing extravagant, monstrous, strained, or\nsingular, can be structurally beautiful. No towers of Babel envious of\nthe skies; no pyramids in mimicry of the mountains of the earth; no\nstreets that are a weariness to traverse, nor temples that make pigmies\nof the worshippers.\n\nIt is one of the primal merits and decencies of Greek work that it was,\non the whole, singularly small in scale, and wholly within reach of\nsight, to its finest details. And, indeed, the best buildings that I\nknow are thus modest; and some of the best are minute jewel cases for\nsweet sculpture. The Parthenon would hardly attract notice, if it were\nset by the Charing Cross Railway Station: the Church of the Miracoli, at\nVenice, the Chapel of the Rose, at Lucca, and the Chapel of the Thorn,\nat Pisa, would not, I suppose, all three together, fill the tenth part,\ncube, of a transept of the Crystal Palace. And they are better so.\n\n146. In the chapter on Power in the \"Seven Lamps of Architecture,\" I\nhave stated what seems, at first, the reverse of what I am saying now;\nnamely, that it is better to have one grand building than any number of\nmean ones. And that is true, but you cannot command grandeur by size\ntill you can command grace in minuteness; and least of all, remember,\nwill you so command it to-day, when magnitude has become the chief\nexponent of folly and misery, co-ordinate in the fraternal enormities of\nthe Factory and Poorhouse,--the Barracks and Hospital. And the final law\nin this matter is, that if you require edifices only for the grace and\nhealth of mankind, and build them without pretence and without\nchicanery, they will be sublime on a modest scale, and lovely with\nlittle decoration.\n\n147. From these principles of simplicity and temperance, two very\nseverely fixed laws of construction follow; namely, first, that our\nstructure, to be beautiful, must be produced with tools of men; and\nsecondly, that it must be composed of natural substances. First, I say,\nproduced with tools of men. All fine art requires the application of the\nwhole strength and subtlety of the body, so that such art is not\npossible to any sickly person, but involves the action and force of a\nstrong man's arm from the shoulder, as well as the delicatest touch of\nhis finger: and it is the evidence that this full and fine strength has\nbeen spent on it which makes the art executively noble; so that no\ninstrument must be used, habitually, which is either too heavy to be\ndelicately restrained, or too small and weak to transmit a vigorous\nimpulse; much less any mechanical aid, such as would render the\nsensibility of the fingers ineffectual.[126]\n\n148. Of course, any kind of work in glass, or in metal, on a large\nscale, involves some painful endurance of heat; and working in clay,\nsome habitual endurance of cold; but the point beyond which the effort\nmust not be carried is marked by loss of power of manipulation. As long\nas the eyes and fingers have complete command of the material (as a\nglass blower has, for instance, in doing fine ornamental work)--the law\nis not violated; but all our great engine and furnace work, in\ngun-making and the like, is degrading to the intellect; and no nation\ncan long persist in it without losing many of its human faculties. Nay,\neven the use of machinery, other than the common rope and pully, for the\nlifting of weights, is degrading to architecture; the invention of\nexpedients for the raising of enormous stones has always been a\ncharacteristic of partly savage or corrupted races. A block of marble\nnot larger than a cart with a couple of oxen could carry, and a\ncross-beam, with a couple of pulleys, raise, is as large as should\ngenerally be used in any building. The employment of large masses is\nsure to lead to vulgar exhibitions of geometrical arrangement,[127] and\nto draw away the attention from the sculpture. In general, rocks\nnaturally break into such pieces as the human beings that have to build\nwith them can easily lift, and no larger should be sought for.\n\n149. In this respect, and in many other subtle ways, the law that the\nwork is to be with tools of men is connected with the farther condition\nof its modesty, that it is to be wrought in substance provided by\nNature, and to have a faithful respect to all the essential qualities of\nsuch substance.\n\nAnd here I must ask your attention to the idea, and, more than\nidea,--the fact, involved in that infinitely misused term,\n\"Providentia,\" when applied to the Divine Power. In its truest sense and\nscholarly use, it is a human virtue, [Greek: Prometheia]; the personal\ntype of it is in Prometheus, and all the first power of [Greek: techne],\nis from him, as compared to the weakness of days when men without\nforesight \"[Greek: ephyron eike panta].\" But, so far as we use the word\n\"Providence\" as an attribute of the Maker and Giver of all things, it\ndoes not mean that in a shipwreck He takes care of the passengers who\nare to be saved and takes none of those who are to be drowned; but it\n_does_ mean that every race of creatures is born into the world under\ncircumstances of approximate adaptation to its necessities; and, beyond\nall others, the ingenious and observant race of man is surrounded with\nelements naturally good for his food, pleasant to his sight, and\nsuitable for the subjects of his ingenuity;--the stone, metal, and clay\nof the earth he walks upon lending themselves at once to his hand, for\nall manner of workmanship.\n\n150. Thus, his truest respect for the law of the entire creation is\nshown by his making the most of what he can get most easily; and there\nis no virtue of art, nor application of common sense, more sacredly\nnecessary than this respect to the beauty of natural substance, and the\nease of local use; neither are there any other precepts of construction\nso vital as these--that you show all the strength of your material,\ntempt none of its weaknesses, and do with it only what can be simply and\npermanently done.\n\n151. Thus, all good building will be with rocks, or pebbles, or burnt\nclay, but with no artificial compound; all good painting, with common\noils and pigments on common canvas, paper, plaster, or wood,--admitting,\nsometimes for precious work, precious things, but all applied in a\nsimple and visible way. The highest imitative art should not, indeed, at\nfirst sight, call attention to the means of it; but even that, at\nlength, should do so distinctly, and provoke the observer to take\npleasure in seeing how completely the workman is master of the\nparticular material he has used, and how beautiful and desirable a\nsubstance it was, for work of that kind. In oil painting its unctious\nquality is to be delighted in; in fresco, its chalky quality; in glass,\nits transparency; in wood, its grain; in marble, its softness; in\nporphyry, its hardness; in iron, its toughness. In a flint country, one\nshould feel the delightfulness of having flints to pick up, and fasten\ntogether into rugged walls. In a marble country one should be always\nmore and more astonished at the exquisite colour and structure of\nmarble; in a slate country one should feel as if every rock cleft itself\nonly for the sake of being built with conveniently.\n\n[Illustration: PLATE X.--MARBLE MASONRY IN THE DUOMO OF VERONA.]\n\n152. Now, for sculpture, there are, briefly, two materials--Clay, and\nStone; for glass is only a clay that gets clear and brittle as it cools,\nand metal a clay that gets opaque and tough as it cools. Indeed, the\ntrue use of gold in this world is only as a very pretty and very ductile\nclay, which you can spread as flat as you like, spin as fine as you\nlike, and which will neither crack, nor tarnish.\n\nAll the arts of sculpture in clay may be summed up under the word\n\"Plastic,\" and all of those in stone, under the word \"Glyptic.\"\n\n153. Sculpture in clay will accordingly include all cast brick-work,\npottery, and tile-work[128]--a somewhat important branch of human skill.\nNext to the potter's work, you have all the arts in porcelain, glass,\nenamel, and metal; everything, that is to say, playful and familiar in\ndesign, much of what is most felicitously inventive, and, in bronze or\ngold, most precious and permanent.\n\n154. Sculpture in stone, whether granite, gem, or marble, while we\naccurately use the general term \"glyptic\" for it, may be thought of\nwith, perhaps, the most clear force under the English word \"engraving.\"\nFor, from the mere angular incision which the Greek consecrated in the\ntriglyphs of his greatest order of architecture, grow forth all the arts\nof bas-relief, and methods of localized groups of sculpture connected\nwith each other and with architecture: as, in another direction, the\narts of engraving and wood-cutting themselves.\n\n155. Over all this vast field of human skill the laws which I have\nenunciated to you rule with inevitable authority, embracing the\ngreatest, and consenting to the humblest, exertion; strong to repress\nthe ambition of nations, if fantastic and vain, but gentle to approve\nthe efforts of children, made in accordance with the visible intention\nof the Maker of all flesh, and the Giver of all Intelligence. These\nlaws, therefore, I now repeat, and beg of you to observe them as\nirrefragable.\n\n1. That the work is to be with tools of men.\n\n2. That it is to be in natural materials.\n\n3. That it is to exhibit the virtues of those materials, and aim at no\nquality inconsistent with them.\n\n4. That its temper is to be quiet and gentle, in harmony with common\nneeds, and in consent to common intelligence.\n\nWe will now observe the bearing of these laws on the elementary\nconditions of the art at present under discussion.\n\n156. There is, first, work in baked clay, which contracts as it dries,\nand is very easily frangible. Then you must put no work into it\nrequiring niceness in dimension, nor any so elaborate that it would be a\ngreat loss if it were broken, but as the clay yields at once to the\nhand, and the sculptor can do anything with it he likes, it is a\nmaterial for him to sketch with and play with,--to record his fancies\nin, before they escape him--and to express roughly, for people who can\nenjoy such sketches, what he has not time to complete in marble. The\nclay, being ductile, lends itself to all softness of line; being easily\nfrangible, it would be ridiculous to give it sharp edges, so that a\nblunt and massive rendering of graceful gesture will be its natural\nfunction; but as it can be pinched, or pulled, or thrust in a moment\ninto projection which it would take hours of chiselling to get in stone,\nit will also properly be used for all fantastic and grotesque form, not\ninvolving sharp edges. Therefore, what is true of chalk and charcoal,\nfor painters, is equally true of clay, for sculptors; they are all most\nprecious materials for true masters, but tempt the false ones into fatal\nlicense; and to judge rightly of terra-cotta work is a far higher reach\nof skill in sculpture-criticism than to distinguish the merits of a\nfinished statue.\n\n157. We have, secondly, work in bronze, iron, gold, and other metals; in\nwhich the laws of structure are still more definite.\n\nAll kinds of twisted and wreathen work on every scale become delightful\nwhen wrought in ductile or tenacious metal, but metal which is to be\n_hammered_ into form separates itself into two great divisions--solid,\nand flat.\n\n[Illustration: PLATE XI.--THE FIRST ELEMENTS OF SCULPTURE.\n\nIncised Outline and Opened Space.]\n\n(A.) In solid metal work, _i. e._, metal cast thick enough to resist\nbending, whether it be hollow or not, violent and various projection may\nbe admitted, which would be offensive in marble; but no sharp edges,\nbecause it is difficult to produce them with the hammer. But since the\npermanence of the material justifies exquisiteness of workmanship,\nwhatever delicate ornamentation can be wrought with rounded surfaces may\nbe advisedly introduced; and since the colour of bronze or any other\nmetal is not so pleasantly representative of flesh as that of marble, a\nwise sculptor will depend less on flesh contour, and more on picturesque\naccessories, which, though they would be vulgar if attempted in stone,\nare rightly entertaining in bronze or silver. Verrochio's statue of\nColleone at Venice, Cellini's Perseus at Florence, and Ghiberti's gates\nat Florence, are models of bronze treatment.\n\n(B.) When metal is beaten thin, it becomes what is technically called\n\"plate,\" (the _flattened_ thing) and may be treated advisably in two\nways; one, by beating it out into bosses, the other by cutting it into\nstrips and ramifications. The vast schools of goldsmith's work and of\niron decoration, founded on these two principles, have had the most\npowerful influences over general taste in all ages and countries. One of\nthe simplest and most interesting elementary examples of the treatment\nof flat metal by cutting is the common branched iron bar, Fig. 8, used\nto close small apertures in countries possessing any good primitive\nstyle of iron-work, formed by alternate cuts on its sides, and the\nbending down of the several portions. The ordinary domestic window\nbalcony of Verona is formed by mere ribands of iron, bent into curves as\nstudiously refined as those of a Greek vase, and decorated merely by\ntheir own terminations in spiral volutes.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 8.]\n\nAll cast work in metal, unfinished by hand, is inadmissible in any\nschool of living art, since it cannot possess the perfection of form due\nto a permanent substance; and the continual sight of it is destructive\nof the faculty of taste: but metal stamped with precision, as in coins,\nis to sculpture what engraving is to painting.\n\n158. Thirdly. Stone-sculpture divides itself into three schools: one in\nvery hard material; one in very soft, and one in that of centrally\nuseful consistence.\n\nA. The virtue of work in hard material is the expression of form in\nshallow relief, or in broad contours; deep cutting in hard material is\ninadmissible, and the art, at once pompous and trivial, of gem\nengraving, has been in the last degree destructive of the honour and\nservice of sculpture.\n\nB. The virtue of work in soft material is deep cutting, with studiously\ngraceful disposition of the masses of light and shade. The greater\nnumber of flamboyant churches of France are cut out of an adhesive\nchalk; and the fantasy of their latest decoration was, in great part,\ninduced by the facility of obtaining contrast of black space, undercut,\nwith white tracery easily left in sweeping and interwoven rods--the\nlavish use of wood in domestic architecture materially increasing the\nhabit of delight in branched complexity of line. These points, however,\nI must reserve for illustration in my lectures on architecture. To-day,\nI shall limit myself to the illustration of elementary sculptural\nstructure in the best material;--that is to say, in crystalline marble,\nneither soft enough to encourage the caprice of the workman, nor hard\nenough to resist his will.\n\n159. C. By the true \"Providence\" of Nature, the rock which is thus\nsubmissive has been in some places stained with the fairest colours, and\nin others blanched into the fairest absence of colour, that can be found\nto give harmony to inlaying, or dignity to form. The possession by the\nGreeks of their [Greek: leukos lithos] was indeed the first circumstance\nregulating the development of their art; it enabled them at once to\nexpress their passion for light by executing the faces, hands, and feet\nof their dark wooden statues in white marble, so that what we look upon\nonly with pleasure for fineness of texture was to them an imitation of\nthe luminous body of the deity shining from behind its dark robes; and\nivory afterwards is employed in their best statues for its yet more soft\nand flesh-like brightness, receptive also of the most delicate\ncolour--(therefore to this day the favourite ground of miniature\npainters). In like manner, the existence of quarries of peach-coloured\nmarble within twelve miles of Verona, and of white marble and green\nserpentine between Pisa and Genoa, defined the manner both of sculpture\nand architecture for all the Gothic buildings of Italy. No subtlety of\neducation could have formed a high school of art without these\nmaterials.\n\n160. Next to the colour, the fineness of substance which will take a\nperfectly sharp edge, is essential; and this not merely to admit fine\ndelineation in the sculpture itself, but to secure a delightful\nprecision in placing the blocks of which it is composed. For the\npossession of too fine marble, as far as regards the work itself, is a\ntemptation instead of an advantage to an inferior sculptor; and the\nabuse of the facility of undercutting, especially of undercutting so as\nto leave profiles defined by an edge against shadow, is one of the chief\ncauses of decline of style in such encrusted bas-reliefs as those of the\nCertosa of Pavia and its contemporary monuments. But no undue temptation\never exists as to the fineness of block fitting; nothing contributes to\ngive so pure and healthy a tone to sculpture as the attention of the\nbuilder to the jointing of his stones; and his having both the power to\nmake them fit so perfectly as not to admit of the slightest portion of\ncement showing externally, and the skill to insure, if needful, and to\nsuggest always, their stability in cementless construction. Plate X.\nrepresents a piece of entirely fine Lombardic building, the central\nportion of the arch in the Duomo of Verona, which corresponds to that of\nthe porch of San Zenone, represented in Plate I. In both these pieces of\nbuilding, the only line that traces the architrave round the arch, is\nthat of the masonry joint; yet this line is drawn with extremest\nsubtlety, with intention of delighting the eye by its relation of varied\ncurvature to the arch itself; and it is just as much considered as the\nfinest pen-line of a Raphael drawing. Every joint of the stone is used,\nin like manner, as a thin black line, which the slightest sign of cement\nwould spoil like a blot. And so proud is the builder of his fine\njointing, and so fearless of any distortion or strain spoiling the\nadjustment afterwards, that in one place he runs his joint quite\ngratuitously through a bas-relief, and gives the keystone its only sign\nof pre-eminence by the minute inlaying of the head of the Lamb, into the\nstone of the course above.\n\n161. Proceeding from this fine jointing to fine draughtsmanship, you\nhave, in the very outset and earliest stage of sculpture, your flat\nstone surface given you as a sheet of white paper, on which you are\nrequired to produce the utmost effect you can with the simplest means,\ncutting away as little of the stone as may be, to save both time and\ntrouble; and, above all, leaving the block itself, when shaped, as solid\nas you can, that its surface may better resist weather, and the carved\nparts be as much protected as possible by the masses left around them.\n\n162. The first thing to be done is clearly to trace the outline of\nsubject with an incision approximating in section to that of the furrow\nof a plough, only more equal-sided. A fine sculptor strikes it, as his\nchisel leans, freely, on marble; an Egyptian, in hard rock, cuts it\nsharp, as in cuneiform inscriptions. In any case, you have a result\nsomewhat like the upper figure, Plate XI., in which I show you the most\nelementary indication of form possible, by cutting the outline of the\ntypical archaic Greek head with an incision like that of a Greek\ntriglyph, only not so precise in edge or slope, as it is to be modified\nafterwards.\n\n163. Now, the simplest thing we can do next, is to round off the flat\nsurface _within_ the incision, and put what form we can get into the\nfeebler projection of it thus obtained. The Egyptians do this, often\nwith exquisite skill, and then, as I showed you in a former lecture,\ncolour the whole--using the incision as an outline. Such a method of\ntreatment is capable of good service in representing, at little cost of\npains, subjects in distant effect, and common, or merely picturesque,\nsubjects even near. To show you what it is capable of, and what\ncoloured sculpture would be in its rudest type, I have prepared the\ncoloured relief of the John Dory[129] as a natural history drawing for\ndistant effect. You know, also, that I meant him to be ugly--as ugly as\nany creature can well be. In time, I hope to show you prettier\nthings--peacocks and kingfishers,--butterflies and flowers, on grounds\nof gold, and the like, as they were in Byzantine work. I shall expect\nyou, in right use of your aesthetic faculties, to like those better than\nwhat I show you to-day. But it is now a question of method only; and if\nyou will look, after the lecture, first at the mere white relief, and\nthen see how much may be gained by a few dashes of colour, such as a\npractised workman could lay in a quarter of an hour,--the whole forming,\nif well done, almost a deceptive image--you will, at least, have the\nrange of power in Egyptian sculpture clearly expressed to you.\n\n164. But for fine sculpture, we must advance by far other methods. If we\ncarve the subject with real delicacy, the cast shadow of the incision\nwill interfere with its outline, so that, for representation of\nbeautiful things, you must clear away the ground about it, at all events\nfor a little distance. As the law of work is to use the least pains\npossible, you clear it only just as far back as you need, and then for\nthe sake of order and finish, you give the space a geometrical outline.\nBy taking, in this case, the simplest I can,--a circle,--I can clear the\nhead with little labor in the removal of surface round it; (see the\nlower figure in Plate XI.)\n\n165. Now, these are the first terms of all well-constructed bas-relief.\nThe mass you have to treat consists of a piece of stone, which, however\nyou afterwards carve it, can but, at its most projecting point, reach\nthe level of the external plane surface out of which it was mapped, and\ndefined by a depression round it; that depression being at first a mere\ntrench, then a moat of certain width, of which the outer sloping bank is\nin contact, as a limiting geometrical line, with the laterally salient\nportions of sculpture. This, I repeat, is the primal construction of\ngood bas-relief, implying, first, perfect protection to its surface from\nany transverse blow, and a geometrically limited space to be occupied by\nthe design, into which it shall pleasantly (and as you shall ultimately\nsee, ingeniously,) contract itself: implying, secondly, a determined\ndepth of projection, which it shall rarely reach, and never exceed: and\nimplying, finally, the production of the whole piece with the least\npossible labor of chisel and loss of stone.\n\n166. And these, which are the first, are very nearly the last\nconstructive laws of sculpture. You will be surprised to find how much\nthey include, and how much of minor propriety in treatment their\nobservance involves.\n\nIn a very interesting essay on the architecture of the Parthenon, by the\nprofessor of architecture of the Ecole Polytechnique, M. Emile Boutmy,\nyou will find it noticed that the Greeks do not usually weaken, by\ncarving, the constructive masses of their building; but put their chief\nsculpture in the empty spaces between the triglyphs, or beneath the\nroof. This is true; but in so doing, they merely build their panel\ninstead of carving it; they accept no less than the Goths, the laws of\nrecess and limitation, as being vital to the safety and dignity of their\ndesign; and their noblest recumbent statues are, constructively, the\nfillings of the acute extremity of a panel in the form of an obtusely\nsummitted triangle.\n\n167. In gradual descent from that severest type, you will find that an\nimmense quantity of sculpture of all times and styles may be generally\nembraced under the notion of a mass hewn out of, or, at least, placed\nin, a panel or recess, deepening, it may be, into a niche; the sculpture\nbeing always designed with reference to its position in such recess;\nand, therefore, to the effect of the building out of which the recess is\nhewn.\n\nBut, for the sake of simplifying our inquiry, I will at first suppose no\nsurrounding protective ledge to exist, and that the area of stone we\nhave to deal with is simply a flat slab, extant from a flat surface\ndepressed all round it.\n\n168. A _flat_ slab, observe. The flatness of surface is essential to the\nproblem of bas-relief. The lateral limit of the panel may, or may not,\nbe required; but the vertical limit of surface _must_ be expressed; and\nthe art of bas-relief is to give the effect of true form on that\ncondition. For observe, if nothing more were needed than to make first a\ncast of a solid form, then cut it in half, and apply the half of it to\nthe flat surface;--if, for instance, to carve a bas-relief of an apple,\nall I had to do was to cut my sculpture of the whole apple in half, and\npin it to the wall, any ordinary trained sculptor, or even a mechanical\nworkman, could produce bas-relief; but the business is to carve a\n_round_ thing out of _flat_ thing; to carve an apple out of a\nbiscuit!--to conquer, as a subtle Florentine has here conquered,[130]\nhis marble, so as not only to get motion into what is most rigidly\nfixed, but to get boundlessness into what is most narrowly bounded; and\ncarve Madonna and Child, rolling clouds, flying angels, and space of\nheavenly air behind all, out of a film of stone not the third of an inch\nthick where it is thickest.\n\n169. Carried, however, to such a degree of subtlety as this, and with so\nambitious and extravagant aim, bas-relief becomes a tour-de-force; and,\nyou know, I have just told you all tours-de-force are wrong. The true\nlaw of bas-relief is to begin with a depth of incision proportioned\njustly to the distance of the observer and the character of the subject,\nand out of that rationally determined depth, neither increased for\nostentation of effect, nor diminished for ostentation of skill, to do\nthe utmost that will be easily visible to an observer, supposing him to\ngive an average human amount of attention, but not to peer into, or\ncritically scrutinize the work.\n\n170. I cannot arrest you to-day by the statement of any of the laws of\nsight and distance which determine the proper depth of bas-relief.\nSuppose that depth fixed; then observe what a pretty problem, or,\nrather, continually varying cluster of problems, will be offered to us.\nYou might, at first, imagine that, given what we may call our scale of\nsolidity, or scale of depth, the diminution from nature would be in\nregular proportion, as for instance, if the real depth of your subject\nbe, suppose a foot, and the depth of your bas-relief an inch, then the\nparts of the real subject which were six inches round the side of it\nwould be carved, you might imagine, at the depth of half-an-inch, and so\nthe whole thing mechanically reduced to scale. But not a bit of it. Here\nis a Greek bas-relief of a chariot with two horses (upper figure, Plate\nXXI). Your whole subject has therefore the depth of two horses side by\nside, say six or eight feet. Your bas-relief has, on the scale,[131] say\nthe depth of the third of an inch. Now, if you gave only the sixth of an\ninch for the depth of the off horse, and, dividing him again, only the\ntwelfth of an inch for that of each foreleg, you would make him look a\nmile away from the other, and his own forelegs a mile apart. Actually,\nthe Greek has made the _near leg of the off horse project much beyond\nthe off leg of the near horse_; and has put nearly the whole depth and\npower of his relief into the breast of the off horse, while for the\nwhole distance from the head of the nearest to the neck of the other, he\nhas allowed himself only a shallow line; knowing that, if he deepened\nthat, he would give the nearest horse the look of having a thick nose;\nwhereas, by keeping that line down, he has not only made the head itself\nmore delicate, but detached it from the other by giving no cast shadow,\nand left the shadow below to serve for thickness of breast, cutting it\nas sharp down as he possibly can, to make it bolder.\n\n171. Here is a fine piece of business we have got into!--even supposing\nthat all this selection and adaptation were to be contrived under\nconstant laws, and related only to the expression of given forms. But\nthe Greek sculptor, all this while, is not only debating and deciding\nhow to show what he wants, but, much more, debating and deciding what,\nas he can't show everything, he will choose to show at all. Thus, being\nhimself interested, and supposing that you will be, in the manner of\nthe driving, he takes great pains to carve the reins, to show you where\nthey are knotted, and how they are fastened round the driver's waist\n(you recollect how Hippolytus was lost by doing that), but he does not\ncare the least bit about the chariot, and having rather more geometry\nthan he likes in the cross and circle of one wheel of it, entirely omits\nthe other!\n\n172. I think you must see by this time that the sculptor's is not quite\na trade which you can teach like brickmaking; nor its produce an article\nof which you can supply any quantity \"demanded\" for the next railroad\nwaiting-room. It may perhaps, indeed, seem to you that, in the\ndifficulties thus presented by it, bas-relief involves more direct\nexertion of intellect than finished solid sculpture. It is not so,\nhowever. The questions involved by bas-relief are of a more curious and\namusing kind, requiring great variety of expedients; though none except\nsuch as a true workmanly instinct delights in inventing and invents\neasily; but design in solid sculpture involves considerations of weight\nin mass, of balance, of perspective and opposition, in projecting forms,\nand of restraint for those which must not project, such as none but the\ngreatest masters have ever completely solved; and they, not always; the\ndifficulty of arranging the composition so as to be agreeable from\npoints of view on all sides of it, being, itself, arduous enough.\n\n173. Thus far, I have been speaking only of the laws of structure\nrelating to the projection of the mass which becomes itself the\nsculpture. Another most interesting group of constructive laws governs\nits relation to the line that contains or defines it.\n\nIn your Standard Series I have placed a photograph of the south transept\nof Rouen Cathedral. Strictly speaking, all standards of Gothic are of\nthe thirteenth century; but, in the fourteenth, certain qualities of\nrichness are obtained by the diminution of restraint; out of which we\nmust choose what is best in their kinds. The pedestals of the statues\nwhich once occupied the lateral recesses are, as you see, covered with\ngroups of figures, enclosed each in a quatrefoil panel; the spaces\nbetween this panel and the enclosing square being filled with sculptures\nof animals.\n\nYou cannot anywhere find a more lovely piece of fancy, or more\nillustrative of the quantity of result that may be obtained with low and\nsimple chiselling. The figures are all perfectly simple in drapery, the\nstory told by lines of action only in the main group, no accessories\nbeing admitted. There is no undercutting anywhere, nor exhibition of\ntechnical skill, but the fondest and tenderest appliance of it; and one\nof the principal charms of the whole is the adaptation of every subject\nto its quaint limit. The tale must be told within the four petals of the\nquatrefoil, and the wildest and playfullest beasts must never come out\nof their narrow corners. The attention with which spaces of this kind\nare filled by the Gothic designers is not merely a beautiful compliance\nwith architectural requirements, but a definite assertion of their\ndelight in the restraint of law; for, in illuminating books, although,\nif they chose it, they might have designed floral ornaments, as we now\nusually do, rambling loosely over the leaves, and although, in later\nworks, such license is often taken by them, in all books of the fine\ntime the wandering tendrils are enclosed by limits approximately\nrectilinear, and in gracefullest branching often detach themselves from\nthe right line only by curvature of extreme severity.\n\n174 Since the darkness and extent of shadow by which the sculpture is\nrelieved necessarily vary with the depth of the recess, there arise a\nseries of problems, in deciding which the wholesome desire for emphasis\nby means of shadow is too often exaggerated by the ambition of the\nsculptor to show his skill in undercutting. The extreme of vulgarity is\nusually reached when the entire bas-relief is cut hollow underneath, as\nin much Indian and Chinese work, so as to relieve its forms against an\nabsolute darkness; but no formal law can ever be given; for exactly the\nsame thing may be beautifully done for a wise purpose, by one person,\nwhich is basely done, and to no purpose, or to a bad one, by another.\nThus, the desire for emphasis itself may be the craving of a deadened\nimagination, or the passion of a vigorous one; and relief against\nshadow may be sought by one man only for sensation, and by another for\nintelligibility. John of Pisa undercuts fiercely, in order to bring out\nthe vigour of life which no level contour could render; the Lombardi of\nVenice undercut delicately, in order to obtain beautiful lines, and\nedges of faultless precision; but the base Indian craftsmen undercut\nonly that people may wonder how the chiselling was done through the\nholes, or that they may see every monster white against black.\n\n175. Yet, here again we are met by another necessity for discrimination.\nThere may be a true delight in the inlaying of white on dark, as there\nis a true delight in vigorous rounding. Nevertheless, the general law is\nalways, that, the lighter the incisions, and the broader the surface,\nthe grander, caeteris paribus, will be the work. Of the structural terms\nof that work you now know enough to understand that the schools of good\nsculpture, considered in relation to projection, divide themselves into\nfour entirely distinct groups:--\n\n     1st. Flat Relief, in which the surface is, in many places,\n     absolutely flat; and the expression depends greatly on the\n     lines of its outer contour, and on fine incisions within\n     them.\n\n     2nd. Round Relief, in which, as in the best coins, the\n     sculptured mass projects so as to be capable of complete\n     modulation into form, but is not anywhere undercut. The\n     formation of a coin by the blow of a die necessitates, of\n     course, the severest obedience to this law.\n\n     3rd. Edged Relief. Undercutting admitted, so as to throw out\n     the forms against a background of shadow.\n\n     4th. Full Relief. The statue completely solid in form, and\n     unreduced in retreating depth of it, yet connected locally\n     with some definite part of the building, so as to be still\n     dependent on the shadow of its background and direction of\n     protective line.\n\n176. Let me recommend you at once to take what pains may be needful to\nenable you to distinguish these four kinds of sculpture, for the\ndistinctions between them are not founded on mere differences in\ngradation of depth. They are truly four species, or orders, of\nsculpture, separated from each other by determined characters. I have\nused, you may have noted, hitherto in my Lectures, the word \"bas-relief\"\nalmost indiscriminately for all, because the degree of lowness or\nhighness of relief is not the question, but the _method_ of relief.\nObserve again, therefore--\n\nA. If a portion of the surface is absolutely flat, you have the first\norder--Flat Relief.\n\nB. If every portion of the surface is rounded, but none undercut, you\nhave Round Relief--essentially that of seals and coins.\n\nC. If any part of the edges be undercut, but the general projection of\nsolid form reduced, you have what I think you may conveniently call\nFoliate Relief,--the parts of the design overlapping each other in\nplaces, like edges of leaves.\n\nD. If the undercutting is bold and deep, and the projection of solid\nform unreduced, you have full relief.\n\nLearn these four names at once by heart:--\n\n    Flat Relief.\n    Round Relief.\n    Foliate Relief.\n    Full Relief.\n\nAnd whenever you look at any piece of sculpture, determine first to\nwhich of these classes it belongs; and then consider how the sculptor\nhas treated it with reference to the necessary structure--that\nreference, remember, being partly to the mechanical conditions of the\nmaterial, partly to the means of light and shade at his command.\n\n[Illustration: PLATE XII.--BRANCH OF PHILLYREA. DARK PURPLE]\n\n177. To take a single instance. You know, for these many years, I have\nbeen telling our architects with all the force of voice I had in me,\nthat they could design nothing until they could carve natural forms\nrightly. Many imagine that work was easy; but judge for yourselves\nwhether it be or not. In Plate XII., I have drawn, with approximate\naccuracy, a cluster of Phillyrea leaves as they grow. Now, if we wanted\nto cut them in bas-relief, the first thing we should have to consider\nwould be the position of their outline on the marble;--here it is, as\nfar down as the spring of the leaves. But do you suppose that is what an\nordinary sculptor could either lay for his first sketch, or contemplate\nas a limit to be worked down to? Then consider how the interlacing and\nspringing of the leaves can be expressed within this outline. It must be\ndone by leaving such projection in the marble as will take the light in\nthe same proportion as the drawing does;--and a Florentine workman could\ndo it, for close sight, without driving one incision deeper, or raising\na single surface higher, than the eighth of an inch. Indeed, no sculptor\nof the finest time would design such a complex cluster of leaves as\nthis, except for bronze or iron work; they would take simpler contours\nfor marble; but the laws of treatment would, under these conditions,\nremain just as strict: and you may, perhaps, believe me now when I tell\nyou that, in any piece of fine structural sculpture by the great\nmasters, there is more subtlety and noble obedience to lovely laws than\ncould be explained to you if I took twenty lectures to do it in, instead\nof one.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 9.]\n\n178. There remains yet a point of mechanical treatment, on which I have\nnot yet touched at all; nor that the least important,--namely, the\nactual method and style of handling. A great sculptor uses his tools\nexactly as a painter his pencil, and you may recognize the decision of\nhis thought, and glow of his temper, no less in the workmanship than the\ndesign. The modern system of modelling the work in clay, getting it into\nform by machinery, and by the hands of subordinates, and touching it at\nlast, if indeed the (so called) sculptor touch it at all, only to\ncorrect their inefficiencies, renders the production of good work in\nmarble a physical impossibility. The first result of it is that the\nsculptor thinks in clay instead of marble, and loses his instinctive\nsense of the proper treatment of a brittle substance. The second is that\nneither he nor the public recognize the touch of the chisel as\nexpressive of personal feeling or power, and that nothing is looked for\nexcept mechanical polish.\n\n179. The perfectly simple piece of Greek relief represented in Plate\nXIII., will enable you to understand at once,--examination of the\noriginal, at your leisure, will prevent you, I trust, from ever\nforgetting--what is meant by the virtue of handling in sculpture.\n\n[Illustration: PLATE XIII.--GREEK FLAT RELIEF AND SCULPTURE BY EDGED\nINCISION.]\n\nThe projection of the heads of the four horses, one behind the other, is\ncertainly not more, altogether, than three-quarters of an inch from the\nflat ground, and the one in front does not in reality project more than\nthe one behind it, yet, by mere drawing,[132] you see the sculptor has\ngot them to appear to recede in due order, and by the soft rounding of\nthe flesh surfaces, and modulation of the veins, he has taken away all\nlook of flatness from the necks. He has drawn the eyes and nostrils with\ndark incision, careful as the finest touches of a painter's pencil: and\nthen, at last, when he comes to the manes, he has let fly hand and\nchisel with their full force, and where a base workman, (above all, if\nhe had modelled the thing in clay first,) would have lost himself in\nlaborious imitation of hair, the Greek has struck the tresses out with\nangular incisions, deep driven, every one in appointed place and\ndeliberate curve, yet flowing so free under his noble hand that you\ncannot alter, without harm, the bending of any single ridge, nor\ncontract, nor extend, a point of them. And if you will look back to\nPlate IX. you will see the difference between this sharp incision, used\nto express horse-hair, and the soft incision with intervening rounded\nridge, used to express the hair of Apollo Chrysocomes; and, beneath, the\nobliquely ridged incision used to express the plumes of his swan; in\nboth these cases the handling being much more slow, because the\nengraving is in metal; but the structural importance of incision, as the\nmeans of effect, never lost sight of. Finally, here are two actual\nexamples of the work in marble of the two great schools of the world;\none, a little Fortune, standing tiptoe on the globe of the Earth, its\nsurface traced with lines in hexagons; not chaotic under Fortune's feet;\nGreek, this, and by a trained workman;--dug up in the temple of Neptune\nat Corfu;--and here, a Florentine portrait-marble, found in the recent\nalterations, face downwards, under the pavement of St'a Maria\nNovella;[133] both of them first-rate of their kind; and both of them,\nwhile exquisitely finished at the telling points, showing, on all their\nunregarded surfaces, the rough furrow of the fast-driven chisel, as\ndistinctly as the edge of a common paving-stone.\n\n180. Let me suggest to you, in conclusion, one most interesting point of\nmental expression in these necessary aspects of finely executed\nsculpture. I have already again and again pressed on your attention the\nbeginning of the arts of men in the make and use of the ploughshare.\nRead more carefully--you might indeed do well to learn at once by\nheart,--the twenty-seven lines of the Fourth Pythian, which describe the\nploughing of Jason. There is nothing grander extant in human fancy, nor\nset down in human words: but this great mythical expression of the\nconquest of the earth-clay, and brute-force, by vital human energy, will\nbecome yet more interesting to you when you reflect what enchantment has\nbeen cut, on whiter clay, by the tracing of finer furrows;--what the\ndelicate and consummate arts of man have done by the ploughing of\nmarble, and granite, and iron. You will learn daily more and more, as\nyou advance in actual practice, how the primary manual art of engraving,\nin the steadiness, clearness, and irrevocableness of it, is the best\nart-discipline that can be given either to mind or hand;[134] you will\nrecognize one law of right, pronouncing itself in the well-resolved work\nof every age; you will see the firmly traced and irrevocable incision\ndetermining not only the forms, but, in great part, the moral temper, of\nall vitally progressive art; you will trace the same principle and power\nin the furrows which the oblique sun shows on the granite of his own\nEgyptian city,--in the white scratch of the stylus through the colour on\na Greek vase--in the first delineation, on the wet wall, of the groups\nof an Italian fresco; in the unerring and unalterable touch of the great\nengraver of Nueremberg,--and in the deep driven and deep bitten ravines\nof metal by which Turner closed, in embossed limits, the shadows of the\nLiber Studiorum.\n\nLearn, therefore, in its full extent, the force of the great Greek word,\n[Greek: charasso];--and, give me pardon--if you think pardon needed,\nthat I ask you also to learn the full meaning of the English word\nderived from it. Here, at the Ford of the Oxen of Jason, are other\nfurrows to be driven than these in the marble of Pentelicus. The\nfruitfullest, or the fatallest of all ploughing is that by the thoughts\nof your youth, on the white field of its imagination. For by these,\neither down to the disturbed spirit, \"[Greek: kekoptai kai charassetai\npedon];\" or around the quiet spirit, and on all the laws of conduct that\nhold it, as a fair vase its frankincense, are ordained the pure colours,\nand engraved the just Characters, of AEonian life.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[126] Nothing is more wonderful, or more disgraceful among the forms of\nignorance engendered by modern vulgar occupations in pursuit of gain,\nthan the unconsciousness, now total, that fine art is essentially\nAthletic. I received a letter from Birmingham, some little time since,\ninviting me to see how much, in glass manufacture, \"machinery excelled\nrude hand work.\" The writer had not the remotest conception that he\nmight as well have asked me to come and see a mechanical boat-race rowed\nby automata, and \"how much machinery excelled rude arm-work.\"\n\n[127] Such as the sculptureless arch of Waterloo Bridge, for instance,\nreferred to in the Third Lecture, Sec. 84.\n\n[128] It is strange, at this day, to think of the relation of the\nAthenian Ceramicus to the French Tile-fields, Tileries, or Tuileries;\nand how these last may yet become--have already partly become--\"the\nPotter's field,\" blood-bought (December, 1870.)\n\n[129] This relief is now among the other casts which I have placed in\nthe lower school in the University galleries.\n\n[130] The reference is to a cast from a small and low relief of\nFlorentine work in the Kensington Museum.\n\n[131] The actual bas-relief is on a coin, and the projection not above\nthe twentieth of an inch, but I magnified it in photograph, for this\nLecture, so as to represent a relief with about the third of an inch for\nmaximum projection.\n\n[132] This plate has been executed from a drawing by Mr. Burgess, in\nwhich he has followed the curves of incision with exquisite care, and\npreserved the effect of the surface of the stone, where a photograph\nwould have lost it by exaggerating accidental stains.\n\n[133] These two marbles will always, henceforward, be sufficiently\naccessible for reference in my room at Corpus Christi College.\n\n[134] That it was also, in, some cases, the earliest that the Greeks\ngave, is proved by Lucian's account of his first lesson at his uncle's;\nthe [Greek: enkopeus], literally \"in-cutter\"--being the first tool put\ninto his hand, and an earthenware tablet to cut upon, which the boy\npressing too hard, presently breaks;--gets beaten--goes home crying, and\nbecomes, after his dream above quoted, a philosopher instead of a\nsculptor.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE VI.\n\nTHE SCHOOL OF ATHENS.\n\n_December, 1870._\n\n\n181. It can scarcely be needful for me to tell even the younger members\nof my present audience, that the conditions necessary for the production\nof a perfect school of sculpture have only twice been met in the history\nof the world, and then for a short time; nor for short time only, but\nalso in narrow districts, namely, in the valleys and islands of Ionian\nGreece, and in the strip of land deposited by the Arno, between the\nApennine crests and the sea.\n\nAll other schools, except these two, led severally by Athens in the\nfifth century before Christ, and by Florence in the fifteenth of our own\nera, are imperfect; and the best of them are derivative: these two are\nconsummate in themselves, and the origin of what is best in others.\n\n182. And observe, these Athenian and Florentine schools are both of\nequal rank, as essentially original and independent. The Florentine,\nbeing subsequent to the Greek, borrowed much from it; but it would have\nexisted just as strongly--and, perhaps, in some respects, more\nnobly--had it been the first, instead of the latter of the two. The task\nset to each of these mightiest of the nations was, indeed, practically\nthe same, and as hard to the one as to the other. The Greeks found\nPhoenician and Etruscan art monstrous, and had to make them human. The\nItalians found Byzantine and Norman art monstrous, and had to make them\nhuman. The original power in the one case is easily traced; in the other\nit has partly to be unmasked, because the change at Florence was, in\nmany points, suggested and stimulated by the former school. But we\nmistake in supposing that Athens taught Florence the laws of design; she\ntaught her, in reality, only the duty of truth.\n\n183. You remember that I told you the highest art could do no more than\nrightly represent the human form. This is the simple test, then, of a\nperfect school,--that it has represented the human form, so that it is\nimpossible to conceive of its being better done. And that, I repeat, has\nbeen accomplished twice only: once in Athens, once in Florence. And so\nnarrow is the excellence even of these two exclusive schools, that it\ncannot be said of either of them that they represented the entire human\nform. The Greeks perfectly drew, and perfectly moulded the body and\nlimbs; but there is, so far as I am aware, no instance of their\nrepresenting the face as well as any great Italian. On the other hand,\nthe Italian painted and carved the face insuperably; but I believe there\nis no instance of his having perfectly represented the body, which, by\ncommand of his religion, it became his pride to despise, and his safety\nto mortify.\n\n184. The general course of your study here renders it desirable that you\nshould be accurately acquainted with the leading principles of Greek\nsculpture; but I cannot lay these before you without giving undue\nprominence to some of the special merits of that school, unless I\npreviously indicate the relation it holds to the more advanced, though\nless disciplined, excellence of Christian art.\n\nIn this and the last lecture of the present course,[135] I shall\nendeavour, therefore, to mass for you, in such rude and diagram-like\noutline as may be possible or intelligible, the main characteristics of\nthe two schools, completing and correcting the details of comparison\nafterwards; and not answering, observe, at present, for any\ngeneralization I give you, except as a ground for subsequent closer and\nmore qualified statements.\n\nAnd in carrying out this parallel, I shall speak indifferently of works\nof sculpture, and of the modes of painting which propose to themselves\nthe same objects as sculpture. And this indeed Florentine, as opposed to\nVenetian, painting, and that of Athens in the fifth century, nearly\nalways did.\n\n185. I begin, therefore, by comparing two designs of the simplest\nkind--engravings, or, at least, linear drawings, both; one on clay, one\non copper, made in the central periods of each style, and representing\nthe same goddess--Aphrodite. They are now set beside each other in your\nRudimentary Series. The first is from a patera lately found at Camirus,\nauthoritatively assigned by Mr. Newton, in his recent catalogue, to the\nbest period of Greek art. The second is from one of the series of\nengravings executed, probably, by Baccio Baldini, in 1485, out of which\nI chose your first practical exercise--the Sceptre of Apollo. I cannot,\nhowever, make the comparison accurate in all respects, for I am obliged\nto set the restricted type of the Aphrodite Urania of the Greeks beside\nthe universal Deity conceived by the Italian as governing the air,\nearth, and sea; nevertheless the restriction in the mind of the Greek,\nand expatiation in that of the Florentine, are both characteristic. The\nGreek Venus Urania is flying in heaven, her power over the waters\nsymbolized by her being borne by a swan, and her power over the earth by\na single flower in her right hand; but the Italian Aphrodite is rising\nout of the actual sea, and only half risen: her limbs are still in the\nsea, her merely animal strength filling the waters with their life; but\nher body to the loins is in the sunshine, her face raised to the sky;\nher hand is about to lay a garland of flowers on the earth.\n\n186. The Venus Urania of the Greeks, in her relation to men, has power\nonly over lawful and domestic love; therefore, she is fully dressed, and\nnot only quite dressed, but most daintily and trimly: her feet\ndelicately sandalled, her gown spotted with little stars, her hair\nbrushed exquisitely smooth at the top of her head, trickling in minute\nwaves down her forehead; and though, because there's such a quantity of\nit, she can't possibly help having a chignon, look how tightly she has\nfastened it in with her broad fillet. Of course she is married, so she\nmust wear a cap with pretty minute pendant jewels at the border; and a\nvery small necklace, all that her husband can properly afford, just\nenough to go closely round the neck, and no more. On the contrary, the\nAphrodite of the Italian, being universal love, is pure-naked; and her\nlong hair is thrown wild to the wind and sea.\n\nThese primal differences in the symbolism, observe, are only because the\nartists are thinking of separate powers: they do not necessarily involve\nany national distinction in feeling. But the differences I have next to\nindicate are essential, and characterize the two opposed national modes\nof mind.\n\n187. First, and chiefly. The Greek Aphrodite is a very pretty person,\nand the Italian a decidedly plain one. That is because a Greek thought\nno one could possibly love any but pretty people; but an Italian thought\nthat love could give dignity to the meanest form that it inhabited, and\nlight to the poorest that it looked upon. So his Aphrodite will not\ncondescend to be pretty.\n\n188. Secondly. In the Greek Venus the breasts are broad and full, though\nperfectly severe in their almost conical profile;--(you are allowed on\npurpose to see the outline of the right breast, under the chiton:)--also\nthe right arm is left bare, and you can just see the contour of the\nfront of the right limb and knee; both arm and limb pure and firm, but\nlovely. The plant she holds in her hand is a branching and flowering\none, the seed vessel prominent. These signs all mean that her essential\nfunction is child-bearing.\n\nOn the contrary, in the Italian Venus the breasts are so small as to be\nscarcely traceable; the body strong, and almost masculine in its angles;\nthe arms meagre and unattractive, and she lays a decorative garland of\nflowers on the earth. These signs mean that the Italian thought of love\nas the strength of an eternal spirit, for ever helpful; and for ever\ncrowned with flowers, that neither know seed-time nor harvest, and bloom\nwhere there is neither death, nor birth.\n\n189. Thirdly. The Greek Aphrodite is entirely calm, and looks straight\nforward. Not one feature of her face is disturbed, or seems ever to have\nbeen subject to emotion. The Italian Aphrodite looks up, her face all\nquivering and burning with passion and wasting anxiety. The Greek one\nis quiet, self-possessed, and self-satisfied; the Italian incapable of\nrest, she has had no thought nor care for herself; her hair has been\nbound by a fillet like the Greeks; but it is now all fallen loose, and\nclotted with the sea, or clinging to her body; only the front tress of\nit is caught by the breeze from her raised forehead, and lifted, in the\nplace where the tongues of fire rest on the brows, in the early\nChristian pictures of Pentecost, and the waving fires abide upon the\nheads of Angelico's seraphim.\n\n190. There are almost endless points of interest, great and small, to be\nnoted in these differences of treatment. This binding of the hair by the\nsingle fillet marks the straight course of one great system of art\nmethod, from that Greek head which I showed you on the archaic coin of\nthe seventh century before Christ, to this of the fifteenth of our own\nera--nay, when you look close, you will see the entire action of the\nhead depends on one lock of hair falling back from the ear, which it\ndoes in compliance with the old Greek observance of its being bent there\nby the pressure of the helmet. That rippling of it down her shoulders\ncomes from the Athena of Corinth; the raising of it on her forehead,\nfrom the knot of the hair of Diana, changed into the vestal fire of the\nangels. But chiefly, the calmness of the features in the one face, and\ntheir anxiety in the other, indicate first, indeed, the characteristic\ndifference in every conception of the schools, the Greek never\nrepresenting expression, the Italian primarily seeking it; but far more,\nmark for us here the utter change in the conception of love; from the\ntranquil guide and queen of a happy terrestrial domestic life, accepting\nits immediate pleasures and natural duties, to the agonizing hope of an\ninfinite good, and the ever mingled joy and terror of a love divine in\njealousy, crying, \"Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon\nthine arm; for love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave.\"\n\nThe vast issues dependent on this change in the conception of the ruling\npassion of the human soul, I will endeavour to show you, on a future\noccasion: in my present lecture, I shall limit myself to the definition\nof the temper of Greek sculpture, and of its distinctions from\nFlorentine in the treatment of any subject whatever, be it love or\nhatred, hope or despair.\n\nThese great differences are mainly the following.\n\n191. 1. A Greek never expresses momentary passion; a Florentine looks to\nmomentary passion as the ultimate object of his skill.\n\nWhen you are next in London, look carefully in the British Museum at the\ncasts from the statues in the pediment of the Temple of Minerva at\nAEgina. You have there Greek work of definite date;--about 600 B.C.,\ncertainly before 580--of the purest kind; and you have the\nrepresentation of a noble ideal subject, the combats of the AEacidae at\nTroy, with Athena herself looking on. But there is no attempt whatever\nto represent expression in the features, none to give complexity of\naction or gesture; there is no struggling, no anxiety, no visible\ntemporary exertion of muscles. There are fallen figures, one pulling a\nlance out of his wound, and others in attitudes of attack and defence;\nseveral kneeling to draw their bows. But all inflict and suffer, conquer\nor expire, with the same smile.\n\n192. Plate XIV. gives you examples, from more advanced art, of true\nGreek representation; the subjects being the two contests of leading\nimport to the Greek heart--that of Apollo with the Python, and of\nHercules with the Nemean Lion. You see that in neither case is there the\nslightest effort to represent the [Greek: lyssa] or agony of contest. No\ngood Greek artist would have you behold the suffering, either of gods,\nheroes, or men; nor allow you to be apprehensive of the issue of their\ncontest with evil beasts, or evil spirits. All such lower sources of\nexcitement are to be closed to you; your interest is to be in the\nthoughts involved by the fact of the war; and in the beauty or rightness\nof form, whether active or inactive. I have to work out this subject\nwith you afterwards, and to compare with the pure Greek method of\nthought, that of modern dramatic passion, engrafted on it, as typically\nin Turner's contest of Apollo and the Python: in the meantime, be\ncontent with the statement of this first great principle--that a Greek,\nas such, never expresses momentary passion.\n\n[Illustration: PLATE XIV.--APOLLO AND THE PYTHON.\n\nHERACLES AND THE NEMEAN LION.]\n\n[Illustration: PLATE XV.--HERA OF ARGOS. ZEUS OF SYRACUSE.]\n\n193. Secondly. The Greek, as such, never expresses personal character,\nwhile a Florentine holds it to be the ultimate condition of beauty. You\nare startled, I suppose, at my saying this, having had it often pointed\nout to you, as a transcendent piece of subtlety in Greek art, that you\ncould distinguish Hercules from Apollo by his being stout, and Diana\nfrom Juno by her being slender. That is very true; but those are general\ndistinctions of class, not special distinctions of personal character.\nEven as general, they are bodily, not mental. They are the distinctions,\nin fleshly aspect, between an athlete and a musician,--between a matron\nand a huntress; but in no wise distinguish the simple-hearted hero from\nthe subtle Master of the Muses, nor the wilful and fitful girl-goddess\nfrom the cruel and resolute matron-goddess. But judge for\nyourselves;--In the successive plates, XV.--XVIII., I show you,[136]\ntypically represented as the protectresses of nations, the Argive,\nCretan, and Lacinian Hera, the Messenian Demeter, the Athena of Corinth,\nthe Artemis of Syracuse, the fountain Arethusa of Syracuse, and the\nSirem Ligeia of Terina. Now, of these heads, it is true that some are\nmore delicate in feature than the rest, and some softer in expression:\nin other respects, can you trace any distinction between the Goddesses\nof Earth and Heaven, or between the Goddess of Wisdom and the Water\nNymph of Syracuse? So little can you do so, that it would have remained\na disputed question--had not the name luckily been inscribed on some\nSyracusan coins--whether the head upon them was meant for Arethusa at\nall; and, continually, it becomes a question respecting finished\nstatues, if without attributes, \"Is this Bacchus or Apollo--Zeus or\nPoseidon?\" There is a fact for you; noteworthy, I think! There is no\npersonal character in true Greek art:--abstract ideas of youth and age,\nstrength and swiftness, virtue and vice,--yes: but there is no\nindividuality; and the negative holds down to the revived\nconventionalism of the Greek school by Leonardo, when he tells you how\nyou are to paint young women, and how old ones; though a Greek would\nhardly have been so discourteous to age as the Italian is in his canon\nof it,--\"old women should be represented as passionate and hasty, after\nthe manner of Infernal Furies.\"\n\n194. \"But at least, if the Greeks do not give character, they give ideal\nbeauty?\" So it is said, without contradiction. But will you look again\nat the series of coins of the best time of Greek art, which I have just\nset before you? Are any of these goddesses or nymphs very beautiful?\nCertainly the Junos are not. Certainly the Demeters are not. The Siren,\nand Arethusa, have well-formed and regular features; but I am quite sure\nthat if you look at them without prejudice, you will think neither\nreach even the average standard of pretty English girls. The Venus\nUrania suggests at first, the idea of a very charming person, but you\nwill find there is no real depth nor sweetness in the contours, looked\nat closely. And remember, these are chosen examples; the best I can find\nof art current in Greece at the great time; and if even I were to take\nthe celebrated statues, of which only two or three are extant, not one\nof them excels the Venus of Melos; and she, as I have already asserted,\nin _The Queen of the Air_, has nothing notable in feature except dignity\nand simplicity. Of Athena I do not know one authentic type of great\nbeauty; but the intense ugliness which the Greeks could tolerate in\ntheir symbolism of her will be convincingly proved to you by the coin\nrepresented in Plate VI. You need only look at two or three vases of the\nbest time, to assure yourselves that beauty of feature was, in popular\nart, not only unattained, but unattempted; and finally,--and this you\nmay accept as a conclusive proof of the Greek insensitiveness to the\nmost subtle beauty--there is little evidence even in their literature,\nand none in their art, of their having ever perceived any beauty in\ninfancy, or early childhood.\n\n[Illustration: PLATE XVI.--DEMETER OF MESSENE. HERA OF CROSSUS.]\n\n[Illustration: PLATE XVII.--ATHENA OF THURIUM.\n\nSEREIE LIGEIA OF TERINA]\n\n195. The Greeks, then, do not give passion, do not give character, do\nnot give refined or naive beauty. But you may think that the absence of\nthese is intended to give dignity to the gods and nymphs; and that their\ncalm faces would be found, if you long observed them, instinct with some\nexpression of divine mystery or power.\n\nI will convince you of the narrow range of Greek thought in these\nrespects, by showing you, from the two sides of one and the same coin,\nimages of the most mysterious of their Deities, and the most\npowerful,--Demeter and Zeus.\n\nRemember, that just as the west coasts of Ireland and England catch\nfirst on their hills the rain of the Atlantic, so the western\nPeloponnese arrests, in the clouds of the first mountain ranges of\nArcadia, the moisture of the Mediterranean; and over all the plains of\nElis, Pylos, and Messene, the strength and sustenance of men was\nnaturally felt to be granted by Zeus; as, on the east coast of Greece,\nthe greater clearness of the air by the power of Athena. If\nyou will recollect the prayer of Rhea, in the single line of\nCallimachus--\"[Greek: Gaia phile, teke kai su teai d' odines elaphrai],\"\n(compare Pausanias iv. 33, at the beginning,)--it will mark for you the\nconnection, in the Greek mind, of the birth of the mountain springs of\nArcadia with the birth of Zeus. And the centres of Greek thought on this\nwestern coast are necessarily Elis, and, (after the time of\nEpaminondas,) Messene.\n\n196. I show you the coin of Messene, because the splendid height and\nform of Mount Ithome were more expressive of the physical power of Zeus\nthan the lower hills of Olympia; and also because it was struck just at\nthe time of the most finished and delicate Greek art--a little after the\nmain strength of Phidias, but before decadence had generally pronounced\nitself. The coin is a silver didrachm, bearing on one side a head of\nDemeter (Plate XVI., at the top); on the other a full figure of Zeus\nAietophoros (Plate XIX., at the top); the two together signifying the\nsustaining strength of the earth and heaven. Look first at the head of\nDemeter. It is merely meant to personify fulness of harvest; there is no\nmystery in it, no sadness, no vestige of the expression which we should\nhave looked for in any effort to realize the Greek thoughts of the Earth\nMother, as we find them spoken by the poets. But take it merely as\npersonified abundance;--the goddess of black furrow and tawny grass--how\ncommonplace it is, and how poor! The hair is grand, and there is one\nstalk of wheat set in it, which is enough to indicate the goddess who is\nmeant; but, in that very office, ignoble, for it shows that the artist\ncould only inform you that this was Demeter by such a symbol. How easy\nit would have been for a great designer to have made the hair lovely\nwith fruitful flowers, and the features noble in mystery of gloom, or of\ntenderness. But here you have nothing to interest you, except the common\nGreek perfections of a straight nose and a full chin.\n\n197. We pass, on the reverse of the die, to the figure of Zeus\nAietophoros. Think of the invocation to Zeus in the Suppliants, (525),\n\"King of Kings, and Happiest of the Happy, Perfectest of the Perfect in\nstrength, abounding in all things, Jove--hear us and be with us;\" and\nthen, consider what strange phase of mind it was, which, under the very\nmountain-home of the god, was content with this symbol of him as a\nwell-fed athlete, holding a diminutive and crouching eagle on his fist.\nThe features and the right hand have been injured in this coin, but the\naction of the arms shows that it held a thunderbolt, of which, I\nbelieve, the twisted rays were triple. In the, presumably earlier, coin\nengraved by Millingen, however,[137] it is singly pointed only; and the\nadded inscription \"[Greek: ITHOM],\" in the field, renders the conjecture\nof Millingen probable, that this is a rude representation of the statue\nof Zeus Ithomates, made by Ageladas, the master of Phidias; and I think\nit has, indeed, the aspect of the endeavour, by a workman of more\nadvanced knowledge, and more vulgar temper, to put the softer anatomy of\nlater schools into the simple action of an archaic figure. Be that as it\nmay, here is one of the most refined cities of Greece content with the\nfigure of an athlete as the representative of their own mountain god;\nmarked as a divine power merely by the attributes of the eagle and\nthunderbolt.\n\n[Illustration: PLATE XVIII.--ARTEMIS OF SYRACUSE.\n\nHERA OF LACINIAN CAPE.]\n\n[Illustration: PLATE XIX.--ZEUS OF MESSENE. AJAX OF OPUS.]\n\n198. Lastly. The Greeks have not, it appears, in any supreme way, given\nto their statues character, beauty, or divine strength. Can they give\ndivine sadness? Shall we find in their artwork any of that pensiveness\nand yearning for the dead, which fills the chants of their tragedy? I\nsuppose if anything like nearness or firmness of faith in afterlife is\nto be found in Greek legend, you might look for it in the stories about\nthe Island of Leuce, at the mouth of the Danube, inhabited by the ghosts\nof Achilles, Patroclus, Ajax the son of Oileus, and Helen; and in which\nthe pavement of the Temple of Achilles was washed daily by the sea-birds\nwith their wings, dipping them in the sea.\n\nNow it happens that we have actually on a coin of the Locrians the\nrepresentation of the ghost of the Lesser Ajax. There is nothing in the\nhistory of human imagination more lovely, than their leaving always a\nplace for his spirit, vacant in their ranks of battle. But here is their\nsculptural representation of the phantom; (lower figure, Plate XIX.),\nand I think you will at once agree with me in feeling that it would be\nimpossible to conceive anything more completely unspiritual. You might\nmore than doubt that it could have been meant for the departed soul,\nunless you were aware of the meaning of this little circlet between the\nfeet. On other coins you find his name inscribed there, but in this you\nhave his habitation, the haunted Island of Leuce itself, with the waves\nflowing round it.\n\n199. Again and again, however, I have to remind you, with respect to\nthese apparently frank and simple failures, that the Greek always\nintends you to think for yourself, and understand, more than he can\nspeak. Take this instance at our hands, the trim little circlet for the\nIsland of Leuce. The workman knows very well it is not like the island,\nand that he could not make it so; that at its best, his sculpture can be\nlittle more than a letter; and yet, in putting this circlet, and its\nencompassing fretwork of minute waves, he does more than if he had\nmerely given you a letter L, or written \"Leuce.\" If you know anything of\nbeaches and sea, this symbol will set your imagination at work in\nrecalling them; then you will think of the temple service of the\nnovitiate sea-birds, and of the ghosts of Achilles and Patroclus\nappearing, like the Dioscuri, above the storm-clouds of the Euxine. And\nthe artist, throughout his work, never for an instant loses faith in\nyour sympathy and passion being ready to answer his;--if you have none\nto give, he does not care to take you into his counsel; on the whole,\nwould rather that you should not look at his work.\n\n200. But if you have this sympathy to give, you may be sure that\nwhatever he does for you will be right, as far as he can render it so.\nIt may not be sublime, nor beautiful, nor amusing; but it will be full\nof meaning, and faithful in guidance. He will give you clue to myriads\nof things that he cannot literally teach; and, so far as he does teach,\nyou may trust him. Is not this saying much?\n\nAnd as he strove only to teach what was true, so, in his sculptured\nsymbol, he strove only to carve what was--Right. He rules over the arts\nto this day, and will for ever, because he sought not first for beauty,\nnor first for passion, or for invention, but for Rightness; striving to\ndisplay, neither himself nor his art, but the thing that he dealt with,\nin its simplicity. That is his specific character as a Greek. Of course,\nevery nation's character is connected with that of others surrounding or\npreceding it; and in the best Greek work you will find some things that\nare still false, or fanciful; but whatever in it is false or fanciful,\nis not the Greek part of it--it is the Phoenician, or Egyptian, or\nPelasgian part. The essential Hellenic stamp is veracity:--Eastern\nnations drew their heroes with eight legs, but the Greeks drew them with\ntwo;--Egyptians drew their deities with cats' heads, but the Greeks drew\nthem with men's; and out of all fallacy, disproportion, and\nindefiniteness, they were, day by day, resolvedly withdrawing and\nexalting themselves into restricted and demonstrable truth.\n\n201. And now, having cut away the misconceptions which encumbered our\nthoughts, I shall be able to put the Greek school into some clearness of\nits position for you, with respect to the art of the world. That\nrelation is strangely duplicate; for on one side, Greek art is the root\nof all simplicity; and on the other, of all complexity.\n\n[Illustration: PLATE XX.--GREEK AND BARBARIAN SCULPTURE.]\n\nOn one side I say, it is the root of all simplicity. If you were for\nsome prolonged period to study Greek sculpture exclusively in the Elgin\nRoom of the British Museum, and were then suddenly transported to the\nHotel de Cluny, or any other museum of Gothic and barbarian workmanship,\nyou would imagine the Greeks were the masters of all that was grand,\nsimple, wise, and tenderly human, opposed to the pettiness of the toys\nof the rest of mankind.\n\n202. On one side of their work they are so. From all vain and mean\ndecoration--all weak and monstrous error, the Greeks rescue the forms of\nman and beast, and sculpture them in the nakedness of their true flesh,\nand with the fire of their living soul. Distinctively from other races,\nas I have now, perhaps to your weariness, told you, this is the work of\nthe Greek, to give health to what was diseased, and chastisement to what\nwas untrue. So far as this is found in any other school, hereafter, it\nbelongs to them by inheritance from the Greeks, or invests them with the\nbrotherhood of the Greek. And this is the deep meaning of the myth of\nDaedalus as the giver of motion to statues. The literal change from the\nbinding together of the feet to their separation, and the other\nmodifications of action which took place, either in progressive skill,\nor often, as the mere consequence of the transition from wood to stone,\n(a figure carved out of one wooden log must have necessarily its feet\nnear each other, and hands at its sides), these literal changes are as\nnothing, in the Greek fable, compared to the bestowing of apparent life.\nThe figures of monstrous gods on Indian temples have their legs separate\nenough; but they are infinitely more dead than the rude figures at\nBranchidae sitting with their hands on their knees. And, briefly, the\nwork of Daedalus is the giving of deceptive life, as that of Prometheus\nthe giving of real life; and I can put the relation of Greek to all\nother art, in this function, before you in easily compared and\nremembered examples.\n\n203. Here, on the right, in Plate XX., is an Indian bull, colossal, and\nelaborately carved, which you may take as a sufficient type of the bad\nart of all the earth. False in form, dead in heart, and loaded with\nwealth, externally. We will not ask the date of this; it may rest in the\neternal obscurity of evil art, everywhere and for ever. Now, besides\nthis colossal bull, here is a bit of Daedalus work, enlarged from a coin\nnot bigger than a shilling: look at the two together, and you ought to\nknow, henceforward, what Greek art means, to the end of your days.\n\n204. In this aspect of it then, I say, it is the simplest and nakedest\nof lovely veracities. But it has another aspect, or rather another pole,\nfor the opposition is diametric. As the simplest, so also it is the most\ncomplex of human art. I told you in my fifth Lecture, showing you the\nspotty picture of Velasquez, that an essential Greek character is a\nliking for things that are dappled. And you cannot but have noticed how\noften and how prevalently the idea which gave its name to the Porch of\nPolygnotus, \"[Greek: stoa poikile],\" occurs to the Greeks as connected\nwith the finest art. Thus, when the luxurious city is opposed to the\nsimple and healthful one, in the second book of Plato's Polity, you find\nthat, next to perfumes, pretty ladies, and dice, you must have in it\n\"[Greek: poikilia],\" which observe, both in that place and again in the\nthird book, is the separate art of joiners' work, or inlaying; but the\nidea of exquisitely divided variegation or division, both in sight and\nsound--the \"ravishing division to the lute,\" as in Pindar's \"[Greek:\npoikiloi hymnoi]\"--runs through the compass of all Greek\nart-description; and if, instead of studying that art among marbles you\nwere to look at it only on vases of a fine time, (look back, for\ninstance, to Plate IV. here), your impression of it would be, instead of\nbreadth and simplicity, one of universal spottiness and chequeredness,\n\"[Greek: en angeon Herkesin pampoikilois];\" and of the artist's\ndelighting in nothing so much as in crossed or starred or spotted\nthings; which, in right places, he and his public both do unlimitedly.\nIndeed they hold it complimentary even to a trout, to call him a\n\"spotty.\" Do you recollect the trout in the tributaries of the Ladon,\nwhich Pausanias says were spotted, so that they were like thrushes and\nwhich, the Arcadians told him, could speak? In this last [Greek:\npoikilia], however, they disappointed him. \"I, indeed, saw some of them\ncaught,\" he says, \"but I did not hear any of them speak, though I waited\nbeside the river till sunset.\"\n\n[Illustration: PLATE XXI.--THE BEGINNINGS OF CHIVALRY.]\n\n205. I must sum roughly now, for I have detained you too long.\n\nThe Greeks have been thus the origin not only of all broad, mighty, and\ncalm conception, but of all that is divided, delicate, and tremulous;\n\"variable as the shade, by the light quivering aspen made.\" To them, as\nfirst leaders of ornamental design, belongs, of right, the praise of\nglistenings in gold, piercings in ivory, stainings in purple,\nburnishings in dark blue steel; of the fantasy of the Arabian\nroof--quartering of the Christian shield,--rubric and arabesque of\nChristian scripture; in fine, all enlargement, and all diminution of\nadorning thought, from the temple to the toy, and from the mountainous\npillars of Agrigentum to the last fineness of fretwork in the Pisan\nChapel of the Thorn.\n\nAnd in their doing all this, they stand as masters of human order and\njustice, subduing the animal nature guided by the spiritual one, as you\nsee the Sicilian Charioteer stands, holding his horse-reins, with the\nwild lion racing beneath him, and the flying angel above, on the\nbeautiful coin of early Syracuse; (lowest in Plate XXI).\n\nAnd the beginnings of Christian chivalary were in that Greek bridling of\nthe dark and the white horses.\n\n206. Not that a Greek never made mistakes. He made as many as we do\nourselves, nearly;--he died of his mistakes at last--as we shall die of\nthem; but so far he was separated from the herd of more mistaken and\nmore wretched nations--so far as he was Greek--it was by his rightness.\nHe lived, and worked, and was satisfied with the fatness of his land,\nand the fame of his deeds, by his justice, and reason, and modesty. He\nbecame _Graeculus esuriens_, little, and hungry, and every man's\nerrand-boy, by his iniquity, and his competition, and his love of talk.\nBut his Graecism was in having done, at least at one period of his\ndominion, more than anybody else, what was modest, useful, and eternally\ntrue; and as a workman, he verily did, or first suggested the doing of,\neverything possible to man.\n\nTake Daedalus, his great type of the practically executive craftsman, and\nthe inventor of expedients in craftsmanship, (as distinguished from\nPrometheus, the institutor of moral order in art). Daedalus invents,--he,\nor his nephew,--\n\nThe potter's wheel, and all work in clay;\n\nThe saw, and all work in wood;\n\nThe masts and sails of ships, and all modes of motion; (wings only\nproving too dangerous!)\n\nThe entire art of minute ornament;\n\nAnd the deceptive life of statues.\n\nBy his personal toil, he involves the fatal labyrinth for Minos; builds\nan impregnable fortress for the Agrigentines; adorns healing baths among\nthe wild parsley fields of Selinus; buttresses the precipices of Eryx,\nunder the temple of Aphrodite; and for her temple itself--finishes in\nexquisiteness the golden honeycomb.\n\n207. Take note of that last piece of his art: it is connected with many\nthings which I must bring before you when we enter on the study of\narchitecture. That study we shall begin at the foot of the Baptistery of\nFlorence, which, of all buildings known to me, unites the most perfect\nsymmetry with the quaintest [Greek: poikilia]. Then, from the tomb of\nyour own Edward the Confessor, to the farthest shrine of the opposite\nArabian and Indian world, I must show you how the glittering and\niridescent dominion of Daedalus prevails; and his ingenuity in division,\ninterposition, and labyrinthine sequence, more widely still. Only this\nlast summer I found the dark red masses of the rough sandstone of\nFurness Abbey had been fitted by him, with no less pleasure than he had\nin carving them, into wedged hexagons--reminiscences of the honeycomb of\nVenus Erycina. His ingenuity plays around the framework of all the\nnoblest things; and yet the brightness of it has a lurid shadow. The\nspot of the fawn, of the bird, and the moth, may be harmless. But\nDaedalus reigns no less over the spot of the leopard and snake. That\ncruel and venomous power of his art is marked, in the legends of him,\nby his invention of the saw from the serpent's tooth; and his seeking\nrefuge, under blood-guiltiness, with Minos, who can judge evil, and\nmeasure, or remit, the penalty of it, but not reward good: Rhadamanthus\nonly can measure _that_; but Minos is essentially the recognizer of evil\ndeeds \"conoscitor delle peccata,\" whom, therefore, you find in Dante\nunder the form of the [Greek: erpeton]. \"Cignesi con la coda tante\nvolte, quantunque gradi vuol che giu sia messa.\"\n\nAnd this peril of the influence of Daedalus is twofold; first in leading\nus to delight in glitterings and semblances of things, more than in\ntheir form, or truth;--admire the harlequin's jacket more than the\nhero's strength; and love the gilding of the missal more than its\nwords;--but farther, and worse, the ingenuity of Daedalus may even become\nbestial, an instinct for mechanical labour only, strangely involved with\na feverish and ghastly cruelty:--(you will find this distinct in the\nintensely Daedal work of the Japanese); rebellious, finally, against the\nlaws of nature and honour, and building labyrinths for monsters,--not\ncombs for bees.\n\n208. Gentlemen, we of the rough northern race may never, perhaps, be\nable to learn from the Greek his reverence for beauty: but we may at\nleast learn his disdain of mechanism:--of all work which he felt to be\nmonstrous and inhuman in its imprudent dexterities.\n\nWe hold ourselves, we English, to be good workmen. I do not think I\nspeak with light reference to recent calamity, (for I myself lost a\nyoung relation, full of hope and good purpose, in the foundered ship\n_London_,) when I say that either an AEginetan or Ionian shipwright built\nships that could be fought from, though they were under water; and\nneither of them would have been proud of having built one that would\nfill and sink helplessly if the sea washed over her deck, or turn upside\ndown if a squall struck her topsail.\n\nBelieve me, gentlemen, good workmanship consists in continence and\ncommon sense, more than in frantic expatiation of mechanical ingenuity;\nand if you would be continent and rational, you had better learn more of\nArt than you do now, and less of Engineering. What is taking place at\nthis very hour,[138] among the streets, once so bright, and avenues\nonce so pleasant, of the fairest city in Europe, may surely lead us all\nto feel that the skill of Daedalus, set to build impregnable fortresses,\nis not so wisely applied as in framing the [Greek: treton ponou]--the\ngolden honeycomb.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[135] The closing Lecture, on the religious temper of the Florentine,\nthough necessary for the complete explanation of the subject to my\nclass, at the time, introduced new points of inquiry which I do not\nchoose to lay before the general reader until they can be examined in\nfuller sequence. The present volume, therefore, closes with the Sixth\nLecture, and that on Christian art will be given as the first of the\npublished course on Florentine Sculpture.\n\n[136] These plates of coins are given for future reference and\nexamination, not merely for the use made of them in this place. The\nLacinian Hera, if a coin could be found unworn in surface, would be very\nnoble; her hair is thrown free because she is the goddess of the cape of\nstorms though in her temple, there, the wind never moved the ashes on\nits altar. (Livy, xxiv. 3.)\n\n[137] Ancient Cities and Kings, Plate IV. No. 20.\n\n[138] The siege of Paris, at the time of the delivery of this Lecture,\nwas in one of its most destructive phases.\n\n\n\n\n_THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND._\n\n(_Delivered at the R. A. Institution, Woolwich, December 14, 1869._)\n\n\nI would fain have left to the frank expression of the moment, but fear I\ncould not have found clear words--I cannot easily find them, even\ndeliberately,--to tell you how glad I am, and yet how ashamed, to accept\nyour permission to speak to you. Ashamed of appearing to think that I\ncan tell you any truth which you have not more deeply felt than I; but\nglad in the thought that my less experience, and way of life sheltered\nfrom the trials, and free from the responsibilities of yours, may have\nleft me with something of a child's power of help to you; a sureness of\nhope, which may perhaps be the one thing that can be helpful to men who\nhave done too much not to have often failed in doing all that they\ndesired. And indeed, even the most hopeful of us, cannot but now be in\nmany things apprehensive. For this at least we all know too well, that\nwe are on the eve of a great political crisis, if not of political\nchange. That a struggle is approaching between the newly-risen power of\ndemocracy and the apparently departing power of feudalism; and another\nstruggle, no less imminent, and far more dangerous, between wealth and\npauperism. These two quarrels are constantly thought of as the same.\nThey are being fought together, and an apparently common interest unites\nfor the most part the millionaire with the noble, in resistance to a\nmultitude, crying, part of it for bread and part of it for liberty.\n\nAnd yet no two quarrels can be more distinct. Riches--so far from being\nnecessary to noblesse--are adverse to it. So utterly adverse, that the\nfirst character of all the Nobilities which have founded great dynasties\nin the world is to be poor;--often poor by oath--always poor by\ngenerosity. And of every true knight in the chivalric ages, the first\nthing history tells you is, that he never kept treasure for himself.\n\nThus the causes of wealth and noblesse are not the same; but opposite.\nOn the other hand, the causes of anarchy and of the poor are not the\nsame, but opposite. Side by side, in the same rank, are now indeed set\nthe pride that revolts against authority, and the misery that appeals\nagainst avarice. But, so far from being a common cause, all anarchy is\nthe forerunner of poverty, and all prosperity begins in obedience. So\nthat thus, it has become impossible to give due support to the cause of\norder, without seeming to countenance injury; and impossible to plead\njustly the claims of sorrow, without seeming to plead also for those of\nlicense.\n\nLet me try, then, to put in very brief terms, the real plan of this\nvarious quarrel, and the truth of the cause on each side. Let us face\nthat full truth, whatever it may be, and decide what part, according to\nour power, we should take in the quarrel.\n\nFirst. For eleven hundred years, all but five, since Charlemagne set on\nhis head the Lombard crown, the body of European people have submitted\npatiently to be governed; generally by kings--always by single leaders\nof some kind. But for the last fifty years they have begun to suspect,\nand of late they have many of them concluded, that they have been on the\nwhole ill-governed, or misgoverned, by their kings. Whereupon they say,\nmore and more widely, \"Let us henceforth have no kings; and no\ngovernment at all.\"\n\nNow we said, we must face the full truth of the matter, in order to see\nwhat we are to do. And the truth is that the people _have_ been\nmisgoverned;--that very little is to be said, hitherto, for most of\ntheir masters--and that certainly in many places they will try their new\nsystem of \"no masters:\"--and as that arrangement will be delightful to\nall foolish persons, and, at first, profitable to all wicked ones,--and\nas these classes are not wanting or unimportant in any human\nsociety,--the experiment is likely to be tried extensively. And the\nworld may be quite content to endure much suffering with this fresh\nhope, and retain its faith in anarchy, whatever comes of it, till it can\nendure no more.\n\nThen, secondly. The people have begun to suspect that one particular\nform of this past misgovernment has been, that their masters have set\nthem to do all the work, and have themselves taken all the wages. In a\nword, that what was called governing them, meant only wearing fine\nclothes, and living on good fare at their expense. And I am sorry to\nsay, the people are quite right in this opinion also. If you inquire\ninto the vital fact of the matter, this you will find to be the constant\nstructure of European society for the thousand years of the feudal\nsystem; it was divided into peasants who lived by working; priests who\nlived by begging; and knights who lived by pillaging; and as the\nluminous public mind becomes gradually cognizant of these facts, it will\nassuredly not suffer things to be altogether arranged that way any more;\nand the devising of other ways will be an agitating business; especially\nbecause the first impression of the intelligent populace is, that\nwhereas, in the dark ages, half the nation lived idle, in the bright\nages to come, the whole of it may.\n\nNow, thirdly--and here is much the worst phase of the crisis. This past\nsystem of misgovernment, especially during the last three hundred years,\nhas prepared, by its neglect, a class among the lower orders which it is\nnow peculiarly difficult to govern. It deservedly lost their\nrespect--but that was the least part of the mischief. The deadly part of\nit was, that the lower orders lost their habit, and at last their\nfaculty, of respect;--lost the very capability of reverence, which is\nthe most precious part of the human soul. Exactly in the degree in which\nyou can find creatures greater than yourself, to look up to, in that\ndegree, you are ennobled yourself, and, in that degree, happy. If you\ncould live always in the presence of archangels, you would be happier\nthan in that of men; but even if only in the company of admirable\nknights and beautiful ladies, the more noble and bright they were, and\nthe more you could reverence their virtue the happier you would be. On\nthe contrary, if you were condemned to live among a multitude of idiots,\ndumb, distorted and malicious, you would not be happy in the constant\nsense of your own superiority. Thus all real joy and power of progress\nin humanity depend on finding something to reverence; and all the\nbaseness and misery of humanity begin in a habit of disdain. Now, by\ngeneral misgovernment, I repeat, we have created in Europe a vast\npopulace, and out of Europe a still vaster one, which has lost even the\npower and conception of reverence;[139]--which exists only in the\nworship of itself--which can neither see anything beautiful around it,\nnor conceive anything virtuous above it; which has, towards all goodness\nand greatness, no other feelings than those of the lowest\ncreatures--fear, hatred, or hunger a populace which has sunk below your\nappeal in their nature, as it has risen beyond your power in their\nmultitude;--whom you can now no more charm than you can the adder, nor\ndiscipline, than you can the summer fly.\n\nIt is a crisis, gentlemen; and time to think of it. I have roughly and\nbroadly put it before you in its darkness. Let us look what we may find\nof light.\n\nOnly the other day, in a journal which is a fairly representative\nexponent of the Conservatism of our day, and for the most part not at\nall in favor of strikes or other popular proceedings; only about three\nweeks since, there was a leader, with this, or a similar, title--\"What\nis to become of the House of Lords?\" It startled me, for it seemed as if\nwe were going even faster than I had thought, when such a question was\nput as a subject of quite open debate, in a journal meant chiefly for\nthe reading of the middle and upper classes. Open or not--the debate is\nnear. What _is_ to become of them? And the answer to such question\ndepends first on their being able to answer another question--\"What is\nthe _use_ of them!\" For some time back, I think the theory of the nation\nhas been, that they are useful as impediments to business, so as to give\ntime for second thoughts. But the nation is getting impatient of\nimpediments to business; and certainly, sooner or later, will think it\nneedless to maintain these expensive obstacles to its humors. And I\nhave not heard, either in public, or from any of themselves, a clear\nexpression of their own conception of their use. So that it seems thus\nto become needful for all men to tell them, as our one quite\nclear-sighted teacher, Carlyle, has been telling us for many a year,\nthat the use of the Lords of a country is to _govern_ the country. If\nthey answer that use, the country will rejoice in keeping them; if not,\nthat will become of them which must of all things found to have lost\ntheir serviceableness.\n\nHere, therefore, is the one question, at this crisis, for them, and for\nus. Will they be lords indeed, and give us laws--dukes indeed, and give\nus guiding--princes indeed, and give us beginning, of truer dynasty,\nwhich shall not be soiled by covetousness, nor disordered by iniquity?\nHave they themselves sunk so far as not to hope this? Are there yet any\namong them who can stand forward with open English brows, and say,--So\nfar as in me lies, I will govern with my might, not for Dieu et _mon_\nDroit, but for the first grand reading of the war cry, from which that\nwas corrupted, \"Dieu et Droit?\" Among them I know there are some--among\nyou, soldiers of England, I know there are many, who can do this; and in\nyou is our trust. I, one of the lower people of your country, ask of you\nin their name--you whom I will not any more call soldiers, but by the\ntruer name of Knights;--Equites of England. How many yet of you are\nthere, knights errant now beyond all former fields of danger--knights\npatient now beyond all former endurance; who still retain the ancient\nand eternal purpose of knighthood, to subdue the wicked, and aid the\nweak? To them, be they few or many, we English people call for help to\nthe wretchedness, and for rule over the baseness, of multitudes desolate\nand deceived, shrieking to one another this new gospel of their new\nreligion. \"Let the weak do as they can, and the wicked as they will.\"\n\nI can hear you saying in your hearts, even the bravest of you, \"The time\nis past for all that.\" Gentlemen, it is not so. The time has come for\n_more_ than all that. Hitherto, soldiers have given their lives for\nfalse fame, and for cruel power. The day is now when they must give\ntheir lives for true fame, and for beneficent power: and the work is\nnear every one of you--close beside you--the means of it even thrust\ninto your hands. The people are crying to you for command, and you stand\nthere at pause, and silent. You think they don't want to be commanded;\ntry them; determine what is needful for them--honorable for them; show\nit them, promise to bring them to it, and they will follow you through\nfire. \"Govern us,\" they cry with one heart, though many minds. They\n_can_ be governed still, these English; they are men still; not gnats,\nnor serpents. They love their old ways yet, and their old masters, and\ntheir old land. They would fain live in it, as many as may stay there,\nif you will show them how, there, to live;--or show them even, how,\nthere, like Englishmen, to die.\n\n\"To live in it, as many as may!\" How many do you think may? How many\n_can_? How many do you want to live there? As masters, your first object\nmust be to increase your power; and in what does the power of a country\nconsist? Will you have dominion over its stones, or over its clouds, or\nover its souls? What do you mean by a great nation, but a great\nmultitude of men who are true to each other, and strong, and of worth?\nNow you can increase the multitude only definitely--your island has only\nso much standing room--but you can increase the _worth in_definitely. It\nis but a little island;--suppose, little as it is, you were to fill it\nwith friends? You may, and that easily. You must, and that speedily; or\nthere will be an end to this England of ours, and to all its loves and\nenmities.\n\nTo fill this little island with true friends--men brave, wise, and\nhappy! Is it so impossible, think you, after the world's eighteen\nhundred years of Christianity, and our own thousand years of toil, to\nfill only this little white gleaming crag with happy creatures, helpful\nto each other? Africa, and India, and the Brazilian wide-watered plain,\nare these not wide enough for the ignorance of our race? have they not\nspace enough for its pain? Must we remain _here_ also savage,--_here_\nat enmity with each other,--_here_ foodless, houseless, in rags, in\ndust, and without hope, as thousands and tens of thousands of us are\nlying? Do not think it, gentlemen. The thought that it is inevitable is\nthe last infidelity; infidelity not to God only, but to every creature\nand every law that He has made. Are we to think that the earth was only\nshaped to be a globe of torture; and that there cannot be one spot of it\nwhere peace can rest, or justice reign? Where are men ever to be happy,\nif not in England? by whom shall they ever be taught to do right, if not\nby you? Are we not of a race first among the strong ones of the earth;\nthe blood in us incapable of weariness, unconquerable by grief? Have we\nnot a history of which we can hardly think without becoming insolent in\nour just pride of it? Can we dare, without passing every limit of\ncourtesy to other nations, to say how much more we have to be proud of\nin our ancestors than they? Among our ancient monarchs, great crimes\nstand out as monstrous and strange. But their valor, and, according to\ntheir understanding, their benevolence, are constant. The Wars of the\nRoses, which are as a fearful crimson shadow on our land, represent the\nnormal condition of other nations; while from the days of the Heptarchy\ndownwards we have had examples given us, in all ranks, of the most\nvaried and exalted virtue; a heap of treasure that no moth can corrupt,\nand which even our traitorship, if we are to become traitors to it,\ncannot sully.\n\nAnd this is the race, then, that we know not any more how to govern! and\nthis the history which we are to behold broken off by sedition! and this\nis the country, of all others, where life is to become difficult to the\nhonest, and ridiculous to the wise! And the catastrophe, forsooth, is to\ncome just when we have been making swiftest progress beyond the wisdom\nand wealth of the past. Our cities are a wilderness of spinning wheels\ninstead of palaces; yet the people have not clothes. We have blackened\nevery leaf of English greenwood with ashes, and the people die of cold;\nour harbors are a forest of merchant ships, and the people die of\nhunger.\n\nWhose fault is it? Yours, gentlemen; yours only. You alone can feed\nthem, and clothe, and bring into their right minds, for you only can\ngovern--that is to say, you only can educate them.\n\nEducate, or govern, they are one and the same word. Education does not\nmean teaching people to know what they do not know. It means teaching\nthem to behave as they do not behave. And the true \"compulsory\neducation\" which the people now ask of you is not catechism, but drill.\nIt is not teaching the youth of England the shapes of letters and the\ntricks of numbers; and then leaving them to turn their arithmetic to\nroguery, and their literature to lust. It is, on the contrary, training\nthem into the perfect exercise and kingly continence of their bodies and\nsouls. It is a painful, continual, and difficult work; to be done by\nkindness, by watching, by warning, by precept, and by praise,--but above\nall--by example.\n\nCompulsory! Yes, by all means! \"Go ye out into the highways and hedges,\nand _compel_ them to come in.\" Compulsory! Yes, and gratis also. _Dei\nGratia_, they must be taught, as, _Dei Gratia_, you are set to teach\nthem. I hear strange talk continually, \"how difficult it is to make\npeople pay for being educated!\" Why, I should think so! Do you make your\nchildren pay for their education, or do you give it them compulsorily,\nand gratis? You do not expect _them_ to pay you for their teaching,\nexcept by becoming good children. Why should you expect a peasant to pay\nfor his, except by becoming a good man?--payment enough, I think, if we\nknew it. Payment enough to himself, as to us. For that is another of our\ngrand popular mistakes--people are always thinking of education as a\nmeans of livelihood. Education is not a profitable business, but a\ncostly one; nay, even the best attainments of it are always\nunprofitable, in any terms of coin. No nation ever made its bread either\nby its great arts, or its great wisdoms. By its minor arts or\nmanufactures, by its practical knowledges, yes: but its noble\nscholarship, its noble philosophy, and its noble art, are always to be\nbought as a treasure, not sold for a livelihood. You do not learn that\nyou may live--you live that you may learn. You are to spend on National\nEducation, and to be spent for it, and to make by it, not more money,\nbut better men;--to get into this British Island the greatest possible\nnumber of good and brave Englishmen. _They_ are to be your \"money's\nworth.\"\n\nBut where is the money to come from? Yes, that is to be asked. Let us,\nas quite the first business in this our national crisis, look not only\ninto our affairs, but into our accounts, and obtain some general notion\nhow we annually spend our money, and what we are getting for it.\nObserve, I do not mean to inquire into the public revenue only; of that\nsome account is rendered already. But let us do the best we can to set\ndown the items of the national _private_ expenditure; and know what we\nspend altogether, and how.\n\nTo begin with this matter of education. You probably have nearly all\nseen the admirable lecture lately given by Captain Maxse, at\nSouthampton. It contains a clear statement of the facts at present\nascertained as to our expenditure in that respect. It appears that of\nour public moneys, for every pound that we spend on education we spend\ntwelve either in charity or punishment;--ten millions a year in\npauperism and crime, and eight hundred thousand in instruction. Now\nCaptain Maxse adds to this estimate of ten millions public money spent\non crime and want, a more or less conjectural sum of eight millions for\nprivate charities. My impression is that this is much beneath the truth,\nbut at all events it leaves out of consideration much the heaviest and\nsaddest form of charity--the maintenance, by the working members of\nfamilies, of the unfortunate or ill-conducted persons whom the general\ncourse of misrule now leaves helpless to be the burden of the rest.\n\nNow I want to get first at some, I do not say approximate, but at all\nevents some suggestive, estimate of the quantity of real distress and\nmisguided life in this country. Then next, I want some fairly\nrepresentative estimate of our private expenditure in luxuries. We won't\nspend more, publicly, it appears, than eight hundred thousand a year, on\neducating men gratis. I want to know, as nearly as possible, what we\nspend privately a year, in educating horses gratis. Let us, at least,\nquit ourselves in this from the taunt of Rabshakeh, and see that for\nevery horse we train also a horseman; and that the rider be at least as\nhigh-bred as the horse, not jockey, but chevalier. Again, we spend eight\nhundred thousand, which is certainly a great deal of money, in making\nrough _minds_ bright. I want to know how much we spend annually in\nmaking rough _stones_ bright; that is to say, what may be the united\nannual sum, or near it, of our jewellers' bills. So much we pay for\neducating children gratis;--how much for educating diamonds gratis? and\nwhich pays best for brightening, the spirit or the charcoal? Let us get\nthose two items set down with some sincerity, and a few more of the same\nkind. _Publicly_ set down. We must not be ashamed of the way we spend\nour money. If our right hand is not to know what our left does, it must\nnot be because it would be ashamed if it did.\n\nThat is, therefore, quite the first practical thing to be done. Let\nevery man who wishes well to his country, render it yearly an account of\nhis income, and of the main heads of his expenditure; or, if he is\nashamed to do so, let him no more impute to the poor their poverty as a\ncrime, nor set them to break stones in order to frighten them from\ncommitting it. To lose money ill is indeed often a crime; but to get it\nill is a worse one, and to spend it ill, worst of all. You object, Lords\nof England, to increase, to the poor, the wages you give them, because\nthey spend them, you say, unadvisedly. Render them, therefore, an\naccount of the wages which _they_ give _you_; and show them, by your\nexample, how to spend theirs, to the last farthing advisedly.\n\nIt is indeed time to make this an acknowledged subject of instruction,\nto the workingman,--how to spend his wages. For, gentlemen, we _must_\ngive that instruction, whether we will or no, one way or the other. We\nhave given it in years gone by; and now we find fault with our peasantry\nfor having been too docile, and profited too shrewdly by our tuition.\nOnly a few days since I had a letter from the wife of a village rector,\na man of common sense and kindness, who was greatly troubled in his\nmind because it was precisely the men who got highest wages in summer\nthat came destitute to his door in the winter. Destitute, and of riotous\ntemper--for their method of spending wages in their period of prosperity\nwas by sitting two days a week in the tavern parlor, ladling port wine,\nnot out of bowls, but out of buckets. Well, gentlemen, who taught them\nthat method of festivity? Thirty years ago, I, a most inexperienced\nfreshman, went to my first college supper; at the head of the table sat\na nobleman of high promise and of admirable powers, since dead of palsy;\nthere also we had in the midst of us, not buckets, indeed, but bowls as\nlarge as buckets; there also, we helped ourselves with ladles. There\n(for this beginning of college education was compulsory), I choosing\nladlefuls of punch instead of claret, because I was then able,\nunperceived to pour them into my waistcoat instead of down my throat,\nstood it out to the end, and helped to carry four of my fellow-students,\none of them the son of the head of a college, head foremost, down stairs\nand home.\n\nSuch things are no more; but the fruit of them remains, and will for\nmany a day to come. The laborers whom you cannot now shut out of the\nale-house are only the too faithful disciples of the gentlemen who were\nwont to shut themselves into the dining-room. The gentlemen have not\nthought it necessary, in order to correct their own habits, to diminish\ntheir incomes; and, believe me, the way to deal with your drunken\nworkman is not to lower his wages,--but to mend his wits.[140]\n\nAnd if indeed we do not yet see quite clearly how to deal with the sins\nof our poor brother, it is possible that our dimness of sight may still\nhave other causes that can be cast out. There are two opposite cries of\nthe great liberal and conservative parties, which are both most right,\nand worthy to be rallying cries. On their side \"let every man have his\nchance;\" on yours \"let every man stand in his place.\" Yes, indeed, let\nthat be so, every man in his place, and every man fit for it. See that\nhe holds that place from Heaven's Providence; and not from his family's\nProvidence. Let the Lords Spiritual quit themselves of simony, we laymen\nwill look after the heretics for them. Let the Lords Temporal quit\nthemselves of nepotism, and we will take care of their authority for\nthem. Publish for us, you soldiers, an army gazette, in which the one\nsubject of daily intelligence shall be the grounds of promotion; a\ngazette which shall simply tell us, what there certainly can be no\ndetriment to the service in our knowing, when any officer is appointed\nto a new command,--what his former services and successes have\nbeen,--whom he has superseded,--and on what ground. It will be always a\nsatisfaction to us; it may sometimes be an advantage to you: and then,\nwhen there is really necessary debate respecting reduction of wages, let\nus always begin not with the wages of the industrious classes, but with\nthose of the idle ones. Let there be honorary titles, if people like\nthem; but let there be no honorary incomes.\n\nSo much for the master's motto, \"Every man in his place.\" Next for the\nlaborer's motto, \"Every man his chance.\" Let us mend that for them a\nlittle, and say, \"Every man his certainty\"--certainty, that if he does\nwell, he will be honored, and aided, and advanced in such degree as may\nbe fitting for his faculty and consistent with his peace; and equal\ncertainty that if he does ill, he will by sure justice be judged, and by\nsure punishment be chastised; if it may be, corrected; and if that may\nnot be, condemned. That is the right reading of the Republican motto,\n\"Every man his chance.\" And then, with such a system of government,\npure, watchful and just, you may approach your great problem of national\neducation, or in other words, of national employment. For all education\nbegins in work. What we think, or what we know; or what we believe, is\nin the end, of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what\nwe _do;_ and for man, woman, or child, the first point of education is\nto make them do their best. It is the law of good economy to make the\nbest of everything. How much more to make the best of every creature!\nTherefore, when your pauper comes to you and asks for bread, ask of him\ninstantly--What faculty have you? What can you do best? Can you drive a\nnail into wood? Go and mend the parish fences. Can you lay a brick? Mend\nthe walls of the cottages where the wind comes in. Can you lift a\nspadeful of earth? Turn this field up three feet deep all over. Can you\nonly drag a weight with your shoulders? Stand at the bottom of this hill\nand help up the overladen horses. Can you weld iron and chisel stone?\nFortify this wreck-strewn coast into a harbor; and change these shifting\nsands into fruitful ground. Wherever death was, bring life; that is to\nbe your work; that your parish refuge; that your education. So and no\notherwise can we meet existent distress. But for the continual education\nof the whole people, and for their future happiness, they must have such\nconsistent employment as shall develop all the powers of the fingers,\nand the limbs, and the brain: and that development is only to be\nobtained by hand-labor, of which you have these four great\ndivisions--hand-labor on the earth, hand-labor on the sea, hand-labor in\nart, hand-labor in war. Of the last two of these I cannot speak\nto-night, and of the first two only with extreme brevity.\n\nI. Hand-labor on the earth, the work of the husbandman and of the\nshepherd;--to dress the earth and to keep the flocks of it--the first\ntask of man, and the final one--the education always of noblest\nlawgivers, kings and teachers; the education of Hesiod, of Moses, of\nDavid, of all the true strength of Rome; and all its tenderness: the\npride of Cincinnatus, and the inspiration of Virgil. Hand-labor on the\nearth, and the harvest of it brought forth with singing:--not\nsteam-piston labor on the earth, and the harvest of it brought forth\nwith steam-whistling. You will have no prophet's voice accompanied by\nthat shepherd's pipe, and pastoral symphony. Do you know that lately, in\nCumberland, in the chief pastoral district of England--in Wordsworth's\nown home--a procession of villagers on their festa day provided for\nthemselves, by way of music, a steam-plough whistling at the head of\nthem.\n\nGive me patience while I put the principle of machine labor before you,\nas clearly and in as short compass as possible; it is one that should be\nknown at this juncture. Suppose a farming proprietor needs to employ a\nhundred men on his estate, and that the labor of these hundred men is\nenough, but not more than enough, to till all his land, and to raise\nfrom it food for his own family, and for the hundred laborers. He is\nobliged, under such circumstances, to maintain all the men in moderate\ncomfort, and can only by economy accumulate much for himself. But,\nsuppose he contrive a machine that will easily do the work of fifty men,\nwith only one man to watch it. This sounds like a great advance in\ncivilization. The farmer of course gets his machine made, turns off the\nfifty men, who may starve or emigrate at their choice, and now he can\nkeep half of the produce of his estate, which formerly went to feed\nthem, all to himself. That is the essential and constant operation of\nmachinery among us at this moment.\n\nNay, it is at first answered; no man can in reality keep half the\nproduce of an estate to himself, nor can he in the end keep more than\nhis own human share of anything; his riches must diffuse themselves at\nsome time; he must maintain somebody else with them, however he spends\nthem. That is mainly true (not altogether so), for food and fuel are in\nordinary circumstances personally wasted by rich people, in quantities\nwhich would save many lives. One of my own great luxuries, for instance,\nis candlelight--and I probably burn, for myself alone, as many candles\nduring the winter, as would comfort the old eyes, or spare the young\nones, of a whole rushlighted country village. Still, it is mainly true,\nthat it is not by their personal waste that rich people prevent the\nlives of the poor. This is the way they do it. Let me go back to my\nfarmer. He has got his machine made, which goes creaking, screaming, and\noccasionally exploding, about modern Arcadia. He has turned off his\nfifty men to starve. Now, at some distance from his own farm, there is\nanother on which the laborers were working for their bread in the same\nway, by tilling the land. The machinist sends over to these, saying--\"I\nhave got food enough for you without your digging or ploughing any more.\nI can maintain you in other occupations instead of ploughing that land;\nif you rake in its gravel you will find some hard stones--you shall\ngrind those on mills till they glitter; then, my wife shall wear a\nnecklace of them. Also, if you turn up the meadows below you will find\nsome fine white clay, of which you shall make a porcelain service for\nme: and the rest of the farm I want for pasture for horses for my\ncarriage--and you shall groom them, and some of you ride behind the\ncarriage with staves in your hands, and I will keep you much fatter for\ndoing that than you can keep yourselves by digging.\"\n\nWell--but it is answered, are we to have no diamonds, nor china, nor\npictures, nor footmen, then--but all to be farmers? I am not saying what\nwe ought to do, I want only to show you with perfect clearness first\nwhat we _are doing_; and that, I repeat, is the upshot of\nmachine-contriving in this country. And observe its effect on the\nnational strength. Without machines, you have a hundred and fifty yeomen\nready to join for defence of the land. You get your machine, starve\nfifty of them, make diamond-cutters or footmen of as many more, and for\nyour national defence against an enemy, you have now, and _can_ have,\nonly fifty men, instead of a hundred and fifty; these also now with\nminds much alienated from you as their chief,[141] and the rest,\nlapidaries or footmen; and a steam plough.\n\nThat is one effect of machinery; but at all events, if we have thus lost\nin men, we have gained in riches; instead of happy human souls, we have\nat least got pictures, china, horses, and are ourselves better off than\nwe were before. But very often, and in much of our machine-contriving,\neven _that_ result does not follow. We are not one whit the richer for\nthe machine, we only employ it for our amusement. For observe, our\ngaining in riches depends on the men who are out of employment\nconsenting to be starved, or sent out of the country. But suppose they\ndo not consent passively to be starved, but some of them become\ncriminals, and have to be taken charge of and fed at a much greater cost\nthan if they were at work, and, others, paupers, rioters, and the like,\nthen you attain the real outcome of modern wisdom and ingenuity. You\nhave your hundred men honestly at country work; but you don't like the\nsight of human beings in your fields; you like better to see a smoking\nkettle. You pay, as an amateur, for that pleasure, and you employ your\nfifty men in picking oakum, or begging, rioting, and thieving.\n\nBy hand-labor, therefore, and that alone, we are to till the ground. By\nhand-labor also to plough the sea; both for food, and in commerce, and\nin war: not with floating kettles there neither, but with hempen bridle,\nand the winds of heaven in harness. That is the way the power of Greece\nrose on her Egean, the power of Venice on her Adria, of Amalfi in her\nblue bay, of the Norman sea-riders from the North Cape to Sicily:--so,\nyour own dominion also of the past. Of the past mind you. On the Baltic\nand the Nile, your power is already departed. By machinery you would\nadvance to discovery; by machinery you would carry your commerce;--you\nwould be engineers instead of sailors; and instantly in the North seas\nyou are beaten among the ice, and before the very Gods of Nile, beaten\namong the sand. Agriculture, then, by the hand or by the plough drawn\nonly by animals; and shepherd and pastoral husbandry, are to be the\nchief schools of Englishmen. And this most royal academy of all\nacademies you have to open over all the land, purifying your heaths and\nhills, and waters, and keeping them full of every kind of lovely natural\norganism, in tree, herb, and living creature. All land that is waste and\nugly, you must redeem into ordered fruitfulness; all ruin, desolateness,\nimperfectness of hut or habitation, you must do away with; and\nthroughout every village and city of your English dominion there must\nnot be a hand that cannot find a helper, nor a heart that cannot find a\ncomforter.\n\n\"How impossible!\" I know, you are thinking. Ah! So far from impossible,\nit is easy, it is natural, it is necessary, and I declare to you that,\nsooner or later, it _must be done_, at our peril. If now our English\nlords of land will fix this idea steadily before them; take the people\nto their hearts, trust to their loyalty, lead their labor;--then indeed\nthere will be princes again in the midst of us, worthy of the island\nthrone,\n\n    \"This royal throne of kings--this sceptred isle--\n    This fortress built by nature for herself\n    Against infection, and the hand of war;\n    This precious stone set in the silver sea;\n    This happy breed of men--this little world:\n    This other Eden--Demi-Paradise.\"\n\nBut if they refuse to do this, and hesitate and equivocate, clutching\nthrough the confused catastrophe of all things only at what they can\nstill keep stealthily for themselves--their doom is nearer than even\ntheir adversaries hope, and it will be deeper than even their despisers\ndream.\n\nThat, believe me, is the work you have to do in England; and out of\nEngland you have room for everything else you care to do. Are her\ndominions in the world so narrow that she can find no place to spin\ncotton in but Yorkshire? We may organize emigration into an infinite\npower. We may assemble troops of the more adventurous and ambitious of\nour youth; we may send them on truest foreign service, founding new\nseats of authority, and centres of thought, in uncultivated and\nunconquered lands; retaining the full affection to the native country no\nless in our colonists than in our armies, teaching them to maintain\nallegiance to their fatherland in labor no less than in battle; aiding\nthem with free hand in the prosecution of discovery, and the victory\nover adverse natural powers; establishing seats of every manufacture in\nthe climates and places best fitted for it, and bringing ourselves into\ndue alliance and harmony of skill with the dexterities of every race,\nand the wisdoms of every tradition and every tongue.\n\nAnd then you may make England itself the centre of the learning, of the\narts, of the courtesies and felicities of the world. Yon may cover her\nmountains with pasture; her plains with corn, her valleys with the lily,\nand her gardens with the rose. You may bring together there in peace\nthe wise and the pure, and the gentle of the earth, and by their word,\ncommand through its farthest darkness the birth of \"God's first\ncreature, which was Light.\" You know whose words those are; the words of\nthe wisest of Englishmen. He, and with him the wisest of all other great\nnations, have spoken always to men of this hope, and they would not\nhear. Plato, in the dialogue of Critias, his last, broken off at his\ndeath--Pindar, in passionate singing of the fortunate islands--Virgil,\nin the prophetic tenth eclogue--Bacon, in his fable of the New\nAtlantis--More, in the book which, too impatiently wise, became the\nbye-word of fools--these, all, have told us with one voice what we\nshould strive to attain; _they_ not hopeless of it, but for our follies\nforced, as it seems, by heaven, to tell us only partly and in parables,\nlest we should hear them and obey.\n\nShall we never listen to the words of these wisest of men? Then listen\nat least to the words of your children--let us in the lips of babes and\nsucklings find our strength; and see that we do not make them mock\ninstead of pray, when we teach them, night and morning, to ask for what\nwe believe never can be granted;--that the will of the Father,--which\nis, that His creatures may be righteous and happy--should be done, _on\nearth_, as it is in Heaven.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[139] Compare _Time and Tide_, Sec. 169, _and Fors Clavigera_, Letter XIV,\npage 9.\n\n[140] See Appendix, \"Modern Education,\" and compare Sec. 70 of _Time and\nTide_.\n\n[141] [They were deserting, I am informed, in the early part of this\nyear, 1873, at the rate of a regiment a week.]\n\n\n\n\n_NOTES ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA._\n\n\nI am often accused of inconsistency; but believe myself defensible\nagainst the charge with respect to what I have said on nearly every\nsubject except that of war. It is impossible for me to write\nconsistently of war, for the groups of facts I have gathered about it\nlead me to two precisely opposite conclusions.\n\nWhen I find this the case, in other matters, I am silent, till I can\nchoose my conclusion: but, with respect to war, I am forced to speak, by\nthe necessities of the time; and forced to act, one way or another. The\nconviction on which I act is, that it causes an incalculable amount of\navoidable human suffering, and that it ought to cease among Christian\nnations; and if therefore any of my boy-friends desire to be soldiers, I\ntry my utmost to bring them into what I conceive to be a better mind.\nBut, on the other hand, I know certainly that the most beautiful\ncharacters yet developed among men have been formed in war;--that all\ngreat nations have been warrior nations, and that the only kinds of\npeace which we are likely to get in the present age are ruinous alike to\nthe intellect, and the heart.\n\nThe lecture on \"War,\" in this volume, addressed to young soldiers, had\nfor its object to strengthen their trust in the virtue of their\nprofession. It is inconsistent with itself, in its closing appeal to\nwomen, praying them to use their influence to bring wars to an end. And\nI have been hindered from completing my long intended notes on the\neconomy of the Kings of Prussia by continually increasing doubt how far\nthe machinery and discipline of war, under which they learned the art\nof government, was essential for such lesson; and what the honesty and\nsagacity of the Friedrich who so nobly repaired his ruined Prussia,\nmight have done for the happiness of his Prussia, unruined.\n\nIn war, however, or in peace, the character which Carlyle chiefly loves\nhim for, and in which Carlyle has shown him to differ from all kings up\nto this time succeeding him, is his constant purpose to use every power\nentrusted to him for the good of his people; and be, not in name only,\nbut in heart and hand, their king.\n\nNot in ambition, but in natural instinct of duty. Friedrich, born to\ngovern, determines to govern to the best of his faculty. That \"best\" may\nsometimes be unwise; and self-will, or love of glory, may have their\noblique hold on his mind, and warp it this way or that; but they are\nnever principal with him. He believes that war is necessary, and\nmaintains it; sees that peace is necessary, and calmly persists in the\nwork of it to the day of his death, not claiming therein more praise\nthan the head of any ordinary household, who rules it simply because it\nis his place, and he must not yield the mastery of it to another.\n\nHow far, in the future, it may be possible for men to gain the strength\nnecessary for kingship without either fronting death, or inflicting it,\nseems to me not at present determinable. The historical facts are that,\nbroadly speaking, none but soldiers, or persons with a soldierly\nfaculty, have ever yet shown themselves fit to be kings; and that no\nother men are so gentle, so just, or so clear-sighted. Wordsworth's\ncharacter of the happy warrior cannot be reached in the height of it\n_but by_ a warrior; nay, so much is it beyond common strength that I had\nsupposed the entire meaning of it to be metaphorical, until one of the\nbest soldiers of England himself read me the poem,[142] and taught me,\nwhat I might have known, had I enough watched his own life, that it was\nentirely literal. There is nothing of so high reach distinctly\ndemonstrable in Friedrich: but I see more and more, as I grow older,\nthat the things which are the most worth, encumbered among the errors\nand faults of every man's nature, are never clearly demonstrable; and\nare often most forcible when they are scarcely distinct to his own\nconscience,--how much less, clamorous for recognition by others!\n\nNothing can be more beautiful than Carlyle's showing of this, to any\ncareful reader of Friedrich. But careful readers are but one in the\nthousand; and by the careless, the masses of detail with which the\nhistorian must deal are insurmountable.\n\nMy own notes, made for the special purpose of hunting down the one point\nof economy, though they cruelly spoil Carlyle's own current and method\nof thought, may yet be useful in enabling readers, unaccustomed to books\ninvolving so vast a range of conception, to discern what, on this one\nsubject only, may be gathered from that history. On any other subject of\nimportance, similar gatherings might be made of other passages. The\nhistorian has to deal with all at once.\n\nI therefore have determined to print here, as a sequel to the Essay on\nWar, my notes from the first volume of Friedrich, on the economies of\nBrandenburg, up to the date of the establishment of the Prussian\nmonarchy. The economies of the first three Kings of Prussia I shall then\ntake up in _Fors Clavigera_, finding them fitter for examination in\nconnection with the subject of that book than of this.\n\nI assume, that the reader will take down his first volume of Carlyle,\nand read attentively the passages to which I refer him. I give the\nreference first to the largest edition, in six volumes (1858-1865);\nthen, in parenthesis, to the smallest or \"people's edition\" (1872-1873).\nThe pieces which I have quoted in my own text are for the use of readers\nwho may not have ready access to the book; and are enough for the\nexplanation of the points to which I wish them to direct their thoughts\nin reading such histories of soldiers or soldier-kingdoms.\n\n\nI.\n\n_Year_ 928 to 936.--_Dawn of Order in Christian Germany._\n\nBook II. Chap. i. p. 67 (47).\n\nHenry the Fowler, \"the beginning of German kings,\" is a mighty soldier\n_in the cause of peace_; his essential work the building and\norganization of fortified towns for the protection of men.\n\nRead page 72 with utmost care (51), \"He fortified towns,\" to end of\nsmall print. I have added some notes on the matter in my lecture on\nGiovanni Pisano; but whether you can glance at them or not, fix in your\nmind this institution of truly civil or civic building in Germany, as\ndistinct from the building of baronial castles for the security of\n_robbers_: and of a standing army consisting of every ninth man, called\na \"burgher\" (\"townsman\")--a soldier, appointed to learn that profession\nthat he may guard the walls--the exact reverse of _our_ notion of a\nburgher.\n\nFrederick's final idea of his army is, indeed, only this.\n\nBrannibor, a chief fortress of the Wends, is thus taken, and further\nstrengthened by Henry the Fowler; wardens appointed for it; and thus the\nhistory of Brandenburg begins. On all frontiers, also, this \"beginning\nof German kings\" has his \"Markgraf.\" \"Ancient of the marked place.\" Read\npage 73, measuredly, learning it by heart, if it may be. (51-2.)\n\n\nII.\n\n936-1000.--_History of Nascent Brandenburg._\n\nThe passage I last desired you to read ends with this sentence: \"The\nsea-wall you build, and what main floodgates you establish in it, will\ndepend on the state of the outer sea.\"\n\nFrom this time forward you have to keep clearly separate in your minds,\n(A) the history of that outer sea, Pagan Scandinavia, Russia, and\nBor-Russia, or Prussia proper; (B) the history of Henry the Fowler's\nEastern and Western Marches; asserting themselves gradually as Austria\nand the Netherlands; and (C) the history of this inconsiderable fortress\nof Brandenburg, gradually becoming considerable, and the capital city of\nincreasing district between them. That last history, however, Carlyle is\nobliged to leave vague and gray for two hundred years after Henry's\ndeath. Absolutely dim for the first century, in which nothing is evident\nbut that its wardens or Markgraves had no peaceable possession of the\nplace. Read the second paragraph in page 74 (52-3), \"in old books\" to\n\"reader,\" and the first in page 83 (59) \"meanwhile\" to \"substantial,\"\nconsecutively. They bring the story of Brandenburg itself down, at any\nrate, from 936 to 1000.\n\n\nIII.\n\n936-1000.--_State of the Outer Sea._\n\nRead now Chapter II. beginning at page 76 (54), wherein you will get\naccount of the beginning of vigorous missionary work on the outer sea,\nin Prussia proper; of the death of St. Adalbert, and of the purchase of\nhis dead body by the Duke of Poland.\n\nYou will not easily understand Carlyle's laugh in this chapter, unless\nyou have learned yourself to laugh in sadness, and to laugh in love.\n\n\"No Czech blows his pipe in the woodlands without certain precautions\nand preliminary fuglings of a devotional nature.\" (Imagine St. Adalbert,\nin spirit, at the railway station in Birmingham!)\n\nMy own main point for notice in the chapter is the purchase of his body\nfor its \"weight in gold.\" Swindling angels held it up in the scales; it\ndid not weigh so much as a web of gossamer. \"Had such excellent odor,\ntoo, and came for a mere nothing of gold,\" says Carlyle. It is one of\nthe first commercial transactions of Germany, but I regret the conduct\nof the angels on the occasion. Evangelicalism has been proud of ceasing\nto invest in relics, its swindling angels helping it to better things,\nas it supposes. For my own part, I believe Christian Germany could not\nhave bought at this time any treasure more precious; nevertheless, the\nmissionary work itself you find is wholly vain. The difference of\nopinion between St. Adalbert and the Wends, on Divine matters, does not\nsignify to the Fates. They will not have it disputed about; and end the\ndispute adversely, to St. Adalbert--adversely, even, to Brandenburg and\nits civilizing power, as you will immediately see.\n\n\nIV.\n\n1000-1030.--_History of Brandenburg in Trouble._\n\nBook II. Chap. iii. p. 83 (59).\n\nThe adventures of Brandenburg in contest with Pagan Prussia, irritated,\nrather than amended, by St. Adalbert. In 1023, roughly, a hundred years\nafter Henry the Fowler's death, Brandenburg is taken by the Wends, and\nits first line of Markgraves ended; its population mostly butchered,\nespecially the priests; and the Wends' God, Triglaph, \"something like\nthree whales' cubs combined by boiling,\" set up on the top of St. Mary's\nHill.\n\nHere is an adverse \"Doctrine of the Trinity\" which has its supporters!\nIt is wonderful,--this Tripod and Triglyph--three-footed, three-cut\nfaith of the North and South, the leaf of the oxalis, and strawberry,\nand clover, fostering the same in their simple manner. I suppose it to\nbe the most savage and natural of notions about Deity; a prismatic\nidol-shape of Him, rude as a triangular log, as a trefoil grass. I do\nnot find how long Triglaph held his state on St. Mary's Hill. \"For a\ntime,\" says Carlyle, \"the priests all slain or fled--shadowy Markgraves\nthe like--church and state lay in ashes, and Triglaph, like a triple\nporpoise under the influence of laudanum, stood, I know not whether on\nhis head or his tail, aloft on the Harlungsberg, as the Supreme of this\nUniverse for the time being.\"\n\n\nV.\n\n1030-1130.--_Brandenburg under the Ditmarsch Markgraves, or\nDitmarsch-Stade Markgraves._\n\nBook II. Chap. iii. p. 85 (60).\n\nOf Anglish, or Saxon breed. They attack Brandenburg, under its\nTriglyphic protector, take it--dethrone him, and hold the town for a\nhundred years, their history \"stamped beneficially on the face of\nthings, Markgraf after Markgraf getting killed in the business.\n'Erschlagen,' 'slain,' fighting with the Heathen--say the old books, and\npass on to another.\" If we allow seven years to Triglaph--we get a clear\ncentury for these--as above indicated. They die out in 1130.\n\n\nVI.\n\n1130-1170.--_Brandenburg under Albert the Bear._\n\nBook II. Chap iv. p. 91 (64).\n\nHe is the first of the Ascanien Markgraves, whose castle of Ascanica is\non the northern slope of the Hartz Mountains, \"ruins still dimly\ntraceable.\"\n\nThere had been no soldier or king of note among the Ditmarsch\nMarkgraves, so that you will do well to fix in your mind successively\nthe three men, Henry the Fowler, St. Adalbert, and Albert the Bear. A\nsoldier again, and a strong one. Named the Bear only from the device on\nhis shield, first wholly definite Markgraf of Brandenburg that there is,\n\"and that the luckiest of events for Brandenburg.\" Read page 93 (66)\ncarefully, and note this of his economies.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nNothing better is known to me of Albert the Bear than his introducing\nlarge numbers of Dutch Netherlanders into those countries; men thrown\nout of work, who already knew how to deal with bog and sand, by mixing\nand delving, and who first taught Brandenburg what greenness and\ncow-pasture was. The Wends, in presence of such things, could not but\nconsent more and more to efface themselves--either to become German, and\ngrow milk and cheese in the Dutch manner, or to disappear from the\nworld.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAfter two-hundred and fifty years of barking and worrying, the Wends are\nnow finally reduced to silence; their anarchy well buried and wholesome\nDutch cabbage planted over it; Albert did several great things in the\nworld; but this, for posterity, remains his memorable feat. Not done\nquite easily, but done: big destinies of nations or of persons are not\nfounded gratis in this world, He had a sore, toilsome time of it,\ncoercing, warring, managing among his fellow-creatures, while his day's\nwork lasted--fifty years or so, for it began early. He died in his\ncastle of Ballenstaedt, peaceably among the Hartz Mountains at last, in\nthe year 1170, age about sixty-five.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nNow, note in all this the steady gain of soldiership enforcing order and\nagriculture, with St. Adalbert giving higher strain to the imagination.\nHenry the Fowler establishes walled towns, fighting for mere peace.\nAlbert the Bear plants the country with cabbages, fighting for his\ncabbage-fields. And the disciples of St. Adalbert, generally, have\nsucceeded in substituting some idea of Christ for the idea of Triglaph.\nSome idea only; other ideas than of Christ haunt even to this day those\nHartz Mountains among which Albert the Bear dies so peacefully.\nMephistopheles, and all his ministers, inhabit there, commanding\nmephitic clouds and earth-born dreams.\n\n\nVII.\n\n1170-1320.--_Brandenburg 150 years under the Ascanien Markgraves._\n\nVol. I. Book II Chap. viii. p. 135 (96).\n\n\"Wholesome Dutch cabbages continued to be more and more planted by them\nin the waste sand: intrusive chaos, and Triglaph held at bay by them,\"\ntill at last in 1240, seventy years after the great Bear's death, they\nfortify a new Burg, a \"_little_ rampart,\" Wehrlin, diminutive of Wehr\n(or vallum), gradually smoothing itself, with a little echo of the Bear\nin it too, into Ber-lin, the oily river Spree flowing by, \"in which you\ncatch various fish;\" while trade over the flats and by the dull streams,\nis widely possible. Of the Ascanien race, the notablest is Otto with the\nArrow, whose story see, pp. 138-141 (98-100), noting that Otto is one of\nthe first Minnesingers; that, being a prisoner to the Archbishop of\nMagdeburg, his wife rescues him, selling her jewels to bribe the canons;\nand that the Knight, set free on parole and promise of farther ransom,\nrides back with his own price in his hand; holding himself thereat\ncheaply bought, though no angelic legerdemain happens to the scales now.\nHis own estimate of his price--\"Rain gold ducats on my war-horse and me,\ntill you cannot see the point of my spear atop.\"\n\nEmptiness of utter pride, you think?\n\nNot so. Consider with yourself, reader, how much you dare to say, aloud,\n_you_ are worth. If you have _no_ courage to name any price whatsoever\nfor yourself, believe me, the cause is not your modesty, but that in\nvery truth you feel in your heart there would be no bid for you at\nLucian's sale of lives, were that again possible, at Christie and\nManson's.\n\nFinally (1319 exactly; say 1320, for memory), the Ascanien line expired\nin Brandenburg, and the little town and its electorate lapsed to the\nKaiser: meantime other economical arrangements had been in progress; but\nobserve first how far we have got.\n\nThe Fowler, St. Adalbert and the Bear have established order, and some\nsort of Christianity; but the established persons begin to think\nsomewhat too well of themselves. On quite honest terms, a dead saint or\na living knight ought to be worth their true \"weight in gold.\" But a\npyramid, with only the point of the spear seen at top, would be many\ntimes over one's weight in gold. And although men were yet far enough\nfrom the notion of modern days, that the gold is better than the flesh,\nand from buying it with the clay of one's body, and even the fire of\none's soul, instead of soul and body with _it_, they were beginning to\nfight for their own supremacy, or for their own religious fancies, and\nnot at all to any useful end, until an entirely unexpected movement is\nmade in the old useful direction forsooth, only by some kind\nship-captains of Luebeck!\n\n\nVIII.\n\n1210-1320.--_Civil work, aiding military, during the Ascanien period._\n\nVol. I. Book II. Chap. vi. p. 109 (77).\n\nIn the year 1190, Acre not yet taken, and the crusading army wasting by\nmurrain on the shore, the German soldiers especially having none to look\nafter them, certain compassionate ship-captains of Luebeck, one Walpot\nvon Bassenheim taking the lead, formed themselves into an union for\nsuccor of the sick and the dying, set up canvas tents from the Luebeck\nship stores, and did what utmost was in them silently in the name of\nmercy and heaven. Finding its work prosper, the little medicinal and\nweather-fending company took vows on itself, strict chivalry forms, and\ndecided to become permanent \"Knights Hospitallers of our dear Lady of\nMount Zion,\" separate from the former Knights Hospitallers, as being\nentirely German: yet soon, as the German Order of St. Mary, eclipsing in\nimportance Templars, Hospitallers, and every other chivalric order then\nextant; no purpose of battle in them, but much strength for it; their\npurpose only the helping of German pilgrims. To this only they are\nbound by their vow, \"geluebde,\" and become one of the usefullest of clubs\nin all the Pall Mall of Europe.\n\nFinding pilgrimage in Palestine falling slack, and more need for them on\nthe homeward side of the sea, their Hochmeister, Hermann of the Salza,\ngoes over to Venice in 1210. There the titular bishop of still\nunconverted Preussen advises him of that field of work for his idle\nknights. Hermann thinks well of it: sets his St. Mary's riders at\nTriglaph, with the sword in one hand and a missal in the other.\n\nNot your modern way of affecting conversion! Too illiberal, you think;\nand what would Mr. J. S. Mill say?\n\nBut if Triglaph _had_ been verily \"three whales' cubs combined by\nboiling,\" you would yourself have promoted attack upon him for the sake\nof his oil, would not you? The Teutsch Ritters, fighting him for\ncharity, are they so much inferior to you?\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThey built, and burnt, innumerable stockades for and against; built\nwooden forts which are now stone towns. They fought much and\nprevalently; galloped desperately to and fro, ever on the alert. In\npeaceabler ulterior times, they fenced in the Nogat and the Weichsel\nwith dams, whereby unlimited quagmire might become grassy meadow--as it\ncontinues to this day. Marienburg (Mary's Burg), with its grand stone\nSchloss still visible and even habitable: this was at length their\nheadquarter. But how many Burgs of wood and stone they built, in\ndifferent parts; what revolts, surprisals, furious fights in woody,\nboggy places they had, no man has counted.\n\nBut always some preaching by zealous monks, accompanied the chivalrous\nfighting. And colonists came in from Germany; trickling in, or at times\nstreaming. Victorious Ritterdom offers terms to the beaten heathen:\nterms not of tolerant nature, but which _will be punctually kept by\nRitterdom_. When the flame of revolt or general conspiracy burnt up\nagain too extensively, high personages came on crusade to them. Ottocar,\nKing of Bohemia, with his extensive far-shining chivalry, \"conquered\nSamland in a month;\" tore up the Romova where Adalbert had been\nmassacred, and burned it from the face of the earth. A certain fortress\nwas founded at that time, in Ottocar's presence; and in honor of him\nthey named it King's Fortress, \"Koenigsberg.\" Among King Ottocar's\nesquires, or subaltern junior officials, on this occasion, is one\nRudolf, heir of a poor Swiss lordship and gray hill castle, called\nHapsburg, rather in reduced circumstances, whom Ottocar likes for his\nprudent, hardy ways; a stout, modest, wise young man, who may chance to\nredeem Hapsburg a little, if he lives.\n\nConversion, and complete conquest once come, there was a happy time for\nPrussia; ploughshare instead of sword: busy sea-havens, German towns,\ngetting built; churches everywhere rising; grass growing, and peaceable\ncows, where formerly had been quagmire and snakes, and for the Order a\nhappy time. On the whole, this Teutsch Ritterdom, for the first century\nand more, was a grand phenomenon, and flamed like a bright blessed\nbeacon through the night of things, in those Northern countries. For\nabove a century, we perceive, it was the rallying place of all brave men\nwho had a career to seek on terms other than vulgar. The noble soul,\naiming beyond money, and sensible to more than hunger in this world, had\na beacon burning (as we say), if the night chanced to overtake it, and\nthe earth to grow too intricate, as is not uncommon. Better than the\ncareer of stump-oratory, I should fancy, and its Hesperides apples,\ngolden, and of gilt horse-dung. Better than puddling away one's poor\nspiritual gift of God (loan, not gift), such as it may be, in building\nthe lofty rhyme, the lofty review article, for a discerning public that\nhas sixpence to spare! Times alter greatly.[143]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe must pause here again for a moment to think where we are, and who is\n_with us_. The Teutsch Ritters have been fighting, independently of all\nstates, for their own hand, or St. Adalbert's; partly for mere love of\nfight, partly for love of order, partly for love of God. Meantime, other\nRiders have been fighting wholly for what they could get by it; and\nother persons, not Riders, have not been fighting at all, but in their\nown towns peacefully manufacturing and selling.\n\nOf Henry the Fowler's Marches, Austria has become a military power,\nFlanders a mercantile one, pious only in the degree consistent with\ntheir several occupations. Prussia is now a practical and farming\ncountry, more Christian than its longer-converted neighbors.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTowns are built, Koenigsberg (King Ottocar's town), Thoren (Thorn, City\nof the Gates), with many others; so that the wild population and the\ntame now lived tolerably together, under Gospel and Luebeck law; and all\nwas ploughing and trading.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBut Brandenburg itself, what of it?\n\nThe Ascanien Markgraves rule it on the whole prosperously down to 1320,\nwhen their line expires, and it falls into the power of Imperial\nAustria.\n\n\nIX.\n\n1320-1415.--_Brandenburg under the Austrians._\n\nA century--the fourteenth--of miserable anarchy and decline for\nBrandenburg, its Kurfuersts, in deadly succession, making what they can\nout of it for their own pockets. The city itself and its territory\nutterly helpless. Read pp. 180, 181 (129, 130). \"The towns suffered\nmuch, any trade they might have had going to wreck. Robber castles\nflourished, all else decayed, no highway safe. What are Hamburg pedlars\nmade for but to be robbed?\"\n\n\nX.\n\n1415-1440.--_Brandenburg under Friedrich of Nueremberg._\n\nThis is the fourth of the men whom you are to remember as creators of\nthe Prussian monarchy, Henry the Fowler, St. Adalbert, Albert the Bear,\nof Ascanien, and Friedrich of Nueremberg; (of Hohenzollern, by name, and\nby country, of the Black Forest, north of the Lake of Constance).\n\nBrandenburg is sold to him at Constance, during the great Council, for\nabout 200,000_l._ of our money, worth perhaps a million in that day;\nstill, with its capabilities, \"dog cheap.\" Admitting, what no one at the\ntime denied, the general marketableness of states as private property,\nthis is the one practical result, thinks Carlyle (not likely to think\nwrong), of that oecumenical deliberation, four years long, of the\n\"elixir of the intellect and dignity of Europe. And that one thing was\nnot its doing; but a pawnbroking job, intercalated,\" putting, however,\nat last, Brandenburg again under the will of one strong man. On St.\nJohn's day, 1412, he first set foot in his town, \"and Brandenburg, under\nits wise Kurfuerst, begins to be cosmic again.\" The story of Heavy Peg,\npages 195-198 (138, 140), is one of the most brilliant and important\npassages of the first volume; page 199, specially to our purpose, must\nbe given entire:--\n\n     The offer to be Kaiser was made him in his old days; but he\n     wisely declined that too. It was in Brandenburg, by what he\n     silently founded there, that he did his chief benefit to\n     Germany and mankind. He understood the noble art of\n     governing men; had in him the justness, clearness, valor,\n     and patience needed for that. A man of sterling probity, for\n     one thing. _Which indeed is the first requisite in said\n     art_:--if you will have your laws obeyed without mutiny, see\n     well that they be pieces of God Almighty's law; otherwise\n     all the artillery in the world will not keep down mutiny.\n\n     Friedrich \"travelled much over Brandenburg;\" looking into\n     everything with his own eyes; making, I can well fancy,\n     innumerable crooked things straight; reducing more and more\n     that famishing dog-kennel of a Brandenburg into a fruitful\n     arable field. His portraits represent a square-headed,\n     mild-looking, solid gentleman, with a certain twinkle of\n     mirth in the serious eyes of him. Except in those Hussite\n     wars for Kaiser Sigismund and the Reich, in which no man\n     could prosper, he may be defined as constantly prosperous.\n     To Brandenburg he was, very literally, the blessing of\n     blessings; redemption out of death into life. In the ruins\n     of that old Friesack Castle, battered down by Heavy Peg,\n     antiquarian science (if it had any eyes) might look for the\n     taproot of the Prussian nation, and the beginning of all\n     that Brandenburg has since grown to under the sun.\n\nWhich growth is now traced by Carlyle in its various budding and\nwithering, under the succession of the twelve Electors, of whom\nFriedrich, with his heavy Peg, is first, and Friedrich, first King of\nPrussia, grandfather of Friedrich the Great, the twelfth.\n\n\nXI.\n\n1416-1701.--_Brandenburg under the Hohenzollern Kurfuersts._\n\nBook III.\n\nWho the Hohenzollerns were, and how they came to power in Nueremberg, is\ntold in Chap. v. of Book II.\n\nTheir succession in Brandenburg is given in brief at page 377 (269). I\ncopy it, in absolute barrenness of enumeration, for our momentary\nconvenience, here:\n\n    Friedrich 1st of Brandenburg (6th of Nueremberg), 1412-1440\n    Friedrich II., called \"Iron Teeth,\"              1440-1472\n    Albert,                                          1472-1486\n    Johann,                                          1486-1499\n    Joachim I.,                                      1499-1535\n    Joachim II.,                                     1535-1571\n    Johann George,                                   1571-1598\n    Joachim Friedrich,                               1598-1608\n    Johann Sigismund,                                1608-1619\n    George Wilhelm,                                  1619-1640\n    Friedrich Wilhelm (the Great Elector),           1640-1688\n    Friedrich, first King; crowned 18th January,       1701\n\nOf this line of princes we have to say they followed generally in their\nancestor's steps, and had success of the like kind more or less;\nHohenzollerns all of them, by character and behaviour as well as by\ndescent. No lack of quiet energy, of thrift, sound sense. There was\nlikewise solid fair-play in general, no founding of yourself on ground\nthat will not carry, _and there was instant, gentle, but inexorable\ncrushing of mutiny_, if it showed itself, which after the Second\nElector, or at most the Third, it had altogether ceased to do.\n\nThis is the general account of them; of special matters note the\nfollowing:--\n\n\nII. Friedrich, called \"Iron-teeth,\" from his firmness, proves a notable\nmanager and governor. Builds the palace at Berlin in its first form, and\nmakes it his chief residence. Buys Neumark from the fallen Teutsch\nRitters, and generally establishes things on securer footing.\n\n\nIII. Albert, \"a fiery, tough old Gentlemen,\" called the Achilles of\nGermany in his day; has half-a-century of fighting with his own\nNuerembergers, with Bavaria, France, Burgundy, and its fiery Charles,\nbesides being head constable to the Kaiser among any disorderly persons\nin the East. His skull, long shown on his tomb, \"marvellous for strength\nand with no visible sutures.\"\n\n\nIV. John, the orator of his race; (but the orations unrecorded). His\nsecond son, Archbishop of Maintz, for whose piece of memorable work see\npage 223 (143) and read in connection with that the history of Margraf\nGeorge, pp. 237-241 (152-154), and the 8th chapter of the third book.\n\n\nV. Joachim I., of little note; thinks there has been enough Reformation,\nand checks proceedings in a dull stubbornness, causing him at least\ngrave domestic difficulties.--Page 271 (173).\n\n\nVI. Joachim II. Again active in the Reformation, and staunch,\n\n     though generally in a cautious, weighty, never in a rash,\n     swift way, to the great cause of Protestantism and to all\n     good causes. He was himself a solemnly devout man; deep,\n     awe-stricken reverence dwelling in his view of this\n     universe. Most serious, though with a jocose dialect,\n     commonly having a cheerful wit in speaking to men. Luther's\n     books he called his Seelenschatz, (soul's treasure); Luther\n     and the Bible were his chief reading. Fond of profane\n     learning, too, and of the useful or ornamental arts; given\n     to music, and \"would himself sing aloud\" when he had a\n     melodious leisure hour.\n\n\nVII. Johann George, a prudent thrifty Herr; no mistresses, no luxuries\nallowed; at the sight of a new-fashioned coat he would fly out on an\nunhappy youth and pack him from his presence. Very strict in point of\njustice; a peasant once appealing to him in one of his inspection\njourneys through the country--\n\n     \"Grant me justice, Durchlaucht, against so and so; I am your\n     Highness's born subject.\" \"Thou shouldst have it, man, wert\n     thou a born Turk!\" answered Johann George.\n\nThus, generally, we find this line of Electors representing in Europe\nthe Puritan mind of England in a somewhat duller, but less dangerous,\nform; receiving what Protestantism could teach of honesty and common\nsense, but not its anti-Catholic fury, or its selfish spiritual anxiety.\nPardon of sins is not to be had from Tetzel; neither, the Hohenzollern\nmind advises with itself, from even Tetzel's master, for either the\nbuying, or the asking. On the whole, we had better commit as few as\npossible, and live just lives and plain ones.\n\n     A conspicuous thrift, veracity, modest solidity, looks\n     through the conduct of this Herr; a determined Protestant he\n     too, as indeed all the following were and are.\n\n\nVIII. Joachim Friedrich. Gets hold of Prussia, which hitherto, you\nobserve, has always been spoken of as a separate country from\nBrandenburg. March 11, 1605--\"squeezed his way into the actual\nguardianship of Preussen and its imbecile Duke, which was his by right.\"\n\nFor my own part, I do not trouble myself much about these rights, never\nbeing able to make out any single one, to begin with, except the right\nto keep everything and every place about you in as good order as you\ncan--Prussia, Poland, or what else. I should much like, for instance,\njust now, to hear of any honest Cornish gentleman of the old Drake breed\ntaking a fancy to land in Spain, and trying what he could make of his\nrights as far round Gibraltar as he could enforce them. At all events,\nMaster Joachim has somehow got hold of Prussia; and means to keep it.\n\n\nIX. Johann Sigismund. Only notable for our economical purposes, as\ngetting the \"guardianship\" of Prussia confirmed to him. The story at\npage 317 (226), \"a strong flame of choler,\" indicates a new order of\nthings among the knights of Europe--\"princely etiquettes melting all\ninto smoke.\" Too literally so, that being one of the calamitous\nfunctions of the plain lives we are living, and of the busy life our\ncountry is living. In the Duchy of Cleve, especially, concerning which\nlegal dispute begins in Sigismund's time. And it is well worth the\nlawyers' trouble, it seems.\n\n     It amounted, perhaps, to two Yorkshires in extent. A\n     naturally opulent country of fertile meadows, shipping\n     capabilities, metalliferous hills, and at this time, in\n     consequence of the Dutch-Spanish war, and the multitude of\n     Protestant refugees, it was getting filled with ingenious\n     industries, and rising to be what it still is, the busiest\n     quarter of Germany. A country lowing with kine; the hum of\n     the flax-spindle heard in its cottages in those old\n     days--\"much of the linen called Hollands is made in Juelich,\n     and only bleached, stamped, and sold by the Dutch,\" says\n     Buesching. A country in our days which is shrouded at short\n     intervals with the due canopy of coal-smoke, and loud with\n     sounds of the anvil and the loom.\n\nThe lawyers took two hundred and six years to settle the question\nconcerning this Duchy, and the thing Johann Sigismund had claimed\nlegally in 1609 was actually handed over to Johann Sigismund's\ndescendant in the seventh generation. \"These litigated duchies are now\nthe Prussian provinces, Juelich, Berg, Cleve, and the nucleus of\nPrussia's possessions in the Rhine country.\"\n\n\nX. George Wilhelm. Read pp. 325 to 327 (231, 233) on this Elector and\nGerman Protestantism, now fallen cold, and somewhat too little\ndangerous. But George Wilhelm is the only weak prince of all the twelve.\nFor another example how the heart and life of a country depend upon its\nprince, not on its council, read this, of Gustavus Adolphus, demanding\nthe cession of Spandau and Kuestrin:\n\n     Which cession Kurfuerst George Wilhelm, though giving all his\n     prayers to the good cause, could by no means grant. Gustav\n     had to insist, with more and more emphasis, advancing at\n     last with military menace upon Berlin itself. He was met by\n     George Wilhelm and his Council, \"in the woods of Coepenick,\"\n     short way to the east of that city; there George Wilhelm and\n     his Council wandered about, sending messages, hopelessly\n     consulting, saying among each other, \"Que faire? ils ont des\n     canons.\" For many hours so, round the inflexible Gustav, who\n     was there like a fixed mile-stone, and to all questions and\n     comers had only one answer.\n\nOn our special question of war and its consequences, read this of the\nThirty Years' one:\n\n     But on the whole, the grand weapon in it, and towards the\n     latter times, the exclusive one, was hunger. The opposing\n     armies tried to starve one another; at lowest, tried each\n     not to starve. Each trying to eat the country or, at any\n     rate, to leave nothing eatable in it; what that will mean\n     for the country we may consider. As the armies too\n     frequently, and the Kaiser's armies habitually, lived\n     without commissariat, often enough without pay, all horrors\n     of war and of being a seat of war, that have been since\n     heard of, are poor to those then practised, the detail of\n     which is still horrible to read. Germany, in all eatable\n     quarters of it, had to undergo the process; tortured, torn\n     to pieces, wrecked, and brayed as in a mortar, under the\n     iron mace of war. Brandenburg saw its towns seized and\n     sacked, its country populations driven to despair by the one\n     party and the other. Three times--first in the\n     Wallenstein-Mecklenburg times, while fire and sword were the\n     weapons, and again, twice over, in the ultimate stages of\n     the struggle, when starvation had become the\n     method--Brandenburg fell to be the principal theatre of\n     conflict, where all forms of the dismal were at their\n     height. In 1638, three years after that precious \"Peace of\n     Prag,\"... the ravages of the starving Gallas and his\n     Imperialists excelled all precedent,... men ate human flesh,\n     nay, human creatures ate their own children. \"Que faire? ils\n     ont des canons!\"\n\n\"We have now arrived at the lowest nadir point\" (says Carlyle) \"of the\nhistory of Brandenburg under the Hohenzollerns.\" Is this then all that\nHeavy Peg and our nine Kurfuersts have done for us?\n\nCarlyle does not mean that; but even he, greatest of historians since\nTacitus, is not enough careful to mark for us the growth of national\ncharacter, as distinct from the prosperity of dynasties.\n\nA republican historian would think of this development only, and suppose\nit to be possible without any dynasties.\n\nWhich is indeed in a measure so, and the work now chiefly needed in\nmoral philosophy, as well as history, is an analysis of the constant and\nprevalent, yet unthought of, influences, which, without any external\nhelp from kings, and in a silent and entirely necessary manner, form, in\nSweden, in Bavaria, in the Tyrol, in the Scottish border, and on the\nFrench sea-coast, races of noble peasants; pacific, poetic, heroic,\nChristian-hearted in the deepest sense, who may indeed perish by sword\nor famine in any cruel thirty years' war, or ignoble thirty years'\npeace, and yet leave such strength to their children that the country,\napparently ravaged into hopeless ruin, revives, under any prudent king,\nas the cultivated fields do under the spring rain. How the rock to which\nno seed can cling, and which no rain can soften, is subdued into the\ngood ground which can bring forth its hundredfold, we forget to watch,\nwhile we follow the footsteps of the sower, or mourn the catastrophes of\nstorm. All this while, the Prussian earth--the Prussian soul--has been\nthus dealt upon by successive fate; and now, though laid, as it seems,\nutterly desolate, it can be revived by a few years of wisdom and of\npeace.\n\nVol. I. Book III. Chap, xviii.--The Great Elector, Friedrich Wilhelm.\nEleventh of the dynasty:--\n\n     There hardly ever came to sovereign power a young man of\n     twenty under more distressing, hopeless-looking\n     circumstances. Political significance Brandenburg had none;\n     a mere Protestant appendage, dragged about by a Papist\n     Kaiser. His father's Prime Minister, as we have seen, was in\n     the interest of his enemies; not Brandenburg's servant, but\n     Austria's. The very commandants of his fortresses,\n     Commandant of Spandau more especially, refused to obey\n     Friedrich Wilhelm on his accession; \"were bound to obey the\n     Kaiser in the first place.\"\n\n     For twenty years past Brandenburg had been scoured by\n     hostile armies, which, especially the Kaiser's part of\n     which, committed outrages new in human history. In a year or\n     two hence, Brandenburg became again the theatre of business,\n     Austrian Gallas advancing thither again (1644) with intent\n     \"to shut up Torstenson and his Swedes in Jutland.\" Gallas\n     could by no means do what he intended; on the contrary, he\n     had to run from Torstenson--what feet could do; was hunted,\n     he and his Merode Brueder (beautiful inventors of the\n     \"marauding\" art), till they pretty much all died (crepirten)\n     says Koehler. No great loss to society, the death of these\n     artists, but we can fancy what their life, and especially\n     what the process of their dying, may have cost poor\n     Brandenburg again!\n\n     Friedrich Wilhelm's aim, in this as in other emergencies,\n     was sun-clear to himself, but for most part dim to everybody\n     else. He had to walk very warily, Sweden on one hand of him,\n     suspicious Kaiser on the other: he had to wear semblances,\n     to be ready with evasive words, and advance noiselessly by\n     many circuits. More delicate operation could not be\n     imagined. But advance he did; advance and arrive. With\n     extraordinary talent, diligence, and felicity the young man\n     wound himself out of this first fatal position, got those\n     foreign armies pushed out of his country, and kept them out.\n     His first concern had been to find some vestige of revenue,\n     to put that upon a clear footing, and by loans or otherwise\n     to scrape a little ready-money together. On the strength _of\n     which a small body of soldiers could be collected about him,\n     and drilled into real ability to fight and obey_. This as a\n     basis: on this followed all manner of things, freedom from\n     Swedish-Austrian invasions, as the first thing. He was\n     himself, as appeared by-and-by, a fighter of the first\n     quality, when it came to that; but never was willing to\n     fight if he could help it. Preferred rather to shift,\n     manoeuvre, and negotiate, which he did in most vigilant,\n     adroit, and masterly manner. But by degrees he had grown to\n     have, and could maintain it, an army of twenty-four thousand\n     men, among the best troops then in being.\n\nTo wear semblances, to be ready with evasive words, how is this, Mr.\nCarlyle? thinks perhaps the rightly thoughtful reader.\n\nYes, such things have to be; There are lies and lies, and there are\ntruths and truths. Ulysses cannot ride on the ram's back, like Phryxus;\nbut must ride under his belly. Read also this, presently following:\n\n     Shortly after which, Friedrich Wilhelm, who had shone much\n     in the battle of Warsaw, into which he was dragged against\n     his will, changed sides. An inconsistent, treacherous man?\n     Perhaps not, O reader! perhaps a man advancing \"in\n     circuits,\" the only way he has; spirally, face now to east,\n     now to west, with his own reasonable private aim sun-clear\n     to him all the while?\n\nThe battle of Warsaw, three days long, fought with Gustavus, the\ngrandfather of Charles XII., against the Poles, virtually ends the\nPolish power:\n\n     Old Johann Casimir, not long after that peace of Oliva,\n     getting tired of his unruly Polish chivalry and their ways,\n     abdicated--retired to Paris, and \"and lived much with Ninon\n     de l'Enclos and her circle,\" for the rest of his life. He\n     used to complain of his Polish chivalry, that there was no\n     solidity in them; nothing but outside glitter, with tumult\n     and anarchic noise; fatal want of one essential talent, _the\n     talent of obeying_; and has been heard to prophesy that a\n     glorious Republic, persisting in such courses, would arrive\n     at results which would surprise it.\n\n     Onward from this time, Friedrich Wilhelm figures in the\n     world; public men watching his procedure; kings anxious to\n     secure him--Dutch print-sellers sticking up his portraits\n     for a hero-worshipping public. Fighting hero, had the public\n     known it, was not his essential character, though he had to\n     fight a great deal. He was essentially an industrial man;\n     great in organizing, regulating, in constraining chaotic\n     heaps to become cosmic for him. He drains bogs, settles\n     colonies in the waste places of his dominions, cuts canals;\n     unweariedly encourages trade and work. The Friedrich\n     Wilhelm's Canal, which still carries tonnage from the Oder\n     to the Spree, is a monument of his zeal in this way;\n     creditable with the means he had. To the poor French\n     Protestants in the Edict-of-Nantes affair, he was like an\n     express benefit of Heaven; one helper appointed to whom the\n     help itself was profitable. He munificently welcomed them\n     to Brandenburg; showed really a noble piety and human pity,\n     as well as judgment; nor did Brandenburg and he want their\n     reward. Some twenty thousand nimble French souls, evidently\n     of the best French quality, found a home there; made \"waste\n     sands about Berlin into potherb gardens;\" and in spiritual\n     Brandenburg, too, did something of horticulture which is\n     still noticeable.\n\nNow read carefully the description of the man, p. 352 (224-5); the story\nof the battle of Fehrbellin, \"the Marathon of Brandenburg,\" p. 354\n(225); and of the winter campaign of 1679, p. 356 (227), beginning with\nits week's marches at sixty miles a day; his wife, as always, being with\nhim;\n\n     Louisa, honest and loving Dutch girl, aunt to our William of\n     Orange, who trimmed up her own \"Orange-burg\"\n     (country-house), twenty miles north of Berlin, into a little\n     jewel of the Dutch type, potherb gardens, training-schools\n     for young girls, and the like, a favorite abode of hers when\n     she was at liberty for recreation. But her life was busy and\n     earnest; she was helpmate, not in name only, to an ever busy\n     man. They were married young; a marriage of love withal.\n     Young Friedrich Wilhelm's courtship; wedding in Holland; the\n     honest, trustful walk and conversation of the two sovereign\n     spouses, their journeyings together, their mutual hopes,\n     fears, and manifold vicissitudes, till death, with stern\n     beauty, shut it in; all is human, true, and wholesome in it,\n     interesting to look upon, and rare among sovereign persons.\n\nLouisa died in 1667, twenty-one years before her husband, who married\nagain--(little to his contentment)--died in 1688; and Louisa's second\nson, Friedrich, ten years old at his mother's death, and now therefore\nthirty-one, succeeds, becoming afterwards Friedrich I. of Prussia.\n\nAnd here we pause on two great questions. Prussia is assuredly at this\npoint a happier and better country than it was, when inhabited by Wends.\nBut is Friedrich I. a happier and better man than Henry the Fowler? Have\nall these kings thus improved their country, but never themselves? Is\nthis somewhat expensive and ambitious Herr, Friedrich I. buttoned in\ndiamonds, indeed the best that Protestantism can produce, as against\nFowlers, Bears, and Red Beards? Much more, Friedrich Wilhelm, orthodox\non predestination; most of all, his less orthodox son;--have we, in\nthese, the highest results which Dr. Martin Luther can produce for the\npresent, in the first circles of society? And if not, how is it that the\ncountry, having gained so much in intelligence and strength, lies more\npassively in their power than the baser country did under that of nobler\nmen?\n\nThese, and collateral questions, I mean to work out as I can, with\nCarlyle's good help;--but must pause for this time; in doubt, as\nheretofore. Only of this one thing I doubt not, that the name of all\ngreat kings, set over Christian nations, must at last be, in fufilment,\nthe hereditary one of these German princes, \"Rich in Peace;\" and that\ntheir coronation will be with Wild olive, not with gold.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[142] The late Sir Herbert Edwardes.\n\n[143] I would much rather print these passages of Carlyle in large\ngolden letters than small black ones; but they are only here at all for\nunlucky people who can't read them with the context.\n\n\n\n\nTHE\n\nETHICS OF THE DUST\n\nTEN LECTURES\n\nTO\n\nLITTLE HOUSEWIVES\n\nON\n\nTHE ELEMENTS OF CRYSTALLISATION\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n\nETHICS OF THE DUST.\n\n\nLECTURE I.                          PAGE\n\nTHE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS                 1\n\n\nLECTURE II.\n\nTHE PYRAMID BUILDERS                  21\n\n\nLECTURE III.\n\nTHE CRYSTAL LIFE                      31\n\n\nLECTURE IV.\n\nTHE CRYSTAL ORDERS                    43\n\n\nLECTURE V.\n\nCRYSTAL VIRTUES                       56\n\n\nLECTURE VI.\n\nCRYSTAL QUARRELS                      70\n\n\nLECTURE VII.\n\nHOME VIRTUES                          82\n\n\nLECTURE VIII.\n\nCRYSTAL CAPRICE                       98\n\n\nLECTURE IX.\n\nCRYSTAL SORROWS                      111\n\n\nLECTURE X.\n\nTHE CRYSTAL REST                     125\n\nNOTES                                143\n\nFICTION--FAIR AND FOUL               153\n\n\nELEMENTS OF DRAWING.\n\n\nLETTER I.\n\nON FIRST PRACTICE                    233\n\n\nLETTER II.\n\nSKETCHING FROM NATURE                293\n\n\nLETTER III.\n\nON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION            331\n\n\nAPPENDIX: THINGS TO BE STUDIED       403\n\n\n\n\nLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.\n\n\nELEMENTS OF DRAWING.\n\nFIGURE                                                       PAGE\n\n1. SQUARES                                                    237\n\n2. GRADATED SPACES                                            241\n\n3. OUTLINE OF LETTER                                          245\n\n4. OUTLINE OF BOUGH OF TREE                                   248\n\n5. CHARRED LOG                                                257\n\n6. SHOOT OF LILAC                                             272\n\n7. LEAF                                                       274\n\n8. BOUGH OF PHILLYREA                                         275\n\n9. SPRAY OF PHILLYREA                                         276\n\n10. TRUNK OF TREE, BY TITIAN                                  284\n\n11. SKETCH FROM RAPHAEL                                       285\n\n12. OUTLINES OF A BALL                                        287\n\n13. WOODCUT OF DURER'S                                        289\n\n14, 15, 16. MASSES OF LEAVES                             290, 291\n\n17, 18, 19. CURVATURES IN LEAVES                         295, 296\n\n20. FROM AN ETCHING, BY TURNER                                297\n\n21. ALPINE BRIDGE                                             307\n\n22. ALPINE BRIDGE AS IT APPEARS AT VARIOUS DISTANCES          308\n\n23. OUTLINES EXPRESSIVE OF FOLIAGE                            314\n\n24. SHOOT OF SPANISH CHESTNUT                                 315\n\n25. YOUNG SHOOT OF OAK                                        316\n\n26, 27, 28. WOODCUTS AFTER TITIAN                        321, 322\n\n29. DIAGRAM OF WINDOW                                         339\n\n30. SWISS COTTAGE                                             355\n\n31. GROUPS OF LEAVE                                           350\n\n32. PAINTING, by Turner                                       361\n\n33. SKETCH ON CALAIS SANDS, by Turner                         365\n\n34. DRAWING OF AN IDEAL BRIDGE, by Turner                     369\n\n35. PROFILE OF THE TOWERS OF EHRENBREITSTEIN                  370\n\n36. CURVES                                                    371\n\n37, 38, 39. CURVES FOUND IN LEAVES                            372\n\n40. OUTLINES OF A TREE TRUNK                                  373\n\n41-44. TREE RADIATION                                    374, 375\n\n45, 46. WOODCUTS OF LEAF                                      376\n\n47. LEAF OF COLUMBINE                                         378\n\n48. TOP OF AN OLD TOWER                                       385\n\n\n\n\nPERSONAE.\n\n\nOLD LECTURER (of incalculable age)\n\nFLORRIE, on astronomical evidence presumed to be aged 9.\n\nISABEL                                            \"  11.\n\nMAY                                               \"  11.\n\nLILY                                              \"  12.\n\nKATHLEEN                                          \"  14.\n\nLUCILLA                                           \"  15.\n\nVIOLET                                            \"  16.\n\nDORA (who has the keys and is housekeeper)        \"  17.\n\nEGYPT (so called from her dark eyes)              \"  17.\n\nJESSIE (who somehow always makes the room look\n       brighter when she is in it)                \"  18.\n\nMARY (of whom everybody, including the Old Lecturer,\n       is in great awe)                           \"  20.\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.\n\n\nI have seldom been more disappointed by the result of my best pains\ngiven to any of my books, than by the earnest request of my publisher,\nafter the opinion of the public had been taken on the 'Ethics of the\nDust,' that I would \"write no more in dialogue!\" However, I bowed to\npublic judgment in this matter at once, (knowing also my inventive\npowers to be of the feeblest,); but in reprinting the book, (at the\nprevailing request of my kind friend, Mr. Henry Willett,) I would pray\nthe readers whom it may at first offend by its disconnected method, to\nexamine, nevertheless, with care, the passages in which the principal\nspeaker sums the conclusions of any dialogue: for these summaries were\nwritten as introductions, for young people, to all that I have said on\nthe same matters in my larger books; and, on re-reading them, they\nsatisfy me better, and seem to me calculated to be more generally\nuseful, than anything else I have done of the kind.\n\nThe summary of the contents of the whole book, beginning, \"You may at\nleast earnestly believe,\" at p. 130, is thus the clearest exposition I\nhave ever yet given of the general conditions under which the Personal\nCreative Power manifests itself in the forms of matter; and the analysis\nof heathen conceptions of Deity, beginning at p. 131, and closing at p.\n138, not only prefaces, but very nearly supersedes, all that in more\nlengthy terms I have since asserted, or pleaded for, in 'Aratra\nPentelici,' and the 'Queen of the Air.'\n\nAnd thus, however the book may fail in its intention of suggesting new\noccupations or interests to its younger readers, I think it worth\nreprinting, in the way I have also reprinted 'Unto this Last,'--page for\npage; that the students of my more advanced works may be able to refer\nto these as the original documents of them; of which the most essential\nin this book are these following.\n\nI. The explanation of the baseness of the avaricious functions of the\nLower Pthah, p. 39, with his beetle-gospel, p. 41, \"that a nation can\nstand on its vices better than on its virtues,\" explains the main motive\nof all my books on Political Economy.\n\nII. The examination of the connexion between stupidity and crime, pp.\n57-62, anticipated all that I have had to urge in Fors Clavigera against\nthe commonly alleged excuse for public wickedness,--\"They don't mean\nit--they don't know any better.\"\n\nIII. The examination of the roots of Moral Power, pp. 90-92, is a\nsummary of what is afterwards developed with utmost care in my inaugural\nlecture at Oxford on the relation of Art to Morals; compare in that\nlecture, Secs. 83-85, with the sentence in p. 91 of this book, \"Nothing\nis ever done so as really to please our Father, unless we would also have\ndone it, though we had had no Father to know of it.\"\n\nThis sentence, however, it must be observed, regards only the general\nconditions of action in the children of God, in consequence of which it\nis foretold of them by Christ that they will say at the Judgment, \"When\nsaw we thee?\" It does not refer to the distinct cases in which virtue\nconsists in faith given to command, appearing to foolish human judgment\ninconsistent with the Moral Law, as in the sacrifice of Isaac; nor to\nthose in which any directly-given command requires nothing more of\nvirtue than obedience.\n\nIV. The subsequent pages, 92-97, were written especially to check the\ndangerous impulses natural to the minds of many amiable young women, in\nthe direction of narrow and selfish religious sentiment: and they\ncontain, therefore, nearly everything which I believe it necessary that\nyoung people should be made to observe, respecting the errors of\nmonastic life. But they in nowise enter on the reverse, or favourable\nside: of which indeed I did not, and as yet do not, feel myself able to\nspeak with any decisiveness; the evidence on that side, as stated in the\ntext, having \"never yet been dispassionately examined.\"\n\nV. The dialogue with Lucilla, beginning at p. 63, is, to my own fancy,\nthe best bit of conversation in the book, and the issue of it, at p. 67,\nthe most practically and immediately useful. For on the idea of the\ninevitable weakness and corruption of human nature, has logically\nfollowed, in our daily life, the horrible creed of modern \"Social\nscience,\" that all social action must be scientifically founded on\nvicious impulses. But on the habit of measuring and reverencing our\npowers and talents that we may kindly use them, will be founded a true\nSocial science, developing, by the employment of them, all the real\npowers and honourable feelings of the race.\n\nVI. Finally, the account given in the second and third lectures, of the\nreal nature and marvellousness of the laws of crystallization, is\nnecessary to the understanding of what farther teaching of the beauty of\ninorganic form I may be able to give, either in 'Deucalion,' or in my\n'Elements of Drawing.' I wish however that the second lecture had been\nmade the beginning of the book; and would fain now cancel the first\naltogether, which I perceive to be both obscure and dull. It was meant\nfor a metaphorical description of the pleasures and dangers in the\nkingdom of Mammon, or of worldly wealth; its waters mixed with blood,\nits fruits entangled in thickets of trouble, and poisonous when\ngathered; and the final captivity of its inhabitants within frozen walls\nof cruelty and disdain. But the imagery is stupid and ineffective\nthroughout; and I retain this chapter only because I am resolved to\nleave no room for any one to say that I have withdrawn, as erroneous in\nprinciple, so much as a single sentence of any of my books written since\n1860.\n\nOne license taken in this book, however, though often permitted to\nessay-writers for the relief of their dulness, I never mean to take\nmore,--the relation of composed metaphor as of actual dream, pp. 23 and\n104. I assumed, it is true, that in these places the supposed dream\nwould be easily seen to be an invention; but must not any more, even\nunder so transparent disguise, pretend to any share in the real powers\nof Vision possessed by great poets and true painters.\n\n    BRANTWOOD:\n\n    _10th October, 1877._\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nThe following lectures were really given, in substance, at a girls'\nschool (far in the country); which in the course of various experiments\non the possibility of introducing some better practice of drawing into\nthe modern scheme of female education, I visited frequently enough to\nenable the children to regard me as a friend. The lectures always fell\nmore or less into the form of fragmentary answers to questions; and they\nare allowed to retain that form, as, on the whole, likely to be more\ninteresting than the symmetries of a continuous treatise. Many children\n(for the school was large) took part, at different times, in the\nconversations; but I have endeavoured, without confusedly multiplying\nthe number of imaginary[144] speakers, to represent, as far as I could,\nthe general tone of comment and enquiry among young people.\n\nIt will be at once seen that these Lectures were not intended for an\nintroduction to mineralogy. Their purpose was merely to awaken in the\nminds of young girls, who were ready to work earnestly and\nsystematically, a vital interest in the subject of their study. No\nscience can be learned in play; but it is often possible, in play, to\nbring good fruit out of past labour, or show sufficient reasons for the\nlabour of the future.\n\nThe narrowness of this aim does not, indeed, justify the absence of all\nreference to many important principles of structure, and many of the\nmost interesting orders of minerals; but I felt it impossible to go far\ninto detail without illustrations; and if readers find this book useful,\nI may, perhaps, endeavour to supplement it by illustrated notes of the\nmore interesting phenomena in separate groups of familiar\nminerals;--flints of the chalk;--agates of the basalts;--and the\nfantastic and exquisitely beautiful varieties of the vein-ores of the\ntwo commonest metals, lead and iron. But I have always found that the\nless we speak of our intentions, the more chance there is of our\nrealizing them; and this poor little book will sufficiently have done\nits work, for the present, if it engages any of its young readers in\nstudy which may enable them to despise it for its shortcomings.\n\n    DENMARK HILL:\n\n    _Christmas, 1865._\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[144] I do not mean, in saying 'imaginary,' that I have not permitted to\nmyself, in several instances, the affectionate discourtesy of some\nreminiscence of personal character; for which I must hope to be forgiven\nby my old pupils and their friends, as I could not otherwise have\nwritten the book at all. But only two sentences in all the dialogues,\nand the anecdote of 'Dotty,' are literally 'historical.'\n\n\n\n\nTHE ETHICS OF THE DUST.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE I.\n\n_THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS._\n\n     _A very idle talk, by the dining-room fire, after\n     raisin-and-almond time._\n\n\nOLD LECTURER; FLORRIE, ISABEL, MAY, LILY, _and_ SIBYL.\n\nOLD LECTURER (L.). Come here, Isabel, and tell me what the make-believe\nwas, this afternoon.\n\nISABEL (_arranging herself very primly on the foot-stool_). Such a\ndreadful one! Florrie and I were lost in the Valley of Diamonds.\n\nL. What! Sindbad's, which nobody could get out of?\n\nISABEL. Yes; but Florrie and I got out of it.\n\nL. So I see. At least, I see you did; but are you sure Florrie did?\n\nISABEL. Quite sure.\n\nFLORRIE (_putting her head round from behind_ L.'s _sofa-cushion_).\nQuite sure. (_Disappears again._)\n\nL. I think I could be made to feel surer about it.\n\n     (FLORRIE _reappears, gives_ L. _a kiss, and again exit._)\n\nL. I suppose it's all right; but how did you manage it?\n\nISABEL. Well, you know, the eagle that took up Sindbad was very\nlarge--very, very large--the largest of all the eagles.\n\nL. How large were the others?\n\nISABEL. I don't quite know--they were so far off. But this one was, oh,\nso big! and it had great wings, as wide as--twice over the ceiling. So,\nwhen it was picking up Sindbad, Florrie and I thought it wouldn't know\nif we got on its back too: so I got up first, and then I pulled up\nFlorrie, and we put our arms round its neck, and away it flew.\n\nL. But why did you want to get out of the valley? and why haven't you\nbrought me some diamonds?\n\nISABEL. It was because of the serpents. I couldn't pick up even the\nleast little bit of a diamond, I was so frightened.\n\nL. You should not have minded the serpents.\n\nISABEL. Oh, but suppose that they had minded me?\n\nL. We all of us mind you a little too much, Isabel, I'm afraid.\n\nISABEL. No--no--no, indeed.\n\nL. I tell you what, Isabel--I don't believe either Sindbad, or Florrie,\nor you, ever were in the Valley of Diamonds.\n\nISABEL. You naughty! when I tell you we were!\n\nL. Because you say you were frightened at the serpents.\n\nISABEL. And wouldn't you have been?\n\nL. Not at those serpents. Nobody who really goes into the valley is ever\nfrightened at them--they are so beautiful.\n\nISABEL (_suddenly serious_). But there's no real Valley of Diamonds, is\nthere?\n\nL. Yes, Isabel; very real indeed.\n\nFLORRIE (_reappearing_). Oh, where? Tell me about it.\n\nL. I cannot tell you a great deal about it; only I know it is very\ndifferent from Sindbad's. In his valley, there was only a diamond lying\nhere and there; but, in the real valley, there are diamonds covering the\ngrass in showers every morning, instead of dew: and there are clusters\nof trees, which look like lilac trees; but, in spring, all their\nblossoms are of amethyst.\n\nFLORRIE. But there can't be any serpents there, then?\n\nL. Why not?\n\nFLORRIE. Because they don't come into such beautiful places.\n\nL. I never said it was a beautiful place.\n\nFLORRIE. What! not with diamonds strewed about it like dew?\n\nL. That's according te your fancy, Florrie. For myself, I like dew\nbetter.\n\nISABEL. Oh, but the dew won't stay; it all dries!\n\nL. Yes; and it would be much nicer if the diamonds dried too, for the\npeople in the valley have to sweep them off the grass, in heaps,\nwhenever they want to walk on it; and then the heaps glitter so, they\nhurt one's eyes.\n\nFLORRIE. Now you're just playing, you know.\n\nL. So are you, you know.\n\nFLORRIE. Yes, but you mustn't play.\n\nL. That's very hard, Florrie; why mustn't I, if you may?\n\nFLORRIE. Oh, I may, because I'm little, but you mustn't, because\nyou're--(_hesitates for a delicate expression of magnitude_).\n\nL. (_rudely taking the first that comes_). Because I'm big? No; that's\nnot the way of it at all, Florrie. Because you're little, you should\nhave very little play; and because I'm big I should have a great deal.\n\nISABEL _and_ FLORRIE (_both_). No--no--no--no. That isn't it at all.\n(ISABEL _sola, quoting Miss Ingelow._) 'The lambs play always--they know\nno better.' (_Putting her head very much on one side._) Ah,\nnow--please--please--tell us true; we want to know.\n\nL. But why do you want me to tell you true, any more than the man who\nwrote the 'Arabian Nights?'\n\nISABEL. Because--because we like to know about real things; and you can\ntell us, and we can't ask the man who wrote the stories.\n\nL. What do you call real things?\n\nISABEL. Now, you know! Things that really are.\n\nL. Whether you can see them or not?\n\nISABEL. Yes, if somebody else saw them.\n\nL. But if nobody has ever seen them?\n\nISABEL (_evading the point_.) Well, but, you know, if there were a real\nValley of Diamonds, somebody _must_ have seen it.\n\nL. You cannot be so sure of that, Isabel. Many people go to real places,\nand never see them; and many people pass through this valley, and never\nsee it.\n\nFLORRIE. What stupid people they must be!\n\nL. No, Florrie. They are much wiser than the people who do see it.\n\nMAY. I think I know where it is.\n\nISABEL. Tell us more about it, and then we'll guess.\n\nL. Well. There's a great broad road, by a river-side, leading up into\nit.\n\nMAY (_gravely cunning, with emphasis on the last word_). Does the road\nreally go _up_?\n\nL. You think it should go down into a valley? No, it goes up; this is a\nvalley among the hills, and it is as high as the clouds, and is often\nfull of them; so that even the people who most want to see it, cannot,\nalways.\n\nISABEL. And what is the river beside the road like?\n\nL. It ought to be very beautiful, because it flows over diamond\nsand--only the water is thick and red.\n\nISABEL. Red water?\n\nL. It isn't all water.\n\nMAY. Oh, please never mind that, Isabel, just now; I want to hear about\nthe valley.\n\nL. So the entrance to it is very wide, under a steep rock; only such\nnumbers of people are always trying to get in, that they keep jostling\neach other, and manage it but slowly. Some weak ones are pushed back,\nand never get in at all; and make great moaning as they go away: but\nperhaps they are none the worse in the end.\n\nMAY. And when one gets in, what is it like?\n\nL. It is up and down, broken kind of ground: the road stops directly;\nand there are great dark rocks, covered all over with wild gourds and\nwild vines; the gourds, if you cut them, are red, with black seeds, like\nwater-melons, and look ever so nice; and the people of the place make a\nred pottage of them: but you must take care not to eat any if you ever\nwant to leave the valley (though I believe putting plenty of meal in it\nmakes it wholesome). Then the wild vines have clusters of the colour of\namber; and the people of the country say they are the grape of Eshcol;\nand sweeter than honey; but, indeed, if anybody else tastes them, they\nare like gall. Then there are thickets of bramble, so thorny that they\nwould be cut away directly, anywhere else; but here they are covered\nwith little cinque-foiled blossoms of pure silver; and, for berries,\nthey have clusters of rubies. Dark rubies, which you only see are red\nafter gathering them. But you may fancy what blackberry parties the\nchildren have! Only they get their frocks and hands sadly torn.\n\nLILY. But rubies can't spot one's frocks as blackberries do?\n\nL. No; but I'll tell you what spots them--the mulberries. There are\ngreat forests of them, all up the hills, covered with silkworms, some\nmunching the leaves so loud that it is like mills at work; and some\nspinning. But the berries are the blackest you ever saw; and, wherever\nthey fall, they stain a deep red; and nothing ever washes it out again.\nAnd it is their juice, soaking through the grass, which makes the river\nso red, because all its springs are in this wood. And the boughs of the\ntrees are twisted, as if in pain, like old olive branches; and their\nleaves are dark. And it is in these forests that the serpents are; but\nnobody is afraid of them. They have fine crimson crests, and they are\nwreathed about the wild branches, one in every tree, nearly; and they\nare singing serpents, for the serpents are, in this forest, what birds\nare in ours.\n\nFLORRIE. Oh, I don't want to go there at all, now.\n\nL. You would like it very much indeed, Florrie, if you were there. The\nserpents would not bite you; the only fear would be of your turning into\none!\n\nFLORRIE. Oh, dear, but that's worse.\n\nL. You wouldn't think so if you really were turned into one, Florrie;\nyou would be very proud of your crest. And as long as you were yourself\n(not that you could get there if you remained quite the little Florrie\nyou are now), you would like to hear the serpents sing. They hiss a\nlittle through it, like the cicadas in Italy; but they keep good time,\nand sing delightful melodies; and most of them have seven heads, with\nthroats which each take a note of the octave; so that they can sing\nchords--it is very fine indeed. And the fire-flies fly round the edge of\nthe forests all the night long; you wade in fire-flies, they make the\nfields look like a lake trembling with reflection of stars; but you must\ntake care not to touch them, for they are not like Italian fireflies,\nbut burn, like real sparks.\n\nFLORRIE. I don't like it at all; I'll never go there.\n\nL. I hope not, Florrie; or at least that you will get out again if you\ndo. And it is very difficult to get out, for beyond these serpent\nforests there are great cliffs of dead gold, which form a labyrinth,\nwinding always higher and higher, till the gold is all split asunder by\nwedges of ice; and glaciers, welded, half of ice seven times frozen, and\nhalf of gold seven times frozen, hang down from them, and fall in\nthunder, cleaving into deadly splinters, like the Cretan arrowheads; and\ninto a mixed dust of snow and gold, ponderous, yet which the mountain\nwhirlwinds are able to lift and drive in wreaths and pillars, hiding the\npaths with a burial cloud, fatal at once with wintry chill, and weight\nof golden ashes. So the wanderers in the labyrinth fall, one by one, and\nare buried there:--yet, over the drifted graves, those who are spared\nclimb to the last, through coil on coil of the path;--for at the end of\nit they see the king of the valley, sitting on his throne: and beside\nhim (but it is only a false vision), spectra of creatures like\nthemselves, set on thrones, from which they seem to look down on all the\nkingdoms of the world, and the glory of them. And on the canopy of his\nthrone there is an inscription in fiery letters, which they strive to\nread, but cannot; for it is written in words which are like the words of\nall languages, and yet are of none. Men say it is more like their own\ntongue to the English than it is to any other nation; but the only\nrecord of it is by an Italian, who heard the King himself cry it as a\nwar cry, 'Pape Satan, Pape Satan Aleppe.'[145]\n\nSIBYL. But do they all perish there? You said there was a way through\nthe valley, and out of it.\n\nL. Yes; but few find it. If any of them keep to the grass paths, where\nthe diamonds are swept aside; and hold their hands over their eyes so as\nnot to be dazzled, the grass paths lead forward gradually to a place\nwhere one sees a little opening in the golden rocks. You were at\nChamouni last year, Sibyl; did your guide chance to show you the pierced\nrock of the Aiguille du Midi?\n\nSIBYL. No, indeed, we only got up from Geneva on Monday night; and it\nrained all Tuesday; and we had to be back at Geneva again, early on\nWednesday morning.\n\nL. Of course. That is the way to see a country in a Sibylline manner, by\ninner consciousness: but you might have seen the pierced rock in your\ndrive up, or down, if the clouds broke: not that there is much to see in\nit; one of the crags of the aiguille-edge, on the southern slope of it,\nis struck sharply through, as by an awl, into a little eyelet hole;\nwhich you may see, seven thousand feet above the valley (as the clouds\nflit past behind it, or leave the sky), first white, and then dark blue.\nWell, there's just such an eyelet hole in one of the upper crags of the\nDiamond Valley; and, from a distance, you think that it is no bigger\nthan the eye of a needle. But if you get up to it, they say you may\ndrive a loaded camel through it, and that there are fine things on the\nother side, but I have never spoken with anybody who had been through.\n\nSIBYL. I think we understand it now. We will try to write it down, and\nthink of it.\n\nL. Meantime, Florrie, though all that I have been telling you is very\ntrue, yet you must not think the sort of diamonds that people wear in\nrings and necklaces are found lying about on the grass. Would you like\nto see how they really are found?\n\nFLORRIE. Oh, yes--yes.\n\nL. Isabel--or Lily--run up to my room and fetch me the little box with a\nglass lid, out of the top drawer of the chest of drawers. (_Race\nbetween_ LILY _and_ ISABEL.)\n\n     (_Re-enter_ ISABEL _with the box, very much out of breath._\n     LILY _behind._)\n\nL. Why, you never can beat Lily in a race on the stairs, can you,\nIsabel?\n\nISABEL (_panting_). Lily--beat me--ever so far--but she gave me--the\nbox--to carry in.\n\nL. Take off the lid, then; gently.\n\nFLORRIE (_after peeping in, disappointed_). There's only a great ugly\nbrown stone!\n\nL. Not much more than that, certainly, Florrie, if people were wise. But\nlook, it is not a single stone; but a knot of pebbles fastened together\nby gravel; and in the gravel, or compressed sand, if you look close, you\nwill see grains of gold glittering everywhere, all through; and then, do\nyou see these two white beads, which shine, as if they had been covered\nwith grease?\n\nFLORRIE. May I touch them?\n\nL. Yes; you will find they are not greasy, only very smooth. Well, those\nare the fatal jewels; native here in their dust with gold, so that you\nmay see, cradled here together, the two great enemies of mankind,--the\nstrongest of all malignant physical powers that have tormented our race.\n\nSIBYL. Is that really so? I know they do great harm; but do they not\nalso do great good?\n\nL. My dear child, what good? Was any woman, do you suppose, ever the\nbetter for possessing diamonds? but how many have been made base,\nfrivolous, and miserable by desiring them? Was ever man the better for\nhaving coffers full of gold? But who shall measure the guilt that is\nincurred to fill them? Look into the history of any civilised nations;\nanalyse, with reference to this one cause of crime and misery, the lives\nand thoughts of their nobles, priests, merchants, and men of luxurious\nlife. Every other temptation is at last concentrated into this; pride,\nand lust, and envy, and anger all give up their strength to avarice. The\nsin of the whole world is essentially the sin of Judas. Men do not\ndisbelieve their Christ; but they sell Him.\n\nSIBYL. But surely that is the fault of human nature? it is not caused by\nthe accident, as it were, of there being a pretty metal, like gold, to\nbe found by digging. If people could not find that, would they not find\nsomething else, and quarrel for it instead?\n\nL. No. Wherever legislators have succeeded in excluding, for a time,\njewels and precious metals from among national possessions, the national\nspirit has remained healthy. Covetousness is not natural to\nman--generosity is; but covetousness must be excited by a special cause,\nas a given disease by a given miasma; and the essential nature of a\nmaterial for the excitement of covetousness is, that it shall be a\nbeautiful thing which can be retained _without a use_. The moment we\ncan use our possessions to any good purpose ourselves, the instinct of\ncommunicating that use to others rises side by side with our power. If\nyou can read a book rightly, you will want others to hear it; if you can\nenjoy a picture rightly, you will want others to see it: learn how to\nmanage a horse, a plough, or a ship, and you will desire to make your\nsubordinates good horsemen, ploughmen, or sailors; you will never be\nable to see the fine instrument you are master of, abused; but, once fix\nyour desire on anything useless, and all the purest pride and folly in\nyour heart will mix with the desire, and make you at last wholly\ninhuman, a mere ugly lump of stomach and suckers, like a cuttle-fish.\n\nSIBYL. But surely, these two beautiful things, gold and diamonds, must\nhave been appointed to some good purpose?\n\nL. Quite conceivably so, my dear: as also earthquakes and pestilences;\nbut of such ultimate purposes we can have no sight. The practical,\nimmediate office of the earthquake and pestilence is to slay us, like\nmoths; and, as moths, we shall be wise to live out of their way. So, the\npractical, immediate office of gold and diamonds is the multiplied\ndestruction of souls (in whatever sense you have been taught to\nunderstand that phrase); and the paralysis of wholesome human effort and\nthought on the face of God's earth: and a wise nation will live out of\nthe way of them. The money which the English habitually spend in cutting\ndiamonds would, in ten years, if it were applied to cutting rocks\ninstead, leave no dangerous reef nor difficult harbour round the whole\nisland coast. Great Britain would be a diamond worth cutting, indeed, a\ntrue piece of regalia. (_Leaves this to their thoughts for a little\nwhile._) Then, also, we poor mineralogists might sometimes have the\nchance of seeing a fine crystal of diamond unhacked by the jeweller.\n\nSIBYL. Would it be more beautiful uncut?\n\nL. No; but of infinite interest. We might even come to know something\nabout the making of diamonds.\n\nSIBYL. I thought the chemists could make them already?\n\nL. In very small black crystals, yes; but no one knows how they are\nformed where they are found; or if indeed they are formed there at all.\nThese, in my hand, look as if they had been swept down with the gravel\nand gold; only we can trace the gravel and gold to their native rocks,\nbut not the diamonds. Read the account given of the diamond in any good\nwork on mineralogy;--you will find nothing but lists of localities of\ngravel, or conglomerate rock (which is only an old indurated gravel).\nSome say it was once a vegetable gum; but it may have been charred wood;\nbut what one would like to know is, mainly, why charcoal should make\nitself into diamonds in India, and only into black lead in Borrowdale.\n\nSIBYL. Are they wholly the same, then?\n\nL. There is a little iron mixed with our black lead but nothing to\nhinder its crystallisation. Your pencils in fact are all pointed with\nformless diamond, though they would be HHH pencils to purpose, if it\ncrystallised.\n\nSUBYL. But what _is_ crystallisation?\n\nL. A pleasant question, when one's half asleep, and it has been tea time\nthese two hours. What thoughtless things girls are!\n\nSIBYL. Yes, we are; but we want to know, for all that.\n\nL. My dear, it would take a week to tell you.\n\nSIBYL. Well, take it, and tell us.\n\nL. But nobody knows anything about it.\n\nSIBYL. Then tell us something that nobody knows.\n\nL. Get along with you, and tell Dora to make tea.\n\n     (_The house rises; but of course the_ LECTURER _wanted to be\n     forced to lecture again, and was._)\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[145] Dante, Inf. 7. 1.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE II.\n\n_THE PYRAMID BUILDERS._\n\n     _In the large Schoolroom, to which everybody has been\n     summoned by ringing of the great bell._\n\n\nL. So you have all actually come to hear about crystallisation! I cannot\nconceive why, unless the little ones think that the discussion may\ninvolve some reference to sugar-candy.\n\n     (_Symptoms of high displeasure among the younger members of\n     council._ ISABEL _frowns severely at L., and shakes her head\n     violently._)\n\nMy dear children, if you knew it, you are yourselves, at this moment, as\nyou sit in your ranks, nothing, in the eye of a mineralogist, but a\nlovely group of rosy sugar-candy, arranged by atomic forces. And even\nadmitting you to be something more, you have certainly been\ncrystallising without knowing it. Did I not hear a great hurrying and\nwhispering, ten minutes ago, when you were late in from the playground;\nand thought you would not all be quietly seated by the time I was\nready:--besides some discussion about places--something about 'it's not\nbeing fair that the little ones should always be nearest?' Well, you\nwere then all being crystallised. When you ran in from the garden, and\nagainst one another in the passages, you were in what mineralogists\nwould call a state of solution, and gradual confluence; when you got\nseated in those orderly rows, each in her proper place, you became\ncrystalline. That is just what the atoms of a mineral do, if they can,\nwhenever they get disordered: they get into order again as soon as may\nbe.\n\nI hope you feel inclined to interrupt me, and say, 'But we know our\nplaces; how do the atoms know theirs? And sometimes we dispute about\nour places; do the atoms--(and, besides, we don't like being compared to\natoms at all)--never dispute about theirs?' Two wise questions these, if\nyou had a mind to put them! it was long before I asked them myself, of\nmyself. And I will not call you atoms any more. May I call you--let me\nsee--'primary molecules?' (_General dissent, indicated in subdued but\ndecisive murmurs._) No! not even, in familiar Saxon, 'dust?'\n\n     (_Pause, with expression on faces of sorrowful doubt_; LILY\n     _gives voice to the general sentiment in a timid 'Please\n     don't._')\n\nNo, children, I won't call you that; and mind, as you grow up, that you\ndo not get into an idle and wicked habit of calling yourselves that. You\nare something better than dust, and have other duties to do than ever\ndust can do; and the bonds of affection you will enter into are better\nthan merely 'getting into order.' But see to it, on the other hand, that\nyou always behave at least as well as 'dust;' remember, it is only on\ncompulsion, and while it has no free permission to do as it likes, that\n_it_ ever gets out of order; but sometimes, with some of us, the\ncompulsion has to be the other way--hasn't it? (_Remonstratory whispers,\nexpressive of opinion that the_ LECTURER _is becoming too personal._)\nI'm not looking at anybody in particular--indeed I am not. Nay, if you\nblush so, Kathleen, how can one help looking? We'll go back to the\natoms.\n\n'How do they know their places?' you asked, or should have asked. Yes,\nand they have to do much more than know them: they have to find their\nway to them, and that quietly and at once, without running against each\nother.\n\nWe may, indeed, state it briefly thus:--Suppose you have to build a\ncastle, with towers and roofs and buttresses, out of bricks of a given\nshape, and that these bricks are all lying in a huge heap at the bottom,\nin utter confusion, upset out of carts at random. You would have to draw\na great many plans, and count all your bricks, and be sure you had\nenough for this and that tower, before you began, and then you would\nhave to lay your foundation, and add layer by layer, in order, slowly.\n\nBut how would you be astonished, in these melancholy days, when children\ndon't read children's books, nor believe any more in fairies, if\nsuddenly a real benevolent fairy, in a bright brick-red gown, were to\nrise in the midst of the red bricks, and to tap the heap of them with\nher wand, and say: 'Bricks, bricks, to your places!' and then you saw in\nan instant the whole heap rise in the air, like a swarm of red bees,\nand--you have been used to see bees make a honeycomb, and to think that\nstrange enough, but now you would see the honeycomb make itself!--You\nwant to ask something, Florrie, by the look of your eyes.\n\nFLORRIE. Are they turned into real bees, with stings?\n\nL. No, Florrie; you are only to fancy flying bricks, as you saw the\nslates flying from the roof the other day in the storm; only those\nslates didn't seem to know where they were going, and, besides, were\ngoing where they had no business: but my spell-bound bricks, though they\nhave no wings, and what is worse, no heads and no eyes, yet find their\nway in the air just where they should settle, into towers and roofs,\neach flying to his place and fastening there at the right moment, so\nthat every other one shall fit to him in his turn.\n\nLILY. But who are the fairies, then, who build the crystals?\n\nL. There is one great fairy, Lily, who builds much more than crystals;\nbut she builds these also. I dreamed that I saw her building a pyramid,\nthe other day, as she used to do, for the Pharaohs.\n\nISABEL. But that was only a dream?\n\nL. Some dreams are truer than some wakings, Isabel; but I won't tell it\nyou unless you like.\n\nISABEL. Oh, please, please.\n\nL. You are all such wise children, there's no talking to you; you won't\nbelieve anything.\n\nLILY. No, we are not wise, and we will believe anything, when you say we\nought.\n\nL. Well, it came about this way. Sibyl, do you recollect that evening\nwhen we had been looking at your old cave by Cumae, and wondering why you\ndidn't live there still; and then we wondered how old you were; and\nEgypt said you wouldn't tell, and nobody else could tell but she; and\nyou laughed--I thought very gaily for a Sibyl--and said you would\nharness a flock of cranes for us, and we might fly over to Egypt if we\nliked, and see.\n\nSIBYL. Yes, and you went, and couldn't find out after all!\n\nL. Why, you know, Egypt had been just doubling that third pyramid of\nhers;[146] and making a new entrance into it; and a fine entrance it\nwas! First, we had to go through an ante-room, which had both its doors\nblocked up with stones; and then we had three granite portcullises to\npull up, one after another; and the moment we had got under them, Egypt\nsigned to somebody above; and down they came again behind us, with a\nroar like thunder, only louder; then we got into a passage fit for\nnobody but rats, and Egypt wouldn't go any further herself, but said we\nmight go on if we liked; and so we came to a hole in the pavement, and\nthen to a granite trap-door--and then we thought we had gone quite far\nenough, and came back, and Egypt laughed at us.\n\nEGYPT. You would not have had me take my crown off, and stoop all the\nway down a passage fit only for rats?\n\nL. It was not the crown, Egypt--you know that very well. It was the\nflounces that would not let you go any farther. I suppose, however, you\nwear them as typical of the inundation of the Nile, so it is all right.\n\nISABEL. Why didn't you take me with you? Where rats can go, mice can. I\nwouldn't have come back.\n\nL. No, mousie; you would have gone on by yourself, and you might have\nwaked one of Pasht's cats.[147] and it would have eaten you. I was very\nglad you were not there. But after all this, I suppose the imagination\nof the heavy granite blocks and the underground ways had troubled me,\nand dreams are often shaped in a strange opposition to the impressions\nthat have caused them; and from all that we had been reading in Bunsen\nabout stones that couldn't be lifted with levers, I began to dream about\nstones that lifted themselves with wings.\n\nSIBYL. Now you must just tell us all about it.\n\nL. I dreamed that I was standing beside the lake, out of whose clay the\nbricks were made for the great pyramid of Asychis.[148] They had just\nbeen all finished, and were lying by the lake margin, in long ridges,\nlike waves. It was near evening; and as I looked towards the sunset, I\nsaw a thing like a dark pillar standing where the rock of the desert\nstoops to the Nile valley. I did not know there was a pillar there, and\nwondered at it; and it grew larger, and glided nearer, becoming like the\nform of a man, but vast, and it did not move its feet, but glided like a\npillar of sand. And as it drew nearer, I looked by chance past it,\ntowards the sun; and saw a silver cloud, which was of all the clouds\nclosest to the sun (and in one place crossed it), draw itself back from\nthe sun, suddenly. And it turned, and shot towards the dark pillar;\nleaping in an arch, like an arrow out of a bow. And I thought it was\nlightning; but when it came near the shadowy pillar, it sank slowly down\nbeside it, and changed into the shape of a woman, very beautiful, and\nwith a strength of deep calm in her blue eyes. She was robed to the feet\nwith a white robe; and above that, to her knees, by the cloud which I\nhad seen across the sun; but all the golden ripples of it had become\nplumes, so that it had changed into two bright wings like those of a\nvulture, which wrapped round her to her knees. She had a weaver's\nshuttle hanging over her shoulder, by the thread of it, and in her left\nhand, arrows, tipped with fire.\n\nISABEL (_clapping her hands_). Oh! it was Neith, it was Neith! I know\nnow.\n\nL. Yes; it was Neith herself; and as the two great spirits came nearer\nto me, I saw they were the Brother and Sister--the pillared shadow was\nthe Greater Pthah.[149] And I heard them speak, and the sound of their\nwords was like a distant singing. I could not understand the words one\nby one; yet their sense came to me; and so I knew that Neith had come\ndown to see her brother's work, and the work that he had put into the\nmind of the king to make his servants do. And she was displeased at it;\nbecause she saw only pieces of dark clay: and no porphyry, nor marble,\nnor any fair stone that men might engrave the figures of the gods upon.\nAnd she blamed her brother, and said, 'Oh, Lord of truth! is this then\nthy will, that men should mould only four-square pieces of clay: and the\nforms of the gods no more?' Then the Lord of truth sighed, and said,\n'Oh! sister, in truth they do not love us; why should they set up our\nimages? Let them do what they may, and not lie--let them make their clay\nfour-square; and labour; and perish.'\n\nThen Neith's dark blue eyes grew darker, and she said, 'Oh, Lord of\ntruth! why should they love us? their love is vain; or fear us? for\ntheir fear is base. Yet let them testify of us, that they knew we lived\nfor ever.'\n\nBut the Lord of truth answered, 'They know, and yet they know not. Let\nthem keep silence; for their silence only is truth.'\n\nBut Neith answered, 'Brother, wilt thou also make league with Death,\nbecause Death is true? Oh! thou potter, who hast cast these human things\nfrom thy wheel, many to dishonour, and few to honour; wilt thou not let\nthem so much as see my face; but slay them in slavery?'\n\nBut Pthah only answered, 'Let them build, sister, let them build.'\n\nAnd Neith answered, 'What shall they build, if I build not with them?'\n\nAnd Pthah drew with his measuring rod upon the sand. And I saw suddenly,\ndrawn on the sand, the outlines of great cities, and of vaults, and\ndomes, and aqueducts, and bastions, and towers, greater than obelisks,\ncovered with black clouds. And the wind blew ripples of sand amidst the\nlines that Pthah drew, and the moving sand was like the marching of men.\nBut I saw that wherever Neith looked at the lines, they faded, and were\neffaced.\n\n'Oh, Brother!' she said at last, 'what is this vanity? If I, who am\nLady of wisdom, do not mock the children of men, why shouldst thou mock\nthem, who art Lord of truth?' But Pthah answered, 'They thought to bind\nme; and they shall be bound. They shall labour in the fire for vanity.'\n\nAnd Neith said, looking at the sand, 'Brother, there is no true labour\nhere--there is only weary life and wasteful death.'\n\nAnd Pthah answered, 'Is it not truer labour, sister, than thy sculpture\nof dreams?'\n\nThen Neith smiled; and stopped suddenly.\n\nShe looked to the sun; its edge touched the horizon-edge of the desert.\nThen she looked to the long heaps of pieces of clay, that lay, each with\nits blue shadow, by the lake shore.\n\n'Brother,' she said, 'how long will this pyramid of thine be in\nbuilding?'\n\n'Thoth will have sealed the scroll of the years ten times, before the\nsummit is laid.'\n\n'Brother, thou knowest not how to teach thy children to labour,'\nanswered Neith. 'Look! I must follow Phre beyond Atlas; shall I build\nyour pyramid for you before he goes down?' And Pthah answered, 'Yea,\nsister, if thou canst put thy winged shoulders to such work.' And Neith\ndrew herself to her height; and I heard a clashing pass through the\nplumes of her wings, and the asp stood up on her helmet, and fire\ngathered in her eyes. And she took one of the flaming arrows out of the\nsheaf in her left hand, and stretched it out over the heaps of clay. And\nthey rose up like flights of locusts, and spread themselves in the air,\nso that it grew dark in a moment. Then Neith designed them places with\nher arrow point; and they drew into ranks, like dark clouds laid level\nat morning. Then Neith pointed with her arrow to the north, and to the\nsouth, and to the east, and to the west, and the flying motes of earth\ndrew asunder into four great ranked crowds; and stood, one in the north,\nand one in the south, and one in the east, and one in the west--one\nagainst another. Then Neith spread her wings wide for an instant, and\nclosed them with a sound like the sound of a rushing sea; and waved her\nhand towards the foundation of the pyramid, where it was laid on the\nbrow of the desert. And the four flocks drew together and sank down,\nlike sea-birds settling to a level rock; and when they met, there was a\nsudden flame, as broad as the pyramid, and as high as the clouds; and it\ndazzled me; and I closed my eyes for an instant; and when I looked\nagain, the pyramid stood on its rock, perfect; and purple with the light\nfrom the edge of the sinking sun.\n\nTHE YOUNGER CHILDREN (_variously pleased_). I'm so glad! How nice! But\nwhat did Pthah say?\n\nL. Neith did not wait to hear what he would say. When I turned back to\nlook at her, she was gone; and I only saw the level white cloud form\nitself again, close to the arch of the sun as it sank. And as the last\nedge of the sun disappeared, the form of Pthah faded into a mighty\nshadow, and so passed away.\n\nEGYPT. And was Neith's pyramid left?\n\nL. Yes; but you could not think, Egypt, what a strange feeling of utter\nloneliness came over me when the presence of the two gods passed away.\nIt seemed as if I had never known what it was to be alone before; and\nthe unbroken line of the desert was terrible.\n\nEGYPT. I used to feel that, when I was queen: sometimes I had to carve\ngods, for company, all over my palace. I would fain have seen real ones,\nif I could.\n\nL. But listen a moment yet, for that was not quite all my dream. The\ntwilight drew swiftly to the dark, and I could hardly see the great\npyramid; when there came a heavy murmuring sound in the air; and a\nhorned beetle, with terrible claws, fell on the sand at my feet, with a\nblow like the beat of a hammer. Then it stood up on its hind claws, and\nwaved its pincers at me: and its fore claws became strong arms, and\nhands; one grasping real iron pincers, and the other a huge hammer; and\nit had a helmet on its head, without any eyelet holes, that I could see.\nAnd its two hind claws became strong crooked legs, with feet bent\ninwards. And so there stood by me a dwarf, in glossy black armour,\nribbed and embossed like a beetle's back, leaning on his hammer. And I\ncould not speak for wonder; but he spoke with a murmur like the dying\naway of a beat upon a bell. He said, 'I will make Neith's great pyramid\nsmall. I am the lower Pthah; and have power over fire. I can wither the\nstrong things, and strengthen the weak; and everything that is great I\ncan make small, and everything that is little I can make great.' Then he\nturned to the angle of the pyramid and limped towards it. And the\npyramid grew deep purple; and then red like blood, and then pale\nrose-colour, like fire. And I saw that it glowed with fire from within.\nAnd the lower Pthah touched it with the hand that held the pincers; and\nit sank down like the sand in an hour-glass,--then drew itself together,\nand sank, still, and became nothing, it seemed to me; but the armed\ndwarf stooped down, and took it into his hand, and brought it to me,\nsaying, 'Everything that is great I can make like this pyramid; and give\ninto men's hands to destroy.' And I saw that he had a little pyramid in\nhis hand, with as many courses in it as the large one; and built like\nthat, only so small. And because it glowed still, I was afraid to touch\nit; but Pthah said, 'Touch it--for I have bound the fire within it, so\nthat it cannot burn.' So I touched it, and took it into my own hand; and\nit was cold; only red, like a ruby. And Pthah laughed, and became like a\nbeetle again, and buried himself in the sand, fiercely; throwing it back\nover his shoulders. And it seemed to me as if he would draw me down with\nhim into the sand; and I started back, and woke, holding the little\npyramid so fast in my hand that it hurt me.\n\nEGYPT. Holding WHAT in your hand?\n\nL. The little pyramid.\n\nEGYPT. Neith's pyramid?\n\nL. Neith's, I believe; though not built for Asychis. I know only that it\nis a little rosy transparent pyramid, built of more courses of bricks\nthan I can count, it being made so small. You don't believe me, of\ncourse, Egyptian infidel; but there it is. (_Giving crystal of rose\nFluor._)\n\n     (_Confused examination by crowded audience, over each\n     other's shoulders and under each other's arms.\n     Disappointment begins to manifest itself._)\n\nSIBYL (_not quite knowing why she and others are disappointed_). But you\nshowed us this the other day!\n\nL. Yes; but you would not look at it the other day.\n\nSIBYL. But was all that fine dream only about this?\n\nL. What finer thing could a dream be about than this! It is small, if\nyou will; but when you begin to think of things rightly, the ideas of\nsmallness and largeness pass away. The making of this pyramid was in\nreality just as wonderful as the dream I have been telling you, and just\nas incomprehensible. It was not, I suppose, as swift, but quite as grand\nthings are done as swiftly. When Neith makes crystals of snow, it needs\na great deal more marshalling of the atoms, by her flaming arrows, than\nit does to make crystals like this one; and that is done in a moment.\n\nEGYPT. But how you _do_ puzzle us! Why do you say Neith does it? You\ndon't mean that she is a real spirit, do you?\n\nL. What _I_ mean, is of little consequence. What the Egyptians meant,\nwho called her 'Neith,'--or Homer, who called her 'Athena,'--or Solomon,\nwho called her by a word which the Greeks render as 'Sophia,' you must\njudge for yourselves. But her testimony is always the same, and all\nnations have received it: 'I was by Him as one brought up with Him, and\nI was daily His delight; rejoicing in the habitable parts of the earth,\nand my delights were with the sons of men.'\n\nMARY. But is not that only a personification?\n\nL. If it be, what will you gain by unpersonifying it, or what right have\nyou to do so? Cannot you accept the image given you, in its life; and\nlisten, like children, to the words which chiefly belong to you as\nchildren: 'I love them that love me, and those that seek me early shall\nfind me?'\n\n     (_They are all quiet for a minute or two; questions begin to\n     appear in their eyes._)\n\nI cannot talk to you any more to-day. Take that rose-crystal away with\nyou and think.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[146] Note i.\n\n[147] Note iii.\n\n[148] Note ii.\n\n[149] Note iii.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE III.\n\n_THE CRYSTAL LIFE._\n\n     _A very dull Lecture, wilfully brought upon themselves by\n     the elder children. Some of the young ones have, however,\n     managed to get in by mistake._ SCENE, _the Schoolroom._\n\n\nL. So I am to stand up here merely to be asked questions, to-day, Miss\nMary, am I?\n\nMARY. Yes; and you must answer them plainly; without telling us any more\nstories. You are quite spoiling the children: the poor little things'\nheads are turning round like kaleidoscopes; and they don't know in the\nleast what you mean. Nor do we old ones, either, for that matter: to-day\nyou must really tell us nothing but facts.\n\nL. I am sworn; but you won't like it, a bit.\n\nMARY. Now, first of all, what do you mean by 'bricks?'--Are the smallest\nparticles of minerals all of some accurate shape, like bricks?\n\nL. I do not know, Miss Mary; I do not even know if anybody knows. The\nsmallest atoms which are visibly and practically put together to make\nlarge crystals, may better be described as 'limited in fixed directions'\nthan as 'of fixed forms.' But I can tell you nothing clear about\nultimate atoms: you will find the idea of little bricks, or, perhaps, of\nlittle spheres, available for all the uses you will have to put it to.\n\nMARY. Well, it's very provoking; one seems always to be stopped just\nwhen one is coming to the very thing one wants to know.\n\nL. No, Mary, for we should not wish to know anything but what is easily\nand assuredly knowable. There's no end to it If I could show you, or\nmyself, a group of ultimate atoms, quite clearly, in this magnifying\nglass, we should both be presently vexed because we could not break them\nin two pieces, and see their insides.\n\nMARY. Well then, next, what do you mean by the flying of the bricks?\nWhat is it the atoms do, that is like flying?\n\nL. When they are dissolved, or uncrystallised, they are really separated\nfrom each other, like a swarm of gnats in the air, or like a shoal of\nfish in the sea;--generally at about equal distances. In currents of\nsolutions, or at different depths of them, one part may be more full of\nthe dissolved atoms than another; but on the whole, you may think of\nthem as equidistant, like the spots in the print of your gown. If they\nare separated by force of heat only, the substance is said to be melted;\nif they are separated by any other substance, as particles of sugar by\nwater, they are said to be 'dissolved.' Note this distinction carefully,\nall of you.\n\nDORA. I will be very particular. When next you tell me there isn't sugar\nenough in your tea, I will say, 'It is not yet dissolved, sir.'\n\nL. I tell you what shall be dissolved, Miss Dora; and that's the present\nparliament, if the members get too saucy.\n\n     (DORA _folds her hands and casts down her eyes._)\n\nL. (_proceeds in state_). Now, Miss Mary, you know already, I believe,\nthat nearly everything will melt, under a sufficient heat, like wax.\nLimestone melts (under pressure); sand melts; granite melts; the lava of\na volcano is a mixed mass of many kinds of rocks, melted: and any melted\nsubstance nearly always, if not always, crystallises as it cools; the\nmore slowly the more perfectly. Water melts at what we call the\nfreezing, but might just as wisely, though not as conveniently, call the\nmelting, point; and radiates as it cools into the most beautiful of all\nknown crystals. Glass melts at a greater heat, and will crystallise, if\nyou let it cool slowly enough, in stars, much like snow. Gold needs more\nheat to melt it, but crystallises also exquisitely, as I will presently\nshow you. Arsenic and sulphur crystallise from their vapours. Now in any\nof these cases, either of melted, dissolved, or vaporous bodies, the\nparticles are usually separated from each other, either by heat, or by\nan intermediate substance; and in crystallising they are both brought\nnearer to each other, and packed, so as to fit as closely as possible:\nthe essential part of the business being not the bringing together, but\nthe packing. Who packed your trunk for you, last holidays, Isabel?\n\nISABEL. Lily does, always.\n\nL. And how much can you allow for Lily's good packing, in guessing what\nwill go into the trunk?\n\nISABEL. Oh! I bring twice as much as the trunk holds. Lily always gets\neverything in.\n\nLILY. Ah! but, Isey, if you only knew what a time it takes! and since\nyou've had those great hard buttons on your frocks, I can't do anything\nwith them. Buttons won't go anywhere, you know.\n\nL. Yes, Lily, it would be well if she only knew what a time it takes;\nand I wish any of us knew what a time crystallisation takes, for that is\nconsummately fine packing. The particles of the rock are thrown down,\njust as Isabel brings her things--in a heap; and innumerable Lilies, not\nof the valley, but of the rock, come to pack them. But it takes such a\ntime!\n\nHowever, the best--out and out the best--way of understanding the thing,\nis to crystallise yourselves.\n\nTHE AUDIENCE. Ourselves!\n\nL. Yes; not merely as you did the other day, carelessly, on the\nschoolroom forms; but carefully and finely, out in the playground. You\ncan play at crystallisation there as much as you please.\n\nKATHLEEN _and_ JESSIE. Oh! how?--how?\n\nL. First, you must put yourselves together, as close as you can, in the\nmiddle of the grass, and form, for first practice any figure you like.\n\nJESSIE. Any dancing figure, do you mean?\n\nL. No; I mean a square, or a cross, or a diamond. Any figure you like,\nstanding close together. You had better outline it first on the turf,\nwith sticks, or pebbles, so as to see that it is rightly drawn; then get\ninto it and enlarge or diminish it at one side, till you are all quite\nin it, and no empty space left.\n\nDORA. Crinoline and all?\n\nL. The crinoline may stand eventually for rough crystalline surface,\nunless you pin it in; and then you may make a polished crystal of\nyourselves.\n\nLILY. Oh, we'll pin it in--we'll pin it in!\n\nL. Then, when you are all in the figure, let every one note her place,\nand who is next her on each side; and let the outsiders count how many\nplaces they stand from the corners.\n\nKATHLEEN. Yes, yes,--and then?\n\nL. Then you must scatter all over the playground--right over it from\nside to side, and end to end; and put yourselves all at equal distances\nfrom each other, everywhere. You needn't mind doing it very accurately,\nbut so as to be nearly equidistant; not less than about three yards\napart from each other, on every side.\n\nJESSIE. We can easily cut pieces of string of equal length, to hold. And\nthen?\n\nL. Then, at a given signal, let everybody walk, at the same rate,\ntowards the outlined figure in the middle. You had better sing as you\nwalk; that will keep you in good time. And as you close in towards it,\nlet each take her place, and the next comers fit themselves in beside\nthe first ones, till you are all in the figure again.\n\nKATHLEEN. Oh! how we shall run against each other! What fun it will be!\n\nL. No, no, Miss Katie; I can't allow any running against each other. The\natoms never do that, whatever human creatures do. You must all know your\nplaces, and find your way to them without jostling.\n\nLILY. But how ever shall we do that?\n\nISABEL. Mustn't the ones in the middle be the nearest, and the outside\nones farther off--when we go away to scatter, I mean?\n\nL. Yes; you must be very careful to keep your order; you will soon find\nout how to do it; it is only like soldiers forming square, except that\neach must stand still in her place as she reaches it, and the others\ncome round her; and you will have much more complicated figures,\nafterwards, to form, than squares.\n\nISABEL. I'll put a stone at my place: then I shall know it.\n\nL. You might each nail a bit of paper to the turf, at your place, with\nyour name upon it: but it would be of no use, for if you don't know your\nplaces, you will make a fine piece of business of it, while you are\nlooking for your names. And, Isabel, if with a little head, and eyes,\nand a brain (all of them very good and serviceable of their kind, as\nsuch things go), you think you cannot know your place without a stone at\nit, after examining it well,--how do you think each atom knows its\nplace, when it never was there before, and there's no stone at it?\n\nISABEL. But does every atom know its place?\n\nL. How else could it get there?\n\nMARY. Are they not attracted to their places?\n\nL. Cover a piece of paper with spots, at equal intervals; and then\nimagine any kind of attraction you choose, or any law of attraction, to\nexist between the spots, and try how, on that permitted supposition, you\ncan attract them into the figure of a Maltese cross, in the middle of\nthe paper.\n\nMARY (_having tried it_). Yes; I see that I cannot:--one would need all\nkinds of attractions, in different ways, at different places. But you do\nnot mean that the atoms are alive?\n\nL. What is it to be alive?\n\nDORA. There now; you're going to be provoking, I know.\n\nL. I do not see why it should be provoking to be asked what it is to be\nalive. Do you think you don't know whether you are alive or not?\n\n     (ISABEL _skips to the end of the room and back._)\n\nL. Yes, Isabel, that's all very fine; and you and I may call that being\nalive: but a modern philosopher calls it being in a 'mode of motion.' It\nrequires a certain quantity of heat to take you to the sideboard; and\nexactly the same quantity to bring you back again. That's all.\n\nISABEL. No, it isn't. And besides, I'm not hot.\n\nL. I am, sometimes, at the way they talk. However, you know, Isabel, you\nmight have been a particle of a mineral, and yet have been carried round\nthe room, or anywhere else, by chemical forces, in the liveliest way.\n\nISABEL. Yes; but I wasn't carried: I carried myself.\n\nL. The fact is, mousie, the difficulty is not so much to say what makes\na thing alive, as what makes it a Self. As soon as you are shut off from\nthe rest of the universe into a Self, you begin to be alive.\n\nVIOLET (_indignant_). Oh, surely--surely that cannot be so. Is not all\nthe life of the soul in communion, not separation?\n\nL. There can be no communion where there is no distinction. But we shall\nbe in an abyss of metaphysics presently, if we don't look out; and\nbesides, we must not be too grand, to-day, for the younger children.\nWe'll be grand, some day, by ourselves, if we must. (_The younger\nchildren are not pleased, and prepare to remonstrate; but, knowing by\nexperience, that all conversations in which the word 'communion' occurs,\nare unintelligible, think better of it._) Meantime, for broad answer\nabout the atoms. I do not think we should use the word 'life,' of any\nenergy which does not belong to a given form. A seed, or an egg, or a\nyoung animal are properly called 'alive' with respect to the force\nbelonging to those forms, which consistently develops that form, and no\nother. But the force which crystallises a mineral appears to be chiefly\nexternal, and it does not produce an entirely determinate and individual\nform, limited in size, but only an aggregation, in which some limiting\nlaws must be observed.\n\nMARY. But I do not see much difference, that way, between a crystal and\na tree.\n\nL. Add, then, that the mode of the energy in a living thing implies a\ncontinual change in its elements; and a period for its end. So you may\ndefine life by its attached negative, death; and still more by its\nattached positive, birth. But I won't be plagued any more about this,\njust now; if you choose to think the crystals alive, do, and welcome.\nRocks have always been called 'living' in their native place.\n\nMARY. There's one question more; then I've done.\n\nL. Only one?\n\nMARY. Only one.\n\nL. But if it is answered, won't it turn into two?\n\nMARY. No; I think it will remain single, and be comfortable.\n\nL. Let me hear it.\n\nMARY. You know, we are to crystallise ourselves out of the whole\nplayground. Now, what playground have the minerals? Where are they\nscattered before they are crystallised; and where are the crystals\ngenerally made?\n\nL. That sounds to me more like three questions than one, Mary. If it is\nonly one, it is a wide one.\n\nMARY. I did not say anything about the width of it.\n\nL. Well, I must keep it within the best compass I can. When rocks either\ndry from a moist state, or cool from a heated state, they necessarily\nalter in bulk; and cracks, or open spaces, form in them in all\ndirections. These cracks must be filled up with solid matter, or the\nrock would eventually become a ruinous heap. So, sometimes by water,\nsometimes by vapour, sometimes nobody knows how, crystallisable matter\nis brought from somewhere, and fastens itself in these open spaces, so\nas to bind the rock together again, with crystal cement. A vast quantity\nof hollows are formed in lavas by bubbles of gas, just as the holes are\nleft in bread well baked. In process of time these cavities are\ngenerally filled with various crystals.\n\nMARY. But where does the crystallising substance come from?\n\nL. Sometimes out of the rock itself; sometimes from below or above,\nthrough the veins. The entire substance of the contracting rock may be\nfilled with liquid, pressed into it so as to fill every pore;--or with\nmineral vapour;--or it may be so charged at one place, and empty at\nanother. There's no end to the 'may be's.' But all that you need fancy,\nfor our present purpose, is that hollows in the rocks, like the caves in\nDerbyshire, are traversed by liquids or vapour containing certain\nelements in a more or less free or separate state, which crystallise on\nthe cave walls.\n\nSIBYL. There now;--Mary has had all her questions answered: it's my turn\nto have mine.\n\nL. Ah, there's a conspiracy among you, I see. I might have guessed as\nmuch.\n\nDORA. I'm sure you ask us questions enough! How can you have the heart,\nwhen you dislike so to be asked them yourself?\n\nL. My dear child, if people do not answer questions, it does not matter\nhow many they are asked, because they've no trouble with them. Now, when\nI ask you questions, I never expect to be answered; but when you ask me,\nyou always do; and it's not fair.\n\nDORA. Very well, we shall understand, next time.\n\nSIBYL. No, but seriously, we all want to ask one thing more, quite\ndreadfully.\n\nL. And I don't want to be asked it, quite dreadfully; but you'll have\nyour own way, of course.\n\nSIBYL. We none of us understand about the lower Pthah. It was not merely\nyesterday; but in all we have read about him in Wilkinson, or in any\nbook, we cannot understand what the Egyptians put their god into that\nugly little deformed shape for.\n\nL. Well, I'm glad it's that sort of question; because I can answer\nanything I like, to that.\n\nEGYPT. Anything you like will do quite well for us; we shall be pleased\nwith the answer, if you are.\n\nL. I am not so sure of that, most gracious queen; for I must begin by\nthe statement that queens seem to have disliked all sorts of work, in\nthose days, as much as some queens dislike sewing to-day.\n\nEGYPT. Now, it's too bad! and just when I was trying to say the\ncivillest thing I could!\n\nL. But, Egypt, why did you tell me you disliked sewing so?\n\nEGYPT. Did not I show you how the thread cuts my fingers? and I always\nget cramp, somehow, in my neck, if I sew long.\n\nL. Well, I suppose the Egyptian queens thought every body got cramp in\ntheir neck, if they sewed long; and that thread always cut people's\nfingers. At all events, every kind of manual labour was despised both by\nthem, and the Greeks; and, while they owned the real good and fruit of\nit, they yet held it a degradation to all who practised it. Also,\nknowing the laws of life thoroughly, they perceived that the special\npractice necessary to bring any manual art to perfection strengthened\nthe body distortedly; one energy or member gaining at the expense of the\nrest. They especially dreaded and despised any kind of work that had to\nbe done near fire: yet, feeling what they owed to it in metal-work, as\nthe basis of all other work, they expressed this mixed reverence and\nscorn in the varied types of the lame Hephaestus, and the lower Pthah.\n\nSIBYL. But what did you mean by making him say 'everything great I can\nmake small, and everything small great?'\n\nL. I had my own separate meaning in that. We have seen in modern times\nthe power of the lower Pthah developed in a separate way, which no Greek\nnor Egyptian could have conceived. It is the character of pure and\neyeless manual labour to conceive everything as subjected to it: and, in\nreality, to disgrace and diminish all that is so subjected; aggrandising\nitself, and the thought of itself, at the expense of all noble things. I\nheard an orator, and a good one too, at the Working Men's College, the\nother day, make a great point in a description of our railroads; saying,\nwith grandly conducted emphasis, 'They have made man greater, and the\nworld less.' His working audience were mightily pleased; they thought it\nso very fine a thing to be made bigger themselves; and all the rest of\nthe world less. I should have enjoyed asking them (but it would have\nbeen a pity--they were so pleased), how much less they would like to\nhave the world made;--and whether, at present, those of them really felt\nthe biggest men, who lived in the least houses.\n\nSIBYL. But then, why did you make Pthah say that he could make weak\nthings strong, and small things great?\n\nL. My dear, he is a boaster and self-assertor, by nature; but it is so\nfar true. For instance, we used to have a fair in our neighbourhood--a\nvery fine fair we thought it. You never saw such an one; but if you look\nat the engraving of Turner's 'St. Catherine's Hill,' you will see what\nit was like. There were curious booths, carried on poles; and\npeep-shows; and music, with plenty of drums and cymbals; and much\nbarley-sugar and gingerbread, and the like: and in the alleys of this\nfair the London populace would enjoy themselves, after their fashion,\nvery thoroughly. Well, the little Pthah set to work upon it one day; he\nmade the wooden poles into iron ones, and put them across, like his own\ncrooked legs, so that you always fall over them if you don't look where\nyou are going; and he turned all the canvas into panes of glass, and put\nit up on his iron cross-poles; and made all the little booths into one\ngreat booth; and people said it was very fine, and a new style of\narchitecture; and Mr. Dickens said nothing was ever like it in\nFairyland, which was very true. And then the little Pthah set to work to\nput fine fairings in it; and he painted the Nineveh bulls afresh, with\nthe blackest eyes he could paint (because he had none himself), and he\ngot the angels down from Lincoln choir, and gilded their wings like his\ngingerbread of old times; and he sent for everything else he could think\nof, and put it in his booth. There are the casts of Niobe and her\nchildren; and the Chimpanzee; and the wooden Caffres and New-Zealanders;\nand the Shakespeare House; and Le Grand Blondin, and Le Petit Blondin;\nand Handel; and Mozart; and no end of shops, and buns, and beer; and all\nthe little-Pthah-worshippers say, never was anything so sublime!\n\nSIBYL. Now, do you mean to say you never go to these Crystal Palace\nconcerts? They're as good as good can be.\n\nL. I don't go to the thundering things with a million of bad voices in\nthem. When I want a song, I get Julia Mannering and Lucy Bertram and\nCounsellor Pleydell to sing 'We be three poor Mariners' to me; then I've\nno headache next morning. But I do go to the smaller concerts, when I\ncan; for they are very good, as you say, Sibyl: and I always get a\nreserved seat somewhere near the orchestra, where I am sure I can see\nthe kettle-drummer drum.\n\nSIBYL. Now _do_ be serious, for one minute.\n\nL. I am serious--never was more so. You know one can't see the\nmodulation of violinists' fingers, but one can see the vibration of the\ndrummer's hand; and it's lovely.\n\nSIBYL. But fancy going to a concert, not to hear, but to see!\n\nL. Yes, it is very absurd. The quite right thing, I believe, is to go\nthere to talk. I confess, however, that in most music, when very well\ndone, the doing of it is to me the chiefly interesting part of the\nbusiness. I'm always thinking how good it would be for the fat,\nsupercilious people, who care so little for their half-crown's worth, to\nbe set to try and do a half-crown's worth of anything like it.\n\nMARY. But surely that Crystal Palace is a great good and help to the\npeople of London?\n\nL. The fresh air of the Norwood hills is, or was, my dear; but they are\nspoiling that with smoke as fast as they can. And the palace (as they\ncall it) is a better place for them, by much, than the old fair; and it\nis always there, instead of for three days only; and it shuts up at\nproper hours of night. And good use may be made of the things in it, if\nyou know how: but as for its teaching the people, it will teach them\nnothing but the lowest of the lower Pthah's work--nothing but hammer and\ntongs. I saw a wonderful piece, of his doing, in the place, only the\nother day. Some unhappy metal-worker--I am not sure if it was not a\nmetal-working firm--had taken three years to make a Golden eagle.\n\nSIBYL. Of real gold?\n\nL. No; of bronze, or copper, or some of their foul patent metal--it is\nno matter what. I meant a model of our chief British eagle. Every\nfeather was made separately; and every filament of every feather\nseparately, and so joined on; and all the quills modelled of the right\nlength and right section, and at last the whole cluster of them fastened\ntogether. You know, children, I don't think much of my own drawing; but\ntake my proud word for once, that when I go to the Zoological Gardens,\nand happen to have a bit of chalk in my pocket, and the Gray Harpy will\nsit, without screwing his head round, for thirty seconds,--I can do a\nbetter thing of him in that time than the three years' work of this\nindustrious firm. For, during the thirty seconds, the eagle is my\nobject,--not myself; and during the three years, the firm's object, in\nevery fibre of bronze it made, was itself, and not the eagle. That is\nthe true meaning of the little Pthah's having no eyes--he can see only\nhimself. The Egyptian beetle was not quite the full type of him; our\nnorthern ground beetle is a truer one. It is beautiful to see it at\nwork, gathering its treasures (such as they are) into little round\nballs; and pushing them home with the strong wrong end of it,--head\ndownmost all the way,--like a modern political economist with his ball\nof capital, declaring that a nation can stand on its vices better than\non its virtues. But away with you, children, now, for I'm getting cross.\n\nDORA. I'm going down-stairs; I shall take care, at any rate, that there\nare no little Pthahs in the kitchen cupboards.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE IV.\n\n_THE CRYSTAL ORDERS._\n\n     _A working Lecture, in the large Schoolroom; with\n     experimental Interludes The great bell has rung\n     unexpectedly._\n\n\nKATHLEEN (_entering disconsolate, though first at the summons_). Oh\ndear, oh dear, what a day! Was ever anything so provoking! just when we\nwanted to crystallise ourselves;--and I'm sure it's going to rain all\nday long.\n\nL. So am I, Kate. The sky has quite an Irish way with it But I don't see\nwhy Irish girls should also look so dismal. Fancy that you don't want to\ncrystallise yourselves: you didn't, the day before yesterday, and you\nwere not unhappy when it rained then.\n\nFLORRIE. Ah! but we do want to-day; and the rain's so tiresome.\n\nL. That is to say, children, that because you are all the richer by the\nexpectation of playing at a new game, you choose to make yourselves\nunhappier than when you had nothing to look forward to, but the old\nones.\n\nISABEL. But then, to have to wait--wait--wait; and before we've tried\nit;--and perhaps it will rain to-morrow, too!\n\nL. It may also rain the day after to-morrow. We can make ourselves\nuncomfortable to any extent with perhapses, Isabel. You may stick\nperhapses into your little minds, like pins, till you are as\nuncomfortable as the Lilliputians made Gulliver with their arrows, when\nhe would not lie quiet.\n\nISABEL. But what _are_ we to do to-day?\n\nL. To be quiet, for one thing, like Gulliver when he saw there was\nnothing better to be done. And to practise patience. I can tell you\nchildren, _that_ requires nearly as much practising as music; and we are\ncontinually losing our lessons when the master comes. Now, to-day,\nhere's a nice little adagio lesson for us, if we play it properly.\n\nISABEL. But I don't like that sort of lesson. I can't play it properly.\n\nL. Can you play a Mozart sonata yet, Isabel? The more need to practise.\nAll one's life is a music, if one touches the notes rightly, and in\ntime. But there must be no hurry.\n\nKATHLEEN. I'm sure there's no music in stopping in on a rainy day.\n\nL. There's no music in a 'rest,' Katie, that I know of: but there's the\nmaking of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the\nlife-melody; and scrambling on without counting--not that it's easy to\ncount; but nothing on which so much depends ever _is_ easy. People are\nalways talking of perseverance, and courage, and fortitude; but patience\nis the finest and worthiest part of fortitude,--and the rarest, too. I\nknow twenty persevering girls for one patient one: but it is only that\ntwenty-first who can do her work, out and out, or enjoy it. For patience\nlies at the root of all pleasures, as well as of all powers. Hope\nherself ceases to be happiness, when Impatience companions her.\n\n     (ISABEL _and_ LILY _sit down on the floor, and fold their\n     hands. The others follow their example._)\n\nGood children! but that's not quite the way of it, neither. Folded hands\nare not necessarily resigned ones. The Patience who really smiles at\ngrief usually stands, or walks, or even runs: she seldom sits; though\nshe may sometimes have to do it, for many a day, poor thing, by\nmonuments; or like Chaucer's, 'with face pale, upon a hill of sand.' But\nwe are not reduced to that to-day. Suppose we use this calamitous\nforenoon to choose the shapes we are to crystallise into? we know\nnothing about them yet.\n\n     (_The pictures of resignation rise from the floor, not in\n     the patientest manner. General applause._)\n\nMARY _(with one or two others_). The very thing we wanted to ask you\nabout!\n\nLILY. We looked at the books about crystals, but they are so dreadful.\n\nL. Well, Lily, we must go through a little dreadfulness, that's a fact:\nno road to any good knowledge is wholly among the lilies and the grass;\nthere is rough climbing to be done always. But the crystal-books are a\nlittle _too_ dreadful, most of them, I admit; and we shall have to be\ncontent with very little of their help. You know, as you cannot stand on\neach other's heads, you can only make yourselves into the sections of\ncrystals,--the figures they show when they are cut through; and we will\nchoose some that will be quite easy. You shall make diamonds of\nyourselves----\n\nISABEL. Oh, no, no! we won't be diamonds, please.\n\nL. Yes, you shall, Isabel; they are very pretty things, if the\njewellers, and the kings and queens, would only let them alone. You\nshall make diamonds of yourselves, and rubies of yourselves, and\nemeralds; and Irish diamonds; two of those--with Lily in the middle of\none, which will be very orderly, of course; and Kathleen in the middle\nof the other, for which we will hope the best;--and you shall make\nDerbyshire spar of yourselves, and Iceland spar, and gold, and silver,\nand--Quicksilver there's enough of in you, without any making.\n\nMARY. Now, you know, the children will be getting quite wild: we must\nreally get pencils and paper, and begin properly.\n\nL. Wait a minute, Miss Mary; I think as we've the school room clear\nto-day, I'll try to give you some notion of the three great orders or\nranks of crystals, into which all the others seem more or less to fall.\nWe shall only want one figure a day, in the playground; and that can be\ndrawn in a minute: but the general ideas had better be fastened first. I\nmust show you a great many minerals; so let me have three tables wheeled\ninto the three windows, that we may keep our specimens separate;--we\nwill keep the three orders of crystals on separate tables.\n\n     (_First Interlude, of pushing and pulling, and spreading of\n     baize covers._ VIOLET, _not particularly minding what she is\n     about, gets herself jammed into a corner, and bid to stand\n     out of the way; on which she devotes herself to\n     meditation._)\n\nVIOLET (_after interval of meditation_). How strange it is that\neverything seems to divide into threes!\n\nL. Everything doesn't divide into threes. Ivy won't, though shamrock\nwill; and daisies won't, though lilies will.\n\nVIOLET. But all the nicest things seem to divide into threes.\n\nL. Violets won't.\n\nVIOLET. No; I should think not, indeed! But I mean the great things.\n\nL. I've always heard the globe had four quarters.\n\nISABEL. Well; but you know you said it hadn't any quarters at all. So\nmayn't it really be divided into three?\n\nL. If it were divided into no more than three, on the outside of it,\nIsabel, it would be a fine world to live in; and if it were divided into\nthree in the inside of it, it would soon be no world to live in at all.\n\nDORA. We shall never get to the crystals, at this rate. (_Aside to_\nMARY.) He will get off into political economy before we know where we\nare. (_Aloud._) But the crystals are divided into three, then?\n\nL. No; but there are three general notions by which we may best get hold\nof them. Then between these notions there are other notions.\n\nLILY (_alarmed_). A great many? And shall we have to learn them all?\n\nL. More than a great many--a quite infinite many. So you cannot learn\nthem all.\n\nLILY (_greatly relieved_). Then may we only learn the three?\n\nL. Certainly; unless, when you have got those three notions, you want to\nhave some more notions;--which would not surprise me. But we'll try for\nthe three, first. Katie, you broke your coral necklace this morning?\n\nKATHLEEN. Oh! who told you? It was in jumping. I'm so sorry!\n\nL. I'm very glad. Can you fetch me the beads of it?\n\nKATHLEEN. I've lost some; here are the rest in my pocket, if I can only\nget them out.\n\nL. You mean to get them out some day, I suppose; so try now. I want\nthem.\n\n     (KATHLEEN _empties her pocket on the floor. The beads\n     disperse. The School disperses also. Second\n     Interlude--hunting piece._)\n\nL. (_after waiting patiently for a quarter of an hour, to_ ISABEL, _who\ncomes up from under the table with her hair all about her ears, and the\nlast findable beads in her hand_). Mice are useful little things\nsometimes. Now, mousie, I want all those beads crystallised. How many\nways are there of putting them in order?\n\nISABEL. Well, first one would string them, I suppose?\n\nL. Yes, that's the first way. You cannot string ultimate atoms;\nbut you can put them in a row, and then they fasten themselves\ntogether, somehow, into a long rod or needle. We will call these\n'_Needle_-crystals.' What would be the next way?\n\nISABEL. I suppose, as we are to get together in the playground, when it\nstops raining, in different shapes?\n\nL. Yes; put the beads together, then, in the simplest form you can, to\nbegin with. Put them into a square, and pack them close.\n\nISABEL (_after careful endeavour_). I can't get them closer.\n\nL. That will do. Now you may see, beforehand, that if you try to throw\nyourselves into square in this confused way, you will never know your\nplaces; so you had better consider every square as made of rods, put\nside by side. Take four beads of equal size, first, Isabel; put them\ninto a little square. That, you may consider as made up of two rods of\ntwo beads each. Then you can make a square a size larger, out of three\nrods of three. Then the next square may be a size larger. How many rods,\nLily?\n\nLILY. Four rods of four beads each, I suppose.\n\nL. Yes, and then five rods of five, and so on. But now, look here; make\nanother square of four beads again. You see they leave a little opening\nin the centre.\n\nISABEL (_pushing two opposite ones closer together_). Now they don't.\n\nL. No; but now it isn't a square; and by pushing the two together you\nhave pushed the two others farther apart.\n\nISABEL. And yet, somehow, they all seem closer than they were!\n\nL. Yes; for before, each of them only touched two of the others, but now\neach of the two in the middle touches the other three. Take away one of\nthe outsiders, Isabel; now you have three in a triangle--the smallest\ntriangle you can make out of the beads. Now put a rod of three beads on\nat one side. So, you have a triangle of six beads; but just the shape of\nthe first one. Next a rod of four on the side of that; and you have a\ntriangle of ten beads: then a rod of five on the side of that; and you\nhave a triangle of fifteen. Thus you have a square with five beads on\nthe side, and a triangle with five beads on the side; equal-sided,\ntherefore, like the square. So, however few or many you may be, you may\nsoon learn how to crystallise quickly into these two figures, which are\nthe foundation of form in the commonest, and therefore actually the most\nimportant, as well as in the rarest, and therefore, by our esteem, the\nmost important, minerals of the world. Look at this in my hand.\n\nVIOLET. Why, it is leaf-gold!\n\nL. Yes; but beaten by no man's hammer; or rather, not beaten at all, but\nwoven. Besides, feel the weight of it. There is gold enough there to\ngild the walls and ceiling, if it were beaten thin.\n\nVIOLET. How beautiful! And it glitters like a leaf covered with frost.\n\nL. You only think it so beautiful because you know it is gold. It is not\nprettier, in reality, than a bit of brass: for it is Transylvanian gold;\nand they say there is a foolish gnome in the mines there, who is always\nwanting to live in the moon, and so alloys all the gold with a little\nsilver. I don't know how that may be: but the silver always _is_ in the\ngold; and if he does it, it's very provoking of him, for no gold is\nwoven so fine anywhere else.\n\nMARY (_who has been looking through her magnifying glass_). But this is\nnot woven. This is all made of little triangles.\n\nL. Say 'patched,' then, if you must be so particular. But if you fancy\nall those triangles, small as they are (and many of them are infinitely\nsmall), made up again of rods, and those of grains, as we built our\ngreat triangle of the beads, what word will you take for the\nmanufacture?\n\nMAY. There's no word--it is beyond words.\n\nL. Yes; and that would matter little, were it not beyond thoughts too.\nBut, at all events, this yellow leaf of dead gold, shed, not from the\nruined woodlands, but the ruined rocks, will help you to remember the\nsecond kind of crystals, _Leaf_-crystals, or _Foliated_ crystals; though\nI show you the form in gold first only to make a strong impression on\nyou, for gold is not generally, or characteristically, crystallised in\nleaves; the real type of foliated crystals is this thing, Mica; which if\nyou once feel well, and break well, you will always know again; and you\nwill often have occasion to know it, for you will find it everywhere,\nnearly, in hill countries.\n\nKATHLEEN. If we break it well! May we break it?\n\nL. To powder, if you like.\n\n     (_Surrenders plate of brown mica to public investigation.\n     Third Interlude. It sustains severely philosophical\n     treatment at all hands._)\n\nFLORRIE. (_to whom the last fragments have descended_) Always leaves,\nand leaves, and nothing but leaves, or white dust!\n\nL. That dust itself is nothing but finer leaves.\n\n     (_Shows them to_ FLORRIE _through magnifying glass._)\n\nISABEL. (_peeping over_ FLORRIE'S _shoulder_). But then this bit under\nthe glass looks like that bit out of the glass! If we could break this\nbit under the glass, what would it be like?\n\nL. It would be all leaves still.\n\nISABEL. And then if we broke those again?\n\nL. All less leaves still.\n\nISABEL (_impatient_). And if we broke them again, and again, and again,\nand again, and again?\n\nL. Well, I suppose you would come to a limit, if you could only see it.\nNotice that the little flakes already differ somewhat from the large\nones: because I can bend them up and down, and they stay bent; while the\nlarge flake, though it bent easily a little way, sprang back when you\nlet it go, and broke, when you tried to bend it far. And a large mass\nwould not bend at all.\n\nMARY. Would that leaf gold separate into finer leaves, in the same way?\n\nL. No; and therefore, as I told you, it is not a characteristic specimen\nof a foliated crystallisation. The little triangles are portions of\nsolid crystals, and so they are in this, which looks like a black mica;\nbut you see it is made up of triangles like the gold, and stands, almost\naccurately, as an intermediate link, in crystals, between mica and gold.\nYet this is the commonest, as gold the rarest, of metals.\n\nMARY. Is it iron? I never saw iron so bright.\n\nL. It is rust of iron, finely crystallised: from its resemblance to\nmica, it is often called micaceous iron.\n\nKATHLEEN. May we break this, too?\n\nL. No, for I could not easily get such another crystal; besides, it\nwould not break like the mica; it is much harder. But take the glass\nagain, and look at the fineness of the jagged edges of the triangles\nwhere they lap over each other. The gold has the same: but you see them\nbetter here, terrace above terrace, countless, and in successive angles,\nlike superb fortified bastions.\n\nMAY. But all foliated crystals are not made of triangles?\n\nL. Far from it: mica is occasionally so, but usually of hexagons; and\nhere is a foliated crystal made of squares, which will show you that the\nleaves of the rock-land have their summer green, as well as their\nautumnal gold.\n\nFLORRIE. Oh! oh! oh! (_jumps for joy_).\n\nL. Did you never see a bit of green leaf before, Florrie?\n\nFLORRIE. Yes, but never so bright as that, and not in a stone.\n\nL. If you will look at the leaves of the trees in sunshine after a\nshower, you will find they are much brighter than that; and surely they\nare none the worse for being on stalks instead of in stones?\n\nFLORRIE. Yes, but then there are so many of them, one never looks, I\nsuppose.\n\nL. Now you have it, Florrie.\n\nVIOLET (_sighing_). There are so many beautiful things we never see!\n\nL. You need not sigh for that, Violet; but I will tell you what we\nshould all sigh for,--that there are so many ugly things we never see.\n\nVIOLET. But we don't want to see ugly things!\n\nL. You had better say, 'We don't want to suffer them.' You ought to be\nglad in thinking how much more beauty God has made, than human eyes can\never see; but not glad in thinking how much more evil man has made, than\nhis own soul can ever conceive, much more than his hands can ever heal.\n\nVIOLET. I don't understand;--how is that like the leaves?\n\nL. The same law holds in our neglect of multiplied pain, as in our\nneglect of multiplied beauty. Florrie jumps for joy at sight of half an\ninch of a green leaf in a brown stone; and takes more notice of it than\nof all the green in the wood: and you, or I, or any of us, would be\nunhappy if any single human creature beside us were in sharp pain; but\nwe can read, at breakfast, day after day, of men being killed, and of\nwomen and children dying of hunger, faster than the leaves strew the\nbrooks in Vallombrosa;--and then go out to play croquet, as if nothing\nhad happened.\n\nMAY. But we do not see the people being killed or dying.\n\nL. You did not see your brother, when you got the telegram the other\nday, saying he was ill, May; but you cried for him and played no\ncroquet. But we cannot talk of these things now; and what is more, you\nmust let me talk straight on, for a little while; and ask no questions\ntill I've done: for we branch ('exfoliate,' I should say,\nmineralogically) always into something else,--though that's my fault\nmore than yours; but I must go straight on now. You have got a distinct\nnotion, I hope, of leaf-crystals; and you see the sort of look they\nhave: you can easily remember that 'folium' is Latin for a leaf, and\nthat the separate flakes of mica, or any other such stones, are called\n'folia;' but, because mica is the most characteristic of these stones,\nother things that are like it in structure are called 'micas;' thus we\nhave Uran-mica, which is the green leaf I showed you; and Copper-mica,\nwhich is another like it, made chiefly of copper; and this foliated iron\nis called 'micaceous iron.' You have then these two great orders,\nNeedle-crystals, made (probably) of grains in rows; and Leaf-crystals,\nmade (probably) of needles interwoven; now, lastly, there are crystals\nof a third order, in heaps, or knots, or masses, which may be made,\neither of leaves laid one upon another, or of needles bound like Roman\nfasces; and mica itself, when it is well crystallised, puts itself into\nsuch masses, as if to show us how others are made. Here is a brown\nsix-sided crystal, quite as beautifully chiselled at the sides as any\ncastle tower; but you see it is entirely built of folia of mica, one\nlaid above another, which break away the moment I touch the edge with my\nknife. Now, here is another hexagonal tower, of just the same size and\ncolour, which I want you to compare with the mica carefully; but as I\ncannot wait for you to do it just now, I must tell you quickly what main\ndifferences to look for. First, you will feel it is far heavier than the\nmica. Then, though its surface looks quite micaceous in the folia of it,\nwhen you try them with the knife, you will find you cannot break them\naway----\n\nKATHLEEN. May I try?\n\nL. Yes, you mistrusting Katie. Here's my strong knife for you.\n(_Experimental pause._ KATHLEEN, _doing her best._) You'll have that\nknife shutting on your finger presently, Kate; and I don't know a girl\nwho would like less to have her hand tied up for a week.\n\nKATHLEEN (_who also does not like to be beaten--giving up the knife\ndespondently_). What _can_ the nasty hard thing be?\n\nL. It is nothing but indurated clay, Kate: very hard set certainly, yet\nnot so hard as it might be. If it were thoroughly well crystallised, you\nwould see none of those micaceous fractures; and the stone would be\nquite red and clear, all through.\n\nKATHLEEN. Oh, cannot you show us one?\n\nL. Egypt can, if you ask her; she has a beautiful one in the clasp of\nher favourite bracelet.\n\nKATHLEEN. Why, that's a ruby!\n\nL. Well, so is that thing you've been scratching at.\n\nKATHLEEN. My goodness!\n\n     (_Takes up the stone again, very delicately; and drops it.\n     General consternation._)\n\nL. Never mind, Katie; you might drop it from the top of the house, and\ndo it no harm. But though you really are a very good girl, and as\ngood-natured as anybody can possibly be, remember, you have your faults,\nlike other people; and, if I were you, the next time I wanted to assert\nanything energetically, I would assert it by 'my badness,' not 'my\ngoodness.'\n\nKATHLEEN. Ah, now, it's too bad of you!\n\nL. Well, then, I'll invoke, on occasion, my 'too-badness.' But you may\nas well pick up the ruby, now you have dropped it; and look carefully at\nthe beautiful hexagonal lines which gleam on its surface; and here is a\npretty white sapphire (essentially the same stone as the ruby), in which\nyou will see the same lovely structure, like the threads of the finest\nwhite cobweb. I do not know what is the exact method of a ruby's\nconstruction; but you see by these lines, what fine construction there\n_is_, even in this hardest of stones (after the diamond), which usually\nappears as a massive lump or knot. There is therefore no real\nmineralogical distinction between needle crystals and knotted crystals,\nbut, practically, crystallised masses throw themselves into one of the\nthree groups we have been examining to-day; and appear either as\nNeedles, as Folia, or as Knots; when they are in needles (or fibres),\nthey make the stones or rocks formed out of them '_fibrous_;' when they\nare in folia, they make them '_foliated_;' when they are in knots (or\ngrains), '_granular_.' Fibrous rocks are comparatively rare, in mass;\nbut fibrous minerals are innumerable; and it is often a question which\nreally no one but a young lady could possibly settle, whether one should\ncall the fibres composing them 'threads' or 'needles.' Here is\namianthus, for instance, which is quite as fine and soft as any cotton\nthread you ever sewed with; and here is sulphide of bismuth, with\nsharper points and brighter lustre than your finest needles have; and\nfastened in white webs of quartz more delicate than your finest lace;\nand here is sulphide of antimony, which looks like mere purple wool, but\nit is all of purple needle crystals; and here is red oxide of copper\n(you must not breathe on it as you look, or you may blow some of the\nfilms of it off the stone), which is simply a woven tissue of scarlet\nsilk. However, these finer thread forms are comparatively rare, while\nthe bolder and needle-like crystals occur constantly; so that, I\nbelieve, 'Needle-crystal' is the best word (the grand one is 'Acicular\ncrystal,' but Sibyl will tell you it is all the same, only less easily\nunderstood; and therefore more scientific). Then the Leaf-crystals, as I\nsaid, form an immense mass of foliated rocks; and the Granular crystals,\nwhich are of many kinds, form essentially granular, or granitic and\nporphyritic rocks; and it is always a point of more interest to me (and\nI think will ultimately be to you), to consider the causes which force a\ngiven mineral to take any one of these three general forms, than what\nthe peculiar geometrical limitations are, belonging to its own\ncrystals.[150] It is more interesting to me, for instance, to try and\nfind out why the red oxide of copper, usually crystallising in cubes or\noctahedrons, makes itself exquisitely, out of its cubes, into this red\nsilk in one particular Cornish mine, than what are the absolutely\nnecessary angles of the octahedron, which is its common form. At all\nevents, that mathematical part of crystallography is quite beyond girls'\nstrength; but these questions of the various tempers and manners of\ncrystals are not only comprehensible by you, but full of the most\ncurious teaching for you. For in the fulfilment, to the best of their\npower, of their adopted form under given circumstances, there are\nconditions entirely resembling those of human virtue; and indeed\nexpressible under no term so proper as that of the Virtue, or Courage of\ncrystals:--which, if you are not afraid of the crystals making you\nashamed of yourselves, we will try to get some notion of, to-morrow. But\nit will be a bye-lecture, and more about yourselves than the minerals,\nDon't come unless you like.\n\nMARY. I'm sure the crystals will make us ashamed of ourselves; but we'll\ncome, for all that.\n\nL. Meantime, look well and quietly over these needle, or thread\ncrystals, and those on the other two tables, with magnifying glasses,\nand see what thoughts will come into your little heads about them. For\nthe best thoughts are generally those which come without being forced,\none does not know how. And so I hope you will get through your wet day\npatiently.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[150] Note iv.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE V.\n\n_CRYSTAL VIRTUES._\n\n     _A quiet talk, in the afternoon, by the sunniest window of\n     the Drawing-room. Present_, FLORRIE, ISABEL, MAY, LUCILLA,\n     KATHLEEN, DORA, MARY, _and some others, who have saved time\n     for the bye-Lecture._\n\n\nL. So you have really come, like good girls, to be made ashamed of\nyourselves?\n\nDORA (_very meekly_). No, we needn't be made so; we always are.\n\nL. Well, I believe that's truer than most pretty speeches: but you know,\nyou saucy girl, some people have more reason to be so than others. Are\nyou sure everybody is, as well as you?\n\nTHE GENERAL VOICE. Yes, yes; everybody.\n\nL. What! Florrie ashamed of herself?\n\n     (FLORRIE _hides behind the curtain._)\n\nL. And Isabel?\n\n     (ISABEL _hides under the table._)\n\nL. And May?\n\n     (MAY _runs into the corner behind the piano._)\n\nL. And Lucilla?\n\n     (LUCILLA _hides her face in her hands._)\n\nL. Dear, dear; but this will never do. I shall have to tell you of the\nfaults of the crystals, instead of virtues, to put you in heart again.\n\nMAY (_coming out of her corner_). Oh! have the crystals faults, like us?\n\nL. Certainly, May. Their best virtues are shown in fighting their\nfaults. And some have a great many faults; and some are very naughty\ncrystals indeed.\n\nFLORRIE (_from behind her curtain_). As naughty as me?\n\nISABEL (_peeping from under the table cloth_). Or me?\n\nL. Well, I don't know. They never forget their syntax, children, when\nonce they've been taught it. But I think some of them are, on the whole,\nworse than any of you. Not that it's amiable of you to look so radiant,\nall in a minute, on that account.\n\nDORA. Oh! but it's so much more comfortable.\n\n     (_Everybody seems to recover their spirits. Eclipse of_\n     FLORRIE _and_ ISABEL _terminates._)\n\nL. What kindly creatures girls are, after all, to their neighbours'\nfailings! I think you may be ashamed of yourselves indeed, now,\nchildren! I can tell you, you shall hear of the highest crystalline\nmerits that I can think of, to-day: and I wish there were more of them;\nbut crystals have a limited, though a stern, code of morals; and their\nessential virtues are but two;--the first is to be pure, and the second\nto be well shaped.\n\nMARY. Pure! Does that mean clear--transparent?\n\nL. No; unless in the case of a transparent substance. You cannot have a\ntransparent crystal of gold; but you may have a perfectly pure one.\n\nISABEL. But you said it was the shape that made things be crystals;\ntherefore, oughtn't their shape to be their first virtue, not their\nsecond?\n\nL. Right, you troublesome mousie. But I call their shape only their\nsecond virtue, because it depends on time and accident, and things which\nthe crystal cannot help. If it is cooled too quickly, or shaken, it must\ntake what shape it can; but it seems as if, even then, it had in itself\nthe power of rejecting impurity, if it has crystalline life enough. Here\nis a crystal of quartz, well enough shaped in its way; but it seems to\nhave been languid and sick at heart; and some white milky substance has\ngot into it, and mixed itself up with it, all through. It makes the\nquartz quite yellow, if you hold it up to the light, and milky blue on\nthe surface. Here is another, broken into a thousand separate facets,\nand out of all traceable shape; but as pure as a mountain spring. I like\nthis one best.\n\nTHE AUDIENCE. So do I--and I--and I.\n\nMARY. Would a crystallographer?\n\nL. I think so. He would find many more laws curiously exemplified in the\nirregularly grouped but pure crystal. But it is a futile question, this\nof first or second. Purity is in most cases a prior, if not a nobler,\nvirtue; at all events it is most convenient to think about it first.\n\nMARY. But what ought we to think about it? Is there much to be\nthought--I mean, much to puzzle one?\n\nL. I don't know what you call 'much.' It is a long time since I met with\nanything in which there was little. There's not much in this, perhaps.\nThe crystal must be either dirty or clean,--and there's an end. So it is\nwith one's hands, and with one's heart--only you can wash your hands\nwithout changing them, but not hearts, nor crystals. On the whole, while\nyou are young, it will be as well to take care that your hearts don't\nwant much washing; for they may perhaps need wringing also, when they\ndo.\n\n     (_Audience doubtful and uncomfortable._ LUCILLA _at last\n     takes courage._)\n\nLUCILLA. Oh! but surely, sir, we cannot make our hearts clean?\n\nL. Not easily, Lucilla; so you had better keep them so when they are.\n\nLUCILLA. When they are! But, sir--\n\nL. Well?\n\nLUCILLA. Sir--surely--are we not told that they are all evil?\n\nL. Wait a little, Lucilla; that is difficult ground you are getting\nupon; and we must keep to our crystals, till at least we understand what\n_their_ good and evil consist in; they may help us afterwards to some\nuseful hints about our own. I said that their goodness consisted chiefly\nin purity of substance, and perfectness of form: but those are rather\nthe _effects_ of their goodness, than the goodness itself. The inherent\nvirtues of the crystals, resulting in these outer conditions, might\nreally seem to be best described in the words we should use respecting\nliving creatures--'force of heart' and steadiness of purpose.' There\nseem to be in some crystals, from the beginning, an unconquerable purity\nof vital power, and strength of crystal spirit. Whatever dead substance,\nunacceptant of this energy, comes in their way, is either rejected, or\nforced to take some beautiful subordinate form; the purity of the\ncrystal remains unsullied, and every atom of it bright with coherent\nenergy. Then the second condition is, that from the beginning of its\nwhole structure, a fine crystal seems to have determined that it will be\nof a certain size and of a certain shape; it persists in this plan, and\ncompletes it. Here is a perfect crystal of quartz for you. It is of an\nunusual form, and one which it might seem very difficult to build--a\npyramid with convex sides, composed of other minor pyramids. But there\nis not a flaw in its contour throughout; not one of its myriads of\ncomponent sides but is as bright as a jeweller's facetted work (and far\nfiner, if you saw it close). The crystal points are as sharp as\njavelins; their edges will cut glass with a touch. Anything more\nresolute, consummate, determinate in form, cannot be conceived. Here, on\nthe other hand, is a crystal of the same substance, in a perfectly\nsimple type of form--a plain six-sided prism; but from its base to its\npoint,--and it is nine inches long,--it has never for one instant made\nup its mind what thickness it will have. It seems to have begun by\nmaking itself as thick as it thought possible with the quantity of\nmaterial at command. Still not being as thick as it would like to be, it\nhas clumsily glued on more substance at one of its sides. Then it has\nthinned itself, in a panic of economy; then puffed itself out again;\nthen starved one side to enlarge another; then warped itself quite out\nof its first line. Opaque, rough-surfaced, jagged on the edge, distorted\nin the spine, it exhibits a quite human image of decrepitude and\ndishonour; but the worst of all the signs of its decay and helplessness,\nis that half-way up, a parasite crystal, smaller, but just as sickly,\nhas rooted itself in the side of the larger one, eating out a cavity\nround its root, and then growing backwards, or downwards, contrary to\nthe direction of the main crystal. Yet I cannot trace the least\ndifference in purity of substance between the first most noble stone,\nand this ignoble and dissolute one. The impurity of the last is in its\nwill, or want of will.\n\nMARY. Oh, if we could but understand the meaning of it all!\n\nL. We can understand all that is good for us. It is just as true for us,\nas for the crystal, that the nobleness of life depends on its\nconsistency,--clearness of purpose,--quiet and ceaseless energy. All\ndoubt, and repenting, and botching, and retouching, and wondering what\nit will be best to do next, are vice, as well as misery.\n\nMARY (_much wondering_). But must not one repent when one does wrong,\nand hesitate when one can't see one's way?\n\nL. You have no business at all to do wrong; nor to get into any way that\nyou cannot see. Your intelligence should always be far in advance of\nyour act. Whenever you do not know what you are about, you are sure to\nbe doing wrong.\n\nKATHLEEN. Oh, dear, but I never know what I am about!\n\nL. Very true, Katie, but it is a great deal to know, if you know that.\nAnd you find that you have done wrong afterwards; and perhaps some day\nyou may begin to know, or at least, think, what you are about.\n\nISABEL. But surely people can't do very wrong if they don't know, can\nthey? I mean, they can't be very naughty. They can be wrong, like\nKathleen or me, when we make mistakes; but not wrong in the dreadful\nway. I can't express what I mean; but there are two sorts of wrong are\nthere not?\n\nL. Yes, Isabel; but you will find that the great difference is between\nkind and unkind wrongs, not between meant and unmeant wrong. Very few\npeople really mean to do wrong,--in a deep sense, none. They only don't\nknow what they are about. Cain did not mean to do wrong when he killed\nAbel.\n\n     (ISABEL _draws a deep breath, and opens her eyes very\n     wide._)\n\nL. No, Isabel; and there are countless Cains among us now, who kill\ntheir brothers by the score a day, not only for less provocation than\nCain had, but for _no_ provocation,--and merely for what they can make\nof their bones,--yet do not think they are doing wrong in the least.\nThen sometimes you have the business reversed, as over in America these\nlast years, where you have seen Abel resolutely killing Cain, and not\nthinking he is doing wrong. The great difficulty is always to open\npeople's eyes: to touch their feelings, and break their hearts, is easy;\nthe difficult thing is to break their heads. What does it matter, as\nlong as they remain stupid, whether you change their feelings or not?\nYou cannot be always at their elbow to tell them what is right: and they\nmay just do as wrong as before, or worse; and their best intentions\nmerely make the road smooth for them,--you know where, children. For it\nis not the place itself that is paved with them, as people say so often.\nYou can't pave the bottomless pit; but you may the road to it.\n\nMAY. Well, but if people do as well as they can see how, surely that is\nthe right for them, isn't it?\n\nL. No, May, not a bit of it; right is right, and wrong is wrong. It is\nonly the fool who does wrong, and says he 'did it for the best.' And if\nthere's one sort of person in the world that the Bible speaks harder of\nthan another, it is fools. Their particular and chief way of saying\n'There is no God' is this, of declaring that whatever their 'public\nopinion' may be, is right: and that God's opinion is of no consequence.\n\nMAY. But surely nobody can always know what is right?\n\nL. Yes, you always can, for to-day; and if you do what you see of it\nto-day, you will see more of it, and more clearly, to-morrow. Here, for\ninstance, you children are at school, and have to learn French, and\narithmetic, and music, and several other such things. That is your\n'right' for the present; the 'right' for us, your teachers, is to see\nthat you learn as much as you can, without spoiling your dinner, your\nsleep, or your play; and that what you do learn, you learn well. You all\nknow when you learn with a will, and when you dawdle. There's no doubt\nof conscience about that, I suppose?\n\nVIOLET. No; but if one wants to read an amusing book, instead of\nlearning one's lesson?\n\nL. You don't call that a 'question,' seriously, Violet? You are then\nmerely deciding whether you will resolutely do wrong or not.\n\nMARY. But, in after life, how many fearful difficulties may arise,\nhowever one tries to know or to do what is right!\n\nL. You are much too sensible a girl, Mary, to have felt that, whatever\nyou may have seen. A great many of young ladies' difficulties arise from\ntheir falling in love with a wrong person: but they have no business to\nlet themselves fall in love, till they know he is the right one.\n\nDORA. How many thousands ought he to have a year?\n\nL. (_disdaining reply_). There are, of course, certain crises of fortune\nwhen one has to take care of oneself, and mind shrewdly what one is\nabout. There is never any real doubt about the path, but you may have to\nwalk very slowly.\n\nMARY. And if one is forced to do a wrong thing by some one who has\nauthority over you?\n\nL. My dear, no one can be forced to do a wrong thing, for the guilt is\nin the will: but you may any day be forced to do a fatal thing, as you\nmight be forced to take poison; the remarkable law of nature in such\ncases being, that it is always unfortunate _you_ who are poisoned, and\nnot the person who gives you the dose. It is a very strange law, but it\n_is_ a law. Nature merely sees to the carrying out of the normal\noperation of arsenic. She never troubles herself to ask who gave it you.\nSo also you may be starved to death, morally as well as physically, by\nother people's faults. You are, on the whole, very good children sitting\nhere to-day;--do you think that your goodness comes all by your own\ncontriving? or that you are gentle and kind because your dispositions\nare naturally more angelic than those of the poor girls who are playing,\nwith wild eyes, on the dustheaps in the alleys of our great towns; and\nwho will one day fill their prisons,--or, better, their graves? Heaven\nonly knows where they, and we who have cast them there, shall stand at\nlast. But the main judgment question will be, I suppose, for all of us,\n'Did you keep a good heart through it?' What you were, others may answer\nfor;--what you tried to be, you must answer for, yourself. Was the heart\npure and true--tell us that?\n\nAnd so we come back to your sorrowful question, Lucilla, which I put\naside a little ago. You would be afraid to answer that your heart _was_\npure and true, would not you?\n\nLUCILLA. Yes, indeed, sir.\n\nL. Because you have been taught that it is all evil--'only evil\ncontinually.' Somehow, often as people say that, they never seem, to me,\nto believe it? Do you really believe it?\n\nLUCILLA. Yes, sir; I hope so.\n\nL. That you have an entirely bad heart?\n\nLUCILLA (_a little uncomfortable at the substitution of the monosyllable\nfor the dissyllable, nevertheless persisting in her orthodoxy_). Yes,\nsir.\n\nL. Florrie, I am sure you are tired; I never like you to stay when you\nare tired; but, you know, you must not play with the kitten while we're\ntalking.\n\nFLORRIE. Oh! but I'm not tired; and I'm only nursing her. She'll be\nasleep in my lap directly.\n\nL. Stop! that puts me in mind of something I had to show you, about\nminerals that are like hair. I want a hair out of Tittie's tail.\n\nFLORRIE (_quite rude, in her surprise, even to the point of repeating\nexpressions_). Out of Tittie's tail!\n\nL. Yes; a brown one: Lucilla, you can get at the tip of it nicely, under\nFlorrie's arm; just pull one out for me.\n\nLUCILLA. Oh! but, sir, it will hurt her so!\n\nL. Never mind; she can't scratch you while Florrie is holding her. Now\nthat I think of it, you had better pull out two.\n\nLUCILLA. But then she may scratch Florrie! and it will hurt her so, sir!\nif you only want brown hairs, wouldn't two of mine do?\n\nL. Would you really rather pull out your own than Tittie's?\n\nLUCILLA. Oh, of course, if mine will do.\n\nL. But that's very wicked, Lucilla!\n\nLUCILLA. Wicked, sir?\n\nL. Yes; if your heart was not so bad, you would much rather pull all the\ncat's hairs out, than one of your own.\n\nLUCILLA. Oh! but sir, I didn't mean bad, like that.\n\nL. I believe, if the truth were told, Lucilla, you would like to tie a\nkettle to Tittie's tail, and hunt her round the playground.\n\nLUCILLA. Indeed, I should not, sir.\n\nL. That's not true, Lucilla; you know it cannot be.\n\nLUCILLA. Sir?\n\nL. Certainly it is not;--how can you possibly speak any truth out of\nsuch a heart as you have? It is wholly deceitful.\n\nLUCILLA. Oh! no, no; I don't mean that way; I don't mean that it makes\nme tell lies, quite out.\n\nL. Only that it tells lies within you?\n\nLUCILLA. Yes.\n\nL. Then, outside of it, you know what is true, and say so; and I may\ntrust the outside of your heart; but within, it is all foul and false.\nIs that the way?\n\nLUCILLA. I suppose so: I don't understand it, quite.\n\nL. There is no occasion for understanding it; but do you feel it? Are\nyou sure that your heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately\nwicked?\n\nLUCILLA (_much relieved by finding herself among phrases with which she\nis acquainted_). Yes, sir. I'm sure of that.\n\nL. (_pensively_). I'm sorry for it, Lucilla.\n\nLUCILLA. So am I, indeed.\n\nL. What are you sorry with, Lucilla?\n\nLUCILLA. Sorry with, sir?\n\nL. Yes; I mean, where do you feel sorry? in your feet?\n\nLUCILLA (_laughing a little_). No, sir, of course.\n\nL. In your shoulders, then?\n\nLUCILLA. No, sir.\n\nL. You are sure of that? Because, I fear, sorrow in the shoulders would\nnot be worth much.\n\nLUCILLA. I suppose I feel it in my heart, if I really am sorry.\n\nL. If you really are! Do you mean to say that you are sure you are\nutterly wicked, and yet do not care?\n\nLUCILLA. No, indeed; I have cried about it often.\n\nL. Well, then, you are sorry in your heart?\n\nLUCILLA. Yes, when the sorrow is worth anything.\n\nL. Even if it be not, it cannot be anywhere else but there. It is not\nthe crystalline lens of your eyes which is sorry, when you cry?\n\nLUCILLA. No, sir, of course.\n\nL. Then, have you two hearts; one of which is wicked, and the other\ngrieved? or is one side of it sorry for the other side?\n\nLUCILLA (_weary of cross-examination, and a little vexed_). Indeed, sir,\nyou know I can't understand it; but you know how it is written--'another\nlaw in my members, warring against the law of my mind.'\n\nL. Yes, Lucilla, I know how it is written; but I do not see that it will\nhelp us to know that, if we neither understand what is written, nor feel\nit. And you will not get nearer to the meaning of one verse, if, as soon\nas you are puzzled by it, you escape to another, introducing three new\nwords--'law,' 'members,' and 'mind'; not one of which you at present\nknow the meaning of; and respecting which, you probably never will be\nmuch wiser; since men like Montesquieu and Locke have spent great part\nof their lives in endeavouring to explain two of them.\n\nLUCILLA. Oh! please, sir, ask somebody else.\n\nL. If I thought anyone else could answer better than you, Lucilla, I\nwould; but suppose I try, instead, myself, to explain your feelings to\nyou?\n\nLUCILLA. Oh, yes; please do.\n\nL. Mind, I say your 'feelings,' not your 'belief.' For I cannot\nundertake to explain anybody's beliefs. Still I must try a little,\nfirst, to explain the belief also, because I want to draw it to some\nissue. As far as I understand what you say, or any one else, taught as\nyou have been taught, says, on this matter,--you think that there is an\nexternal goodness, a whited-sepulchre kind of goodness, which appears\nbeautiful outwardly, but is within full of uncleanness: a deep secret\nguilt, of which we ourselves are not sensible; and which can only be\nseen by the Maker of us all. (_Approving murmurs from audience._)\n\nL. Is it not so with the body as well as the soul?\n\n     (_Looked notes of interrogation._)\n\nL. A skull, for instance, is not a beautiful thing?\n\n     (_Grave faces, signifying 'Certainly not,' and 'What\n     next?'_)\n\nL. And if you all could see in each other, with clear eyes, whatever God\nsees beneath those fair faces of yours, you would not like it?\n\n     (_Murmured 'No's.'_)\n\nL. Nor would it be good for you?\n\n     (_Silence._)\n\nL. The probability being that what God does not allow you to see, He\ndoes not wish you to see; nor even to think of?\n\n     (_Silence prolonged._)\n\nL. It would not at all be good for you, for instance, whenever you were\nwashing your faces, and braiding your hair, to be thinking of the shapes\nof the jawbones, and of the cartilage of the nose, and of the jagged\nsutures of the scalp?\n\n     (_Resolutely whispered No's._)\n\nL. Still less, to see through a clear glass the daily processes of\nnourishment and decay?\n\n     (_No._)\n\nL. Still less if instead of merely inferior and preparatory conditions\nof structure, as in the skeleton,--or inferior offices of structure, as\nin operations of life and death,--there were actual disease in the body;\nghastly and dreadful. You would try to cure it; but having taken such\nmeasures as were necessary, you would not think the cure likely to be\npromoted by perpetually watching the wounds, or thinking of them. On the\ncontrary, you would be thankful for every moment of forgetfulness: as,\nin daily health, you must be thankful that your Maker has veiled\nwhatever is fearful in your frame under a sweet and manifest beauty; and\nhas made it your duty, and your only safety, to rejoice in that, both in\nyourself and in others:--not indeed concealing, or refusing to believe\nin sickness, if it come; but never dwelling on it.\n\nNow, your wisdom and duty touching soul-sickness are just the same.\nAscertain clearly what is wrong with you; and so far as you know any\nmeans of mending it, take those means, and have done: when you are\nexamining yourself, never call yourself merely a 'sinner,' that is very\ncheap abuse; and utterly useless. You may even get to like it, and be\nproud of it. But call yourself a liar, a coward, a sluggard, a glutton,\nor an evil-eyed jealous wretch, if you indeed find yourself to be in any\nwise any of these. Take steady means to check yourself in whatever fault\nyou have ascertained, and justly accused yourself of. And as soon as you\nare in active way of mending, you will be no more inclined to moan over\nan undefined corruption. For the rest, you will find it less easy to\nuproot faults, than to choke them by gaining virtues. Do not think of\nyour faults; still less of others' faults: in every person who comes\nnear you, look for what is good and strong: honour that; rejoice in it;\nand, as you can, try to imitate it: and your faults will drop off, like\ndead leaves, when their time comes. If, on looking back, your whole life\nshould seem rugged as a palm tree stem; still, never mind, so long as it\nhas been growing; and has its grand green shade of leaves, and weight of\nhonied fruit, at top. And even if you cannot find much good in yourself\nat last, think that it does not much matter to the universe either what\nyou were, or are; think how many people are noble, if you cannot be; and\nrejoice in _their_ nobleness. An immense quantity of modern confession\nof sin, even when honest, is merely a sickly egotism; which will rather\ngloat over its own evil, than lose the centralisation of its interest in\nitself.\n\nMARY. But then, if we ought to forget ourselves so much, how did the old\nGreek proverb 'Know thyself' come to be so highly esteemed?\n\nL. My dear, it is the proverb of proverbs; Apollo's proverb, and the\nsun's;--but do you think you can know yourself by looking _into_\nyourself? Never. You can know what you are, only by looking _out_ of\nyourself. Measure your own powers with those of others; compare your own\ninterests with those of others; try to understand what you appear to\nthem, as well as what they appear to you; and judge of yourselves, in\nall things, relatively and subordinately; not positively: starting\nalways with a wholesome conviction of the probability that there is\nnothing particular about you. For instance, some of you perhaps think\nyou can write poetry. Dwell on your own feelings and doings:--and you\nwill soon think yourselves Tenth Muses; but forget your own feelings;\nand try, instead, to understand a line or two of Chaucer or Dante: and\nyou will soon begin to feel yourselves very foolish girls--which is much\nlike the fact.\n\nSo, something which befalls you may seem a great misfortune;--you\nmeditate over its effects on you personally; and begin to think that it\nis a chastisement, or a warning, or a this or that or the other of\nprofound significance; and that all the angels in heaven have left their\nbusiness for a little while, that they may watch its effects on your\nmind. But give up this egotistic indulgence of your fancy; examine a\nlittle what misfortunes, greater a thousandfold, are happening, every\nsecond, to twenty times worthier persons: and your self-consciousness\nwill change into pity and humility; and you will know yourself, so far\nas to understand that 'there hath nothing taken thee but what is common\nto man.'\n\nNow, Lucilla, these are the practical conclusions which any person of\nsense would arrive at, supposing the texts which relate to the inner\nevil of the heart were as many, and as prominent, as they are often\nsupposed to be by careless readers. But the way in which common people\nread their Bibles is just like the way that the old monks thought\nhedgehogs ate grapes. They rolled themselves (it was said), over and\nover, where the grapes lay on the ground. What fruit stuck to their\nspines, they carried off, and ate. So your hedgehoggy readers roll\nthemselves over and over their Bibles, and declare that whatever sticks\nto their own spines is Scripture; and that nothing else is. But you can\nonly get the skins of the texts that way. If you want their juice, you\nmust press them in cluster. Now, the clustered texts about the human\nheart, insist, as a body, not on any inherent corruption in all hearts,\nbut on the terrific distinction between the bad and the good ones. 'A\ngood man, out of the good treasure of his heart, bringeth forth that\nwhich is good; and an evil man, out of the evil treasure, bringeth\nforth that which is evil.' 'They on the rock are they which, in an\nhonest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it.' 'Delight thyself\nin the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.' 'The\nwicked have bent their bow, that they may privily shoot at him that is\nupright in heart.' And so on; they are countless, to the same effect.\nAnd, for all of us, the question is not at all to ascertain how much or\nhow little corruption there is in human nature; but to ascertain\nwhether, out of all the mass of that nature, we are of the sheep or the\ngoat breed; whether we are people of upright heart, being shot at, or\npeople of crooked heart, shooting. And, of all the texts bearing on the\nsubject, this, which is a quite simple and practical order, is the one\nyou have chiefly to hold in mind. 'Keep thy heart with all diligence,\nfor out of it are the issues of life.'\n\nLUCILLA. And yet, how inconsistent the texts seem!\n\nL. Nonsense, Lucilla! do you think the universe is bound to look\nconsistent to a girl of fifteen? Look up at your own room window;--you\ncan just see it from where you sit. I'm glad that it is left open, as it\nought to be, in so fine a day. But do you see what a black spot it\nlooks, in the sunlighted wall?\n\nLUCILLA. Yes, it looks as black as ink.\n\nL. Yet you know it is a very bright room when you are inside of it;\nquite as bright as there is any occasion for it to be, that its little\nlady may see to keep it tidy. Well, it is very probable, also, that if\nyou could look into your heart from the sun's point of view, it might\nappear a very black hole indeed; nay, the sun may sometimes think good\nto tell you that it looks so to Him; but He will come into it, and make\nit very cheerful for you, for all that, if you don't put the shutters\nup. And the one question for _you_, remember, is not 'dark or light?'\nbut 'tidy or untidy?' Look well to your sweeping and garnishing; and be\nsure it is only the banished spirit, or some of the seven wickeder ones\nat his back, who will still whisper to you that it is all black.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE VI.\n\n_CRYSTAL QUARRELS._\n\n     _Full conclave, in Schoolroom. There has been a game at\n     crystallisation in the morning, of which various account has\n     to be rendered. In particular, everybody has to explain why\n     they were always where they were not intended to be._\n\n\nL. (_having received and considered the report_). You have got on pretty\nwell, children: but you know these were easy figures you have been\ntrying. Wait till I have drawn you out the plans of some crystals of\nsnow!\n\nMARY. I don't think those will be the most difficult:--they are so\nbeautiful that we shall remember our places better; and then they are\nall regular, and in stars: it is those twisty oblique ones we are afraid\nof.\n\nL. Read Carlyle's account of the battle of Leuthen, and learn\nFreidrich's 'oblique order.' You will 'get it done for once, I think,\nprovided you _can_ march as a pair of compasses would.' But remember,\nwhen you can construct the most difficult single figures, you have only\nlearned half the game--nothing so much as the half, indeed, as the\ncrystals themselves play it.\n\nMARY. Indeed; what else is there?\n\nL. It is seldom that any mineral crystallises alone. Usually two or\nthree, under quite different crystalline laws, form together. They do\nthis absolutely without flaw or fault, when they are in fine temper: and\nobserve what this signifies. It signifies that the two, or more,\nminerals of different natures agree, somehow, between themselves, how\nmuch space each will want;--agree which of them shall give away to the\nother at their junction; or in what measure each will accommodate itself\nto the other's shape! And then each takes its permitted shape, and\nallotted share of space; yielding, or being yielded to, as it builds,\ntill each crystal has fitted itself perfectly and gracefully to its\ndifferently-natured neighbour. So that, in order to practise this, in\neven the simplest terms, you must divide into two parties, wearing\ndifferent colours; each must choose a different figure to construct; and\nyou must form one of these figures through the other, both going on at\nthe same time.\n\nMARY. I think _we_ may, perhaps, manage it; but I cannot at all\nunderstand how the crystals do. It seems to imply so much preconcerting\nof plan, and so much giving way to each other, as if they really were\nliving.\n\nL. Yes, it implies both concurrence and compromise, regulating all\nwilfulness of design: and, more curious still, the crystals do _not_\nalways give way to each other. They show exactly the same varieties of\ntemper that human creatures might. Sometimes they yield the required\nplace with perfect grace and courtesy; forming fantastic, but\nexquisitely finished groups: and sometimes they will not yield at all;\nbut fight furiously for their places, losing all shape and honour, and\neven their own likeness, in the contest.\n\nMARY. But is not that wholly wonderful? How is it that one never sees it\nspoken of in books?\n\nL. The scientific men are all busy in determining the constant laws\nunder which the struggle takes place; these indefinite humours of the\nelements are of no interest to them. And unscientific people rarely give\nthemselves the trouble of thinking at all when they look at stones. Not\nthat it is of much use to think; the more one thinks, the more one is\npuzzled.\n\nMARY. Surely it is more wonderful than anything in botany?\n\nL. Everything has its own wonders; but, given the nature of the plant,\nit is easier to understand what a flower will do, and why it does it,\nthan, given anything we as yet know of stone-nature, to understand what\na crystal will do, and why it does it. You at once admit a kind of\nvolition and choice, in the flower, but we are not accustomed to\nattribute anything of the kind to the crystal. Yet there is, in reality,\nmore likeness to some conditions of human feeling among stones than\namong plants. There is a far greater difference between kindly-tempered\nand ill-tempered crystals of the same mineral, than between any two\nspecimens of the same flower: and the friendships and wars of crystals\ndepend more definitely and curiously on their varieties of disposition,\nthan any associations of flowers. Here, for instance, is a good garnet,\nliving with good mica; one rich red, and the other silver white: the\nmica leaves exactly room enough for the garnet to crystallise\ncomfortably in; and the garnet lives happily in its little white house;\nfitted to it, like a pholas in its cell. But here are wicked garnets\nliving with wicked mica. See what ruin they make of each other! You\ncannot tell which is which; the garnets look like dull red stains on the\ncrumbling stone. By the way, I never could understand, if St. Gothard is\na real saint, why he can't keep his garnets in better order. These are\nall under his care; but I suppose there are too many of them for him to\nlook after. The streets of Airolo are paved with them.\n\nMAY. Paved with garnets?\n\nL. With mica-slate and garnets; I broke this bit out of a paving stone.\nNow garnets and mica are natural friends, and generally fond of each\nother; but you see how they quarrel when they are ill brought up. So it\nis always. Good crystals are friendly with almost all other good\ncrystals, however little they chance to see of each other, or however\nopposite their habits may be; while wicked crystals quarrel with one\nanother, though they may be exactly alike in habits, and see each other\ncontinually. And of course the wicked crystals quarrel with the good\nones.\n\nISABEL. Then do the good ones get angry?\n\nL. No, never: they attend to their own work and life; and live it as\nwell as they can, though they are always the sufferers. Here, for\ninstance, is a rock-crystal of the purest race and finest temper, who\nwas born, unhappily for him, in a bad neighbourhood, near Beaufort in\nSavoy; and he has had to fight with vile calcareous mud all his life.\nSee here, when he was but a child, it came down on him, and nearly\nburied him; a weaker crystal would have died in despair; but he only\ngathered himself together, like Hercules against the serpents, and threw\na layer of crystal over the clay; conquered it,--imprisoned it,--and\nlived on. Then, when he was a little older, came more clay; and poured\nitself upon him here, at the side; and he has laid crystal over that,\nand lived on, in his purity. Then the clay came on at his angles, and\ntried to cover them, and round them away; but upon that he threw out\nbuttress-crystals at his angles, all as true to his own central line as\nchapels round a cathedral apse; and clustered them round the clay; and\nconquered it again. At last the clay came on at his summit, and tried to\nblunt his summit; but he could not endure that for an instant; and left\nhis flanks all rough, but pure; and fought the clay at his crest, and\nbuilt crest over crest, and peak over peak, till the clay surrendered at\nlast; and here is his summit, smooth and pure, terminating a pyramid of\nalternate clay and crystal, half a foot high!\n\nLILY. Oh, how nice of him! What a dear, brave crystal! But I can't bear\nto see his flanks all broken, and the clay within them.\n\nL. Yes; it was an evil chance for him, the being born to such\ncontention; there are some enemies so base that even to hold them\ncaptive is a kind of dishonour. But look, here has been quite a\ndifferent kind of struggle: the adverse power has been more orderly, and\nhas fought the pure crystal in ranks as firm as its own. This is not\nmere rage and impediment of crowded evil: here is a disciplined\nhostility; army against army.\n\nLILY. Oh, but this is much more beautiful!\n\nL. Yes, for both the elements have true virtue in them; it is a pity\nthey are at war, but they war grandly.\n\nMARY. But is this the same clay as in the other crystal?\n\nL. I used the word clay for shortness. In both, the enemy is really\nlimestone; but in the first, disordered, and mixed with true clay;\nwhile, here, it is nearly pure, and crystallises into its own primitive\nform, the oblique six-sided one, which you know: and out of these it\nmakes regiments; and then squares of the regiments, and so charges the\nrock crystal literally in square against column.\n\nISABEL. Please, please, let me see. And what does the rock crystal do?\n\nL. The rock crystal seems able to do nothing. The calcite cuts it\nthrough at every charge. Look here,--and here! The loveliest crystal in\nthe whole group is hewn fairly into two pieces.\n\nISABEL. Oh, dear; but is the calcite harder than the crystal then?\n\nL. No, softer. Very much softer.\n\nMARY. But then, how can it possibly cut the crystal?\n\nL. It did not really cut it, though it passes through it. The two were\nformed together, as I told you; but no one knows how. Still, it is\nstrange that this hard quartz has in all cases a good-natured way with\nit, of yielding to everything else. All sorts of soft things make nests\nfor themselves in it; and it never makes a nest for itself in anything.\nIt has all the rough outside work; and every sort of cowardly and weak\nmineral can shelter itself within it. Look; these are hexagonal plates\nof mica; if they were outside of this crystal they would break, like\nburnt paper; but they are inside of it,--nothing can hurt them,--the\ncrystal has taken them into its very heart, keeping all their delicate\nedges as sharp as if they were under water, instead of bathed in rock.\nHere is a piece of branched silver: you can bend it with a touch of your\nfinger, but the stamp of its every fibre is on the rock in which it lay,\nas if the quartz had been as soft as wool.\n\nLILY. Oh, the good, good quartz! But does it never get inside of\nanything?\n\nL. As it is a little Irish girl who asks, I may perhaps answer, without\nbeing laughed at, that it gets inside of itself sometimes. But I don't\nremember seeing quartz make a nest for itself in anything else.\n\nISABEL. Please, there was something I heard you talking about, last\nterm, with Miss Mary. I was at my lessons, but I heard something about\nnests; and I thought it was birds' nests; and I couldn't help\nlistening; and then, I remember, it was about 'nests of quartz in\ngranite.' I remember, because I was so disappointed!\n\nL. Yes, mousie, you remember quite rightly; but I can't tell you about\nthose nests to-day, nor perhaps to-morrow: but there's no contradiction\nbetween my saying then, and now; I will show you that there is not, some\nday. Will you trust me meanwhile?\n\nISABEL. Won't I!\n\nL. Well, then, look, lastly, at this piece of courtesy in quartz; it is\non a small scale, but wonderfully pretty. Here is nobly born quartz\nliving with a green mineral, called epidote; and they are immense\nfriends. Now, you see, a comparatively large and strong quartz-crystal,\nand a very weak and slender little one of epidote, have begun to grow,\nclose by each other, and sloping unluckily towards each other, so that\nthey at last meet. They cannot go on growing together; the quartz\ncrystal is five times as thick, and more than twenty times as\nstrong,[151] as the epidote; but he stops at once, just in the very\ncrowning moment of his life, when he is building his own summit! He lets\nthe pale little film of epidote grow right past him; stopping his own\nsummit for it; and he never himself grows any more.\n\nLILY (_after some silence of wonder_). But is the quartz _never_ wicked\nthen?\n\nL. Yes, but the wickedest quartz seems good-natured, compared to other\nthings. Here are two very characteristic examples; one is good quartz,\nliving with good pearlspar, and the other, wicked quartz, living with\nwicked pearlspar. In both, the quartz yields to the soft carbonate of\niron: but, in the first place, the iron takes only what it needs of\nroom; and is inserted into the planes of the rock crystal with such\nprecision, that you must break it away before you can tell whether it\nreally penetrates the quartz or not; while the crystals of iron are\nperfectly formed, and have a lovely bloom on their surface besides. But\nhere, when the two minerals quarrel, the unhappy quartz has all its\nsurfaces jagged and torn to pieces; and there is not a single iron\ncrystal whose shape you can completely trace. But the quartz has the\nworst of it, in both instances.\n\nVIOLET. Might we look at that piece of broken quartz again, with the\nweak little film across it? it seems such a strange lovely thing, like\nthe self-sacrifice of a human being.\n\nL. The self-sacrifice of a human being is not a lovely thing, Violet. It\nis often a necessary and noble thing; but no form nor degree of suicide\ncan be ever lovely.\n\nVIOLET. But self-sacrifice is not suicide!\n\nL. What is it then?\n\nVIOLET. Giving up one's self for another.\n\nL. Well; and what do you mean by 'giving up one's self?'\n\nVIOLET. Giving up one's tastes, one's feelings, one's time, one's\nhappiness, and so on, to make others happy.\n\nL. I hope you will never marry anybody, Violet, who expects you to make\nhim happy in that way.\n\nVIOLET (_hesitating_). In what way?\n\nL. By giving up your tastes, and sacrificing your feelings, and\nhappiness.\n\nVIOLET. No, no, I don't mean that; but you know, for other people, one\nmust.\n\nL. For people who don't love you, and whom you know nothing about? Be it\nso; but how does this 'giving up' differ from suicide then?\n\nVIOLET. Why, giving up one's pleasures is not killing one's self?\n\nL. Giving up wrong pleasure is not; neither is it self-sacrifice, but\nself-culture. But giving up right pleasure is. If you surrender the\npleasure of walking, your foot will wither; you may as well cut it off:\nif you surrender the pleasure of seeing, your eyes will soon be unable\nto bear the light; you may as well pluck them out. And to maim yourself\nis partly to kill yourself. Do but go on maiming, and you will soon\nslay.\n\nVIOLET. But why do you make me think of that verse then about the foot\nand the eye?\n\nL. You are indeed commanded to cut off and to pluck out, if foot or eye\noffend you; but why _should_ they offend you?\n\nVIOLET. I don't know; I never quite understood that.\n\nL. Yet it is a sharp order; one needing to be well understood if it is\nto be well obeyed! When Helen sprained her ancle the other day, you saw\nhow strongly it had to be bandaged: that is to say, prevented from all\nwork, to recover it. But the bandage was not 'lovely.'\n\nVIOLET. No, indeed.\n\nL. And if her foot had been crushed, or diseased, or snake-bitten,\ninstead of sprained, it might have been needful to cut it off. But the\namputation would not have been 'lovely.'\n\nVIOLET. No.\n\nL. Well, if eye and foot are dead already, and betray you--if the light\nthat is in you be darkness, and your feet run into mischief, or are\ntaken in the snare,--it is indeed time to pluck out, and cut off, I\nthink: but, so crippled, you can never be what you might have been\notherwise. You enter into life, at best, halt or maimed; and the\nsacrifice is not beautiful, though necessary.\n\nVIOLET (_after a pause_). But when one sacrifices one's self for others?\n\nL. Why not rather others for you?\n\nVIOLET. Oh! but I couldn't bear that.\n\nL. Then why should they bear it?\n\nDORA (_bursting in, indignant_). And Thermopylae, and Protesilaus, and\nMarcus Curtius, and Arnold de Winkelried, and Iphigenia, and Jephthah's\ndaughter?\n\nL. (_sustaining the indignation unmoved_). And the Samaritan woman's\nson?\n\nDORA. Which Samaritan woman's?\n\nL. Read 2 Kings vi. 29.\n\nDORA (_obeys_). How horrid! As if we meant anything like that!\n\nL. You don't seem to me to know in the least what you do mean, children.\nWhat practical difference is there between 'that,' and what you are\ntalking about? The Samaritan children had no voice of their own in the\nbusiness, it is true; but neither had Iphigenia: the Greek girl was\ncertainly neither boiled, nor eaten; but that only makes a difference in\nthe dramatic effect; not in the principle.\n\nDORA (_biting her lip_). Well, then, tell us what we ought to mean. As\nif you didn't teach it all to us, and mean it yourself, at this moment,\nmore than we do, if you wouldn't be tiresome!\n\nL. I mean, and have always meant, simply this, Dora;--that the will of\nGod respecting us is that we shall live by each other's happiness, and\nlife; not by each other's misery, or death. I made you read that verse\nwhich so shocked you just now, because the relations of parent and child\nare typical of all beautiful human help. A child may have to die for its\nparents; but the purpose of Heaven is that it shall rather live for\nthem;--that, not by its sacrifice, but by its strength, its joy, its\nforce of being, it shall be to them renewal of strength; and as the\narrow in the hand of the giant. So it is in all other right relations.\nMen help each other by their joy, not by their sorrow. They are not\nintended to slay themselves for each other, but to strengthen themselves\nfor each other. And among the many apparently beautiful things which\nturn, through mistaken use, to utter evil, I am not sure but that the\nthoughtlessly meek and self-sacrificing spirit of good men must be named\nas one of the fatallest. They have so often been taught that there is a\nvirtue in mere suffering, as such; and foolishly to hope that good may\nbe brought by Heaven out of all on which Heaven itself has set the stamp\nof evil, that we may avoid it,--that they accept pain and defeat as if\nthese were their appointed portion; never understanding that their\ndefeat is not the less to be mourned because it is more fatal to their\nenemies than to them. The one thing that a good man has to do, and to\nsee done, is justice; he is neither to slay himself nor others\ncauselessly: so far from denying himself, since he is pleased by good,\nhe is to do his utmost to get his pleasure accomplished. And I only wish\nthere were strength, fidelity, and sense enough, among the good\nEnglishmen of this day, to render it possible for them to band together\nin a vowed brotherhood, to enforce, by strength of heart and hand, the\ndoing of human justice among all who came within their sphere. And\nfinally, for your own teaching, observe, although there may be need for\nmuch self-sacrifice and self-denial in the correction of faults of\ncharacter, the moment the character is formed, the self-denial ceases.\nNothing is really well done, which it costs you pain to do.\n\nVIOLET. But surely, sir, you are always pleased with us when we try to\nplease others, and not ourselves?\n\nL. My dear child, in the daily course and discipline of right life, we\nmust continually and reciprocally submit and surrender in all kind and\ncourteous and affectionate ways: and these submissions and ministries to\neach other, of which you all know (none better) the practice and the\npreciousness, are as good for the yielder as the receiver: they\nstrengthen and perfect as much as they soften and refine. But the real\nsacrifice of all our strength, or life, or happiness to others (though\nit may be needed, and though all brave creatures hold their lives in\ntheir hand, to be given, when such need comes, as frankly as a soldier\ngives his life in battle), is yet always a mournful and momentary\nnecessity; not the fulfilment of the continuous law of being.\nSelf-sacrifice which is sought after, and triumphed in, is usually\nfoolish; and calamitous in its issue: and by the sentimental\nproclamation and pursuit of it, good people have not only made most of\ntheir own lives useless, but the whole framework of their religion so\nhollow, that at this moment, while the English nation, with its lips,\npretends to teach every man to 'love his neighbour as himself,' with its\nhands and feet it clutches and tramples like a wild beast; and\npractically lives, every soul of it that can, on other people's labour.\nBriefly, the constant duty of every man to his fellows is to ascertain\nhis own powers and special gifts; and to strengthen them for the help of\nothers. Do you think Titian would have helped the world better by\ndenying himself, and not painting; or Casella by denying himself, and\nnot singing? The real virtue is to be ready to sing the moment people\nask us; as he was, even in purgatory. The very word 'virtue' means not\n'conduct' but 'strength,' vital energy in the heart. Were not you\nreading about that group of words beginning with V,--vital, virtuous,\nvigorous, and so on,--in Max Muller, the other day, Sibyl? Can't you\ntell the others about it?\n\nSIBYL. No, I can't; will you tell us, please?\n\nL. Not now, it is too late. Come to me some idle time to-morrow, and\nI'll tell you about it, if all's well. But the gist of it is, children,\nthat you should at least know two Latin words; recollect that 'mors'\nmeans death and delaying; and 'vita' means life and growing: and try\nalways, not to mortify yourselves, but to vivify yourselves.\n\nVIOLET. But, then, are we not to mortify our earthly affections? and\nsurely we are to sacrifice ourselves, at least in God's service, if not\nin man's?\n\nL. Really, Violet, we are getting too serious. I've given you enough\nethics for one talk, I think! Do let us have a little play. Lily, what\nwere you so busy about, at the ant-hill in the wood, this morning?\n\nLILY. Oh, it was the ants who were busy, not I; I was only trying to\nhelp them a little.\n\nL. And they wouldn't be helped, I suppose?\n\nLILY. No, indeed. I can't think why ants are always so tiresome, when\none tries to help them! They were carrying bits of stick, as fast as\nthey could, through a piece of grass; and pulling and pushing, _so_\nhard; and tumbling over and over,--it made one quite pity them; so I\ntook some of the bits of stick, and carried them forward a little, where\nI thought they wanted to put them; but instead of being pleased, they\nleft them directly, and ran about looking quite angry and frightened;\nand at last ever so many of them got up my sleeves, and bit me all over,\nand I had to come away.\n\nL. I couldn't think what you were about. I saw your French grammar lying\non the grass behind you, and thought perhaps you had gone to ask the\nants to hear you a French verb.\n\nISABEL. Ah! but you didn't, though!\n\nL. Why not, Isabel? I knew, well enough, Lily couldn't learn that verb\nby herself.\n\nISABEL. No; but the ants couldn't help her.\n\nL. Are you sure the ants could not have helped you, Lily?\n\nLILY (_thinking_). I ought to have learned something from them, perhaps.\n\nL. But none of them left their sticks to help you through the irregular\nverb?\n\nLILY. No, indeed. (_Laughing, with some others._)\n\nL. What are you laughing at, children? I cannot see why the ants should\nnot have left their tasks to help Lily in her's,--since here is Violet\nthinking she ought to leave _her_ tasks, to help God in His. Perhaps,\nhowever, she takes Lily's more modest view, and thinks only that 'He\nought to learn something from her.'\n\n     (_Tears in_ VIOLET'S _eyes._)\n\nDORA (_scarlet_). It's too bad--it's a shame:--poor Violet!\n\nL. My dear children, there's no reason why one should be so red, and the\nother so pale, merely because you are made for a moment to feel the\nabsurdity of a phrase which you have been taught to use, in common with\nhalf the religious world. There is but one way in which man can ever\nhelp God--that is, by letting God help him: and there is no way in which\nhis name is more guiltily taken in vain, than by calling the abandonment\nof our own work, the performance of His.\n\nGod is a kind Father. He sets us all in the places where He wishes us to\nbe employed; and that employment is truly 'our Father's business.' He\nchooses work for every creature which will be delightful to them, if\nthey do it simply and humbly. He gives us always strength enough, and\nsense enough, for what He wants us to do; if we either tire ourselves or\npuzzle ourselves, it is our own fault. And we may always be sure,\nwhatever we are doing, that we cannot be pleasing Him, if we are not\nhappy ourselves. Now, away with you, children; and be as happy as you\ncan. And when you cannot, at least don't plume yourselves upon pouting.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[151] Quartz is not much harder than epidote; the strength is only\nsupposed to be in some proportion to the squares of the diameters.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE VII.\n\n_HOME VIRTUES._\n\n     _By the fireside, in the Drawing-room. Evening._\n\n\nDORA. Now, the curtains are drawn, and the fire's bright and here's your\narm-chair--and you're to tell us all about what you promised.\n\nL. All about what?\n\nDORA. All about virtue.\n\nKATHLEEN. Yes, and about the words that begin with V.\n\nL. I heard you singing about a word that begins with V, in the\nplayground, this morning, Miss Katie.\n\nKATHLEEN. Me singing?\n\nMAY. Oh tell us--tell us.\n\nL. 'Vilikens and his----'\n\nKATHLEEN (_stopping his mouth_). Oh! please don't. Where were you?\n\nISABEL. I'm sure I wish I had known where he was! We lost him among the\nrhododendrons, and I don't know where he got to; oh, you\nnaughty--naughty--(_climbs on his knee_).\n\nDORA. Now, Isabel, we really want to talk.\n\nL. _I_ don't.\n\nDORA. Oh, but you must. You promised, you know.\n\nL. Yes, if all was well; but all's ill. I'm tired, and cross; and I\nwon't.\n\nDORA. You're not a bit tired, and you're not crosser than two sticks;\nand we'll make you talk, if you were crosser than six. Come here, Egypt;\nand get on the other side of him.\n\n     (EGYPT _takes up a commanding position near the\n     hearth-brush._)\n\nDORA (_reviewing her forces_). Now, Lily, come and sit on the rug in\nfront.\n\n     (LILY _does as she is bid._)\n\nL. (_seeing he has no chance against the odds_.) Well, well; but I'm\nreally tired. Go and dance a little, first; and let me think.\n\nDORA. No; you mustn't think. You will be wanting to make us think next;\nthat will be tiresome.\n\nL. Well, go and dance first, to get quit of thinking; and then I'll talk\nas long as you like.\n\nDORA. Oh, but we can't dance to-night. There isn't time; and we want to\nhear about virtue.\n\nL. Let me see a little of it first. Dancing is the first of girl's\nvirtues.\n\nEGYPT. Indeed! And the second?\n\nL. Dressing.\n\nEGYPT. Now, you needn't say that! I mended that tear the first thing\nbefore breakfast this morning.\n\nL. I cannot otherwise express the ethical principle, Egypt; whether you\nhave mended your gown or not.\n\nDORA. Now don't be tiresome. We really must hear about virtue, please;\nseriously.\n\nL. Well. I'm telling you about it, as fast as I can.\n\nDORA. What! the first of girls' virtues is dancing?\n\nL. More accurately, it is wishing to dance, and not wishing to tease,\nnor hear about virtue.\n\nDORA (_to_ EGYPT). Isn't he cross?\n\nEGYPT. How many balls must we go to in the season, to be perfectly\nvirtuous?\n\nL. As many as you can without losing your colour. But I did not say you\nshould wish to go to balls. I said you should be always wanting to\ndance.\n\nEGYPT. So we do; but everybody says it is very wrong.\n\nL. Why, Egypt, I thought--\n\n    'There was a lady once,\n    That would not be a queen,--that would she not,\n    For all the mud in Egypt.'\n\nYou were complaining the other day of having to go out a great deal\noftener than you liked.\n\nEGYPT. Yes, so I was; but then, it isn't to dance. There's no room to\ndance: it's--(_Pausing to consider what it is for_).\n\nL. It is only to be seen, I suppose. Well, there's no harm in that.\nGirls ought to like to be seen.\n\nDORA (_her eyes flashing_). Now, you don't mean that; and you're too\nprovoking; and we won't dance again, for a month.\n\nL. It will answer every purpose of revenge, Dora, if you only banish me\nto the library; and dance by yourselves: but I don't think Jessie and\nLily will agree to that. You like me to see you dancing, don't you Lily?\n\nLILY. Yes, certainly,--when we do it rightly.\n\nL. And besides, Miss Dora, if young ladies really do not want to be\nseen, they should take care not to let their eyes flash when they\ndislike what people say; and, more than that, it is all nonsense from\nbeginning to end, about not wanting to be seen. I don't know any more\ntiresome flower in the borders than your especially 'modest' snowdrop;\nwhich one always has to stoop down and take all sorts of tiresome\ntrouble with, and nearly break its poor little head off, before you can\nsee it; and then, half of it is not worth seeing. Girls should be like\ndaisies; nice and white, with an edge of red, if you look close; making\nthe ground bright wherever they are; knowing simply and quietly that\nthey do it, and are meant to do it, and that it would be very wrong if\nthey didn't do it. Not want to be seen, indeed! How long were you in\ndoing your back hair, this afternoon, Jessie?\n\n     (JESSIE _not immediately answering_, DORA _comes to her\n     assistance._)\n\nDORA. Not above three-quarters of an hour, I think, Jess?\n\nJESSIE (_putting her finger up_). Now, Dorothy, _you_ needn't talk, you\nknow!\n\nL. I know she needn't, Jessie; I shall ask her about those dark plaits\npresently. (DORA _looks round to see if there is any way open for\nretreat._) But never mind; it was worth the time, whatever it was; and\nnobody will ever mistake that golden wreath for a chignon; but if you\ndon't want it to be seen, you had better wear a cap.\n\nJESSIE. Ah, now, are you really going to do nothing but play? And we all\nhave been thinking, and thinking, all day; and hoping you would tell us\nthings; and now--!\n\nL. And now I am telling you things, and true things, and things good for\nyou; and you won't believe me. You might as well have let me go to sleep\nat once, as I wanted to.\n\n     (_Endeavours again to make himself comfortable._)\n\nISABEL. Oh, no, no, you sha'n't go to sleep, you naughty--Kathleen, come\nhere.\n\nL. (_knowing what he has to expect if_ KATHLEEN _comes_). Get away,\nIsabel, you're too heavy. (_Sitting up._) What have I been saying?\n\nDORA. I do believe he has been asleep all the time! You never heard\nanything like the things you've been saying.\n\nL. Perhaps not. If you have heard them, and anything like them, it is\nall I want.\n\nEGYPT. Yes, but we don't understand, and you know we don't; and we want\nto.\n\nL. What did I say first?\n\nDORA. That the first virtue of girls was wanting to go to balls.\n\nL. I said nothing of the kind.\n\nJESSIE. 'Always wanting to dance,' you said.\n\nL. Yes, and that's true. Their first virtue is to be intensely\nhappy;--so happy that they don't know what to do with themselves for\nhappiness,--and dance, instead of walking. Don't you recollect 'Louisa,'\n\n    'No fountain from a rocky cave\n      E'er tripped with foot so free;\n    She seemed as happy as a wave\n      That dances on the sea.'\n\nA girl is always like that, when everything's right with her.\n\nVIOLET. But, surely, one must be sad sometimes?\n\nL. Yes, Violet; and dull sometimes, and stupid sometimes, and cross\nsometimes. What must be, must; but it is always either our own fault,\nor somebody else's. The last and worst thing that can be said of a\nnation is, that it has made its young girls sad, and weary.\n\nMAY. But I am sure I have heard a great many good people speak against\ndancing?\n\nL. Yes, May; but it does not follow they were wise as well as good. I\nsuppose they think Jeremiah liked better to have to write Lamentations\nfor his people, than to have to write that promise for them, which\neverybody seems to hurry past, that they may get on quickly to the verse\nabout Rachel weeping for her children; though the verse they pass is the\ncounter-blessing to that one: 'Then shall the virgin rejoice in the\ndance; and both young men and old together; and I will turn their\nmourning into joy.'\n\n     (_The children get very serious, but look at each other, as\n     if pleased._)\n\nMARY. They understand now: but, do you know what you said next?\n\nL. Yes; I was not more than half asleep. I said their second virtue was\ndressing.\n\nMARY. Well! what did you mean by that?\n\nL. What do _you_ mean by dressing?\n\nMARY. Wearing fine clothes.\n\nL. Ah! there's the mistake. _I_ mean wearing plain ones.\n\nMARY. Yes, I daresay! but that's not what girls understand by dressing,\nyou know.\n\nL. I can't help that. If they understand by dressing, buying dresses,\nperhaps they also understand by drawing, buying pictures. But when I\nhear them say they can draw, I understand that they can make a drawing;\nand when I hear them say they can dress, I understand that they can make\na dress and--which is quite as difficult--wear one.\n\nDORA. I'm not sure about the making; for the wearing, we can all wear\nthem--out, before anybody expects it.\n\nEGYPT (_aside, to_ L., _piteously_). Indeed I have mended that torn\nflounce quite neatly; look if I haven't!\n\nL. (_aside, to_ EGYPT). All right; don't be afraid. (_Aloud to_ DORA.)\nYes, doubtless; but you know that is only a slow way of _un_dressing.\n\nDORA. Then, we are all to learn dress-making, are we?\n\nL. Yes; and always to dress yourselves beautifully--not finely, unless\non occasion; but then very finely and beautifully too. Also, you are to\ndress as many other people as you can; and to teach them how to dress,\nif they don't know; and to consider every ill-dressed woman or child\nwhom you see anywhere, as a personal disgrace; and to get at them,\nsomehow, until everybody is as beautifully dressed as birds.\n\n     (_Silence; the children drawing their breaths hard, as if\n     they had come from under a shower bath._)\n\nL (_seeing objections begin to express themselves in the eyes_). Now you\nneedn't say you can't; for you can: and it's what you were meant to do,\nalways; and to dress your houses, and your gardens, too; and to do very\nlittle else, I believe, except singing; and dancing, as we said, of\ncourse; and--one thing more.\n\nDORA. Our third and last virtue, I suppose?\n\nL. Yes; on Violet's system of triplicities.\n\nDORA. Well, we are prepared for anything now. What is it?\n\nL. Cooking.\n\nDORA. Cardinal, indeed! If only Beatrice were here with her seven\nhandmaids, that she might see what a fine eighth we had found for her!\n\nMARY. And the interpretation? What does 'cooking' mean?\n\nL. It means the knowledge of Medea, and of Circe, and of Calypso, and of\nHelen, and of Rebekah, and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the knowledge\nof all herbs, and fruits, and balms, and spices; and of all that is\nhealing and sweet in fields and groves, and savoury in meats; it means\ncarefulness, and inventiveness, and watchfulness, and willingness, and\nreadiness of appliance; it means the economy of your great-grandmothers,\nand the science of modern chemists; it means much tasting, and no\nwasting; it means English thoroughness, and French art, and Arabian\nhospitality; and it means, in fine, that you are to be perfectly and\nalways 'ladies'--'loaf-givers;' and, as you are to see, imperatively\nthat everybody has something pretty to put on,--so you are to see, yet\nmore imperatively, that everybody has something nice to eat.\n\n     (_Another pause, and long drawn breath._)\n\nDORA (_slowly recovering herself_) _to_ EGYPT. We had better have let\nhim go to sleep, I think, after all!\n\nL. You had better let the younger ones go to sleep now: for I haven't\nhalf done.\n\nISABEL (_panic-struck_). Oh! please, please! just one quarter of an\nhour.\n\nL. No, Isabel; I cannot say what I've got to say, in a quarter of an\nhour; and it is too hard for you, besides:--you would be lying awake,\nand trying to make it out, half the night. That will never do.\n\nISABEL. Oh, please!\n\nL. It would please me exceedingly, mousie: but there are times when we\nmust both be displeased; more's the pity. Lily may stay for half an\nhour, if she likes.\n\nLILY. I can't; because Isey never goes to sleep, if she is waiting for\nme to come.\n\nISABEL. Oh, yes, Lily; I'll go to sleep to-night, I will, indeed.\n\nLILY. Yes, it's very likely, Isey, with those fine round eyes! (_To_ L.)\nYou'll tell me something of what you've been saying, to-morrow, won't\nyou?\n\nL. No, I won't, Lily. You must choose. It's only in Miss Edgeworth's\nnovels that one can do right, and have one's cake and sugar afterwards,\nas well (not that I consider the dilemma, to-night, so grave).\n\n     (LILY, _sighing, takes_ ISABEL's _hand._)\n\nYes, Lily dear, it will be better, in the outcome of it, so, than if you\nwere to hear all the talks that ever were talked, and all the stories\nthat ever were told. Good night.\n\n     (_The door leading to the condemned cells of the Dormitory\n     closes on_ LILY, ISABEL, FLORRIE, _and other diminutive and\n     submissive victims._)\n\nJESSIE (_after a pause_). Why, I thought you were so fond of Miss\nEdgeworth!\n\nL. So I am; and so you ought all to be. I can read her over and over\nagain, without ever tiring; there's no one whose every page is so full,\nand so delightful; no one who brings you into the company of pleasanter\nor wiser people; no one who tells you more truly how to do right. And it\nis very nice, in the midst of a wild world, to have the very ideal of\npoetical justice done always to one's hand:--to have everybody found\nout, who tells lies; and everybody decorated with a red riband, who\ndoesn't; and to see the good Laura, who gave away her half sovereign,\nreceiving a grand ovation from an entire dinner party disturbed for the\npurpose; and poor, dear, little Rosamond, who chooses purple jars\ninstead of new shoes, left at last without either her shoes or her\nbottle. But it isn't life: and, in the way children might easily\nunderstand it, it isn't morals.\n\nJESSIE. How do you mean we might understand it?\n\nL. You might think Miss Edgeworth meant that the right was to be done\nmainly because one was always rewarded for doing it. It is an injustice\nto her to say that: her heroines always do right simply for its own\nsake, as they should; and her examples of conduct and motive are wholly\nadmirable. But her representation of events is false and misleading. Her\ngood characters never are brought into the deadly trial of\ngoodness,--the doing right, and suffering for it, quite finally. And\nthat is life, as God arranges it. 'Taking up one's cross' does not at\nall mean having ovations at dinner parties, and being put over everybody\nelse's head.\n\nDORA. But what _does_ it mean then? That is just what we couldn't\nunderstand, when you were telling us about not sacrificing ourselves,\nyesterday.\n\nL. My dear, it means simply that you are to go the road which you see to\nbe the straight one; carrying whatever you find is given you to carry,\nas well and stoutly as you can; without making faces, or calling people\nto come and look at you. Above all, you are neither to load, nor unload,\nyourself; nor cut your cross to your own liking. Some people think it\nwould be better for them to have it large; and many, that they could\ncarry it much faster if it were small; and even those who like it\nlargest are usually very particular about its being ornamental, and made\nof the best ebony. But all that you have really to do is to keep your\nback as straight as you can; and not think about what is upon it--above\nall, not to boast of what is upon it. The real and essential meaning of\n'virtue' is in that straightness of back. Yes; you may laugh, children,\nbut it is. You know I was to tell about the words that began with V.\nSibyl, what does 'virtue' mean, literally?\n\nSIBYL. Does it mean courage?\n\nL. Yes; but a particular kind of courage. It means courage of the nerve;\nvital courage. That first syllable of it, if you look in Max Mueller, you\nwill find really means 'nerve,' and from it come 'vis,' and 'vir,' and\n'virgin' (through vireo), and the connected word 'virga'--'a rod;'--the\ngreen rod, or springing bough of a tree, being the type of perfect human\nstrength, both in the use of it in the Mosaic story, when it becomes a\nserpent, or strikes the rock; or when Aaron's bears its almonds; and in\nthe metaphorical expressions, the 'Rod out of the stem of Jesse,' and\nthe 'Man whose name is the Branch,' and so on. And the essential idea of\nreal virtue is that of a vital human strength, which instinctively,\nconstantly, and without motive, does what is right. You must train men\nto this by habit, as you would the branch of a tree; and give them\ninstincts and manners (or morals) of purity, justice, kindness, and\ncourage. Once rightly trained, they act as they should, irrespectively\nof all motive, of fear, or of reward. It is the blackest sign of\nputrescence in a national religion, when men speak as if it were the\nonly safeguard of conduct; and assume that, but for the fear of being\nburned, or for the hope of being rewarded, everybody would pass their\nlives in lying, stealing, and murdering. I think quite one of the\nnotablest historical events of this century (perhaps the very\nnotablest), was that council of clergymen, horror-struck at the idea of\nany diminution in our dread of hell, at which the last of English\nclergymen whom one would have expected to see in such a function, rose\nas the devil's advocate; to tell us how impossible it was we could get\non without him.\n\nVIOLET (_after a pause_). But, surely, if people weren't\nafraid--(_hesitates again_).\n\nL. They should be afraid of doing wrong, and of that only, my dear.\nOtherwise, if they only don't do wrong for fear of being punished, they\n_have_ done wrong in their hearts, already.\n\nVIOLET. Well, but surely, at least one ought to be afraid of displeasing\nGod; and one's desire to please Him should be one's first motive?\n\nL. He never would be pleased with us, if it were, my dear. When a father\nsends his son out into the world--suppose as an apprentice--fancy the\nboy's coming home at night, and saying, 'Father, I could have robbed the\ntill to-day; but I didn't, because I thought you wouldn't like it.' Do\nyou think the father would be particularly pleased?\n\n     (VIOLET _is silent._)\n\nHe would answer, would he not, if he were wise and good, 'My boy, though\nyou had no father, you must not rob tills'? And nothing is ever done so\nas really to please our Great Father, unless we would also have done it,\nthough we had had no Father to know of it.\n\nVIOLET (_after long pause_). But, then, what continual threatenings, and\npromises of reward there are!\n\nL. And how vain both! with the Jews, and with all of us. But the fact\nis, that the threat and promise are simply statements of the Divine law,\nand of its consequences. The fact is truly told you,--make what use you\nmay of it: and as collateral warning, or encouragement, or comfort, the\nknowledge of future consequences may often be helpful to us; but helpful\nchiefly to the better state when we can act without reference to them.\nAnd there's no measuring the poisoned influence of that notion of future\nreward on the mind of Christian Europe, in the early ages. Half the\nmonastic system rose out of that, acting on the occult pride and\nambition of good people (as the other half of it came of their follies\nand misfortunes). There is always a considerable quantity of pride, to\nbegin with, in what is called 'giving one's self to God.' As if one had\never belonged to anybody else!\n\nDORA. But, surely, great good has come out of the monastic system--our\nbooks,--our sciences--all saved by the monks?\n\nL. Saved from what, my dear? From the abyss of misery and ruin which\nthat false Christianity allowed the whole active world to live in. When\nit had become the principal amusement, and the most admired art, of\nChristian men, to cut one another's throats, and burn one another's\ntowns; of course the few feeble or reasonable persons left, who desired\nquiet, safety, and kind fellowship, got into cloisters; and the\ngentlest, thoughtfullest, noblest men and women shut themselves up,\nprecisely where they could be of least use. They are very fine things,\nfor us painters, now,--the towers and white arches upon the tops of the\nrocks; always in places where it takes a day's climbing to get at them;\nbut the intense tragi-comedy of the thing, when one thinks of it, is\nunspeakable. All the good people of the world getting themselves hung up\nout of the way of mischief, like Bailie Nicol Jarvie;--poor little\nlambs, as it were, dangling there for the sign of the Golden Fleece; or\nlike Socrates in his basket in the 'Clouds'! (I must read you that bit\nof Aristophanes again, by the way.) And believe me, children, I am no\nwarped witness, as far as regards monasteries; or if I am, it is in\ntheir favour. I have always had a strong leaning that way; and have\npensively shivered with Augustines at St. Bernard; and happily made hay\nwith Franciscans at Fesole; and sat silent with Carthusians in their\nlittle gardens, south of Florence; and mourned through many a day-dream,\nat Melrose and Bolton. But the wonder is always to me, not how much, but\nhow little, the monks have, on the whole, done, with all that leisure,\nand all that goodwill! What nonsense monks characteristically\nwrote;--what little progress they made in the sciences to which they\ndevoted themselves as a duty,--medicine especially;--and, last and\nworst, what depths of degradation they can sometimes see one another,\nand the population round them, sink into; without either doubting their\nsystem, or reforming it!\n\n(_Seeing questions rising to lips._) Hold your little tongues, children;\nit's very late, and you'll make me forget what I've to say. Fancy\nyourselves in pews, for five minutes. There's one point of possible good\nin the conventual system, which is always attractive to young girls; and\nthe idea is a very dangerous one;--the notion of a merit, or exalting\nvirtue, consisting in a habit of meditation on the 'things above,' or\nthings of the next world. Now it is quite true, that a person of\nbeautiful mind, dwelling on whatever appears to them most desirable and\nlovely in a possible future will not only pass their time pleasantly,\nbut will even acquire, at last, a vague and wildly gentle charm of\nmanner and feature, which will give them an air of peculiar sanctity in\nthe eyes of others. Whatever real or apparent good there may be in this\nresult, I want you to observe, children, that we have no real authority\nfor the reveries to which it is owing. We are told nothing distinctly of\nthe heavenly world; except that it will be free from sorrow, and pure\nfrom sin. What is said of pearl gates, golden floors, and the like, is\naccepted as merely figurative by religious enthusiasts themselves; and\nwhatever they pass their time in conceiving, whether of the happiness of\nrisen souls, of their intercourse, or of the appearance and employment\nof the heavenly powers, is entirely the product of their own\nimagination; and as completely and distinctly a work of fiction, or\nromantic invention, as any novel of Sir Walter Scott's. That the romance\nis founded on religious theory or doctrine;--that no disagreeable or\nwicked persons are admitted into the story;--and that the inventor\nfervently hopes that some portion of it may hereafter come true, does\nnot in the least alter the real nature of the effort or enjoyment.\n\nNow, whatever indulgence may be granted to amiable people for pleasing\nthemselves in this innocent way, it is beyond question, that to seclude\nthemselves from the rough duties of life, merely to write religious\nromances, or, as in most cases, merely to dream them, without taking so\nmuch trouble as is implied in writing, ought not to be received as an\nact of heroic virtue. But, observe, even in admitting thus much, I have\nassumed that the fancies are just and beautiful, though fictitious. Now,\nwhat right have any of us to assume that our own fancies will assuredly\nbe either the one or the other? That they delight us, and appear lovely\nto us, is no real proof of its not being wasted time to form them: and\nwe may surely be led somewhat to distrust our judgment of them by\nobserving what ignoble imaginations have sometimes sufficiently, or even\nenthusiastically, occupied the hearts of others. The principal source of\nthe spirit of religious contemplation is the East; now I have here in my\nhand a Byzantine image of Christ, which, if you will look at it\nseriously, may, I think, at once and for ever render you cautious in the\nindulgence of a merely contemplative habit of mind. Observe, it is the\nfashion to look at such a thing only as a piece of barbarous art; that\nis the smallest part of its interest. What I want you to see, is the\nbaseness and falseness of a religious state of enthusiasm, in which such\na work could be dwelt upon with pious pleasure. That a figure, with two\nsmall round black beads for eyes; a gilded face, deep cut into horrible\nwrinkles; an open gash for a mouth, and a distorted skeleton for a body,\nwrapped about, to make it fine, with striped enamel of blue and\ngold;--that such a figure, I say, should ever have been thought helpful\ntowards the conception of a Redeeming Deity, may make you, I think, very\ndoubtful, even of the Divine approval,--much more of the Divine\ninspiration,--of religious reverie in general. You feel, doubtless, that\nyour own idea of Christ would be something very different from this; but\nin what does the difference consist? Not in any more divine authority in\nyour imagination; but in the intellectual work of six intervening\ncenturies; which, simply, by artistic discipline, has refined this crude\nconception for you, and filled you, partly with an innate sensation,\npartly with an acquired knowledge, of higher forms,--which render this\nByzantine crucifix as horrible to you, as it was pleasing to its maker.\nMore is required to excite your fancy; but your fancy is of no more\nauthority than his was: and a point of national art-skill is quite\nconceivable, in which the best we can do now will be as offensive to the\nreligious dreamers of the more highly cultivated time, as this Byzantine\ncrucifix is to you.\n\nMARY. But surely, Angelico will always retain his power over everybody?\n\nL. Yes, I should think, always; as the gentle words of a child will: but\nyou would be much surprised, Mary, if you thoroughly took the pains to\nanalyse, and had the perfect means of analysing, that power of\nAngelico,--to discover its real sources. Of course it is natural, at\nfirst, to attribute it to the pure religious fervour by which he was\ninspired; but do you suppose Angelico was really the only monk, in all\nthe Christian world of the middle ages, who laboured, in art, with a\nsincere religious enthusiasm?\n\nMARY. No, certainly not.\n\nL. Anything more frightful, more destructive of all religious faith\nwhatever, than such a supposition, could not be. And yet, what other\nmonk ever produced such work? I have myself examined carefully upwards\nof two thousand illuminated missals, with especial view to the discovery\nof any evidence of a similar result upon the art, from the monkish\ndevotion; and utterly in vain.\n\nMARY. But then, was not Fra Angelico a man of entirely separate and\nexalted genius?\n\nL. Unquestionably; and granting him to be that, the peculiar phenomenon\nin his art is, to me, not its loveliness, but its weakness. The effect\nof 'inspiration,' had it been real, on a man of consummate genius,\nshould have been, one would have thought, to make everything that he did\nfaultless and strong, no less than lovely. But of all men, deserving to\nbe called 'great,' Fra Angelico permits to himself the least pardonable\nfaults, and the most palpable follies. There is evidently within him a\nsense of grace, and power of invention, as great as Ghiberti's:--we are\nin the habit of attributing those high qualities to his religious\nenthusiasm; but, if they were produced by that enthusiasm in him, they\nought to be produced by the same feelings in others; and we see they\nare not. Whereas, comparing him with contemporary great artists, of\nequal grace and invention, one peculiar character remains notable in\nhim--which, logically, we ought therefore to attribute to the religious\nfervour;--and that distinctive character is, the contented indulgence of\nhis own weaknesses, and perseverance in his own ignorances.\n\nMARY. But that's dreadful! And what _is_ the source of the peculiar\ncharm which we all feel in his work?\n\nL. There are many sources of it, Mary; united and seeming like one. You\nwould never feel that charm but in the work of an entirely good man; be\nsure of that; but the goodness is only the recipient and modifying\nelement, not the creative one. Consider carefully what delights you in\nany original picture of Angelico's. You will find, for one minor thing,\nan exquisite variety and brightness of ornamental work. That is not\nAngelico's inspiration. It is the final result of the labour and thought\nof millions of artists, of all nations; from the earliest Egyptian\npotters downwards--Greeks, Byzantines, Hindoos, Arabs, Gauls, and\nNorthmen--all joining in the toil; and consummating it in Florence, in\nthat century, with such embroidery of robe and inlaying of armour as had\nnever been seen till then; nor, probably, ever will be seen more.\nAngelico merely takes his share of this inheritance, and applies it in\nthe tenderest way to subjects which are peculiarly acceptant of it. But\nthe inspiration, if it exist anywhere, flashes on the knight's shield\nquite as radiantly as on the monk's picture. Examining farther into the\nsources of your emotion in the Angelico work, you will find much of the\nimpression of sanctity dependent on a singular repose and grace of\ngesture, consummating itself in the floating, flying, and above all, in\nthe dancing groups. That is not Angelico's inspiration. It is only a\npeculiarly tender use of systems of grouping which had been long before\ndeveloped by Giotto, Memmi, and Orcagna; and the real root of it all is\nsimply--What do you think, children? The beautiful dancing of the\nFlorentine maidens!\n\nDORA (_indignant again_). Now, I wonder what next! Why not say it all\ndepended on Herodias' daughter, at once?\n\nL. Yes; it is certainly a great argument against singing, that there\nwere once sirens.\n\nDORA. Well, it may be all very fine and philosophical, but shouldn't I\njust like to read you the end of the second volume of 'Modern Painters'!\n\nL. My dear, do you think any teacher could be worth your listening to,\nor anybody else's listening to, who had learned nothing, and altered his\nmind in nothing, from seven and twenty to seven and forty? But that\nsecond volume is very good for you as far as it goes. It is a great\nadvance, and a thoroughly straight and swift one, to be led, as it is\nthe main business of that second volume to lead you, from Dutch cattle\npieces, and ruffian-pieces, to Fra Angelico. And it is right for you\nalso, as you grow older, to be strengthened in the general sense and\njudgment which may enable you to distinguish the weaknesses from the\nvirtues of what you love: else you might come to love both alike; or\neven the weaknesses without the virtues. You might end by liking\nOverbeck and Cornelius as well as Angelico. However, I have perhaps been\nleaning a little too much to the merely practical side of things, in\nto-night's talk; and you are always to remember, children, that I do not\ndeny, though I cannot affirm, the spiritual advantages resulting, in\ncertain cases, from enthusiastic religious reverie, and from the other\npractices of saints and anchorites. The evidence respecting them has\nnever yet been honestly collected, much less dispassionately examined:\nbut assuredly, there is in that direction a probability, and more than a\nprobability, of dangerous error, while there is none whatever in the\npractice of an active, cheerful, and benevolent life. The hope of\nattaining a higher religious position, which induces us to encounter,\nfor its exalted alternative, the risk of unhealthy error, is often, as I\nsaid, founded more on pride than piety; and those who, in modest\nusefulness, have accepted what seemed to them here the lowliest place in\nthe kingdom of their Father, are not, I believe, the least likely to\nreceive hereafter the command, then unmistakable, 'Friend, go up\nhigher.'\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE VIII.\n\n_CRYSTAL CAPRICE._\n\n_Formal Lecture in Schoolroom, after some practical examination of\nminerals._\n\n\nL. We have seen enough, children, though very little of what might be\nseen if we had more time, of mineral structures produced by visible\nopposition, or contest among elements; structures of which the variety,\nhowever great, need not surprise us: for we quarrel, ourselves, for many\nand slight causes;--much more, one should think, may crystals, who can\nonly feel the antagonism, not argue about it. But there is a yet more\nsingular mimicry of our human ways in the varieties of form which appear\nowing to no antagonistic force; but merely to the variable humour and\ncaprice of the crystals themselves: and I have asked you all to come\ninto the schoolroom to-day, because, of course, this is a part of the\ncrystal mind which must be peculiarly interesting to a feminine\naudience. (_Great symptoms of disapproval on the part of said\naudience._) Now, you need not pretend that it will not interest you; why\nshould it not? It is true that we men are never capricious; but that\nonly makes us the more dull and disagreeable. You, who are crystalline\nin brightness, as well as in caprice, charm infinitely, by infinitude of\nchange. (_Audible murmurs of 'Worse and worse!' 'As if we could be got\nover that way!' &c. The_ LECTURER, _however, observing the expression of\nthe features to be more complacent, proceeds._) And the most curious\nmimicry, if not of your changes of fashion, at least of your various\nmodes (in healthy periods) of national costume, takes place among the\ncrystals of different countries. With a little experience, it is quite\npossible to say at a glance, in what districts certain crystals have\nbeen found; and although, if we had knowledge extended and accurate\nenough, we might of course ascertain the laws and circumstances which\nhave necessarily produced the form peculiar to each locality, this would\nbe just as true of the fancies of the human mind. If we could know the\nexact circumstances which affect it, we could foretell what now seems to\nus only caprice of thought, as well as what now seems to us only caprice\nof crystal: nay, so far as our knowledge reaches, it is on the whole\neasier to find some reason why the peasant girls of Berne should wear\ntheir caps in the shape of butterflies; and the peasant girls of Munich\ntheir's in the shape of shells, than to say why the rock-crystals of\nDauphine should all have their summits of the shape of lip-pieces of\nflageolets, while those of St. Gothard are symmetrical; or why the fluor\nof Chamouni is rose-coloured, and in octahedrons, while the fluor of\nWeardale is green, and in cubes. Still farther removed is the hope, at\npresent, of accounting for minor differences in modes of grouping and\nconstruction. Take, for instance, the caprices of this single mineral,\nquartz;--variations upon a single theme. It has many forms; but see what\nit will make out of this _one_, the six-sided prism. For shortness'\nsake, I shall call the body of the prism its 'column,' and the pyramid\nat the extremities its 'cap.' Now, here, first you have a straight\ncolumn, as long and thin as a stalk of asparagus, with two little caps\nat the ends; and here you have a short thick column, as solid as a\nhaystack, with two fat caps at the ends; and here you have two caps\nfastened together, and no column at all between them! Then here is a\ncrystal with its column fat in the middle, and tapering to a little cap;\nand here is one stalked like a mushroom, with a huge cap put on the top\nof a slender column! Then here is a column built wholly out of little\ncaps, with a large smooth cap at the top. And here is a column built of\ncolumns and caps; the caps all truncated about half way to their points.\nAnd in both these last, the little crystals are set anyhow, and build\nthe large one in a disorderly way; but here is a crystal made of columns\nand truncated caps, set in regular terraces all the way up.\n\nMARY. But are not these, groups of crystals, rather than one crystal?\n\nL. What do you mean by a group, and what by one crystal?\n\nDORA (_audibly aside, to_ MARY, _who is brought to pause_). You know you\nare never expected to answer, Mary.\n\nL. I'm sure this is easy enough. What do you mean by a group of people?\n\nMARY. Three or four together, or a good many together, like the caps in\nthese crystals.\n\nL. But when a great many persons get together they don't take the shape\nof one person?\n\n     (MARY _still at pause._)\n\nISABEL. No, because they can't; but, you know the crystals can; so why\nshouldn't they?\n\nL. Well, they don't; that is to say, they don't always, nor even often.\nLook here, Isabel.\n\nISABEL. What a nasty ugly thing!\n\nL. I'm glad you think it so ugly. Yet it is made of beautiful crystals;\nthey are a little grey and cold in colour, but most of them are clear.\n\nISABEL. But they're in such horrid, horrid disorder!\n\nL. Yes; all disorder is horrid, when it is among things that are\nnaturally orderly. Some little girl's rooms are naturally _dis_orderly,\nI suppose; or I don't know how they could live in them, if they cry out\nso when they only see quartz crystals in confusion.\n\nISABEL. Oh! but how come they to be like that?\n\nL. You may well ask. And yet you will always hear people talking as if\nthey thought order more wonderful than disorder! It _is_ wonderful--as\nwe have seen; but to me, as to you, child, the supremely wonderful thing\nis that nature should ever be ruinous or wasteful, or deathful! I look\nat this wild piece of crystallisation with endless astonishment.\n\nMARY. Where does it come from?\n\nL. The Tete Noire of Chamonix. What makes it more strange is that it\nshould be in a vein of fine quartz rock. If it were in a mouldering\nrock, it would be natural enough; but in the midst of so fine substance,\nhere are the crystals tossed in a heap; some large, myriads small\n(almost as small as dust), tumbling over each other like a terrified\ncrowd, and glued together by the sides, and edges, and backs, and heads;\nsome warped, and some pushed out and in, and all spoiled and each\nspoiling the rest.\n\nMARY. And how flat they all are!\n\nL. Yes; that's the fashion at the Tete Noire.\n\nMARY. But surely this is ruin, not caprice?\n\nL. I believe it is in great part misfortune; and we will examine these\ncrystal troubles in next lecture. But if you want to see the\ngracefullest and happiest caprices of which dust is capable, you must go\nto the Hartz; not that I ever mean to go there myself, for I want to\nretain the romantic feeling about the name; and I have done myself some\nharm already by seeing the monotonous and heavy form of the Brocken from\nthe suburbs of Brunswick. But whether the mountains be picturesque or\nnot, the tricks which the goblins (as I am told) teach the crystals in\nthem, are incomparably pretty. They work chiefly on the mind of a\ndocile, bluish coloured, carbonate of lime; which comes out of a grey\nlimestone. The goblins take the greatest possible care of its education,\nand see that nothing happens to it to hurt its temper; and when it may\nbe supposed to have arrived at the crisis which is, to a well brought up\nmineral, what presentation at court is to a young lady--after which it\nis expected to set fashions--there's no end to its pretty ways of\nbehaving. First it will make itself into pointed darts as fine as\nhoar-frost; here, it is changed into a white fur as fine as silk; here\ninto little crowns and circlets, as bright as silver; as if for the\ngnome princesses to wear; here it is in beautiful little plates, for\nthem to eat off; presently it is in towers which they might be\nimprisoned in; presently in caves and cells, where they may make\nnun-gnomes of themselves, and no gnome ever hear of them more; here is\nsome of it in sheaves, like corn; here, some in drifts, like snow; here,\nsome in rays, like stars: and, though these are, all of them,\nnecessarily, shapes that the mineral takes in other places, they are\nall taken here with such a grace that you recognise the high caste and\nbreeding of the crystals wherever you meet them; and know at once they\nare Hartz-born.\n\nOf course, such fine things as these are only done by crystals which are\nperfectly good, and good-humoured; and of course, also, there are\nill-humoured crystals who torment each other, and annoy quieter\ncrystals, yet without coming to anything like serious war. Here (for\nonce) is some ill-disposed quartz, tormenting a peaceable octahedron of\nfluor, in mere caprice. I looked at it the other night so long, and so\nwonderingly, just before putting my candle out, that I fell into another\nstrange dream. But you don't care about dreams.\n\nDORA. No; we didn't, yesterday; but you know we are made up of caprice;\nso we do, to-day: and you must tell it us directly.\n\nL. Well, you see, Neith and her work were still much in my mind; and\nthen, I had been looking over these Hartz things for you, and thinking\nof the sort of grotesque sympathy there seemed to be in them with the\nbeautiful fringe and pinnacle work of Northern architecture. So, when I\nfell asleep, I thought I saw Neith and St. Barbara talking together.\n\nDORA. But what had St. Barbara to do with it?[152]\n\nL. My dear, I am quite sure St. Barbara is the patroness of good\narchitects: not St. Thomas, whatever the old builders thought. It might\nbe very fine, according to the monks' notions, in St. Thomas, to give\nall his employer's money away to the poor: but breaches of contract are\nbad foundations; and I believe, it was not he, but St. Barbara, who\noverlooked the work in all the buildings you and I care about. However\nthat may be, it was certainly she whom I saw in my dream with Neith.\nNeith was sitting weaving, and I thought she looked sad, and threw her\nshuttle slowly; and St. Barbara was standing at her side, in a stiff\nlittle gown, all ins and outs, and angles; but so bright with embroidery\nthat it dazzled me whenever she moved; the train of it was just like a\nheap of broken jewels, it was so stiff, and full of corners, and so\nmany-coloured, and bright. Her hair fell over her shoulders in long,\ndelicate waves, from under a little three pinnacled crown, like a tower.\nShe was asking Neith about the laws of architecture in Egypt and Greece;\nand when Neith told her the measures of the pyramids, St. Barbara said\nshe thought they would have been better three-cornered: and when Neith\ntold her the measures of the Parthenon, St. Barbara said she thought it\nought to have had two transepts. But she was pleased when Neith told her\nof the temple of the dew, and of the Caryan maidens bearing its frieze:\nand then she thought that perhaps Neith would like to hear what sort of\ntemples she was building herself, in the French valleys, and on the\ncrags of the Rhine. So she began gossiping, just as one of you might to\nan old lady: and certainly she talked in the sweetest way in the world\nto Neith; and explained to her all about crockets and pinnacles: and\nNeith sat, looking very grave; and always graver as St. Barbara went on;\ntill at last, I'm sorry to say, St. Barbara lost her temper a little.\n\nMAY (_very grave herself_). 'St. Barbara?'\n\nL. Yes, May. Why shouldn't she? It was very tiresome of Neith to sit\nlooking like that.\n\nMAY. But, then, St. Barbara was a saint!\n\nL. What's that, May?\n\nMAY. A saint! A saint is--I am sure you know!\n\nL. If I did, it would not make me sure that you knew too, May: but I\ndon't.\n\nVIOLET (_expressing the incredulity of the audience_). Oh,--sir!\n\nL. That is to say, I know that people are called saints who are supposed\nto be better than others: but I don't know how much better they must be,\nin order to be saints; nor how nearly anybody may be a saint, and yet\nnot be quite one; nor whether everybody who is called a saint was one;\nnor whether everybody who isn't called a saint, isn't one.\n\n     (_General silence; the audience feeling themselves on the\n     verge of the Infinities--and a little shocked--and much\n     puzzled by so many questions at once._)\n\nL. Besides, did you never hear that verse about being 'called to be\nsaints'?\n\nMAY (_repeats Rom._ i. 7.)\n\nL. Quite right, May. Well, then, who are called to be that? People in\nRome only?\n\nMAY. Everybody, I suppose, whom God loves.\n\nL. What! little girls as well as other people?\n\nMAY. All grown-up people, I mean.\n\nL. Why not little girls? Are they wickeder when they are little?\n\nMAY. Oh, I hope not.\n\nL. Why not little girls, then?\n\n     (_Pause._)\n\nLILY. Because, you know, we can't be worth anything if we're ever so\ngood;--I mean, if we try to be ever so good; and we can't do difficult\nthings--like saints.\n\nL. I am afraid, my dear, that old people are not more able or willing\nfor their difficulties than you children are for yours. All I can say\nis, that if ever I see any of you, when you are seven or eight and\ntwenty, knitting your brows over any work you want to do or to\nunderstand, as I saw you, Lily, knitting your brows over your slate this\nmorning, I should think you very noble women. But--to come back to my\ndream--St. Barbara _did_ lose her temper a little; and I was not\nsurprised. For you can't think how provoking Neith looked, sitting there\njust like a statue of sandstone; only going on weaving, like a machine;\nand never quickening the cast of her shuttle; while St. Barbara was\ntelling her so eagerly all about the most beautiful things, and\nchattering away, as fast as bells ring on Christmas Eve, till she saw\nthat Neith didn't care; and then St. Barbara got as red as a rose, and\nstopped, just in time;--or I think she would really have said something\nnaughty.\n\nISABEL. Oh, please, but didn't Neith say anything then?\n\nL. Yes. She said, quite quietly, 'It may be very pretty, my love; but it\nis all nonsense.'\n\nISABEL. Oh dear, oh dear; and then?\n\nL. Well; then I was a little angry myself, and hoped St. Barbara would\nbe quite angry; but she wasn't. She bit her lips first; and then gave a\ngreat sigh--such a wild, sweet sigh--and then she knelt down and hid her\nface on Neith's knees. Then Neith smiled a little, and was moved.\n\nISABEL. Oh, I am so glad!\n\nL. And she touched St. Barbara's forehead with a flower of white lotus;\nand St. Barbara sobbed once or twice, and then said: 'If you only could\nsee how beautiful it is, and how much it makes people feel what is good\nand lovely; and if you could only hear the children singing in the Lady\nchapels!' And Neith smiled,--but still sadly,--and said, 'How do you\nknow what I have seen, or heard, my love? Do you think all those vaults\nand towers of yours have been built without me? There was not a pillar\nin your Giotto's Santa Maria del Fiore which I did not set true by my\nspearshaft as it rose. But this pinnacle and flame work which has set\nyour little heart on fire, is all vanity; and you will see what it will\ncome to, and that soon; and none will grieve for it more than I. And\nthen every one will disbelieve your pretty symbols and types. Men must\nbe spoken simply to, my dear, if you would guide them kindly, and long.'\nBut St. Barbara answered, that, 'Indeed she thought every one liked her\nwork,' and that 'the people of different towns were as eager about their\ncathedral towers as about their privileges or their markets;' and then\nshe asked Neith to come and build something with her, wall against\ntower; and 'see whether the people will be as much pleased with your\nbuilding as with mine.' But Neith answered, 'I will not contend with\nyou, my dear. I strive not with those who love me; and for those who\nhate me, it is not well to strive with me, as weaver Arachne knows. And\nremember, child, that nothing is ever done beautifully, which is done in\nrivalship; nor nobly, which is done in pride.'\n\nThen St. Barbara hung her head quite down, and said she was very sorry\nshe had been so foolish; and kissed Neith; and stood thinking a minute:\nand then her eyes got bright again, and she said, she would go directly\nand build a chapel with five windows in it; four for the four cardinal\nvirtues, and one for humility, in the middle, bigger than the rest. And\nNeith very nearly laughed quite out, I thought; certainly her beautiful\nlips lost all their sternness for an instant; then she said, 'Well,\nlove, build it, but do not put so many colours into your windows as you\nusually do; else no one will be able to see to read, inside: and when it\nis built, let a poor village priest consecrate it, and not an\narchbishop.' St. Barbara started a little, I thought, and turned as if\nto say something; but changed her mind, and gathered up her train, and\nwent out. And Neith bent herself again to her loom, in which she was\nweaving a web of strange dark colours, I thought; but perhaps it was\nonly after the glittering of St. Barbara's embroidered train: and I\ntried to make out the figures in Neith's web, and confused myself among\nthem, as one always does in dreams; and then the dream changed\naltogether, and I found myself, all at once, among a crowd of little\nGothic and Egyptian spirits, who were quarrelling: at least the Gothic\nones were trying to quarrel; for the Egyptian ones only sat with their\nhands on their knees, and their aprons sticking out very stiffly; and\nstared. And after a while I began to understand what the matter was. It\nseemed that some of the troublesome building imps, who meddle and make\ncontinually, even in the best Gothic work, had been listening to St.\nBarbara's talk with Neith; and had made up their minds that Neith had no\nworkpeople who could build against them. They were but dull imps, as you\nmay fancy by their thinking that; and never had done much, except\ndisturbing the great Gothic building angels at their work, and playing\ntricks to each other; indeed, of late they had been living years and\nyears, like bats, up under the cornices of Strasbourg and Cologne\ncathedrals, with nothing to do but to make mouths at the people below.\nHowever, they thought they knew everything about tower building; and\nthose who had heard what Neith said, told the rest; and they all flew\ndown directly, chattering in German, like jackdaws, to show Neith's\npeople what they could do. And they had found some of Neith's old\nworkpeople somewhere near Sais, sitting in the sun, with their hands on\ntheir knees; and abused them heartily: and Neith's people did not mind\nat first, but, after a while, they seemed to get tired of the noise; and\none or two rose up slowly, and laid hold of their measuring rods, and\nsaid, 'If St. Barbara's people liked to build with them, tower against\npyramid, they would show them how to lay stones.' Then the little Gothic\nspirits threw a great many double somersaults for joy; and put the tips\nof their tongues out slily to each other, on one side; and I heard the\nEgyptians say, 'they must be some new kind of frog--they didn't think\nthere was much building in _them_.' However, the stiff old workers took\ntheir rods, as I said, and measured out a square space of sand; but as\nsoon as the German spirits saw that, they declared they wanted exactly\nthat bit of ground to build on, themselves. Then the Egyptian builders\noffered to go farther off, and the Germans ones said, 'Ja wohl.' But as\nsoon as the Egyptians had measured out another square, the little\nGermans said they must have some of that too. Then Neith's people\nlaughed; and said, 'they might take as much as they liked, but they\nwould not move the plan of their pyramid again.' Then the little Germans\ntook three pieces, and began to build three spires directly; one large,\nand two little. And when the Egyptians saw they had fairly begun, they\nlaid their foundation all round, of large square stones: and began to\nbuild, so steadily that they had like to have swallowed up the three\nlittle German spires. So when the Gothic spirits saw that, they built\ntheir spires leaning, like the tower of Pisa, that they might stick out\nat the side of the pyramid. And Neith's people stared at them; and\nthought it very clever, but very wrong; and on they went, in their own\nway, and said nothing. Then the little Gothic spirits were terribly\nprovoked because they could not spoil the shape of the pyramid; and they\nsat down all along the ledges of it to make faces; but that did no good.\nThen they ran to the corners, and put their elbows on their knees, and\nstuck themselves out as far as they could, and made more faces; but that\ndid no good, neither. Then they looked up to the sky, and opened their\nmouths wide, and gobbled, and said it was too hot for work, and\nwondered when it would rain; but that did no good, neither. And all the\nwhile the Egyptian spirits were laying step above step, patiently. But\nwhen the Gothic ones looked, and saw how high they had got, they said,\n'Ach, Himmel!' and flew down in a great black cluster to the bottom; and\nswept out a level spot in the sand with their wings, in no time, and\nbegan building a tower straight up, as fast as they could. And the\nEgyptians stood still again to stare at them; for the Gothic spirits had\ngot quite into a passion, and were really working very wonderfully. They\ncut the sandstone into strips as fine as reeds; and put one reed on the\ntop of another, so that you could not see where they fitted: and they\ntwisted them in and out like basket work, and knotted them into\nlikenesses of ugly faces, and of strange beasts biting each other; and\nup they went, and up still, and they made spiral staircases at the\ncorners, for the loaded workers to come up by (for I saw they were but\nweak imps, and could not fly with stones on their backs), and then they\nmade traceried galleries for them to run round by; and so up again; with\nfiner and finer work, till the Egyptians wondered whether they meant the\nthing for a tower or a pillar: and I heard them saying to one another,\n'It was nearly as pretty as lotus stalks; and if it were not for the\nugly faces, there would be a fine temple, if they were going to build it\nall with pillars as big as that!' But in a minute afterwards,--just as\nthe Gothic spirits had carried their work as high as the upper course,\nbut three or four, of the pyramid--the Egyptians called out to them to\n'mind what they were about, for the sand was running away from under one\nof their tower corners.' But it was too late to mind what they were\nabout; for, in another instant, the whole tower sloped aside; and the\nGothic imps rose out of it like a flight of puffins, in a single cloud;\nbut screaming worse than any puffins you ever heard: and down came the\ntower, all in a piece, like a falling poplar, with its head right on the\nflank of the pyramid; against which it snapped short off. And of course\nthat waked me!\n\nMARY. What a shame of you to have such a dream, after all you have told\nus about Gothic architecture!\n\nL. If you have understood anything I ever told you about it, you know\nthat no architecture was ever corrupted more miserably; or abolished\nmore justly by the accomplishment of its own follies. Besides, even in\nits days of power, it was subject to catastrophes of this kind. I have\nstood too often, mourning, by the grand fragment of the apse of\nBeauvais, not to have that fact well burnt into me. Still, you must have\nseen, surely, that these imps were of the Flamboyant school; or, at\nleast, of the German schools correspondent with it in extravagance.\n\nMARY. But, then, where is the crystal about which you dreamed all this?\n\nL. Here; but I suppose little Pthah has touched it again, for it is very\nsmall. But, you see, here is the pyramid, built of great square stones\nof fluor spar, straight up; and here are the three little pinnacles of\nmischievous quartz, which have set themselves, at the same time, on the\nsame foundation; only they lean like the tower of Pisa, and come out\nobliquely at the side: and here is one great spire of quartz which seems\nas if it had been meant to stand straight up, a little way off; and then\nhad fallen down against the pyramid base, breaking its pinnacle away. In\nreality, it has crystallised horizontally, and terminated imperfectly:\nbut, then, by what caprice does one crystal form horizontally, when all\nthe rest stand upright? But this is nothing to the phantasies of fluor,\nand quartz, and some other such companions, when they get leave to do\nanything they like. I could show you fifty specimens, about every one of\nwhich you might fancy a new fairy tale. Not that, in truth, any crystals\nget leave to do quite what they like; and many of them are sadly tried,\nand have little time for caprices--poor things!\n\nMARY. I thought they always looked as if they were either in play or in\nmischief! What trials have they?\n\nL. Trials much like our own. Sickness, and starvation; fevers, and\nagues, and palsy; oppression; and old age, and the necessity of passing\naway in their time, like all else. If there's any pity in you, you must\ncome to-morrow, and take some part in these crystal griefs.\n\nDORA. I am sure we shall cry till our eyes are red.\n\nL. Ah, you may laugh, Dora: but I've been made grave, not once, nor\ntwice, to see that even crystals 'cannot choose but be old' at last. It\nmay be but a shallow proverb of the Justice's; but it is a shrewdly wide\none.\n\nDORA (_pensive, for once_). I suppose it is very dreadful to be old! But\nthen (_brightening again_), what should we do without our dear old\nfriends, and our nice old lecturers?\n\nL. If all nice old lecturers were minded as little as one I know of----\n\nDORA. And if they all meant as little what they say, would they not\ndeserve it? But we'll come--we'll come, and cry.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[152] Note v.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE IX.\n\n_CRYSTAL SORROWS._\n\n_Working Lecture in Schoolroom._\n\n\nL. We have been hitherto talking, children, as if crystals might live,\nand play, and quarrel, and behave ill or well, according to their\ncharacters, without interruption from anything else. But so far from\nthis being so, nearly all crystals, whatever their characters, have to\nlive a hard life of it, and meet with many misfortunes. If we could see\nfar enough, we should find, indeed, that, at the root, all their vices\nwere misfortunes: but to-day I want you to see what sort of troubles the\nbest crystals have to go through, occasionally, by no fault of their\nown.\n\nThis black thing, which is one of the prettiest of the very few pretty\nblack things in the world, is called 'Tourmaline.' It may be\ntransparent, and green, or red, as well as black; and then no stone can\nbe prettier (only, all the light that gets into it, I believe, comes out\na good deal the worse; and is not itself again for a long while). But\nthis is the commonest state of it,--opaque, and as black as jet.\n\nMARY. What does 'Tourmaline' mean?\n\nL. They say it is Ceylanese, and I don't know Ceylanese; but we may\nalways be thankful for a graceful word, whatever it means.\n\nMARY. And what is it made of?\n\nL. A little of everything; there's always flint, and clay, and magnesia\nin it; and the black is iron, according to its fancy; and there's\nboracic acid, if you know what that is; and if you don't, I cannot tell\nyou to-day; and it doesn't signify; and there's potash, and soda; and,\non the whole, the chemistry of it is more like a mediaeval doctor's\nprescription, than the making of a respectable mineral: but it may,\nperhaps, be owing to the strange complexity of its make, that it has a\nnotable habit which makes it, to me, one of the most interesting of\nminerals. You see these two crystals are broken right across, in many\nplaces, just as if they had been shafts of black marble fallen from a\nruinous temple; and here they lie, imbedded in white quartz, fragment\nsucceeding fragment, keeping the line of the original crystal, while the\nquartz fills up the intervening spaces. Now tourmaline has a trick of\ndoing this, more than any other mineral I know: here is another bit\nwhich I picked up on the glacier of Macugnaga; it is broken, like a\npillar built of very flat broad stones, into about thirty joints, and\nall these are heaved and warped away from each other sideways, almost\ninto a line of steps; and then all is filled up with quartz paste. And\nhere, lastly, is a green Indian piece, in which the pillar is first\ndisjointed, and then wrung round into the shape of an S.\n\nMARY. How _can_ this have been done?\n\nL. There are a thousand ways in which it may have been done; the\ndifficulty is not to account for the doing of it; but for the showing of\nit in some crystals, and not in others. You never by any chance get a\nquartz crystal broken or twisted in this way. If it break or twist at\nall, which it does sometimes, like the spire of Dijon, it is by its own\nwill or fault; it never seems to have been passively crushed. But, for\nthe forces which cause this passive ruin of the tourmaline,--here is a\nstone which will show you multitudes of them in operation at once. It is\nknown as 'brecciated agate,' beautiful, as you see; and highly valued as\na pebble: yet, so far as I can read or hear, no one has ever looked at\nit with the least attention. At the first glance, you see it is made of\nvery fine red striped agates, which have been broken into small pieces,\nand fastened together again by paste, also of agate. There would be\nnothing wonderful in this, if this were all. It is well known that by\nthe movements of strata, portions of rock are often shattered to\npieces:--well known also that agate is a deposit of flint by water under\ncertain conditions of heat and pressure: there is, therefore, nothing\nwonderful in an agate's being broken; and nothing wonderful in its\nbeing mended with the solution out of which it was itself originally\ncongealed. And with this explanation, most people, looking at a\nbrecciated agate, or brecciated anything, seem to be satisfied. I was so\nmyself, for twenty years; but, lately happening to stay for some time at\nthe Swiss Baden, where the beach of the Limmat is almost wholly composed\nof brecciated limestones, I began to examine them thoughtfully; and\nperceived, in the end, that they were, one and all, knots of as rich\nmystery as any poor little human brain was ever lost in. That piece of\nagate in your hand, Mary, will show you many of the common phenomena of\nbreccias; but you need not knit your brows over it in that way; depend\nupon it, neither you nor I shall ever know anything about the way it was\nmade, as long as we live.\n\nDORA. That does not seem much to depend upon.\n\nL. Pardon me, puss. When once we gain some real notion of the extent and\nthe unconquerableness of our ignorance, it is a very broad and restful\nthing to depend upon: you can throw yourself upon it at ease, as on a\ncloud, to feast with the gods. You do not thenceforward trouble\nyourself,--nor any one else,--with theories, or the contradiction of\ntheories; you neither get headache nor heartburning; and you never more\nwaste your poor little store of strength, or allowance of time.\n\nHowever, there are certain facts, about this agate-making, which I can\ntell you; and then you may look at it in a pleasant wonder as long as\nyou like; pleasant wonder is no loss of time.\n\nFirst, then, it is not broken freely by a blow; it is slowly wrung, or\nground, to pieces. You can only with extreme dimness conceive the force\nexerted on mountains in transitional states of movement. You have all\nread a little geology; and you know how coolly geologists talk of\nmountains being raised or depressed. They talk coolly of it, because\nthey are accustomed to the fact; but the very universality of the fact\nprevents us from ever conceiving distinctly the conditions of force\ninvolved. You know I was living last year in Savoy; my house was on the\nback of a sloping mountain which rose gradually for two miles, behind\nit; and then fell at once in a great precipice towards Geneva, going\ndown three thousand feet in four or five cliffs, or steps. Now that\nwhole group of cliffs had simply been torn away by sheer strength from\nthe rocks below, as if the whole mass had been as soft as biscuit. Put\nfour or five captains' biscuits on the floor, on the top of one another;\nand try to break them all in half, not by bending, but by holding one\nhalf down, and tearing the other halves straight up;--of course you will\nnot be able to do it, but you will feel and comprehend the sort of force\nneeded. Then, fancy each captains' biscuit a bed of rock, six or seven\nhundred feet thick; and the whole mass torn straight through; and one\nhalf heaved up three thousand feet, grinding against the other as it\nrose,--and you will have some idea of the making of the Mont Saleve.\n\nMAY. But it must crush the rocks all to dust!\n\nL. No; for there is no room for dust. The pressure is too great;\nprobably the heat developed also so great that the rock is made partly\nductile; but the worst of it is, that we never can see these parts of\nmountains in the state they were left in at the time of their elevation;\nfor it is precisely in these rents and dislocations that the crystalline\npower principally exerts itself. It is essentially a styptic power, and\nwherever the earth is torn, it heals and binds; nay, the torture and\ngrieving of the earth seem necessary to bring out its full energy; for\nyou only find the crystalline living power fully in action, where the\nrents and faults are deep and many.\n\nDORA. If you please, sir,--would you tell us--what are 'faults'?\n\nL. You never heard of such things?\n\nDORA. Never in all our lives.\n\nL. When a vein of rock which is going on smoothly, is interrupted by\nanother troublesome little vein, which stops it, and puts it out, so\nthat it has to begin again in another place--that is called a fault. _I_\nalways think it ought to be called the fault of the vein that interrupts\nit; but the miners always call it the fault of the vein that is\ninterrupted.\n\nDORA. So it is, if it does not begin again where it left off.\n\nL. Well, that is certainly the gist of the business: but, whatever\ngood-natured old lecturers may do, the rocks have a bad habit, when they\nare once interrupted, of never asking 'Where was I?'\n\nDORA. When the two halves of the dining table came separate, yesterday,\nwas that a 'fault'?\n\nL. Yes; but not the table's. However, it is not a bad illustration,\nDora. When beds of rock are only interrupted by a fissure, but remain at\nthe same level, like the two halves of the table, it is not called a\nfault, but only a fissure; but if one half of the table be either tilted\nhigher than the other, or pushed to the side, so that the two parts will\nnot fit, it is a fault. You had better read the chapter on faults in\nJukes's Geology; then you will know all about it. And this rent that I\nam telling you of in the Saleve, is one only of myriads, to which are\nowing the forms of the Alps, as, I believe, of all great mountain\nchains. Wherever you see a precipice on any scale of real magnificence,\nyou will nearly always find it owing to some dislocation of this kind;\nbut the point of chief wonder to me, is the delicacy of the touch by\nwhich these gigantic rents have been apparently accomplished. Note,\nhowever, that we have no clear evidence, hitherto, of the time taken to\nproduce any of them. We know that a change of temperature alters the\nposition and the angles of the atoms of crystals, and also the entire\nbulk of rocks. We know that in all volcanic, and the greater part of all\nsubterranean, action, temperatures are continually changing, and\ntherefore masses of rock must be expanding or contracting, with infinite\nslowness, but with infinite force. This pressure must result in\nmechanical strain somewhere, both in their own substance, and in that of\nthe rocks surrounding them; and we can form no conception of the result\nof irresistible pressure, applied so as to rend and raise, with\nimperceptible slowness of gradation, masses thousands of feet in\nthickness. We want some experiments tried on masses of iron and stone;\nand we can't get them tried, because Christian creatures never will\nseriously and sufficiently spend money, except to find out the shortest\nways of killing each other. But, besides this slow kind of pressure,\nthere is evidence of more or less sudden violence, on the same terrific\nscale; and, through it all, the wonder, as I said, is always to me the\ndelicacy of touch. I cut a block of the Saleve limestone from the edge\nof one of the principal faults which have formed the precipice; it is a\nlovely compact limestone, and the fault itself is filled up with a red\nbreccia formed of the crushed fragments of the torn rock, cemented by a\nrich red crystalline paste. I have had the piece I cut from it smoothed,\nand polished across the junction; here it is; and you may now pass your\nsoft little fingers over the surface, without so much as feeling the\nplace where a rock which all the hills of England might have been sunk\nin the body of, and not a summit seen, was torn asunder through that\nwhole thickness, as a thin dress is torn when you tread upon it.\n\n     (_The audience examine the stone, and touch it timidly; but\n     the matter remains inconceivable to them._)\n\nMARY (_struck by the beauty of the stone_). But this is almost marble?\n\nL. It is quite marble. And another singular point in the business, to my\nmind, is that these stones, which men have been cutting into slabs, for\nthousands of years, to ornament their principal buildings with,--and\nwhich, under the general name of 'marble,' have been the delight of the\neyes, and the wealth of architecture, among all civilised nations,--are\nprecisely those on which the signs and brands of these earth agonies\nhave been chiefly struck; and there is not a purple vein nor flaming\nzone in them, which is not the record of their ancient torture. What a\nboundless capacity for sleep, and for serene stupidity, there is in the\nhuman mind! Fancy reflective beings, who cut and polish stones for three\nthousand years, for the sake of the pretty stains upon them; and educate\nthemselves to an art at last (such as it is), of imitating these veins\nby dexterous painting; and never a curious soul of them, all that while,\nasks, 'What painted the rocks?'\n\n     (_The audience look dejected, and ashamed of themselves._)\n\nThe fact is, we are all, and always, asleep, through our lives; and it\nis only by pinching ourselves very hard that we ever come to see, or\nunderstand, anything. At least, it is not always we who pinch ourselves;\nsometimes other people pinch us; which I suppose is very good of\nthem,--or other things, which I suppose is very proper of them. But it\nis a sad life; made up chiefly of naps and pinches.\n\n     (_Some of the audience, on this, appearing to think that the\n     others require pinching, the_ LECTURER _changes the\n     subject._)\n\nNow, however, for once, look at a piece of marble carefully, and think\nabout it. You see this is one side of the fault; the other side is down\nor up, nobody knows where; but, on this side, you can trace the evidence\nof the dragging and tearing action. All along the edge of this marble,\nthe ends of the fibres of the rock are torn, here an inch, and there\nhalf an inch, away from each other; and you see the exact places where\nthey fitted, before they were torn separate; and you see the rents are\nnow all filled up with the sanguine paste, full of the broken pieces of\nthe rock; the paste itself seems to have been half melted, and partly to\nhave also melted the edge of the fragments it contains, and then to have\ncrystallised with them, and round them. And the brecciated agate I first\nshowed you contains exactly the same phenomena; a zoned crystallisation\ngoing on amidst the cemented fragments, partly altering the structure of\nthose fragments themselves, and subject to continual change, either in\nthe intensity of its own power, or in the nature of the materials\nsubmitted to it;--so that, at one time, gravity acts upon them, and\ndisposes them in horizontal layers, or causes them to droop in\nstalactites; and at another, gravity is entirely defied, and the\nsubstances in solution are crystallised in bands of equal thickness on\nevery side of the cell. It would require a course of lectures longer\nthan these (I have a great mind,--you have behaved so saucily--to stay\nand give them) to describe to you the phenomena of this kind, in agates\nand chalcedonies only;--nay, there is a single sarcophagus in the\nBritish Museum, covered with grand sculpture of the 18th dynasty, which\ncontains in the magnificent breccia (agates and jaspers imbedded in\nporphyry), out of which it is hewn, material for the thought of years;\nand record of the earth-sorrow of ages in comparison with the duration\nof which, the Egyptian letters tell us but the history of the evening\nand morning of a day.\n\nAgates, I think, of all stones, confess most of their past history; but\nall crystallisation goes on under, and partly records, circumstances of\nthis kind--circumstances of infinite variety, but always involving\ndifficulty, interruption, and change of condition at different times.\nObserve, first, you have the whole mass of the rock in motion, either\ncontracting itself, and so gradually widening the cracks; or being\ncompressed, and thereby closing them, and crushing their edges;--and, if\none part of its substance be softer, at the given temperature, than\nanother, probably squeezing that softer substance out into the veins.\nThen the veins themselves, when the rock leaves them open by its\ncontraction, act with various power of suction upon its substance;--by\ncapillary attraction when they are fine,--by that of pure vacuity when\nthey are larger, or by changes in the constitution and condensation of\nthe mixed gases with which they have been originally filled. Those gases\nthemselves may be supplied in all variation of volume and power from\nbelow; or, slowly, by the decomposition of the rocks themselves; and, at\nchanging temperatures, must exert relatively changing forces of\ndecomposition and combination on the walls of the veins they fill; while\nwater, at every degree of heat and pressure (from beds of everlasting\nice, alternate with cliffs of native rock, to volumes of red hot, or\nwhite hot, steam), congeals, and drips, and throbs, and thrills, from\ncrag to crag; and breathes from pulse to pulse of foaming or fiery\narteries, whose beating is felt through chains of the great islands of\nthe Indian seas, as your own pulses lift your bracelets, and makes whole\nkingdoms of the world quiver in deadly earthquake, as if they were light\nas aspen leaves. And, remember, the poor little crystals have to live\ntheir lives, and mind their own affairs, in the midst of all this, as\nbest they may. They are wonderfully like human creatures,--forget all\nthat is going on if they don't see it, however dreadful; and never think\nwhat is to happen to-morrow. They are spiteful or loving, and indolent\nor painstaking, and orderly or licentious, with no thought whatever of\nthe lava or the flood which may break over them any day; and evaporate\nthem into air-bubbles, or wash them into a solution of salts. And you\nmay look at them, once understanding the surrounding conditions of their\nfate, with an endless interest. You will see crowds of unfortunate\nlittle crystals, who have been forced to constitute themselves in a\nhurry, their dissolving element being fiercely scorched away; you will\nsee them doing their best, bright and numberless, but tiny. Then you\nwill find indulged crystals, who have had centuries to form themselves\nin, and have changed their mind and ways continually; and have been\ntired, and taken heart again; and have been sick, and got well again;\nand thought they would try a different diet, and then thought better of\nit; and made but a poor use of their advantages, after all. And others\nyou will see, who have begun life as wicked crystals; and then have been\nimpressed by alarming circumstances, and have become converted crystals,\nand behaved amazingly for a little while, and fallen away again, and\nended, but discreditably, perhaps even in decomposition; so that one\ndoesn't know what will become of them. And sometimes you will see\ndeceitful crystals, that look as soft as velvet, and are deadly to all\nnear them; and sometimes you will see deceitful crystals, that seem\nflint-edged, like our little quartz-crystal of a housekeeper here,\n(hush! Dora,) and are endlessly gentle and true wherever gentleness and\ntruth are needed. And sometimes you will see little child-crystals put\nto school like school-girls, and made to stand in rows; and taken the\ngreatest care of, and taught how to hold themselves up, and behave: and\nsometimes you will see unhappy little child-crystals left to lie about\nin the dirt, and pick up their living, and learn manners, where they\ncan. And sometimes you will see fat crystals eating up thin ones, like\ngreat capitalists and little labourers; and politico-economic crystals\nteaching the stupid ones how to eat each other, and cheat each other;\nand foolish crystals getting in the way of wise ones; and impatient\ncrystals spoiling the plans of patient ones, irreparably; just as things\ngo on in the world. And sometimes you may see hypocritical crystals\ntaking the shape of others, though they are nothing like in their minds;\nand vampire crystals eating out the hearts of others; and hermit-crab\ncrystals living in the shells of others; and parasite crystals living on\nthe means of others; and courtier crystals glittering in attendance upon\nothers; and all these, besides the two great companies of war and peace,\nwho ally themselves, resolutely to attack, or resolutely to defend. And\nfor the close, you see the broad shadow and deadly force of inevitable\nfate, above all this: you see the multitudes of crystals whose time has\ncome; not a set time, as with us, but yet a time, sooner or later, when\nthey all must give up their crystal ghosts:--when the strength by which\nthey grew, and the breath given them to breathe, pass away from them;\nand they fail, and are consumed, and vanish away; and another generation\nis brought to life, framed out of their ashes.\n\nMARY. It is very terrible. Is it not the complete fulfilment, down into\nthe very dust, of that verse: 'The whole creation groaneth and\ntravaileth in pain'?\n\nL. I do not know that it is in pain, Mary: at least, the evidence tends\nto show that there is much more pleasure than pain, as soon as sensation\nbecomes possible.\n\nLUCILLA. But then, surely, if we are told that it is pain, it must be\npain?\n\nL. Yes; if we are told; and told in the way you mean, Lucilla; but\nnothing is said of the proportion to pleasure. Unmitigated pain would\nkill any of us in a few hours; pain equal to our pleasures would make us\nloathe life; the word itself cannot be applied to the lower conditions\nof matter, in its ordinary sense. But wait till to-morrow to ask me\nabout this. To-morrow is to be kept for questions and difficulties; let\nus keep to the plain facts to-day. There is yet one group of facts\nconnected with this rending of the rocks, which I especially want you to\nnotice. You know, when you have mended a very old dress, quite\nmeritoriously, till it won't mend any more----\n\nEGYPT (_interrupting_). Could not you sometimes take gentlemen's work to\nillustrate by?\n\nL. Gentlemen's work is rarely so useful as yours, Egypt; and when it is\nuseful, girls cannot easily understand it.\n\nDORA. I am sure we should understand it better than gentlemen understand\nabout sewing.\n\nL. My dear, I hope I always speak modestly, and under correction, when I\ntouch upon matters of the kind too high for me; and besides, I never\nintend to speak otherwise than respectfully of sewing;--though you\nalways seem to think I am laughing at you. In all seriousness,\nillustrations from sewing are those which Neith likes me best to use;\nand which young ladies ought to like everybody to use. What do you think\nthe beautiful word 'wife' comes from?\n\nDORA (_tossing her head_). I don't think it is a particularly beautiful\nword.\n\nL. Perhaps not. At your ages you may think 'bride' sounds better; but\nwife's the word for wear, depend upon it. It is the great word in which\nthe English and Latin languages conquer the French and the Greek. I hope\nthe French will some day get a word for it, yet, instead of their\ndreadful 'femme.' But what do you think it comes from?\n\nDORA. I never _did_ think about it.\n\nL. Nor you, Sibyl?\n\nSIBYL. No; I thought it was Saxon, and stopped there.\n\nL. Yes; but the great good of Saxon words is, that they usually do mean\nsomething. Wife means 'weaver.' You have all the right to call\nyourselves little 'housewives,' when you sew neatly.\n\nDORA. But I don't think we want to call ourselves 'little housewives.'\n\nL. You must either be house-Wives, or house-Moths; remember that. In the\ndeep sense, you must either weave men's fortunes, and embroider them; or\nfeed upon, and bring them to decay. You had better let me keep my sewing\nillustration, and help me out with it.\n\nDORA. Well we'll hear it, under protest.\n\nL. You have heard it before; but with reference to other matters. When\nit is said, 'no man putteth a piece of new cloth on an old garment, else\nit taketh from the old,' does it not mean that the new piece tears the\nold one away at the sewn edge?\n\nDORA. Yes; certainly.\n\nL. And when you mend a decayed stuff with strong thread, does not the\nwhole edge come away sometimes, when it tears again?\n\nDORA. Yes; and then it is of no use to mend it any more.\n\nL. Well, the rocks don't seem to think that: but the same thing happens\nto them continually. I told you they were full of rents, or veins. Large\nmasses of mountain are sometimes as full of veins as your hand is; and\nof veins nearly as fine (only you know a rock vein does not mean a tube,\nbut a crack or cleft). Now these clefts are mended, usually, with the\nstrongest material the rock can find; and often literally with threads;\nfor the gradually opening rent seems to draw the substance it is filled\nwith into fibres, which cross from one side of it to the other, and are\npartly crystalline; so that, when the crystals become distinct, the\nfissure has often exactly the look of a tear, brought together with\nstrong cross stitches. Now when this is completely done, and all has\nbeen fastened and made firm, perhaps some new change of temperature may\noccur, and the rock begin to contract again. Then the old vein must open\nwider; or else another open elsewhere. If the old vein widen, it _may_\ndo so at its centre; but it constantly happens, with well filled veins,\nthat the cross stitches are too strong to break; the walls of the vein,\ninstead, are torn away by them; and another little supplementary\nvein--often three or four successively--will be thus formed at the side\nof the first.\n\nMARY. That is really very much like our work. But what do the mountains\nuse to sew with?\n\nL. Quartz, whenever they can get it: pure limestones are obliged to be\ncontent with carbonate of lime; but most mixed rocks can find some\nquartz for themselves. Here is a piece of black slate from the Buet: it\nlooks merely like dry dark mud;--you could not think there was any\nquartz in it; but, you see, its rents are all stitched together with\nbeautiful white thread, which is the purest quartz, so close drawn that\nyou can break it like flint, in the mass; but, where it has been exposed\nto the weather, the fine fibrous structure is shown: and, more than\nthat, you see the threads have been all twisted and pulled aside, this\nway and the other, by the warpings and shifting of the sides of the vein\nas it widened.\n\nMARY. It is wonderful! But is that going on still? Are the mountains\nbeing torn and sewn together again at this moment?\n\nL. Yes, certainly, my dear: but I think, just as certainly (though\ngeologists differ on this matter), not with the violence, or on the\nscale, of their ancient ruin and renewal. All things seem to be tending\ntowards a condition of at least temporary rest; and that groaning and\ntravailing of the creation, as, assuredly, not wholly in pain, is not,\nin the full sense, 'until now.'\n\nMARY. I want so much to ask you about that!\n\nSIBYL. Yes; and we all want to ask you about a great many other things\nbesides.\n\nL. It seems to me that you have got quite as many new ideas as are good\nfor any of you at present: and I should not like to burden you with\nmore; but I must see that those you have are clear, if I can make them\nso; so we will have one more talk, for answer of questions, mainly.\nThink over all the ground, and make your difficulties thoroughly\npresentable. Then we'll see what we can make of them.\n\nDORA. They shall all be dressed in their very best; and curtsey as they\ncome in.\n\nL. No, no, Dora; no curtseys, if you please. I had enough of them the\nday you all took a fit of reverence, and curtsied me out of the room.\n\nDORA. But, you know, we cured ourselves of the fault, at once, by that\nfit. We have never been the least respectful since. And the difficulties\nwill only curtsey themselves out of the room, I hope;--come in at one\ndoor--vanish at the other.\n\nL. What a pleasant world it would be, if all its difficulties were\ntaught to behave so! However, one can generally make something, or\n(better still) nothing, or at least less, of them, if they thoroughly\nknow their own minds; and your difficulties--I must say that for you,\nchildren,--generally do know their own minds, as you do yourselves.\n\nDORA. That is very kindly said for us. Some people would not allow so\nmuch as that girls had any minds to know.\n\nL. They will at least admit that you have minds to change, Dora.\n\nMARY. You might have left us the last speech, without a retouch. But\nwe'll put our little minds, such as they are, in the best trim we can,\nfor to-morrow.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE X.\n\n_THE CRYSTAL REST._\n\n     _Evening. The fireside._ L's _arm-chair in the comfortablest\n     corner._\n\n\nL. (_perceiving various arrangements being made of foot-stool, cushion,\nscreen, and the like_). Yes, yes, it's all very fine! and I am to sit\nhere to be asked questions till supper-time, am I?\n\nDORA. I don't think you can have any supper to-night:--we've got so much\nto ask.\n\nLILY. Oh, Miss Dora! We can fetch it him here, you know, so nicely!\n\nL. Yes, Lily, that will be pleasant, with competitive examination going\non over one's plate; the competition being among the examiners. Really,\nnow that I know what teasing things girls are, I don't so much wonder\nthat people used to put up patiently with the dragons who took _them_\nfor supper. But I can't help myself, I suppose;--no thanks to St.\nGeorge. Ask away, children, and I'll answer as civilly as may be.\n\nDORA. We don't so much care about being answered civilly, as about not\nbeing asked things back again.\n\nL. 'Ayez seulement la patience que je le parle.' There shall be no\nrequitals.\n\nDORA. Well, then, first of all--What shall we ask first, Mary?\n\nMARY. It does not matter. I think all the questions come into one, at\nlast, nearly.\n\nDORA. You know, you always talk as if the crystals were alive; and we\nnever understand how much you are in play, and how much in earnest.\nThat's the first thing.\n\nL. Neither do I understand, myself, my dear, how much I am in earnest.\nThe stones puzzle me as much as I puzzle you. They look as if they were\nalive, and make me speak as if they were; and I do not in the least know\nhow much truth there is in the appearance. I'm not to ask things back\nagain to-night, but all questions of this sort lead necessarily to the\none main question, which we asked, before, in vain, 'What is it to be\nalive?'\n\nDORA. Yes; but we want to come back to that: for we've been reading\nscientific books about the 'conservation of forces,' and it seems all so\ngrand, and wonderful; and the experiments are so pretty; and I suppose\nit must be all right: but then the books never speak as if there were\nany such thing as 'life.'\n\nL. They mostly omit that part of the subject, certainly, Dora; but they\nare beautifully right as far as they go; and life is not a convenient\nelement to deal with. They seem to have been getting some of it into and\nout of bottles, in their 'ozone' and 'antizone' lately; but they still\nknow little of it: and, certainly, I know less.\n\nDORA. You promised not to be provoking, to-night.\n\nL. Wait a minute. Though, quite truly, I know less of the secrets of\nlife than the philosophers do; I yet know one corner of ground on which\nwe artists can stand, literally as 'Life Guards' at bay, as steadily as\nthe Guards at Inkermann; however hard the philosophers push. And you may\nstand with us, if once you learn to draw nicely.\n\nDORA. I'm sure we are all trying! but tell us where we may stand.\n\nL. You may always stand by Form, against Force. To a painter, the\nessential character of anything is the form of it; and the philosophers\ncannot touch that. They come and tell you, for instance, that there is\nas much heat, or motion, or calorific energy (or whatever else they like\nto call it), in a tea-kettle as in a Gier-eagle. Very good; that is so;\nand it is very interesting. It requires just as much heat as will boil\nthe kettle, to take the Gier-eagle up to his nest; and as much more to\nbring him down again on a hare or a partridge. But we painters,\nacknowledging the equality and similarity of the kettle and the bird in\nall scientific respects, attach, for our part, our principal interest to\nthe difference in their forms. For us, the primarily cognisable facts,\nin the two things, are, that the kettle has a spout, and the eagle a\nbeak; the one a lid on its back, the other a pair of wings;--not to\nspeak of the distinction also of volition, which the philosophers may\nproperly call merely a form or mode of force;--but then, to an artist,\nthe form, or mode, is the gist of the business. The kettle chooses to\nsit still on the hob; the eagle to recline on the air. It is the fact of\nthe choice, not the equal degree of temperature in the fulfilment of it,\nwhich appears to us the more interesting circumstance;--though the other\nis very interesting too. Exceedingly so! Don't laugh, children; the\nphilosophers have been doing quite splendid work lately, in their own\nway: especially, the transformation of force into light is a great piece\nof systematised discovery; and this notion about the sun's being\nsupplied with his flame by ceaseless meteoric hail is grand, and looks\nvery likely to be true. Of course, it is only the old gun-lock,--flint\nand steel,--on a large scale: but the order and majesty of it are\nsublime. Still, we sculptors and painters care little about it. 'It is\nvery fine,' we say, 'and very useful, this knocking the light out of the\nsun, or into it, by an eternal cataract of planets. But you may hail\naway, so, for ever, and you will not knock out what we can. Here is a\nbit of silver, not the size of half-a-crown, on which, with a single\nhammer stroke, one of us, two thousand and odd years ago, hit out the\nhead of the Apollo of Clazomenae. It is merely a matter of form; but if\nany of you philosophers, with your whole planetary system to hammer\nwith, can hit out such another bit of silver as this,--we will take off\nour hats to you. For the present, we keep them on.'\n\nMARY. Yes, I understand; and that is nice; but I don't think we shall\nany of us like having only form to depend upon.\n\nL. It was not neglected in the making of Eve, my dear.\n\nMARY. It does not seem to separate us from the dust of the ground. It is\nthat breathing of the life which we want to understand.\n\nL. So you should: but hold fast to the form, and defend that first, as\ndistinguished from the mere transition of forces. Discern the moulding\nhand of the potter commanding the clay, from his merely beating foot,\nas it turns the wheel. If you can find incense, in the vase,\nafterwards,--well: but it is curious how far mere form will carry you\nahead of the philosophers. For instance, with regard to the most\ninteresting of all their modes of force--light;--they never consider how\nfar the existence of it depends on the putting of certain vitreous and\nnervous substances into the formal arrangement which we call an eye. The\nGerman philosophers began the attack, long ago, on the other side, by\ntelling us, there was no such thing as light at all, unless we chose to\nsee it: now, German and English, both, have reversed their engines, and\ninsist that light would be exactly the same light that it is, though\nnobody could ever see it. The fact being that the force must be there,\nand the eyes there; and 'light' means the effect of the one on the\nother;--and perhaps, also--(Plato saw farther into that mystery than any\none has since, that I know of),--on something a little way within the\neyes; but we may stand quite safe, close behind the retina, and defy the\nphilosophers.\n\nSIBYL. But I don't care so much about defying the philosophers, if only\none could get a clear idea of life, or soul, for one's self.\n\nL. Well, Sibyl, you used to know more about it, in that cave of yours,\nthan any of us. I was just going to ask you about inspiration, and the\ngolden bough, and the like; only I remembered I was not to ask anything.\nBut, will not you, at least, tell us whether the ideas of Life, as the\npower of putting things together, or 'making' them; and of Death, as the\npower of pushing things separate, or 'unmaking' them, may not be very\nsimply held in balance against each other?\n\nSIBYL. No, I am not in my cave to-night; and cannot tell you anything.\n\nL. I think they may. Modern Philosophy is a great separator; it is\nlittle more than the expansion of Moliere's great sentence, 'Il s'ensuit\nde la, que tout ce qu'il y a de beau est dans les dictionnaires; il n'y\na que les mots qui sont transposes.' But when you used to be in your\ncave, Sibyl, and to be inspired, there was (and there remains still in\nsome small measure), beyond the merely formative and sustaining power,\nanother, which we painters call 'passion'--I don't know what the\nphilosophers call it; we know it makes people red, or white; and\ntherefore it must be something, itself; and perhaps it is the most truly\n'poetic' or 'making' force of all, creating a world of its own out of a\nglance, or a sigh: and the want of passion is perhaps the truest death,\nor 'unmaking' of everything;--even of stones. By the way, you were all\nreading about that ascent of the Aiguille Verte, the other day?\n\nSIBYL. Because you had told us it was so difficult, you thought it could\nnot be ascended.\n\nL. Yes; I believed the Aiguille Verte would have held its own. But do\nyou recollect what one of the climbers exclaimed, when he first felt\nsure of reaching the summit?\n\nSIBYL. Yes, it was, 'Oh, Aiguille Verte, vous etes morte, vous etes\nmorte!'\n\nL. That was true instinct. Real philosophic joy. Now can you at all\nfancy the difference between that feeling of triumph in a mountain's\ndeath; and the exultation of your beloved poet, in its life--\n\n    'Quantus Athos, aut quantus Eryx, aut ipse coruscis\n    Quum fremit ilicibus quantus, gandetque nivali\n    Vertice, se attollens pater Apenninus ad auras.'\n\nDORA. You must translate for us mere house-keepers, please,--whatever\nthe cave-keepers may know about it.\n\nMARY. Will Dryden do?\n\nL. No. Dryden is a far way worse than nothing, and nobody will 'do.' You\ncan't translate it. But this is all you need know, that the lines are\nfull of a passionate sense of the Apennines' fatherhood, or protecting\npower over Italy; and of sympathy with their joy in their snowy strength\nin heaven; and with the same joy, shuddering through all the leaves of\ntheir forests.\n\nMARY. Yes, that is a difference indeed! but then, you know, one can't\nhelp feeling that it is fanciful. It is very delightful to imagine the\nmountains to be alive; but then,--_are_ they alive?\n\nL. It seems to me, on the whole, Mary, that the feelings of the purest\nand most mightily passioned human souls are likely to be the truest.\nNot, indeed, if they do not desire to know the truth, or blind\nthemselves to it that they may please themselves with passion; for then\nthey are no longer pure: but if, continually seeking and accepting the\ntruth as far as it is discernible, they trust their Maker for the\nintegrity of the instincts He has gifted them with, and rest in the\nsense of a higher truth which they cannot demonstrate, I think they will\nbe most in the right, so.\n\nDORA _and_ JESSIE (_clapping their hands_). Then we really may believe\nthat the mountains are living?\n\nL. You may at least earnestly believe, that the presence of the spirit\nwhich culminates in your own life, shows itself in dawning, wherever the\ndust of the earth begins to assume any orderly and lovely state. You\nwill find it impossible to separate this idea of gradated manifestation\nfrom that of the vital power. Things are not either wholly alive, or\nwholly dead. They are less or more alive. Take the nearest, most easily\nexamined instance--the life of a flower. Notice what a different degree\nand kind of life there is in the calyx and the corolla. The calyx is\nnothing but the swaddling clothes of the flower; the child-blossom is\nbound up in it, hand and foot; guarded in it, restrained by it, till the\ntime of birth. The shell is hardly more subordinate to the germ in the\negg, than the calyx to the blossom. It bursts at last; but it never\nlives as the corolla does. It may fall at the moment its task is\nfulfilled, as in the poppy; or wither gradually, as in the buttercup; or\npersist in a ligneous apathy, after the flower is dead, as in the rose;\nor harmonise itself so as to share in the aspect of the real flower, as\nin the lily; but it never shares in the corolla's bright passion of\nlife. And the gradations which thus exist between the different members\nof organic creatures, exist no less between the different ranges of\norganism. We know no higher or more energetic life than our own; but\nthere seems to me this great good in the idea of gradation of life--it\nadmits the idea of a life above us, in other creatures, as much nobler\nthan ours, as ours is nobler than that of the dust.\n\nMARY. I am glad you have said that; for I know Violet and Lucilla and\nMay want to ask you something; indeed, we all do; only you frightened\nViolet so about the ant-hill, that she can't say a word; and May is\nafraid of your teasing her, too: but I know they are wondering why you\nare always telling them about heathen gods and goddesses, as if you half\nbelieved in them; and you represent them as good; and then we see there\nis really a kind of truth in the stories about them; and we are all\npuzzled: and, in this, we cannot even make our difficulty quite clear to\nourselves;--it would be such a long confused question, if we could ask\nyou all we should like to know.\n\nL. Nor is it any wonder, Mary; for this is indeed the longest, and the\nmost wildly confused question that reason can deal with; but I will try\nto give you, quickly, a few clear ideas about the heathen gods, which\nyou may follow out afterwards, as your knowledge increases.\n\nEvery heathen conception of deity in which you are likely to be\ninterested, has three distinct characters:--\n\nI. It has a physical character. It represents some of the great powers\nor objects of nature--sun or moon, or heaven, or the winds, or the sea.\nAnd the fables first related about each deity represent, figuratively,\nthe action of the natural power which it represents; such as the rising\nand setting of the sun, the tides of the sea, and so on.\n\nII. It has an ethical character, and represents, in its history, the\nmoral dealings of God with man. Thus Apollo is first, physically, the\nsun contending with darkness; but morally, the power of divine life\ncontending with corruption. Athena is, physically, the air; morally, the\nbreathing of the divine spirit of wisdom. Neptune is, physically, the\nsea; morally, the supreme power of agitating passion; and so on.\n\nIII. It has, at last, a personal character; and is realised in the minds\nof its worshippers as a living spirit, with whom men may speak face to\nface, as a man speaks to his friend.\n\nNow it is impossible to define exactly, how far, at any period of a\nnational religion, these three ideas are mingled; or how far one\nprevails over the other. Each enquirer usually takes up one of these\nideas, and pursues it, to the exclusion of the others: no impartial\neffort seems to have been made to discern the real state of the heathen\nimagination in its successive phases. For the question is not at all\nwhat a mythological figure meant in its origin; but what it became in\neach subsequent mental development of the nation inheriting the thought.\nExactly in proportion to the mental and moral insight of any race, its\nmythological figures mean more to it, and become more real. An early and\nsavage race means nothing more (because it has nothing more to mean) by\nits Apollo, than the sun; while a cultivated Greek means every operation\nof divine intellect and justice. The Neith, of Egypt, meant, physically,\nlittle more than the blue of the air; but the Greek, in a climate of\nalternate storm and calm, represented the wild fringes of the\nstorm-cloud by the serpents of her aegis; and the lightning and cold of\nthe highest thunder-clouds, by the Gorgon on her shield: while morally,\nthe same types represented to him the mystery and changeful terror of\nknowledge, as her spear and helm its ruling and defensive power. And no\nstudy can be more interesting, or more useful to you, than that of the\ndifferent meanings which have been created by great nations, and great\npoets, out of mythological figures given them, at first, in utter\nsimplicity. But when we approach them in their third, or personal,\ncharacter (and, for its power over the whole national mind, this is far\nthe leading one), we are met at once by questions which may well put all\nof you at pause. Were they idly imagined to be real beings? and did they\nso usurp the place of the true God? Or were they actually real\nbeings--evil spirits,--leading men away from the true God? Or is it\nconceivable that they might have been real beings,--good\nspirits,--entrusted with some message from the true God? These were the\nquestions you wanted to ask; were they not, Lucilla?\n\nLUCILLA. Yes, indeed.\n\nL. Well, Lucilla, the answer will much depend upon the clearness of your\nfaith in the personality of the spirits which are described in the book\nof your own religion;--their personality, observe, as distinguished from\nmerely symbolical visions. For instance, when Jeremiah has the vision\nof the seething pot with its mouth to the north, you know that this\nwhich he sees is not a real thing; but merely a significant dream. Also,\nwhen Zechariah sees the speckled horses among the myrtle trees in the\nbottom, you still may suppose the vision symbolical;--you do not think\nof them as real spirits, like Pegasus, seen in the form of horses. But\nwhen you are told of the four riders in the Apocalypse, a distinct sense\nof personality begins to force itself upon you. And though you might, in\na dull temper, think that (for one instance of all) the fourth rider on\nthe pale horse was merely a symbol of the power of death,--in your\nstronger and more earnest moods you will rather conceive of him as a\nreal and living angel. And when you look back from the vision of the\nApocalypse to the account of the destruction of the Egyptian first-born,\nand of the army of Sennacherib, and again to David's vision at the\nthreshing floor of Araunah, the idea of personality in this death-angel\nbecomes entirely defined, just as in the appearance of the angels to\nAbraham, Manoah, or Mary.\n\nNow, when you have once consented to this idea of a personal spirit,\nmust not the question instantly follow: 'Does this spirit exercise its\nfunctions towards one race of men only, or towards all men? Was it an\nangel of death to the Jew only, or to the Gentile also?' You find a\ncertain Divine agency made visible to a King of Israel, as an armed\nangel, executing vengeance, of which one special purpose was to lower\nhis kingly pride. You find another (or perhaps the same) agency, made\nvisible to a Christian prophet as an angel standing in the sun, calling\nto the birds that fly under heaven to come, that they may eat the flesh\nof kings. Is there anything impious in the thought that the same agency\nmight have been expressed to a Greek king, or Greek seer, by similar\nvisions?--that this figure, standing in the sun, and armed with the\nsword, or the bow (whose arrows were drunk with blood), and exercising\nespecially its power in the humiliation of the proud, might, at first,\nhave been called only 'Destroyer,' and afterwards, as the light, or sun,\nof justice, was recognised in the chastisement, called also 'Physician'\nor 'Healer?' If you feel hesitation in admitting the possibility of\nsuch a manifestation, I believe you will find it is caused, partly\nindeed by such trivial things as the difference to your ear between\nGreek and English terms; but, far more, by uncertainty in your own mind\nrespecting the nature and truth of the visions spoken of in the Bible.\nHave any of you intently examined the nature of your belief in them?\nYou, for instance, Lucilla, who think often, and seriously, of such\nthings?\n\nLUCILLA. No; I never could tell what to believe about them. I know they\nmust be true in some way or other; and I like reading about them.\n\nL. Yes; and I like reading about them too, Lucilla; as I like reading\nother grand poetry. But, surely, we ought both to do more than like it?\nWill God be satisfied with us, think you, if we read His words merely\nfor the sake of an entirely meaningless poetical sensation?\n\nLUCILLA. But do not the people who give themselves to seek out the\nmeaning of these things, often get very strange, and extravagant?\n\nL. More than that, Lucilla. They often go mad. That abandonment of the\nmind to religious theory, or contemplation, is the very thing I have\nbeen pleading with you against. I never said you should set yourself to\ndiscover the meanings; but you should take careful pains to understand\nthem, so far as they _are_ clear; and you should always accurately\nascertain the state of your mind about them. I want you never to read\nmerely for the pleasure of fancy; still less as a formal religious duty\n(else you might as well take to repeating Paters at once; for it is\nsurely wiser to repeat one thing we understand, than read a thousand\nwhich we cannot). Either, therefore, acknowledge the passages to be, for\nthe present, unintelligible to you; or else determine the sense in which\nyou at present receive them; or, at all events, the different senses\nbetween which you clearly see that you must choose. Make either your\nbelief, or your difficulty, definite; but do not go on, all through your\nlife, believing nothing intelligently, and yet supposing that your\nhaving read the words of a divine book must give you the right to\ndespise every religion but your own. I assure you, strange as it may\nseem, our scorn of Greek tradition depends, not on our belief, but our\ndisbelief, of our own traditions. We have, as yet, no sufficient clue to\nthe meaning of either; but you will always find that, in proportion to\nthe earnestness of our own faith, its tendency to accept a spiritual\npersonality increases: and that the most vital and beautiful Christian\ntemper rests joyfully in its conviction of the multitudinous ministry of\nliving angels, infinitely varied in rank and power. You all know one\nexpression of the purest and happiest form of such faith, as it exists\nin modern times, in Richter's lovely illustrations of the Lord's Prayer.\nThe real and living death-angel, girt as a pilgrim for journey, and\nsoftly crowned with flowers, beckons at the dying mother's door;\nchild-angels sit talking face to face with mortal children, among the\nflowers;--hold them by their little coats, lest they fall on the\nstairs;--whisper dreams of heaven to them, leaning over their pillows;\ncarry the sound of the church bells for them far through the air; and\neven descending lower in service, fill little cups with honey, to hold\nout to the weary bee. By the way, Lily, did you tell the other children\nthat story about your little sister, and Alice, and the sea?\n\nLILY. I told it to Alice, and to Miss Dora. I don't think I did to\nanybody else. I thought it wasn't worth.\n\nL. We shall think it worth a great deal now, Lily, if you will tell it\nus. How old is Dotty, again? I forget.\n\nLILY. She is not quite three; but she has such odd little old ways,\nsometimes.\n\nL. And she was very fond of Alice?\n\nLILY. Yes; Alice was so good to her always!\n\nL. And so when Alice went away?\n\nLILY. Oh, it was nothing, you know, to tell about; only it was strange\nat the time.\n\nL. Well; but I want you to tell it.\n\nLILY. The morning after Alice had gone, Dotty was very sad and restless\nwhen she got up; and went about, looking into all the corners, as if she\ncould find Alice in them, and at last she came to me, and said, 'Is Alie\ngone over the great sea?' And I said, 'Yes, she is gone over the great,\ndeep sea, but she will come back again some day.' Then Dotty looked\nround the room; and I had just poured some water out into the basin; and\nDotty ran to it, and got up on a chair, and dashed her hands through the\nwater, again and again; and cried, 'Oh, deep, deep sea! send little Alie\nback to me.'\n\nL. Isn't that pretty, children? There's a dear little heathen for you!\nThe whole heart of Greek mythology is in that; the idea of a personal\nbeing in the elemental power;--of its being moved by prayer;--and of its\npresence everywhere, making the broken diffusion of the element sacred.\n\nNow, remember, the measure in which we may permit ourselves to think of\nthis trusted and adored personality, in Greek, or in any other,\nmythology, as conceivably a shadow of truth, will depend on the degree\nin which we hold the Greeks, or other great nations, equal, or inferior,\nin privilege and character, to the Jews, or to ourselves. If we believe\nthat the great Father would use the imagination of the Jew as an\ninstrument by which to exalt and lead him; but the imagination of the\nGreek only to degrade and mislead him: if we can suppose that real\nangels were sent to minister to the Jews and to punish them; but no\nangels, or only mocking spectra of angels, or even devils in the shapes\nof angels, to lead Lycurgus and Leonidas from desolate cradle to\nhopeless grave:--and if we can think that it was only the influence of\nspectres, or the teaching of demons, which issued in the making of\nmothers like Cornelia, and of sons like Cleobis and Bito, we may, of\ncourse, reject the heathen Mythology in our privileged scorn: but, at\nleast, we are bound to examine strictly by what faults of our own it has\ncome to pass, that the ministry of real angels among ourselves is\noccasionally so ineffectual, as to end in the production of Cornelias\nwho entrust their child-jewels to Charlotte Winsors for the better\nkeeping of them; and of sons like that one who, the other day, in\nFrance, beat his mother to death with a stick; and was brought in by the\njury, 'guilty, with extenuating circumstances.'\n\nMAY. Was that really possible?\n\nL. Yes, my dear. I am not sure that I can lay my hand on the reference\nto it (and I should not have said 'the other day'--it was a year or two\nago), but you may depend on the fact; and I could give you many like it,\nif I chose. There was a murder done in Russia, very lately, on a\ntraveller. The murderess's little daughter was in the way, and found it\nout, somehow. Her mother killed her, too, and put her into the oven.\nThere is a peculiar horror about the relations between parent and child,\nwhich are being now brought about by our variously degraded forms of\nEuropean white slavery. Here _is_ one reference, I see, in my notes on\nthat story of Cleobis and Bito; though I suppose I marked this chiefly\nfor its quaintness, and the beautifully Christian names of the sons; but\nit is a good instance of the power of the King of the Valley of\nDiamonds[153] among us.\n\nIn 'Galignani' of July 21-22, 1862, is reported a trial of a farmer's\nson in the department of the Yonne. The father, two years ago, at Malay\nle Grand, gave up his property to his two sons, on condition of being\nmaintained by them. Simon fulfilled his agreement, but Pierre would not.\nThe tribunal of Sens condemns Pierre to pay eighty-four francs a year to\nhis father. Pierre replies, 'he would rather die than pay it.' Actually,\nreturning home, he throws himself into the river, and the body is not\nfound till next day.\n\nMARY. But--but--I can't tell what you would have us think. Do you\nseriously mean that the Greeks were better than we are; and that their\ngods were real angels?\n\nL. No, my dear. I mean only that we know, in reality, less than nothing\nof the dealings of our Maker with our fellow-men; and can only reason or\nconjecture safely about them, when we have sincerely humble thoughts of\nourselves and our creeds.\n\nWe owe to the Greeks every noble discipline in literature; every radical\nprinciple of art; and every form of convenient beauty in our household\nfurniture and daily occupations of life. We are unable, ourselves, to\nmake rational use of half that we have received from them: and, of our\nown, we have nothing but discoveries in science, and fine mechanical\nadaptations of the discovered physical powers. On the other hand, the\nvice existing among certain classes, both of the rich and poor, in\nLondon, Paris, and Vienna, could have been conceived by a Spartan or\nRoman of the heroic ages only as possible in a Tartarus, where fiends\nwere employed to teach, but not to punish, crime. It little becomes us\nto speak contemptuously of the religion of races to whom we stand in\nsuch relations; nor do I think any man of modesty or thoughtfulness will\never speak so of any religion, in which God has allowed one good man to\ndie, trusting.\n\nThe more readily we admit the possibility of our own cherished\nconvictions being mixed with error, the more vital and helpful whatever\nis right in them will become: and no error is so conclusively fatal as\nthe idea that God will not allow _us_ to err, though He has allowed all\nother men to do so. There may be doubt of the meaning of other visions,\nbut there is none respecting that of the dream of St. Peter; and you may\ntrust the Rock of the Church's Foundation for true interpreting, when he\nlearned from it that, 'in every nation, he that feareth God and worketh\nrighteousness, is accepted with Him.' See that you understand what that\nrighteousness means; and set hand to it stoutly: you will always measure\nyour neighbors' creed kindly, in proportion to the substantial fruits of\nyour own. Do not think you will ever get harm by striving to enter into\nthe faith of others, and to sympathise, in imagination, with the guiding\nprinciples of their lives. So only can you justly love them, or pity\nthem, or praise. By the gracious effort you will double, treble--nay,\nindefinitely multiply, at once the pleasure, the reverence, and the\nintelligence with which you read: and, believe me, it is wiser and\nholier, by the fire of your own faith to kindle the ashes of expired\nreligions, than to let your soul shiver and stumble among their graves,\nthrough the gathering darkness, and communicable cold.\n\nMARY (_after some pause_). We shall all like reading Greek history so\nmuch better after this! but it has put everything else out of our heads\nthat we wanted to ask.\n\nL. I can tell you one of the things; and I might take credit for\ngenerosity in telling you; but I have a personal reason--Lucilla's verse\nabout the creation.\n\nDORA. Oh, yes--yes; and its 'pain together, until now.'\n\nL. I call you back to that, because I must warn you against an old error\nof my own. Somewhere in the fourth volume of 'Modern Painters,' I said\nthat the earth seemed to have passed through its highest state: and\nthat, after ascending by a series of phases, culminating in its\nhabitation by man, it seems to be now gradually becoming less fit for\nthat habitation.\n\nMARY. Yes, I remember.\n\nL. I wrote those passages under a very bitter impression of the gradual\nperishing of beauty from the loveliest scenes which I knew in the\nphysical world;--not in any doubtful way, such as I might have\nattributed to loss of sensation in myself--but by violent and definite\nphysical action; such as the filling up of the Lac de Chede by landslips\nfrom the Rochers des Fiz;--the narrowing of the Lake Lucerne by the\ngaining delta of the stream of the Muotta-Thal, which, in the course of\nyears, will cut the lake into two, as that of Brientz has been divided\nfrom that of Thun;--the steady diminishing of the glaciers north of the\nAlps, and still more, of the sheets of snow on their southern slopes,\nwhich supply the refreshing streams of Lombardy:--the equally steady\nincrease of deadly maremma round Pisa and Venice; and other such\nphenomena, quite measurably traceable within the limits even of short\nlife, and unaccompanied, as it seemed, by redeeming or compensatory\nagencies. I am still under the same impression respecting the existing\nphenomena; but I feel more strongly, every day, that no evidence to be\ncollected within historical periods can be accepted as any clue to the\ngreat tendencies of geological change; but that the great laws which\nnever fail, and to which all change is subordinate, appear such as to\naccomplish a gradual advance to lovelier order, and more calmly, yet\nmore deeply, animated Rest. Nor has this conviction ever fastened itself\nupon me more distinctly, than during my endeavour to trace the laws\nwhich govern the lowly framework of the dust. For, through all the\nphases of its transition and dissolution, there seems to be a continual\neffort to raise itself into a higher state; and a measured gain, through\nthe fierce revulsion and slow renewal of the earth's frame, in beauty,\nand order, and permanence. The soft white sediments of the sea draw\nthemselves, in process of time, into smooth knots of sphered symmetry;\nburdened and strained under increase of pressure, they pass into a\nnascent marble; scorched by fervent heat, they brighten and blanch into\nthe snowy rock of Paros and Carrara. The dark drift of the inland river,\nor stagnant slime of inland pool and lake, divides, or resolves itself\nas it dries, into layers of its several elements; slowly purifying each\nby the patient withdrawal of it from the anarchy of the mass in which it\nwas mingled. Contracted by increasing drought, till it must shatter into\nfragments, it infuses continually a finer ichor into the opening veins,\nand finds in its weakness the first rudiments of a perfect strength.\nBent at last, rock from rock, nay, atom from atom, and tormented in\nlambent fire, it knits, through the fusion, the fibres of a perennial\nendurance; and, during countless subsequent centuries, declining, or\nrather let me say, rising to repose, finishes the infallible lustre of\nits crystalline beauty, under harmonies of law which are wholly\nbeneficent, because wholly inexorable.\n\n     (_The children seem pleased, but more inclined to think over\n     these matters than to talk._)\n\nL. (_after giving them a little time_). Mary, I seldom ask you to read\nanything out of books of mine; but there is a passage about the Law of\nHelp, which I want you to read to the children now, because it is of no\nuse merely to put it in other words for them. You know the place I mean,\ndo not you?\n\nMARY. Yes (_presently finding it_); where shall I begin?\n\nL. Here; but the elder ones had better look afterwards at the piece\nwhich comes just before this.\n\nMARY (_reads_):\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n'A pure or holy state of anything is that in which all its parts are\nhelpful or consistent. The highest and first law of the universe, and\nthe other name of life, is therefore, \"help.\" The other name of death is\n\"separation.\" Government and co-operation are in all things, and\neternally, the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, eternally, and in\nall things, the laws of death.\n\n'Perhaps the best, though the most familiar, example we could take of\nthe nature and power of consistence, will be that of the possible\nchanges in the dust we tread on.\n\n'Exclusive of animal decay, we can hardly arrive at a more absolute type\nof impurity, than the mud or slime of a damp, over-trodden path, in the\noutskirts of a manufacturing town. I do not say mud of the road, because\nthat is mixed with animal refuse; but take merely an ounce or two of the\nblackest slime of a beaten footpath, on a rainy day, near a\nmanufacturing town. That slime we shall find in most cases composed of\nclay (or brickdust, which is burnt clay), mixed with soot, a little sand\nand water. All these elements are at helpless war with each other, and\ndestroy reciprocally each other's nature and power: competing and\nfighting for place at every tread of your foot; sand squeezing out clay,\nand clay squeezing out water, and soot meddling everywhere, and defiling\nthe whole. Let us suppose that this ounce of mud is left in perfect\nrest, and that its elements gather together, like to like, so that their\natoms may get into the closest relations possible.\n\n'Let the clay begin. Ridding itself of all foreign substance, it\ngradually becomes a white earth, already very beautiful, and fit, with\nhelp of congealing fire, to be made into finest porcelain, and painted\non, and be kept in kings' palaces. But such artificial consistence is\nnot its best. Leave it still quiet, to follow its own instinct of unity,\nand it becomes, not only white but clear; not only clear, but hard; nor\nonly clear and hard, but so set that it can deal with light in a\nwonderful way, and gather out of it the loveliest blue rays only,\nrefusing the rest. We call it then a sapphire.\n\n'Such being the consummation of the clay, we give similar permission of\nquiet to the sand. It also becomes, first, a white earth; then proceeds\nto grow clear and hard, and at last arranges itself in mysterious,\ninfinitely fine parallel lines, which have the power of reflecting, not\nmerely the blue rays, but the blue, green, purple, and red rays, in the\ngreatest beauty in which they can be seen through any hard material\nwhatsoever. We call it then an opal.\n\n'In next order the soot sets to work. It cannot make itself white at\nfirst; but, instead of being discouraged, tries harder and harder; and\ncomes out clear at last; and the hardest thing in the world: and for\nthe blackness that it had, obtains in exchange the power of reflecting\nall the rays of the sun at once, in the vividest blaze that any solid\nthing can shoot. We call it then a diamond.\n\n'Last of all, the water purifies, or unites itself; contented enough if\nit only reach the form of a dewdrop: but, if we insist on its proceeding\nto a more perfect consistence, it crystallises into the shape of a star.\nAnd, for the ounce of slime which we had by political economy of\ncompetition, we have, by political economy of co-operation, a sapphire,\nan opal, and a diamond, set in the midst of a star of snow.'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nL. I have asked you to hear that, children, because, from all that we\nhave seen in the work and play of these past days, I would have you gain\nat least one grave and enduring thought. The seeming trouble,--the\nunquestionable degradation,--of the elements of the physical earth, must\npassively wait the appointed time of their repose, or their restoration.\nIt can only be brought about for them by the agency of external law. But\nif, indeed, there be a nobler life in us than in these strangely moving\natoms;--if, indeed, there is an eternal difference between the fire\nwhich inhabits them, and that which animates us,--it must be shown, by\neach of us in his appointed place, not merely in the patience, but in\nthe activity of our hope; not merely by our desire, but our labour, for\nthe time when the Dust of the generations of men shall be confirmed for\nfoundations of the gates of the city of God. The human clay, now\ntrampled and despised, will not be,--cannot be,--knit into strength and\nlight by accident or ordinances of unassisted fate. By human cruelty and\niniquity it has been afflicted;--by human mercy and justice it must be\nraised: and, in all fear or questioning of what is or is not, the real\nmessage of creation, or of revelation, you may assuredly find perfect\npeace, if you are resolved to do that which your Lord has plainly\nrequired,--and content that He should indeed require no more of\nyou,--than to do Justice, to love Mercy, and to walk humbly with Him.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[153] Note vi.\n\n\n\n\nNOTES.\n\n\nNOTE I.\n\nPage 24.\n\n_'That third pyramid of hers.'_\n\nThroughout the dialogues, it must be observed that 'Sibyl' is addressed\n(when in play) as having once been the Cumaean Sibyl; and 'Egypt' as\nhaving been queen Nitocris,--the Cinderella, and 'the greatest heroine\nand beauty' of Egyptian story. The Egyptians called her 'Neith the\nVictorious' (Nitocris), and the Greeks 'Face of the Rose' (Rhodope).\nChaucer's beautiful conception of Cleopatra in the 'Legend of Good\nWomen,' is much more founded on the traditions of her than on those of\nCleopatra; and, especially in its close, modified by Herodotus's\nterrible story of the death of Nitocris, which, however, is\nmythologically nothing more than a part of the deep monotonous ancient\ndirge for the fulfilment of the earthly destiny of Beauty; 'She cast\nherself into a chamber full of ashes.'\n\nI believe this Queen is now sufficiently ascertained to have either\nbuilt, or increased to double its former size, the third pyramid of\nGizeh: and the passage following in the text refers to an imaginary\nendeavour, by the Old Lecturer and the children together, to make out\nthe description of that pyramid in the 167th page of the second volume\nof Bunsen's 'Egypt's Place in Universal History'--ideal\nendeavour,--which ideally terminates as the Old Lecturer's real\nendeavours to the same end always have terminated. There are, however,\nvaluable notes respecting Nitocris at page 210 of the same volume: but\nthe 'Early Egyptian History for the Young,' by the author of Sidney\nGray, contains, in a pleasant form, as much information as young readers\nwill usually need.\n\n\nNOTE II.\n\nPage 25.\n\n_'Pyramid of Asychis.'_\n\nThis pyramid, in mythology, divides with the Tower of Babel the shame,\nor vain glory, of being presumptuously, and first among great edifices,\nbuilt with 'brick for stone.' This was the inscription on it, according\nto Herodotus:--\n\n     'Despise me not, in comparing me with the pyramids of stone;\n     for I have the pre-eminence over them, as far as Jupiter has\n     pre-eminence over the gods. For, striking with staves into\n     the pool, men gathered the clay which fastened itself to the\n     staff, and kneaded bricks out of it, and so made me.'\n\nThe word I have translated 'kneaded' is literally 'drew;' in the sense\nof drawing, for which the Latins used 'duco;' and thus gave us our\n'ductile' in speaking of dead clay, and Duke, Doge, or leader, in\nspeaking of living clay. As the asserted pre-eminence of the edifice is\nmade, in this inscription, to rest merely on the quantity of labour\nconsumed in it, this pyramid is considered, in the text, as the type, at\nonce, of the base building, and of the lost labour, of future ages, so\nfar at least as the spirits of measured and mechanical effort deal with\nit: but Neith, exercising her power upon it, makes it a type of the work\nof wise and inspired builders.\n\n\nNOTE III.\n\nPage 25.\n\n_'The Greater Pthah.'_\n\nIt is impossible, as yet, to define with distinctness the personal\nagencies of the Egyptian deities. They are continually associated in\nfunction, or hold derivative powers, or are related to each other in\nmysterious triads; uniting always symbolism of physical phenomena with\nreal spiritual power. I have endeavoured partly to explain this in the\ntext of the tenth Lecture: here, it is only necessary for the reader to\nknow that the Greater Pthah more or less represents the formative power\nof order and measurement: he always stands on a four-square pedestal,\n'the Egyptian cubit, metaphorically used as the hieroglyphic for truth;'\nhis limbs are bound together, to signify fixed stability, as of a\npillar; he has a measuring-rod in his hand; and at Philae, is represented\nas holding an egg on a potter's wheel; but I do not know if this symbol\noccurs in older sculptures. His usual title is the 'Lord of Truth.'\nOthers, very beautiful: 'King of the Two Worlds, of Gracious\nCountenance,' 'Superintendent of the Great Abode,' &c., are given by Mr.\nBirch in Arundale's 'Gallery of Antiquities,' which I suppose is the\nbook of best authority easily accessible. For the full titles and\nutterances of the gods, Rosellini is as yet the only--and I believe,\nstill a very questionable--authority; and Arundale's little book,\nexcellent in the text, has this great defect, that its drawings give the\nstatues invariably a ludicrous or ignoble character. Readers who have\nnot access to the originals must be warned against this frequent fault\nin modern illustration (especially existing also in some of the painted\ncasts of Gothic and Norman work at the Crystal Palace). It is not owing\nto any wilful want of veracity: the plates in Arundale's book are\nlaboriously faithful: but the expressions of both face and body in a\nfigure depend merely on emphasis of touch; and, in barbaric art, most\ndraughtsmen emphasise what they plainly see--the barbarism; and miss\nconditions of nobleness, which they must approach the monument in a\ndifferent temper before they will discover, and draw with great subtlety\nbefore they can express.\n\nThe character of the Lower Pthah, or perhaps I ought rather to say, of\nPthah in his lower office, is sufficiently explained in the text of the\nthird Lecture; only the reader must be warned that the Egyptian\nsymbolism of him by the beetle was not a scornful one; it expressed only\nthe idea of his presence in the first elements of life. But it may not\nunjustly be used, in another sense, by us, who have seen his power in\nnew development; and, even as it was, I cannot conceive that the\nEgyptians should have regarded their beetle-headed image of him\n(Champollion, 'Pantheon,' pl. 12), without some occult scorn. It is the\nmost painful of all their types of any beneficent power; and even among\nthose of evil influences, none can be compared with it, except its\nopposite, the tortoise-headed demon of indolence.\n\nPasht (p. 24, line 32) is connected with the Greek Artemis, especially\nin her offices of judgment and vengeance. She is usually lioness-headed;\nsometimes cat-headed; her attributes seeming often trivial or ludicrous\nunless their full meaning is known; but the enquiry is much too wide to\nbe followed here. The cat was sacred to her; or rather to the sun, and\nsecondarily to her. She is alluded to in the text because she is always\nthe companion of Pthah (called 'the beloved of Pthah,' it may be as\nJudgment, demanded and longed for by Truth); and it may be well for\nyoung readers to have this fixed in their minds, even by chance\nassociation. There are more statues of Pasht in the British Museum than\nof any other Egyptian deity; several of them fine in workmanship; nearly\nall in dark stone, which may be, presumably, to connect her, as the\nmoon, with the night; and in her office of avenger, with grief.\n\nThoth (p. 27, line 17), is the Recording Angel of Judgment; and the\nGreek Hermes Phre (line 20), is the Sun.\n\nNeith is the Egyptian spirit of divine wisdom; and the Athena of the\nGreeks. No sufficient statement of her many attributes, still less of\ntheir meanings, can be shortly given; but this should be noted\nrespecting the veiling of the Egyptian image of her by vulture\nwings--that as she is, physically, the goddess of the air, this bird,\nthe most powerful creature of the air known to the Egyptians, naturally\nbecame her symbol. It had other significations; but certainly this, when\nin connection with Neith. As representing her, it was the most important\nsign, next to the winged sphere, in Egyptian sculpture; and, just as in\nHomer, Athena herself guides her heroes into battle, this symbol of\nwisdom, giving victory, floats over the heads of the Egyptian kings. The\nGreeks, representing the goddess herself in human form, yet would not\nlose the power of the Egyptian symbol, and changed it into an angel of\nvictory. First seen in loveliness on the early coins of Syracuse and\nLeontium, it gradually became the received sign of all conquest, and the\nso-called 'Victory' of later times; which, little by little, loses its\ntruth, and is accepted by the moderns only as a personification of\nvictory itself,--not as an actual picture of the living Angel who led to\nvictory. There is a wide difference between these two conceptions,--all\nthe difference between insincere poetry, and sincere religion. This I\nhave also endeavoured farther to illustrate in the tenth Lecture; there\nis however one part of Athena's character which it would have been\nirrelevant to dwell upon there; yet which I must not wholly leave\nunnoticed.\n\nAs the goddess of the air, she physically represents both its beneficent\ncalm, and necessary tempest: other storm-deities (as Chrysaor and AEolus)\nbeing invested with a subordinate and more or less malignant function,\nwhich is exclusively their own, and is related to that of Athena as the\npower of Mars is related to hers in war. So also Virgil makes her able\nto wield the lightning herself, while Juno cannot, but must pray for the\nintervention of AEolus. She has precisely the correspondent moral\nauthority over calmness of mind, and just anger. She soothes Achilles,\nas she incites Tydides; her physical power over the air being always\nhinted correlatively. She grasps Achilles by his hair--as the wind would\nlift it--softly,\n\n    'It fanned his cheek, it raised his hair,\n    Like a meadow gale in spring.'\n\nShe does not merely turn the lance of Mars from Diomed; but seizes it in\nboth her hands, and casts it aside, with a sense of making it vain, like\nchaff in the wind;--to the shout of Achilles, she adds her own voice of\nstorm in heaven--but in all cases the moral power is still the principal\none--most beautifully in that seizing of Achilles by the hair, which was\nthe talisman of his life (because he had vowed it to the Sperchius if he\nreturned in safety), and which, in giving at Patroclus' tomb, he,\nknowingly, yields up the hope of return to his country, and signifies\nthat he will die with his friend. Achilles and Tydides are, above all\nother heroes, aided by her in war, because their prevailing characters\nare the desire of justice, united in both with deep affections; and, in\nAchilles, with a passionate tenderness, which is the real root of his\npassionate anger. Ulysses is her favourite chiefly in her office as the\ngoddess of conduct and design.\n\n\nNOTE IV.\n\nPage 54.\n\n_'Geometrical limitations.'_\n\nIt is difficult, without a tedious accuracy, or without full\nillustration, to express the complete relations of crystalline\nstructure, which dispose minerals to take, at different times, fibrous,\nmassive, or foliated forms; and I am afraid this chapter will be\ngenerally skipped by the reader: yet the arrangement itself will be\nfound useful, if kept broadly in mind; and the transitions of state are\nof the highest interest, if the subject is entered upon with any\nearnestness. It would have been vain to add to the scheme of this little\nvolume any account of the geometrical forms of crystals: an available\none, though still far too difficult and too copious, has been arranged\nby the Rev. Mr. Mitchell, for Orr's 'Circle of the Sciences'; and, I\nbelieve, the 'nets' of crystals, which are therein given to be cut out\nwith scissors and put prettily together, will be found more conquerable\nby young ladies than by other students. They should also, when an\nopportunity occurs, be shown, at any public library, the diagram of the\ncrystallisation of quartz referred to poles, at p. 8 of Cloizaux's\n'Manuel de Mineralogie': that they may know what work is; and what the\nsubject is.\n\nWith a view to more careful examination of the nascent states of silica,\nI have made no allusion in this volume to the influence of mere\nsegregation, as connected with the crystalline power. It has only been\nrecently, during the study of the breccias alluded to in page 113, that\nI have fully seen the extent to which this singular force often modifies\nrocks in which at first its influence might hardly have been suspected;\nmany apparent conglomerates being in reality formed chiefly by\nsegregation, combined with mysterious brokenly-zoned structures, like\nthose of some malachites. I hope some day to know more of these and\nseveral other mineral phenomena (especially of those connected with the\nrelative sizes of crystals), which otherwise I should have endeavoured\nto describe in this volume.\n\n\nNOTE V.\n\nPage 102.\n\n_'St. Barbara.'_\n\nI would have given the legends of St. Barbara, and St. Thomas, if I had\nthought it always well for young readers to have everything at once told\nthem which they may wish to know. They will remember the stories better\nafter taking some trouble to find them: and the text is intelligible\nenough as it stands. The idea of St. Barbara, as there given is founded\npartly on her legend in Peter de Natalibus, partly on the beautiful\nphotograph of Van Eyck's picture of her at Antwerp: which was some time\nsince published at Lille.\n\n\nNOTE VI.\n\nPage 137.\n\n_'King of the Valley of Diamonds.'_\n\nIsabel interrupted the Lecturer here, and was briefly bid to hold her\ntongue; which gave rise to some talk, apart, afterwards, between L. and\nSibyl, of which a word or two may be perhaps advisably set down.\n\nSIBYL. We shall spoil Isabel, certainly, if we don't mind: I was glad\nyou stopped her, and yet sorry; for she wanted so much to ask about the\nValley of Diamonds again, and she has worked so hard at it, and made it\nnearly all out by herself. She recollected Elisha's throwing in the\nmeal, which nobody else did.\n\nL. But what did she want to ask?\n\nSIBYL. About the mulberry trees and the serpents; we are all stopped by\nthat. Won't you tell us what it means?\n\nL. Now, Sibyl, I am sure you, who never explained yourself, should be\nthe last to expect others to do so. I hate explaining myself.\n\nSIBYL. And yet how often you complain of other people for not saying\nwhat they meant. How I have heard you growl over the three stone steps\nto purgatory; for instance!\n\nL. Yes; because Dante's meaning is worth getting at; but mine matters\nnothing: at least, if ever I think it is of any consequence, I speak it\nas clearly as may be. But you may make anything you like of the serpent\nforests. I could have helped you to find out what they were, by giving a\nlittle more detail, but it would have been tiresome.\n\nSIBYL. It is much more tiresome not to find out. Tell us, please, as\nIsabel says, because we feel so stupid.\n\nL. There is no stupidity; you could not possibly do more than guess at\nanything so vague. But I think, you, Sibyl, at least, might have\nrecollected what first dyed the mulberry?\n\nSIBYL. So I did; but that helped little; I thought of Dante's forest of\nsuicides, too, but you would not simply have borrowed that?\n\nL. No. If I had had strength to use it, I should have stolen it, to beat\ninto another shape; not borrowed it. But that idea of souls in trees is\nas old as the world; or at least, as the world of man. And I _did_ mean\nthat there were souls in those dark branches; the souls of all those who\nhad perished in misery through the pursuit of riches; and that the river\nwas of their blood, gathering gradually, and flowing out of the valley.\nThat I meant the serpents for the souls of those who had lived\ncarelessly and wantonly in their riches; and who have all their sins\nforgiven by the world, because they are rich: and therefore they have\nseven crimson crested heads, for the seven mortal sins; of which they\nare proud: and these, and the memory and report of them, are the chief\ncauses of temptation to others, as showing the pleasantness and\nabsolving power of riches; so that thus they are singing serpents. And\nthe worms are the souls of the common money-getters and traffickers, who\ndo nothing but eat and spin: and who gain habitually by the distress or\nfoolishness of others (as you see the butchers have been gaining out of\nthe panic at the cattle plague, among the poor),--so they are made to\neat the dark leaves, and spin, and perish.\n\nSIBYL. And the souls of the great, cruel, rich people who oppress the\npoor, and lend money to government to make unjust war, where are they?\n\nL. They change into the ice, I believe, and are knit with the gold; and\nmake the grave dust of the valley. I believe so, at least, for no one\never sees those souls anywhere.\n\n     (SIBYL _ceases questioning._)\n\nISABEL (_who has crept up to her side without any one's seeing_). Oh,\nSibyl, please ask him about the fire-flies!\n\nL. What, you there, mousie! No; I won't tell either Sibyl or you about\nthe fire-flies; nor a word more about anything else. You ought to be\nlittle fire-flies yourselves, and find your way in twilight by your own\nwits.\n\nISABEL. But you said they burned, you know?\n\nL. Yes; and you may be fire-flies that way too, some of you, before\nlong, though I did not mean that. Away with you, children. You have\nthought enough for to-day.\n\n\n\n\nNOTE TO SECOND EDITION.\n\n\n_Sentence_ out of letter from May (who is staying with Isabel just now\nat Cassel), dated 15th June, 1877:--\n\n\"I am reading the Ethics with a nice Irish girl who is staying here, and\nshe's just as puzzled as I've always been about the fire-flies, and we\nboth want to know so much.--Please be a very nice old Lecturer, and tell\nus, won't you?\"\n\nWell, May, you never were a vain girl; so could scarcely guess that I\nmeant them for the light, unpursued vanities, which yet blind us,\nconfused among the stars. One evening, as I came late into Siena, the\nfire-flies were flying high on a stormy sirocco wind,--the stars\nthemselves no brighter, and all their host seeming, at moments, to fade\nas the insects faded.\n\n\n\n\nFICTION--FAIR AND FOUL.\n\n\nOn the first mild--or, at least, the first bright--day of March, in this\nyear, I walked through what was once a country lane, between the\nhostelry of the Half-moon at the bottom of Herne Hill, and the secluded\nCollege of Dulwich.\n\nIn my young days, Croxsted Lane was a green bye-road traversable for\nsome distance by carts; but rarely so traversed, and, for the most part,\nlittle else than a narrow strip of untilled field, separated by\nblackberry hedges from the better cared-for meadows on each side of it:\ngrowing more weeds, therefore, than they, and perhaps in spring a\nprimrose or two--white archangel--daisies plenty, and purple thistles in\nautumn. A slender rivulet, boasting little of its brightness, for there\nare no springs at Dulwich, yet fed purely enough by the rain and morning\ndew, here trickled--there loitered--through the long grass beneath the\nhedges, and expanded itself, where it might, into moderately clear and\ndeep pools, in which, under their veils of duck-weed, a fresh-water\nshell or two, sundry curious little skipping shrimps, any quantity of\ntadpoles in their time, and even sometimes a tittlebat, offered\nthemselves to my boyhood's pleased, and not inaccurate, observation.\nThere, my mother and I used to gather the first buds of the hawthorn;\nand there, in after years, I used to walk in the summer shadows, as in a\nplace wilder and sweeter than our garden, to think over any passage I\nwanted to make better than usual in _Modern Painters_.\n\nSo, as aforesaid, on the first kindly day of this year, being thoughtful\nmore than usual of those old times, I went to look again at the place.\n\nOften, both in those days, and since, I have put myself hard to it,\nvainly, to find words wherewith to tell of beautiful things; but beauty\nhas been in the world since the world was made, and human language can\nmake a shift, somehow, to give account of it, whereas the peculiar\nforces of devastation induced by modern city life have only entered the\nworld lately; and no existing terms of language known to me are enough\nto describe the forms of filth, and modes of ruin, that varied\nthemselves along the course of Croxsted Lane. The fields on each side of\nit are now mostly dug up for building, or cut through into gaunt corners\nand nooks of blind ground by the wild crossings and concurrencies of\nthree railroads. Half a dozen handfuls of new cottages, with Doric\ndoors, are dropped about here and there among the gashed ground: the\nlane itself, now entirely grassless, is a deep-rutted, heavy-hillocked\ncart-road, diverging gatelessly into various brick-fields or pieces of\nwaste; and bordered on each side by heaps of--Hades only knows\nwhat!--mixed dust of every unclean thing that can crumble in drought,\nand mildew of every unclean thing that can rot or rust in damp: ashes\nand rags, beer-bottles and old shoes, battered pans, smashed crockery,\nshreds of nameless clothes, door-sweepings, floor-sweepings, kitchen\ngarbage, back-garden sewage, old iron, rotten timber jagged with\nout-torn nails, cigar-ends, pipe-bowls, cinders, bones, and ordure,\nindescribable; and, variously kneaded into, sticking to, or fluttering\nfoully here and there over all these,--remnants broadcast, of every\nmanner of newspaper, advertisement or big-lettered bill, festering and\nflaunting out their last publicity in the pits of stinking dust and\nmortal slime.\n\nThe lane ends now where its prettiest windings once began; being cut off\nby a cross-road leading out of Dulwich to a minor railway station: and\non the other side of this road, what was of old the daintiest intricacy\nof its solitude is changed into a straight, and evenly macadamised\ncarriage drive, between new houses of extreme respectability, with good\nattached gardens and offices--most of these tenements being larger--all\nmore pretentious, and many, I imagine, held at greatly higher rent than\nmy father's, tenanted for twenty years at Herne Hill. And it became\nmatter of curious meditation to me what must here become of children\nresembling my poor little dreamy quondam self in temper, and thus\nbrought up at the same distance from London, and in the same or better\ncircumstances of worldly fortune; but with only Croxsted Lane in its\npresent condition for their country walk. The trimly kept road before\ntheir doors, such as one used to see in the fashionable suburbs of\nCheltenham or Leamington, presents nothing to their study but gravel,\nand gas-lamp posts; the modern addition of a vermilion letter-pillar\ncontributing indeed to the splendour, but scarcely to the interest of\nthe scene; and a child of any sense or fancy would hastily contrive\nescape from such a barren desert of politeness, and betake itself to\ninvestigation, such as might be feasible, of the natural history of\nCroxsted Lane.\n\nBut, for its sense or fancy, what food, or stimulus, can it find, in\nthat foul causeway of its youthful pilgrimage? What would have happened\nto myself, so directed, I cannot clearly imagine. Possibly, I might have\ngot interested in the old iron and wood-shavings; and become an engineer\nor a carpenter: but for the children of to-day, accustomed from the\ninstant they are out of their cradles, to the sight of this infinite\nnastiness, prevailing as a fixed condition of the universe, over the\nface of nature, and accompanying all the operations of industrious man,\nwhat is to be the scholastic issue? unless, indeed, the thrill of\nscientific vanity in the primary analysis of some unheard-of process of\ncorruption--or the reward of microscopic research in the sight of worms\nwith more legs, and acari of more curious generation than ever vivified\nthe more simply smelling plasma of antiquity.\n\nOne result of such elementary education is, however, already certain;\nnamely, that the pleasure which we may conceive taken by the children of\nthe coming time, in the analysis of physical corruption, guides, into\nfields more dangerous and desolate, the expatiation of imaginative\nliterature: and that the reactions of moral disease upon itself, and the\nconditions of languidly monstrous character developed in an atmosphere\nof low vitality, have become the most valued material of modern\nfiction, and the most eagerly discussed texts of modern philosophy.\n\nThe many concurrent reasons for this mischief may, I believe, be massed\nunder a few general heads.\n\nI. There is first the hot fermentation and unwholesome secrecy of the\npopulation crowded into large cities, each mote in the misery lighter,\nas an individual soul, than a dead leaf, but becoming oppressive and\ninfectious each to his neighbour, in the smoking mass of decay. The\nresulting modes of mental ruin and distress are continually new; and in\na certain sense, worth study in their monstrosity: they have accordingly\ndeveloped a corresponding science of fiction, concerned mainly with the\ndescription of such forms of disease, like the botany of leaf-lichens.\n\nIn De Balzac's story of _Father Goriot_, a grocer makes a large fortune,\nof which he spends on himself as much as may keep him alive; and on his\ntwo daughters, all that can promote their pleasures or their pride. He\nmarries them to men of rank, supplies their secret expenses, and\nprovides for his favourite a separate and clandestine establishment with\nher lover. On his deathbed, he sends for this favourite daughter, who\nwishes to come, and hesitates for a quarter of an hour between doing so,\nand going to a ball at which it has been for the last month her chief\nambition to be seen. She finally goes to the ball.\n\nThis story is, of course, one of which the violent contrasts and\nspectral catastrophe could only take place, or be conceived, in a large\ncity. A village grocer cannot make a large fortune, cannot marry his\ndaughters to titled squires, and cannot die without having his children\nbrought to him, if in the neighbourhood, by fear of village gossip, if\nfor no better cause.\n\nII. But a much more profound feeling than this mere curiosity of science\nin morbid phenomena is concerned in the production of the carefullest\nforms of modern fiction. The disgrace and grief resulting from the mere\ntrampling pressure and electric friction of town life, become to the\nsufferers peculiarly mysterious in their undeservedness, and frightful\nin their inevitableness. The power of all surroundings over them for\nevil; the incapacity of their own minds to refuse the pollution, and of\ntheir own wills to oppose the weight, of the staggering mass that chokes\nand crushes them into perdition, brings every law of healthy existence\ninto question with them, and every alleged method of help and hope into\ndoubt. Indignation, without any calming faith in justice, and\nself-contempt, without any curative self-reproach, dull the\nintelligence, and degrade the conscience, into sullen incredulity of all\nsunshine outside the dunghill, or breeze beyond the wafting of its\nimpurity; and at last a philosophy develops itself, partly satiric,\npartly consolatory, concerned only with the regenerative vigour of\nmanure, and the necessary obscurities of fimetic Providence; showing how\neverybody's fault is somebody else's, how infection has no law,\ndigestion no will, and profitable dirt no dishonour.\n\nAnd thus an elaborate and ingenious scholasticism, in what may be called\nthe Divinity of Decomposition, has established itself in connection with\nthe more recent forms of romance, giving them at once a complacent tone\nof clerical dignity, and an agreeable dash of heretical impudence; while\nthe inculcated doctrine has the double advantage of needing no laborious\nscholarship for its foundation, and no painful self-denial for its\npractice.\n\nIII. The monotony of life in the central streets of any great modern\ncity, but especially in those of London, where every emotion intended to\nbe derived by men from the sight of nature, or the sense of art, is\nforbidden for ever, leaves the craving of the heart for a sincere, yet\nchangeful, interest, to be fed from one source only. Under natural\nconditions the degree of mental excitement necessary to bodily health is\nprovided by the course of the seasons, and the various skill and fortune\nof agriculture. In the country every morning of the year brings with it\na new aspect of springing or fading nature; a new duty to be fulfilled\nupon earth, and a new promise or warning in heaven. No day is without\nits innocent hope, its special prudence, its kindly gift, and its\nsublime danger; and in every process of wise husbandry, and every\neffort of contending or remedial courage, the wholesome passions, pride,\nand bodily power of the labourer are excited and exerted in happiest\nunison. The companionship of domestic, the care of serviceable, animals,\nsoften and enlarge his life with lowly charities, and discipline him in\nfamiliar wisdoms and unboastful fortitudes; while the divine laws of\nseed-time which cannot be recalled, harvest which cannot be hastened,\nand winter in which no man can work, compel the impatiences and coveting\nof his heart into labour too submissive to be anxious, and rest too\nsweet to be wanton. What thought can enough comprehend the contrast\nbetween such life, and that in streets where summer and winter are only\nalternations of heat and cold; where snow never fell white, nor sunshine\nclear; where the ground is only a pavement, and the sky no more than the\nglass roof of an arcade; where the utmost power of a storm is to choke\nthe gutters, and the finest magic of spring, to change mud into dust:\nwhere--chief and most fatal difference in state, there is no interest of\noccupation for any of the inhabitants but the routine of counter or desk\nwithin doors, and the effort to pass each other without collision\noutside; so that from morning to evening the only possible variation of\nthe monotony of the hours, and lightening of the penalty of existence,\nmust be some kind of mischief, limited, unless by more than ordinary\ngodsend of fatality, to the fall of a horse, or the slitting of a\npocket.\n\nI said that under these laws of inanition, the craving of the human\nheart for some kind of excitement could be supplied from _one_ source\nonly. It might have been thought by any other than a sternly tentative\nphilosopher, that the denial of their natural food to human feelings\nwould have provoked a reactionary desire for it; and that the dreariness\nof the street would have been gilded by dreams of pastoral felicity.\nExperience has shown the fact to be otherwise; the thoroughly trained\nLondoner can enjoy no other excitement than that to which he has been\naccustomed, but asks for _that_ in continually more ardent or more\nvirulent concentration; and the ultimate power of fiction to entertain\nhim is by varying to his fancy the modes, and defining for his dulness\nthe horrors, of Death. In the single novel of _Bleak House_ there are\nnine deaths (or left for death's, in the drop scene) carefully wrought\nout or led up to, either by way of pleasing surprise, as the baby's at\nthe brickmaker's, or finished in their threatenings and sufferings, with\nas much enjoyment as can be contrived in the anticipation, and as much\npathology as can be concentrated in the description. Under the following\nvarieties of method:--\n\n    One by assassination                  Mr. Tulkinghorn.\n    One by starvation, with phthisis      Joe.\n    One by chagrin                        Richard.\n    One by spontaneous combustion         Mr. Krook.\n    One by sorrow                         Lady Dedlock's lover.\n    One by remorse                        Lady Dedlock.\n    One by insanity                       Miss Flite.\n    One by paralysis                      Sir Leicester.\n\nBesides the baby, by fever, and a lively young Frenchwoman left to be\nhanged.\n\nAnd all this, observe, not in a tragic, adventurous, or military story,\nbut merely as the further enlivenment of a narrative intended to be\namusing; and as a properly representative average of the statistics of\ncivilian mortality in the centre of London.\n\nObserve further, and chiefly. It is not the mere number of deaths\n(which, if we count the odd troopers in the last scene, is exceeded in\n_Old Mortality_, and reached, within one or two, both in _Waverley_ and\n_Guy Mannering_) that marks the peculiar tone of the modern novel. It is\nthe fact that all these deaths, but one, are of inoffensive, or at least\nin the world's estimate respectable persons; and that they are all\ngrotesquely either violent or miserable, purporting thus to illustrate\nthe modern theology that the appointed destiny of a large average of our\npopulation is to die like rats in a drain, either by trap or poison.\nNot, indeed, that a lawyer in full practice can be usually supposed as\nfaultless in the eye of heaven as a dove or a woodcock; but it is not,\nin former divinities, thought the will of Providence that he should be\ndropped by a shot from a client behind his fire-screen, and retrieved in\nthe morning by his housemaid under the chandelier. Neither is Lady\nDedlock less reprehensible in her conduct than many women of fashion\nhave been and will be: but it would not therefore have been thought\npoetically just, in old-fashioned morality, that she should be found by\nher daughter lying dead, with her face in the mud of a St. Giles's\nchurchyard.\n\nIn the work of the great masters death is always either heroic,\ndeserved, or quiet and natural (unless their purpose be totally and\ndeeply tragic, when collateral meaner death is permitted, like that of\nPolonius or Roderigo). In _Old Mortality_, four of the deaths,\nBothwell's, Ensign Grahame's, Macbriar's, and Evandale's, are\nmagnificently heroic; Burley's and Oliphant's long deserved, and swift;\nthe troopers', met in the discharge of their military duty, and the old\nmiser's, as gentle as the passing of a cloud, and almost beautiful in\nits last words of--now unselfish--care.\n\n     'Ailie' (he aye ca'd me Ailie, we were auld acquaintance,)\n     'Ailie, take ye care and haud the gear weel thegither; for\n     the name of Morton of Milnwood's gane out like the last\n     sough of an auld sang.' And sae he fell out o' ae dwam into\n     another, and ne'er spak a word mair, unless it were\n     something we cou'dna mak out, about a dipped candle being\n     gude eneugh to see to dee wi'. He cou'd ne'er bide to see a\n     moulded ane, and there was ane, by ill luck, on the table.\n\nIn _Guy Mannering_, the murder, though unpremeditated, of a single\nperson, (himself not entirely innocent, but at least by heartlessness in\na cruel function earning his fate,) is avenged to the uttermost on all\nthe men conscious of the crime; Mr. Bertram's death, like that of his\nwife, brief in pain, and each told in the space of half-a-dozen lines;\nand that of the heroine of the tale, self-devoted, heroic in the\nhighest, and happy.\n\nNor is it ever to be forgotten, in the comparison of Scott's with\ninferior work, that his own splendid powers were, even in early life,\ntainted, and in his latter years destroyed, by modern conditions of\ncommercial excitement, then first, but rapidly, developing themselves.\nThere are parts even in his best novels coloured to meet tastes which he\ndespised; and many pages written in his later ones to lengthen his\narticle for the indiscriminate market.\n\nBut there was one weakness of which his healthy mind remained incapable\nto the last. In modern stories prepared for more refined or fastidious\naudiences than those of Dickens, the funereal excitement is obtained,\nfor the most part, not by the infliction of violent or disgusting death;\nbut in the suspense, the pathos, and the more or less by all felt, and\nrecognised, mortal phenomena of the sick-room. The temptation, to weak\nwriters, of this order of subject is especially great, because the study\nof it from the living--or dying--model is so easy, and to many has been\nthe most impressive part of their own personal experience; while, if the\ndescription be given even with mediocre accuracy, a very large section\nof readers will admire its truth, and cherish its melancholy: Few\nauthors of second or third rate genius can either record or invent a\nprobable conversation in ordinary life; but few, on the other hand, are\nso destitute of observant faculty as to be unable to chronicle the\nbroken syllables and languid movements of an invalid. The easily\nrendered, and too surely recognised, image of familiar suffering is felt\nat once to be real where all else had been false; and the historian of\nthe gestures of fever and words of delirium can count on the applause of\na gratified audience as surely as the dramatist who introduces on the\nstage of his flagging action a carriage that can be driven or a fountain\nthat will flow. But the masters of strong imagination disdain such work,\nand those of deep sensibility shrink from it.[154] Only under conditions\nof personal weakness, presently to be noted, would Scott comply with the\ncravings of his lower audience in scenes of terror like the death of\nFront-de-Boeuf. But he never once withdrew the sacred curtain of the\nsick-chamber, nor permitted the disgrace of wanton tears round the\nhumiliation of strength, or the wreck of beauty.\n\nIV. No exception to this law of reverence will be found in the scenes in\nCoeur de Lion's illness introductory to the principal incident in the\n_Talisman_. An inferior writer would have made the king charge in\nimagination at the head of his chivalry, or wander in dreams by the\nbrooks of Aquitaine; but Scott allows us to learn no more startling\nsymptoms of the king's malady than that he was restless and impatient,\nand could not wear his armour. Nor is any bodily weakness, or crisis of\ndanger, permitted to disturb for an instant the royalty of intelligence\nand heart in which he examines, trusts and obeys the physician whom his\nattendants fear.\n\nYet the choice of the main subject in this story and its companion--the\ntrial, to a point of utter torture, of knightly faith, and several\npassages in the conduct of both, more especially the exaggerated scenes\nin the House of Baldringham, and hermitage of Engedi, are signs of the\ngradual decline in force of intellect and soul which those who love\nScott best have done him the worst injustice in their endeavours to\ndisguise or deny. The mean anxieties, moral humiliations, and\nmercilessly demanded brain-toil, which killed him, show their sepulchral\ngrasp for many and many a year before their final victory; and the\nstates of more or less dulled, distorted, and polluted imagination which\nculminate in _Castle Dangerous_, cast a Stygian hue over _St. Ronan's\nWell, The Fair Maid of Perth_, and _Anne of Geierstein_, which lowers\nthem, the first altogether, the other two at frequent intervals, into\nfellowship with the normal disease which festers throughout the whole\nbody of our lower fictitious literature.\n\nFictitious! I use the ambiguous word deliberately; for it is impossible\nto distinguish in these tales of the prison-house how far their vice and\ngloom are thrown into their manufacture only to meet a vile demand, and\nhow far they are an integral condition of thought in the minds of men\ntrained from their youth up in the knowledge of Londinian and Parisian\nmisery. The speciality of the plague is a delight in the exposition of\nthe relations between guilt and decrepitude; and I call the results of\nit literature 'of the prison-house,' because the thwarted habits of body\nand mind, which are the punishment of reckless crowding in cities,\nbecome, in the issue of that punishment, frightful subjects of exclusive\ninterest to themselves; and the art of fiction in which they finally\ndelight is only the more studied arrangement and illustration, by\ncoloured firelights, of the daily bulletins of their own wretchedness,\nin the prison calendar, the police news, and the hospital report.\n\nThe reader will perhaps be surprised at my separating the greatest work\nof Dickens, _Oliver Twist_, with honour, from the loathsome mass to\nwhich it typically belongs. That book is an earnest and uncaricatured\nrecord of states of criminal life, written with didactic purpose, full\nof the gravest instruction, nor destitute of pathetic studies of noble\npassion. Even the _Mysteries of Paris_ and Gaboriau's _Crime d'Augival_\nare raised, by their definiteness of historical intention and\nforewarning anxiety, far above the level of their order, and may be\naccepted as photographic evidence of an otherwise incredible\ncivilisation, corrupted in the infernal fact of it, down to the genesis\nof such figures as the Vicomte d'Augival, the Stabber,[155] the\nSkeleton, and the She-wolf. But the effectual head of the whole\ncretinous school is the renowned novel in which the hunchbacked lover\nwatches the execution of his mistress from the tower of Notre-Dame; and\nits strength passes gradually away into the anatomical preparations, for\nthe general market, of novels like _Poor Miss Finch_, in which the\nheroine is blind, the hero epileptic, and the obnoxious brother is found\ndead with his hands dropped off, in the Arctic regions.[156]\n\nThis literature of the Prison-house, understanding by the word not only\nthe cell of Newgate, but also and even more definitely the cell of the\nHotel-Dieu, the Hopital des Fous, and the grated corridor with the\ndripping slabs of the Morgue, having its central root thus in the Ile\nde Paris--or historically and pre-eminently the 'Cite de Paris'--is,\nwhen understood deeply, the precise counter-corruption of the religion\nof the Sainte Chapelle, just as the worst forms of bodily and mental\nruin are the corruption of love. I have therefore called it 'Fiction\nmecroyante,' with literal accuracy and precision; according to the\nexplanation of the word which the reader may find in any good French\ndictionary,[157] and round its Arctic pole in the Morgue, he may gather\ninto one Caina of gelid putrescence the entire product of modern infidel\nimagination, amusing itself with destruction of the body, and busying\nitself with aberration of the mind.\n\nAberration, palsy, or plague, observe, as distinguished from normal\nevil, just as the venom of rabies or cholera differs from that of a wasp\nor a viper. The life of the insect and serpent deserves, or at least\npermits, our thoughts; not so, the stages of agony in the fury-driven\nhound. There is some excuse, indeed, for the pathologic labour of the\nmodern novelist in the fact that he cannot easily, in a city population,\nfind a healthy mind to vivisect: but the greater part of such amateur\nsurgery is the struggle, in an epoch of wild literary competition, to\nobtain novelty of material. The varieties of aspect and colour in\nhealthy fruit, be it sweet or sour, may be within certain limits\ndescribed exhaustively. Not so the blotches of its conceivable blight:\nand while the symmetries of integral human character can only be traced\nby harmonious and tender skill, like the branches of a living tree, the\nfaults and gaps of one gnawed away by corroding accident can be shuffled\ninto senseless change like the wards of a Chubb lock.\n\nV. It is needless to insist on the vast field for this dice-cast or\ncard-dealt calamity which opens itself in the ignorance, money-interest,\nand mean passion, of city marriage. Peasants know each other as\nchildren--meet, as they grow up in testing labour; and if a stout\nfarmer's son marries a handless girl, it is his own fault. Also in the\npatrician families of the field, the young people know what they are\ndoing, and marry a neighbouring estate, or a covetable title, with some\nconception of the responsibilities they undertake. But even among these,\ntheir season in the confused metropolis creates licentious and\nfortuitous temptation before unknown; and in the lower middle orders, an\nentirely new kingdom of discomfort and disgrace has been preached to\nthem in the doctrines of unbridled pleasure which are merely an apology\nfor their peculiar forms of illbreeding. It is quite curious how often\nthe catastrophe, or the leading interest, of a modern novel, turns upon\nthe want, both in maid and bachelor, of the common self-command which\nwas taught to their grandmothers and grandfathers as the first element\nof ordinarily decent behaviour. Rashly inquiring the other day the plot\nof a modern story from a female friend, I elicited, after some\nhesitation, that it hinged mainly on the young people's 'forgetting\nthemselves in a boat;' and I perceive it to be accepted as nearly an\naxiom in the code of modern civic chivalry that the strength of amiable\nsentiment is proved by our incapacity on proper occasions to express,\nand on improper ones to control it. The pride of a gentleman of the old\nschool used to be in his power of saying what he meant, and being silent\nwhen he ought, (not to speak of the higher nobleness which bestowed love\nwhere it was honourable, and reverence where it was due); but the\nautomatic amours and involuntary proposals of recent romance acknowledge\nlittle further law of morality than the instinct of an insect, or the\neffervescence of a chemical mixture.\n\nThere is a pretty little story of Alfred de Musset's,--_La Mouche_,\nwhich, if the reader cares to glance at it, will save me further trouble\nin explaining the disciplinarian authority of mere old-fashioned\npoliteness, as in some sort protective of higher things. It describes,\nwith much grace and precision, a state of society by no means\npre-eminently virtuous, or enthusiastically heroic; in which many people\ndo extremely wrong, and none sublimely right. But as there are heights\nof which the achievement is unattempted, there are abysses to which fall\nis barred; neither accident nor temptation will make any of the\nprincipal personages swerve from an adopted resolution, or violate an\naccepted principle of honour; people are expected as a matter of course\nto speak with propriety on occasion, and to wait with patience when they\nare bid: those who do wrong, admit it; those who do right don't boast of\nit; everybody knows his own mind, and everybody has good manners.\n\nNor must it be forgotten that in the worst days of the self-indulgence\nwhich destroyed the aristocracies of Europe, their vices, however\nlicentious, were never, in the fatal modern sense, 'unprincipled.' The\nvainest believed in virtue; the vilest respected it. 'Chaque chose avait\nson nom,'[158] and the severest of English moralists recognises the\naccurate wit, the lofty intellect, and the unfretted benevolence, which\nredeemed from vitiated surroundings the circle of d'Alembert and\nMarmontel.[159]\n\nI have said, with too slight praise, that the vainest, in those days,\n'believed' in virtue. Beautiful and heroic examples of it were always\nbefore them; nor was it without the secret significance attaching to\nwhat may seem the least accidents in the work of a master, that Scott\ngave to both his heroines of the age of revolution in England the name\nof the queen of the highest order of English chivalry.[160]\n\nIt is to say little for the types of youth and maid which alone Scott\nfelt it a joy to imagine, or thought it honourable to portray, that they\nact and feel in a sphere where they are never for an instant liable to\nany of the weaknesses which disturb the calm, or shake the resolution,\nof chastity and courage in a modern novel. Scott lived in a country and\ntime, when, from highest to lowest, but chiefly in that dignified and\nnobly severe[161] middle class to which he himself belonged, a habit of\nserene and stainless thought was as natural to the people as their\nmountain air. Women like Rose Bradwardine and Ailie Dinmont were the\ngrace and guard of almost every household (God be praised that the race\nof them is not yet extinct, for all that Mall or Boulevard can do), and\nit has perhaps escaped the notice of even attentive readers that the\ncomparatively uninteresting character of Sir Walter's heroes had always\nbeen studied among a class of youths who were simply incapable of doing\nanything seriously wrong; and could only be embarrassed by the\nconsequences of their levity or imprudence.\n\nBut there is another difference in the woof of a Waverley novel from the\ncobweb of a modern one, which depends on Scott's larger view of human\nlife. Marriage is by no means, in his conception of man and woman, the\nmost important business of their existence;[162] nor love the only\nreward to be proposed to their virtue or exertion. It is not in his\nreading of the laws of Providence a necessity that virtue should, either\nby love or any other external blessing, be rewarded at all;[163] and\nmarriage is in all cases thought of as a constituent of the happiness of\nlife, but not as its only interest, still less its only aim. And upon\nanalysing with some care the motives of his principal stories, we shall\noften find that the love in them is merely a light by which the sterner\nfeatures of character are to be irradiated, and that the marriage of the\nhero is as subordinate to the main bent of the story as Henry the\nFifth's courtship of Katherine is to the battle of Agincourt. Nay, the\nfortunes of the person who is nominally the subject of the tale are\noften little more than a background on which grander figures are to be\ndrawn, and deeper fates forth-shadowed. The judgments between the faith\nand chivalry of Scotland at Drumclog and Bothwell bridge owe little of\ntheir interest in the mind of a sensible reader to the fact that the\ncaptain of the Popinjay is carried a prisoner to one battle, and returns\na prisoner from the other: and Scott himself, while he watches the white\nsail that bears Queen Mary for the last time from her native land, very\nnearly forgets to finish his novel, or to tell us--and with small sense\nof any consolation to be had out of that minor circumstance,--that\n'Roland and Catherine were united, spite of their differing faiths.'\n\nNeither let it be thought for an instant that the slight, and sometimes\nscornful, glance with which Scott passes over scenes which a novelist of\nour own day would have analysed with the airs of a philosopher, and\npainted with the curiosity of a gossip, indicate any absence in his\nheart of sympathy with the great and sacred elements of personal\nhappiness. An era like ours, which has with diligence and ostentation\nswept its heart clear of all the passions once known as loyalty,\npatriotism, and piety, necessarily magnifies the apparent force of the\none remaining sentiment which sighs through the barren chambers, or\nclings inextricably round the chasms of ruin; nor can it but regard with\nawe the unconquerable spirit which still tempts or betrays the\nsagacities of selfishness into error or frenzy which is believed to be\nlove.\n\nThat Scott was never himself, in the sense of the phrase as employed by\nlovers of the Parisian school, 'ivre d'amour,' may be admitted without\nprejudice to his sensibility,[164] and that he never knew 'l'amor che\nmove 'l sol e l'altre stelle,' was the chief, though unrecognised,\ncalamity of his deeply chequered life. But the reader of honour and\nfeeling will not therefore suppose that the love which Miss Vernon\nsacrifices, stooping for an instant from her horse, is of less noble\nstamp, or less enduring faith, than that which troubles and degrades\nthe whole existence of Consuelo; or that the affection of Jeanie Deans\nfor the companion of her childhood, drawn like a field of soft blue\nheaven beyond the cloudy wrack of her sorrow, is less fully in\npossession of her soul than the hesitating and self-reproachful impulses\nunder which a modern heroine forgets herself in a boat, or compromises\nherself in the cool of the evening.\n\nI do not wish to return over the waste ground we have traversed,\ncomparing, point by point, Scott's manner with those of Bermondsey and\nthe Faubourgs; but it may be, perhaps, interesting at this moment to\nexamine, with illustration from those Waverley novels which have so\nlately _re_tracted the attention of a fair and gentle public, the\nuniversal conditions of 'style,' rightly so called, which are in all\nages, and above all local currents or wavering tides of temporary\nmanners, pillars of what is for ever strong, and models of what is for\never fair.\n\nBut I must first define, and that within strict horizon, the works of\nScott, in which his perfect mind may be known, and his chosen ways\nunderstood.\n\nHis great works of prose fiction, excepting only the first half-volume\nof _Waverley_, were all written in twelve years, 1814-26 (of his own age\nforty-three to fifty-five), the actual time employed in their\ncomposition being not more than a couple of months out of each year; and\nduring that time only the morning hours and spare minutes during the\nprofessional day. 'Though the first volume of _Waverley_ was begun long\nago, and actually lost for a time, yet the other two were begun and\nfinished between the 4th of June and the first of July, during all which\nI attended my duty in court, and proceeded without loss of time or\nhindrance of business.'[165]\n\nFew of the maxims for the enforcement of which, in _Modern Painters_,\nlong ago, I got the general character of a lover of paradox, are more\nsingular, or more sure, than the statement, apparently so encouraging to\nthe idle, that if a great thing can be done at all, it can be done\neasily. But it is in that kind of ease with which a tree blossoms after\nlong years of gathered strength, and all Scott's great writings were the\nrecreations of a mind confirmed in dutiful labour, and rich with organic\ngathering of boundless resource.\n\nOmitting from our count the two minor and ill-finished sketches of the\n_Black Dwarf_ and _Legend of Montrose_, and, for a reason presently to\nbe noticed, the unhappy _St. Ronan's_, the memorable romances of Scott\nare eighteen, falling into three distinct groups, containing six each.\n\nThe first group is distinguished from the other two by characters of\nstrength and felicity which never more appeared after Scott was struck\ndown by his terrific illness in 1819. It includes _Waverley_, _Guy\nMannering_, _The Antiquary_, _Rob Roy_, _Old Mortality_, and _The Heart\nof Midlothian_.\n\nThe composition of these occupied the mornings of his happiest days,\nbetween the ages of 43 and 48. On the 8th of April, 1819 (he was 48 on\nthe preceding 15th of August) he began for the first time to\ndictate--being unable for the exertion of writing--_The Bride of\nLammermuir_, 'the affectionate Laidlaw beseeching him to stop dictating,\nwhen his audible suffering filled every pause. \"Nay, Willie,\" he\nanswered \"only see that the doors are fast. I would fain keep all the\ncry as well as all the wool to ourselves; but as for giving over work,\nthat can only be when I am in woollen.\"'[166] From this time forward the\nbrightness of joy and sincerity of inevitable humour, which perfected\nthe imagery of the earlier novels, are wholly absent, except in the two\nshort intervals of health unaccountably restored, in which he wrote\n_Redgauntlet_ and _Nigel_.\n\nIt is strange, but only a part of the general simplicity of Scott's\ngenius, that these revivals of earlier power were unconscious, and that\nthe time of extreme weakness in which he wrote _St. Ronan's Well_, was\nthat in which he first asserted his own restoration.\n\nIt is also a deeply interesting characteristic of his noble nature that\nhe never gains anything by sickness; the whole man breathes or faints\nas one creature; the ache that stiffens a limb chills his heart, and\nevery pang of the stomach paralyses the brain. It is not so with\ninferior minds, in the workings of which it is often impossible to\ndistinguish native from narcotic fancy, and throbs of conscience from\nthose of indigestion. Whether in exaltation or languor, the colours of\nmind are always morbid, which gleam on the sea for the 'Ancient\nMariner,' and through the casements on 'St. Agnes' Eve;' but Scott is at\nonce blinded and stultified by sickness; never has a fit of the cramp\nwithout spoiling a chapter, and is perhaps the only author of vivid\nimagination who never wrote a foolish word but when he was ill.\n\nIt remains only to be noticed on this point that any strong natural\nexcitement, affecting the deeper springs of his heart, would at once\nrestore his intellectual powers in all their fullness, and that, far\ntowards their sunset: but that the strong will on which he prided\nhimself, though it could trample upon pain, silence grief, and compel\nindustry, never could warm his imagination, or clear the judgment in his\ndarker hours.\n\nI believe that this power of the heart over the intellect is common to\nall great men: but what the special character of emotion was, that alone\ncould lift Scott above the power of death, I am about to ask the reader,\nin a little while, to observe with joyful care.\n\nThe first series of romances then, above named, are all that exhibit the\nemphasis of his unharmed faculties. The second group, composed in the\nthree years subsequent to illness all but mortal, bear every one of them\nmore or less the seal of it.\n\nThey consist of the _Bride of Lammermuir_, _Ivanhoe_, the _Monastery_,\nthe _Abbot_, _Kenilworth_, and the _Pirate_.[167] The marks of broken\nhealth on all these are essentially twofold--prevailing melancholy, and\nfantastic improbability. Three of the tales are agonizingly tragic, the\n_Abbot_ scarcely less so in its main event, and _Ivanhoe_ deeply wounded\nthrough all its bright panoply; while even in that most powerful of the\nseries, the impossible archeries and axestrokes, the incredibly\nopportune appearances of Locksley, the death of Ulrica, and the\nresuscitation of Athelstane, are partly boyish, partly feverish. Caleb\nin the _Bride_, Triptolemus and Halcro in the _Pirate_, are all\nlaborious, and the first incongruous; half a volume of the _Abbot_ is\nspent in extremely dull detail of Roland's relations with his\nfellow-servants and his mistress, which have nothing whatever to do with\nthe future story; and the lady of Avenel herself disappears after the\nfirst volume, 'like a snaw wreath when it's thaw, Jeanie.' The public\nhas for itself pronounced on the _Monastery_, though as much too harshly\nas it has foolishly praised the horrors of _Ravenswood_ and the nonsense\nof _Ivanhoe_; because the modern public finds in the torture and\nadventure of these, the kind of excitement which it seeks at an opera,\nwhile it has no sympathy whatever with the pastoral happiness of\nGlendearg, or with the lingering simplicities of superstition which give\nhistorical likelihood to the legend of the White Lady.\n\nBut both this despised tale and its sequel have Scott's heart in them.\nThe first was begun to refresh himself in the intervals of artificial\nlabour on _Ivanhoe_. 'It was a relief,' he said, 'to interlay the\nscenery most familiar to me[168] with the strange world for which I had\nto draw so much on imagination.'[169] Through all the closing scenes of\nthe second he is raised to his own true level by his love for the\nqueen. And within the code of Scott's work to which I am about to appeal\nfor illustration of his essential powers, I accept the _Monastery_ and\n_Abbot_, and reject from it the remaining four of this group.\n\nThe last series contains two quite noble ones, _Redgauntlet_ and\n_Nigel_; two of very high value, _Durward_ and _Woodstock_; the slovenly\nand diffuse _Peveril_, written for the trade; the sickly _Tales of the\nCrusaders_, and the entirely broken and diseased _St. Ronan's Well_.\nThis last I throw out of count altogether, and of the rest, accept only\nthe four first named as sound work; so that the list of the novels in\nwhich I propose to examine his methods and ideal standards, reduces\nitself to these following twelve (named in order of production):\n_Waverley_, _Guy Mannering_, the _Antiquary_, _Rob Roy_, _Old\nMortality_, the _Heart of Midlothian_, the _Monastery_, the _Abbot_, the\n_Fortunes of Nigel_, _Quentin Durward_, and _Woodstock_.[170]\n\nIt is, however, too late to enter on my subject in this article, which I\nmay fitly close by pointing out some of the merely verbal\ncharacteristics of his style, illustrative in little ways of the\nquestions we have been examining, and chiefly of the one which may be\nmost embarrassing to many readers, the difference, namely, between\ncharacter and disease.\n\nOne quite distinctive charm in the Waverleys is their modified use of\nthe Scottish dialect; but it has not generally been observed, either by\ntheir imitators, or the authors of different taste who have written for\na later public, that there is a difference between the dialect of a\nlanguage, and its corruption.\n\nA dialect is formed in any district where there are persons of\nintelligence enough to use the language itself in all its fineness and\nforce, but under the particular conditions of life, climate, and temper,\nwhich introduce words peculiar to the scenery, forms of word and idioms\nof sentence peculiar to the race, and pronunciations indicative of their\ncharacter and disposition.\n\nThus 'burn' (of a streamlet) is a word possible only in a country where\nthere are brightly running waters, 'lassie,' a word possible only where\ngirls are as free as the rivulets, and 'auld,' a form of the southern\n'old,' adopted by a race of finer musical ear than the English.\n\nOn the contrary, mere deteriorations, or coarse, stridulent, and, in the\nordinary sense of the phrase, 'broad' forms of utterance, are not\ndialects at all, having nothing dialectic in them, and all phrases\ndeveloped in states of rude employment, and restricted intercourse, are\ninjurious to the tone and narrowing to the power of the language they\naffect. Mere breadth of accent does not spoil a dialect as long as the\nspeakers are men of varied idea and good intelligence; but the moment\nthe life is contracted by mining, millwork, or any oppressive and\nmonotonous labour, the accents and phrases become debased. It is part of\nthe popular folly of the day to find pleasure in trying to write and\nspell these abortive, crippled, and more or less brutal forms of human\nspeech.\n\nAbortive, crippled, or brutal, are however not necessarily 'corrupted'\ndialects. Corrupt language is that gathered by ignorance, invented by\nvice, misused by insensibility, or minced and mouthed by affectation,\nespecially in the attempt to deal with words of which only half the\nmeaning is understood, or half the sound heard. Mrs. Gamp's 'aperiently\nso'--and the 'undermined' with primal sense of undermine, of--I forget\nwhich gossip, in the _Mill on the Floss_, are master- and\nmistress-pieces in this latter kind. Mrs. Malaprop's 'allegories on the\nbanks of the Nile' are in a somewhat higher order of mistake: Miss\nTabitha Bramble's ignorance is vulgarised by her selfishness, and\nWinifred Jenkins' by her conceit. The 'wot' of Noah Claypole, and the\nother degradations of cockneyism (Sam Weller and his father are in\nnothing more admirable than in the power of heart and sense that can\npurify even these); the 'trewth' of Mr. Chadband, and 'natur' of Mr.\nSqueers, are examples of the corruption of words by insensibility: the\nuse of the word 'bloody' in modern low English is a deeper corruption,\nnot altering the form of the word, but defiling the thought in it.\n\nThus much being understood, I shall proceed to examine thoroughly a\nfragment of Scott's Lowland Scottish dialect; not choosing it of the\nmost beautiful kind; on the contrary, it shall be a piece reaching as\nlow down as he ever allows Scotch to go--it is perhaps the only unfair\npatriotism in him, that if ever he wants a word or two of really\nvillainous slang, he gives it in English or Dutch--not Scotch.\n\nI had intended in the close of this paper to analyse and compare the\ncharacters of Andrew Fairservice and Richie Moniplies for examples, the\nformer of innate evil, unaffected by external influences, and\nundiseased, but distinct from natural goodness as a nettle is distinct\nfrom balm or lavender; and the latter of innate goodness, contracted and\npinched by circumstance, but still undiseased, as an oak-leaf crisped by\nfrost, not by the worm. This, with much else in my mind, I must put off;\nbut the careful study of one sentence of Andrew's will give us a good\ndeal to think of.\n\nI take his account of the rescue of Glasgow Cathedral at the time of the\nReformation.\n\n     Ah! it's a brave kirk--nane o' yere whigmaleeries and\n     curliewurlies and opensteek hems about it--a' solid,\n     weel-jointed mason-wark, that will stand as lang as the\n     warld, keep hands and gunpowther aff it. It had amaist a\n     douncome lang syne at the Reformation, when they pu'd doun\n     the kirks of St. Andrews and Perth, and thereawa', to\n     cleanse them o' Papery, and idolatry, and image-worship, and\n     surplices, and sic-like rags o' the muckle hure that sitteth\n     on seven hills, as if ane wasna braid eneugh for her auld\n     hinder end. Sae the commons o' Renfrew, and o' the Barony,\n     and the Gorbals, and a' about, they behoved to come into\n     Glasgow ae fair morning, to try their hand on purging the\n     High Kirk o' Popish nicknackets. But the townsmen o'\n     Glasgow, they were feared their auld edifice might slip the\n     girths in gaun through siccan rough physic, sae they rang\n     the common bell, and assembled the train-bands wi' took o'\n     drum. By good luck, the worthy James Rabat was Dean o' Guild\n     that year--(and a gude mason he was himsell, made him the\n     keener to keep up the auld bigging), and the trades\n     assembled, and offered downright battle to the commons,\n     rather than their kirk should coup the crans, as others had\n     done elsewhere. It wasna for luve o' Paperie--na, na!--nane\n     could ever say that o' the trades o' Glasgow--Sae they sune\n     came to an agreement to take a' the idolatrous statues of\n     sants (sorrow be on them!) out o' their neuks--And sae the\n     bits o' stane idols were broken in pieces by Scripture\n     warrant, and flung into the Molendinar burn, and the auld\n     kirk stood as crouse as a cat when the flaes are kaimed aff\n     her, and a'body was alike pleased. And I hae heard wise folk\n     say, that if the same had been done in ilka kirk in\n     Scotland, the Reform wad just hae been as pure as it is e'en\n     now, and we wad hae mair Christian-like kirks; for I hae\n     been sae lang in England, that naething will drived out o'\n     my head, that the dog-kennel at Osbaldistone-Hall is better\n     than mony a house o' God in Scotland.\n\nNow this sentence is in the first place a piece of Scottish history of\nquite inestimable and concentrated value. Andrew's temperament\nis the type of a vast class of Scottish--shall we call it\n'_sow_-thistlian'--mind, which necessarily takes the view of either Pope\nor saint that the thistle in Lebanon took of the cedar or lilies in\nLebanon; and the entire force of the passions which, in the Scottish\nrevolution, foretold and forearmed the French one, is told in this one\nparagraph; the coarseness of it, observe, being admitted, not for the\nsake of the laugh, any more than an onion in broth merely for its\nflavour, but for the meat of it; the inherent constancy of that\ncoarseness being a fact in this order of mind, and an essential part of\nthe history to be told.\n\nSecondly, observe that this speech, in the religious passion of it, such\nas there may be, is entirely sincere. Andrew is a thief, a liar, a\ncoward, and, in the Fair service from which he takes his name, a\nhypocrite; but in the form of prejudice, which is all that his mind is\ncapable of in the place of religion, he is entirely sincere. He does not\nin the least pretend detestation of image worship to please his master,\nor any one else; he honestly scorns the 'carnal morality[171] as dowd\nand fusionless as rue-leaves at Yule' of the sermon in the upper\ncathedral; and when wrapt in critical attention to the 'real savour o'\ndoctrine' in the crypt, so completely forgets the hypocrisy of his fair\nservice as to return his master's attempt to disturb him with hard\npunches of the elbow.\n\nThirdly. He is a man of no mean sagacity, quite up to the average\nstandard of Scottish common sense, not a low one; and, though incapable\nof understanding any manner of lofty thought or passion, is a shrewd\nmeasurer of weaknesses, and not without a spark or two of kindly\nfeeling. See first his sketch of his master's character to Mr.\nHammorgaw, beginning: 'He's no a'thegither sae void o' sense, neither;'\nand then the close of the dialogue: 'But the lad's no a bad lad after\na', and he needs some carefu' body to look after him.'\n\nFourthly. He is a good workman; knows his own business well, and can\njudge of other craft, if sound, or otherwise.\n\nAll these four qualities of him must be known before we can understand\nthis single speech. Keeping them in mind, I take it up, word by word.\n\nYou observe, in the outset, Scott makes no attempt whatever to indicate\naccents or modes of pronunciation by changed spelling, unless the word\nbecomes a quite definitely new and scarcely writeable one. The Scottish\nway of pronouncing 'James,' for instance, is entirely peculiar, and\nextremely pleasant to the ear. But it is so, just because it does _not_\nchange the word into Jeems, nor into Jims, nor into Jawms. A modern\nwriter of dialects would think it amusing to use one or other of these\nugly spellings. But Scott writes the name in pure English, knowing that\na Scots reader will speak it rightly, and an English one be wise in\nletting it alone. On the other hand he writes 'weel' for 'well,' because\nthat word is complete in its change, and may be very closely expressed\nby the double _e_. The ambiguous '_u_'s in 'gude' and 'sune' are\nadmitted, because far liker the sound than the double _o_ would be, and\nthat in 'hure,' for grace' sake, to soften the word;--so also 'flaes'\nfor 'fleas.' 'Mony' for 'many' is again positively right in sound, and\n'neuk' differs from our 'nook' in sense, and is not the same word at\nall, as we shall presently see.\n\nSecondly, observe, not a word is corrupted in any indecent haste,\nslowness, slovenliness, or incapacity of pronunciation. There is no\nlisping, drawling, slobbering, or snuffling: the speech is as clear as\na bell and as keen as an arrow: and its elisions and contractions are\neither melodious, ('na,' for 'not,'--'pu'd,' for 'pulled,') or as normal\nas in a Latin verse. The long words are delivered without the slightest\nbungling; and 'bigging' finished to its last _g_.\n\nI take the important words now in their places.\n\n_Brave._ The old English sense of the word in 'to go brave' retained,\nexpressing Andrew's sincere and respectful admiration. Had he meant to\ninsinuate a hint of the church's being too fine, he would have said\n'braw.'\n\n_Kirk._ This is of course just as pure and unprovincial a word as\n'Kirche,' or 'eglise.'\n\n_Whigmaleerie._ I cannot get at the root of this word, but it is one\nshowing that the speaker is not bound by classic rules, but will use any\nsyllables that enrich his meaning. 'Nipperty-tipperty' (of his master's\n'poetry-nonsense') is another word of the same class. 'Curlieurlie' is\nof course just as pure as Shakespeare's 'Hurly-burly.' But see first\nsuggestion of the idea to Scott at Blair-Adam (L. vi. 264).\n\n_Opensteek hems._ More description, or better, of the later Gothic\ncannot be put into four syllables. 'Steek,' melodious for stitch, has a\ncombined sense of closing or fastening. And note that the later Gothic,\nbeing precisely what Scott knew best (in Melrose) and liked best, it is,\nhere as elsewhere, quite as much himself[172] as Frank, that he is\nlaughing at, when he laughs _with_ Andrew, whose 'opensteek hems' are\nonly a ruder metaphor for his own 'willow-wreaths changed to stone.'\n\n_Gunpowther._ '-Ther' is a lingering vestige of the French '-dre.'\n\n_Syne._ One of the melodious and mysterious Scottish words which have\npartly the sound of wind and stream in them, and partly the range of\nsoftened idea which is like a distance of blue hills over border land\n('far in the distant Cheviot's blue'). Perhaps even the least\nsympathetic 'Englisher' might recognise this, if he heard 'Old Long\nSince' vocally substituted for the Scottish words to the air. I do not\nknow the root; but the word's proper meaning is not 'since,' but before\nor after an interval of some duration, 'as weel sune as syne.' 'But\nfirst on Sawnie gies a ca', Syne, bauldly in she enters.'\n\n_Behoved_ (_to come_). A rich word, with peculiar idiom, always used\nmore or less ironically of anything done under a partly mistaken and\npartly pretended notion of duty.\n\n_Siccan._ Far prettier, and fuller in meaning than 'such.' It contains\nan added sense of wonder; and means properly 'so great' or 'so unusual.'\n\n_Took_ (_o' drum_). Classical 'tuck' from Italian 'toccata,' the\npreluding 'touch' or flourish, on any instrument (but see Johnson under\nword 'tucket,' quoting _Othello_). The deeper Scottish vowels are used\nhere to mark the deeper sound of the bass drum, as in more solemn\nwarning.\n\n_Bigging._ The only word in all the sentence of which the Scottish form\nis less melodious than the English, 'and what for no,' seeing that\nScottish architecture is mostly little beyond Bessie Bell's and Mary\nGray's? 'They biggit a bow're by yon burnside, and theekit it ow're wi\nrashes.' But it is pure Anglo-Saxon in roots; see glossary to\nFairbairn's edition of the Douglas _Virgil_, 1710.\n\n_Coup._ Another of the much-embracing words; short for 'upset,' but with\na sense of awkwardness as the inherent cause of fall; compare Richie\nMoniplies (also for sense of 'behoved'): 'Ae auld hirplin deevil of a\npotter behoved just to step in my way, and offer me a pig (earthern\npot--etym. dub.), as he said \"just to put my Scotch ointment in;\" and I\ngave him a push, as but natural, and the tottering deevil coupit owre\namang his own pigs, and damaged a score of them.' So also Dandie Dinmont\nin the postchaise: ''Od! I hope they'll no coup us.'\n\n_The Crans._ Idiomatic; root unknown to me, but it means in this use,\nfull, total, and without recovery.\n\n_Molendinar._ From 'molendinum,' the grinding-place. I do not know if\nactually the local name,[173] or Scott's invention. Compare Sir\nPiercie's 'Molinaras.' But at all events used here with bye-sense of\ndegradation of the formerly idle saints to grind at the mill.\n\n_Crouse._ Courageous, softened with a sense of comfort.\n\n_Ilka._ Again a word with azure distance, including the whole sense of\n'each' and 'every.' The reader must carefully and reverently distinguish\nthese comprehensive words, which gather two or more perfectly understood\nmeanings into one _chord_ of meaning, and are harmonies more than words,\nfrom the above-noted blunders between two half-hit meanings, struck as a\nbad piano-player strikes the edge of another note. In English we have\nfewer of these combined thoughts; so that Shakespeare rather plays with\nthe distinct lights of his words, than melts them into one. So again\nBishop Douglas spells, and doubtless spoke, the word 'rose,'\ndifferently, according to his purpose; if as the chief or governing\nruler of flowers, 'rois,' but if only in her own beauty, rose.\n\n_Christian-like._ The sense of the decency and order proper to\nChristianity is stronger in Scotland than in any other country, and the\nword 'Christian' more distinctly opposed to 'beast.' Hence the\nback-handed cut at the English for their over-pious care of dogs.\n\nI am a little surprised myself at the length to which this examination\nof one small piece of Sir Walter's first-rate work has carried us, but\nhere I must end for this time, trusting, if the Editor of the\n_Nineteenth Century_ permit me, yet to trespass, perhaps more than once,\non his readers' patience; but, at all events, to examine in a following\npaper the technical characteristics of Scott's own style, both in prose\nand verse, together with Byron's, as opposed to our fashionably recent\ndialects and rhythms; the essential virtues of language, in both the\nmasters of the old school, hinging ultimately, little as it might be\nthought, on certain unalterable views of theirs concerning the code\ncalled 'of the Ten Commandments,' wholly at variance with the dogmas of\nautomatic morality which, summed again by the witches' line, 'Fair is\nfoul, and foul is fair,' hover through the fog and filthy air of our\nprosperous England.\n\n    JOHN RUSKIN.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n'_He hated greetings in the market-place_, and there were generally\nloiterers in the streets to persecute him _either about the events of\nthe day_, or about some petty pieces of business.'\n\nThese lines, which the reader will find near the beginning of the\nsixteenth chapter of the first volume of the _Antiquary_, contain two\nindications of the old man's character, which, receiving the ideal of\nhim as a portrait of Scott himself, are of extreme interest to me. They\nmean essentially that neither Monkbarns nor Scott had any mind to be\ncalled of men, Rabbi, in mere hearing of the mob; and especially that\nthey hated to be drawn back out of their far-away thoughts, or forward\nout of their long-ago thoughts, by any manner of 'daily' news, whether\nprinted or gabbled. Of which two vital characteristics, deeper in both\nthe men, (for I must always speak of Scott's creations as if they were\nas real as himself,) than any of their superficial vanities, or passing\nenthusiasms, I have to speak more at another time. I quote the passage\njust now, because there was one piece of the daily news of the year 1815\nwhich did extremely interest Scott, and materially direct the labour of\nthe latter part of his life; nor is there any piece of history in this\nwhole nineteenth century quite so pregnant with various instruction as\nthe study of the reasons which influenced Scott and Byron in their\nopposite views of the glories of the battle of Waterloo.\n\nBut I quote it for another reason also. The principal greeting which Mr.\nOldbuck on this occasion receives in the market-place, being compared\nwith the speech of Andrew Fairservice, examined in my first paper, will\nfurnish me with the text of what I have mainly to say in the present\none.\n\n'\"Mr. Oldbuck,\" said the town-clerk (a more important person, who came\nin front and ventured to stop the old gentleman), \"the provost,\nunderstanding you were in town, begs on no account that you'll quit it\nwithout seeing him; he wants to speak to ye about bringing the water\nfrae the Fairwell spring through a part o' your lands.\"\n\n'\"What the deuce!--have they nobody's land but mine to cut and carve\non?--I won't consent, tell them.\"\n\n'\"And the provost,\" said the clerk, going on, without noticing the\nrebuff, \"and the council, wad be agreeable that you should hae the auld\nstanes at Donagild's Chapel, that ye was wussing to hae.\"\n\n'\"Eh?--what?--Oho! that's another story--Well, well, I'll call upon the\nprovost, and we'll talk about it.\"\n\n'\"But ye maun speak your mind on't forthwith, Monkbarns, if ye want the\nstanes; for Deacon Harlewalls thinks the carved through-stanes might be\nput with advantage on the front of the new council-house--that is, the\ntwa cross-legged figures that the callants used to ca' Robbin and\nBobbin, ane on ilka door-cheek; and the other stane, that they ca'd\nAilie Dailie, abune the door. It will be very tastefu', the Deacon says,\nand just in the style of modern Gothic.\"\n\n'\"Good Lord deliver me from this Gothic generation!\" exclaimed the\nAntiquary,--\"a monument of a knight-templar on each side of a Grecian\nporch, and a Madonna on the top of it!--_O crimini!_--Well, tell the\nprovost I wish to have the stones, and we'll not differ about the\nwater-course.--It's lucky I happened to come this way to-day.\"\n\n'They parted mutually satisfied; but the wily clerk had most reason to\nexult in the dexterity he had displayed, since the whole proposal of an\nexchange between the monuments (which the council had determined to\nremove as a nuisance, because they encroached three feet upon the public\nroad) and the privilege of conveying the water to the burgh, through the\nestate of Monkbarns, was an idea which had originated with himself upon\nthe pressure of the moment.'\n\nIn this single page of Scott, will the reader please note the kind of\nprophetic instinct with which the great men of every age mark and\nforecast its destinies? The water from the Fairwell is the future\nThirlmere carried to Manchester; the 'auld stanes'[174] at Donagild's\nChapel, removed as a _nuisance_, foretell the necessary view taken by\nmodern cockneyism, Liberalism, and progress, of all things that remind\nthem of the noble dead, of their father's fame, or of their own duty;\nand the public road becomes their idol, instead of the saint's shrine.\nFinally, the roguery of the entire transaction--the mean man seeing the\nweakness of the honourable, and 'besting' him--in modern slang, in the\nmanner and at the pace of modern trade--'on the pressure of the moment.'\n\nBut neither are these things what I have at present quoted the passage\nfor.\n\nI quote it, that we may consider how much wonderful and various history\nis gathered in the fact, recorded for us in this piece of entirely fair\nfiction, that in the Scottish borough of Fairport, (Montrose, really,)\nin the year 17-- of Christ, the knowledge given by the pastors and\nteachers provided for its children by enlightened Scottish\nProtestantism, of their fathers' history, and the origin of their\nreligion, had resulted in this substance and sum;--that the statues of\ntwo crusading knights had become, to their children, Robin and Bobbin;\nand the statue of the Madonna, Ailie Dailie.\n\nA marvellous piece of history, truly: and far too comprehensive for\ngeneral comment here. Only one small piece of it I must carry forward\nthe readers' thoughts upon.\n\nThe pastors and teachers aforesaid, (represented typically in another\npart of this errorless book by Mr. Blattergowl) are not, whatever else\nthey may have to answer for, answerable for these names. The names are\nof the children's own choosing and bestowing, but not of the children's\nown inventing. 'Robin' is a classically endearing cognomen, recording\nthe _errant_ heroism of old days--the name of the Bruce and of Rob Roy.\n'Bobbin' is a poetical and symmetrical fulfilment and adornment of the\noriginal phrase. 'Ailie' is the last echo of 'Ave,' changed into the\nsoftest Scottish Christian name familiar to the children, itself the\nbeautiful feminine form of royal 'Louis;' the 'Dailie' again\nsymmetrically added for kinder and more musical endearment. The last\nvestiges, you see, of honour for the heroism and religion of their\nancestors, lingering on the lips of babes and sucklings.\n\nBut what is the meaning of this necessity the children find themselves\nunder of completing the nomenclature rhythmically and rhymingly? Note\nfirst the difference carefully, and the attainment of both qualities by\nthe couplets in question. Rhythm is the syllabic and quantitative\nmeasure of the words, in which Robin, both in weight and time, balances\nBobbin; and Dailie holds level scale with Ailie. But rhyme is the added\ncorrespondence of sound; unknown and undesired, so far as we can learn,\nby the Greek Orpheus, but absolutely essential to, and, as special\nvirtue, becoming titular of, the Scottish Thomas.\n\nThe 'Ryme,'[175] you may at first fancy, is the especially childish part\nof the work. Not so. It is the especially chivalric and Christian part\nof it. It characterises the Christian chant or canticle, as a higher\nthing than a Greek ode, melos, or hymnos, or than a Latin carmen.\n\nThink of it, for this again is wonderful! That these children of\nMontrose should have an element of music in their souls which Homer had\nnot,--which a melos of David the Prophet and King had not,--which\nOrpheus and Amphion had not,--which Apollo's unrymed oracles became mute\nat the sound of.\n\nA strange new equity this,--melodious justice and judgment as it\nwere,--in all words spoken solemnly and ritualistically by Christian\nhuman creatures;--Robin and Bobbin--by the Crusader's tomb, up to 'Dies\nirae, dies illa,' at judgment of the crusading soul.\n\nYou have to understand this most deeply of all Christian minstrels, from\nfirst to last; that they are more musical, because more joyful, than any\nothers on earth: ethereal minstrels, pilgrims of the sky, true to the\nkindred points of heaven and home; their joy essentially the sky-lark's,\nin light, in purity; but, with their human eyes, looking for the\nglorious appearing of something in the sky, which the bird cannot.\n\nThis it is that changes Etruscan murmur into Terza rima--Horatian Latin\ninto Provencal troubadour's melody; not, because less artful, less wise.\n\nHere is a little bit, for instance, of French ryming just before\nChaucer's time--near enough to our own French to be intelligible to us\nyet.\n\n    'O quant tres-glorieuse vie,\n    Quant cil quit out peut et maistrie,\n    Veult esprouver pour necessaire,\n    Ne pour quant il ne blasma mie\n    La vie de Marthe sa mie:\n    Mais il lui donna exemplaire\n    D'autrement vivre, et de bien plaire\n    A Dieu; et plut de bien a faire:\n    Pour se conclut-il que Marie\n    Qui estoit a ses piedz sans braire,\n    Et pensait d'entendre et de taire,\n    Estleut la plus saine partie.\n\n    La meilleur partie esleut-elle\n    Et la plus saine et la plus belle,\n    Qui ja ne luy sera ostee\n    Car par verite se fut celle\n    Qui fut tousjours fresche et nouvelle,\n    D'aymer Dieu et d'en estre aymee;\n    Car jusqu'au cueur fut entamee,\n    Et si ardamment enflammee.\n    Que tous-jours ardoit l'estincelle;\n    Par quoi elle fut visitee\n    Et de Dieu premier comfortee;\n    Car charite est trop ysnelle.'\n\nThe only law of _metre_, observed in this song, is that each line shall\nbe octosyllabic:\n\n    Qui fut | tousjours | fresche et | nouvelle,\n    D'autre | ment vi | vret de | bien (ben) plaire,\n    Et pen  | soit den | tendret | de taire\n\nBut the reader must note that words which were two-syllabled in Latin\nmostly remain yet so in the French.\n\n    La _vi_ | -_e_ de | Marthe | sa mie,\n\nalthough _mie_, which is pet language, loving abbreviation of _amica_\nthrough _amie_, remains monosyllabic. But _vie_ elides its _e_ before a\nvowel:\n\n    Car Mar- | the me | nait vie | active\n    Et Ma- | ri-e | contemp | lative;\n\nand custom endures many exceptions. Thus _Marie_ may be three-syllabled\nas above, or answer to _mie_ as a dissyllable; but _vierge_ is always, I\nthink, dissyllabic, _vier-ge_, with even stronger accent on the -_ge_,\nfor the Latin -_go_.\n\nThen, secondly, of quantity, there is scarcely any fixed law. The metres\nmay be timed as the minstrel chooses--fast or slow--and the iambic\ncurrent checked in reverted eddy, as the words chance to come.\n\nBut, thirdly, there is to be rich ryming and chiming, no matter how\nsimply got, so only that the words jingle and tingle together with due\nart of interlacing and answering in different parts of the stanza,\ncorrespondent to the involutions of tracery and illumination. The whole\ntwelve-line stanza is thus constructed with two rymes only, six of each,\nthus arranged:\n\n    AAB | AAB | BBA | BBA |\n\ndividing the verse thus into four measures, reversed in ascent and\ndescent, or _descant_ more properly; and doubtless with correspondent\nphases in the voice-given, and duly accompanying, or following, music;\nThomas the Rymer's own precept, that 'tong is chefe in mynstrelsye,'\nbeing always kept faithfully in mind.[176]\n\nHere then you have a sufficient example of the pure chant of the\nChristian ages; which is always at heart joyful, and divides itself into\nthe four great forms, Song of Praise, Song of Prayer, Song of Love, and\nSong of Battle; praise, however, being the keynote of passion through\nall the four forms; according to the first law which I have already\ngiven in the laws of Fesole; 'all great Art is Praise,' of which the\ncontrary is also true, all foul or miscreant Art is accusation, [Greek:\ndiabole]: 'She gave me of the tree and I did eat' being an entirely\nmuseless expression on Adam's part, the briefly essential contrary of\nLove-song.\n\nWith these four perfect forms of Christian chant, of which we may take\nfor pure examples the 'Te Deum,' the 'Te Lucis Ante,' the 'Amor che\nnella mente,'[177] and the 'Chant de Roland,' are mingled songs of\nmourning, of Pagan origin (whether Greek or Danish), holding grasp still\nof the races that have once learned them, in times of suffering and\nsorrow; and songs of Christian humiliation or grief, regarding chiefly\nthe sufferings of Christ, or the conditions of our own sin: while\nthrough the entire system of these musical complaints are interwoven\nmoralities, instructions, and related histories, in illustration of\nboth, passing into Epic and Romantic verse, which gradually, as the\nforms and learnings of society increase, becomes less joyful, and more\ndidactic, or satiric, until the last echoes of Christian joy and melody\nvanish in the 'Vanity of human wishes.'\n\nAnd here I must pause for a minute or two to separate the different\nbranches of our inquiry clearly from one another. For one thing, the\nreader must please put for the present out of his head all thought of\nthe progress of 'civilisation'--that is to say, broadly, of the\nsubstitution of wigs for hair, gas for candles, and steam for legs. This\nis an entirely distinct matter from the phases of policy and religion.\nIt has nothing to do with the British Constitution, or the French\nRevolution, or the unification of Italy. There are, indeed, certain\nsubtle relations between the state of mind, for instance, in Venice,\nwhich makes her prefer a steamer to a gondola, and that which makes her\nprefer a gazetteer to a duke; but these relations are not at all to be\ndealt with until we solemnly understand that whether men shall be\nChristians and poets, or infidels and dunces, does not depend on the way\nthey cut their hair, tie their breeches, or light their fires. Dr.\nJohnson might have worn his wig in fulness conforming to his dignity,\nwithout therefore coming to the conclusion that human wishes were vain;\nnor is Queen Antoinette's civilised hair-powder, as opposed to Queen\nBertha's savagely loose hair, the cause of Antoinette's laying her head\nat last in scaffold dust, but Bertha in a pilgrim-haunted tomb.\n\nAgain, I have just now used the words 'poet' and 'dunce,' meaning the\ndegree of each quality possible to average human nature. Men are\neternally divided into the two classes of poet (believer, maker, and\npraiser) and dunce (or unbeliever, unmaker, and dispraiser). And in\nprocess of ages they have the power of making faithful and formative\ncreatures of themselves, or unfaithful and _de_formative. And this\ndistinction between the creatures who, blessing, are blessed, and\nevermore _benedicti_, and the creatures who, cursing, are cursed, and\nevermore _maledicti_, is one going through all humanity; antediluvian in\nCain and Abel, diluvian in Ham and Shem. And the question for the public\nof any given period is not whether they are a constitutional or\nunconstitutional vulgus, but whether they are a benignant or malignant\nvulgus. So also, whether it is indeed the gods who have given any\ngentleman the grace to despise the rabble, depends wholly on whether it\nis indeed the rabble, or he, who are the malignant persons.\n\nBut yet again. This difference between the persons to whom Heaven,\naccording to Orpheus, has granted 'the hour of delight,'[178] and those\nwhom it has condemned to the hour of detestableness, being, as I have\njust said, of all times and nations,--it is an interior and more\ndelicate difference which we are examining in the gift of _Christian_,\nas distinguished from unchristian, song. Orpheus, Pindar, and Horace are\nindeed distinct from the prosaic rabble, as the bird from the snake; but\nbetween Orpheus and Palestrina, Horace and Sidney, there is another\ndivision, and a new power of music and song given to the humanity which\nhas hope of the Resurrection.\n\n_This_ is the root of all life and all rightness in Christian harmony,\nwhether of word or instrument; and so literally, that in precise manner\nas this hope disappears, the power of song is taken away, and taken away\nutterly. When the Christian falls back out of the bright hope of the\nResurrection, even the Orpheus song is forbidden him. Not to have known\nthe hope is blameless: one may sing, unknowing, as the swan, or\nPhilomela. But to have known and fall away from it, and to declare that\nthe human wishes, which are summed in that one--'Thy kingdom come'--are\nvain! The Fates ordain there shall be no singing after that denial.\n\nFor observe this, and earnestly. The old Orphic song, with its dim hope\nof yet once more Eurydice,--the Philomela song--granted after the cruel\nsilence,--the Halcyon song--with its fifteen days of peace, were all\nsad, or joyful only in some vague vision of conquest over death. But the\nJohnsonian vanity of wishes is on the whole satisfactory to\nJohnson--accepted with gentlemanly resignation by Pope--triumphantly and\nwith bray of penny trumpets and blowing of steam-whistles, proclaimed\nfor the glorious discovery of the civilised ages, by Mrs. Barbauld, Miss\nEdgeworth, Adam Smith, and Co. There is no God, but have we not\ninvented gunpowder?--who wants a God, with that in his pocket?[179]\nThere is no Resurrection, neither angel nor spirit; but have we not\npaper and pens, and cannot every blockhead print his opinions, and the\nDay of Judgment become Republican, with everybody for a judge, and the\nflat of the universe for the throne? There is no law, but only\ngravitation and congelation, and we are stuck together in an everlasting\nhail, and melted together in everlasting mud, and great was the day in\nwhich our worships were born. And there is no Gospel, but only, whatever\nwe've got, to get more, and, wherever we are, to go somewhere else. And\nare not these discoveries, to be sung of, and drummed of, and fiddled\nof, and generally made melodiously indubitable in the eighteenth century\nsong of praise?\n\nThe Fates will not have it so. No word of song is possible, in that\ncentury, to mortal lips. Only polished versification, sententious\npentameter and hexameter, until, having turned out its toes long enough\nwithout dancing, and pattered with its lips long enough without piping,\nsuddenly Astraea returns to the earth, and a Day of Judgment of a sort,\nand there bursts out a song at last again, a most curtly melodious\ntriplet of Amphisbaenic ryme. '_Ca ira._'\n\nAmphisbaenic, fanged in each ryme with fire, and obeying Ercildoune's\nprecept, 'Tong is chefe of mynstrelsye,' to the syllable.--Don\nGiovanni's hitherto fondly chanted 'Andiam, andiam,' become suddenly\nimpersonal and prophetic: IT shall go, and you also. A cry--before it is\na song, then song and accompaniment together--perfectly done; and the\nmarch 'towards the field of Mars. The two hundred and fifty\nthousand--they to the sound of stringed music--preceded by young girls\nwith tricolor streamers, they have shouldered soldier-wise their shovels\nand picks, and with one throat are singing _Ca ira_.'[180]\n\nThrough all the springtime of 1790, 'from Brittany to Burgundy, on most\nplains of France, under most city walls, there march and\nconstitutionally wheel to the Ca-iraing mood of fife and drum--our clear\nglancing phalanxes;--the song of the two hundred and fifty thousand,\nvirgin led, is in the long light of July.' Nevertheless, another song is\nyet needed, for phalanx, and for maid. For, two springs and summers\nhaving gone--amphisbaenic,--on the 28th of August 1792, 'Dumouriez rode\nfrom the camp of Maulde, eastwards to _Sedan_.'[181]\n\nAnd Longwi has fallen basely, and Brunswick and the Prussian king will\nbeleaguer Verdun, and Clairfait and the Austrians press deeper in over\nthe northern marches, Cimmerian Europe behind. And on that same night\nDumouriez assembles council of war at his lodgings in Sedan. Prussians\nhere, Austrians there, triumphant both. With broad highway to Paris and\nlittle hindrance--_we_ scattered, helpless here and there--what to\nadvise? The generals advise retreating, and retreating till Paris be\nsacked at the latest day possible. Dumouriez, silent, dismisses\n_them_,--keeps only, with a sign, Thouvenot. Silent, thus, when needful,\nyet having voice, it appears, of what musicians call tenor-quality, of a\nrare kind. Rubini-esque, even, but scarcely producible to fastidious\nears at opera. The seizure of the forest of Argonne follows--the\ncannonade of Valmy. The Prussians do not march on Paris _this_ time, the\nautumnal hours of fate pass on--_ca ira_--and on the 6th of November,\nDumouriez meets the Austrians also. 'Dumouriez wide-winged, they\nwide-winged--at and around Jemappes, its green heights fringed and maned\nwith red fire. And Dumouriez is swept back on this wing and swept back\non that, and is like to be swept back utterly, when he rushes up in\nperson, speaks a prompt word or two, and then, with clear tenor-pipe,\nuplifts the hymn of the Marseillaise, ten thousand tenor or bass pipes\njoining, or say some forty thousand in all, for every heart leaps up at\nthe sound; and so, with rhythmic march melody, they rally, they advance,\nthey rush death-defying, and like the fire whirlwind sweep all manner of\nAustrians from the scene of action.' Thus, through the lips of\nDumouriez, sings Tyrtaeus, Rouget de Lisle,[182] 'Aux armes--marchons!'\nIambic measure with a witness! in what wide strophe here beginning--in\nwhat unthought-of antistrophe returning to that council chamber in\nSedan!\n\nWhile these two great songs were thus being composed, and sung, and\ndanced to in cometary cycle, by the French nation, here in our less\ngiddy island there rose, amidst hours of business in Scotland and of\nidleness in England, three troubadours of quite different temper.\nDifferent also themselves, but not opponent; forming a perfect chord,\nand adverse all the three of them alike to the French musicians, in this\nmain point--that while the _Ca ira_ and Marseillaise were essentially\nsongs of blame and wrath, the British bards wrote, virtually, always\nsongs of praise, though by no means psalmody in the ancient keys. On the\ncontrary, all the three are alike moved by a singular antipathy to the\npriests, and are pointed at with fear and indignation by the pietists,\nof their day;--not without latent cause. For they are all of them, with\nthe most loving service, servants of that world which the Puritan and\nmonk alike despised; and, in the triple chord of their song, could not\nbut appear to the religious persons around them as respectively and\nspecifically the praisers--Scott of the world, Burns of the flesh, and\nByron of the devil.\n\nTo contend with this carnal orchestra, the religious world, having long\nago rejected its Catholic Psalms as antiquated and unscientific, and\nfinding its Puritan melodies sunk into faint jar and twangle from their\nnative trumpet-tone, had nothing to oppose but the innocent, rather than\nreligious, verses of the school recognised as that of the English\nLakes; very creditable to them; domestic at once and refined; observing\nthe errors of the world outside of the Lakes with a pitying and tender\nindignation, and arriving in lacustrine seclusion at many valuable\nprinciples of philosophy, as pure as the tarns of their mountains, and\nof corresponding depth.[183]\n\nI have lately seen, and with extreme pleasure, Mr. Matthew Arnold's\narrangement of Wordsworth's poems; and read with sincere interest his\nhigh estimate of them. But a great poet's work never needs arrangement\nby other hands; and though it is very proper that Silver How should\nclearly understand and brightly praise its fraternal Rydal Mount, we\nmust not forget that, over yonder, are the Andes, all the while.\n\nWordsworth's rank and scale among poets were determined by himself, in a\nsingle exclamation:--\n\n    'What was the great Parnassus' self to thee,\n    Mount Skiddaw?'\n\nAnswer his question faithfully, and you have the relation between the\ngreat masters of the Muse's teaching, and the pleasant fingerer of his\npastoral flute among the reeds of Rydal.\n\nWordsworth is simply a Westmoreland peasant, with considerably less\nshrewdness than most border Englishmen or Scotsmen inherit; and no sense\nof humour: but gifted (in this singularly) with vivid sense of natural\nbeauty, and a pretty turn for reflections, not always acute, but, as far\nas they reach, medicinal to the fever of the restless and corrupted life\naround him. Water to parched lips may be better than Samian wine, but do\nnot let us therefore confuse the qualities of wine and water. I much\ndoubt there being many inglorious Miltons in our country churchyards;\nbut I am very sure there are many Wordsworths resting there, who were\ninferior to the renowned one only in caring less to hear themselves\ntalk.\n\nWith an honest and kindly heart, a stimulating egoism, a wholesome\ncontentment in modest circumstances, and such sufficient ease, in that\naccepted state, as permitted the passing of a good deal of time in\nwishing that daisies could see the beauty of their own shadows, and\nother such profitable mental exercises, Wordsworth has left us a series\nof studies of the graceful and happy shepherd life of our lake country,\nwhich to me personally, for one, are entirely sweet and precious; but\nthey are only so as the mirror of an existent reality in many ways more\nbeautiful than its picture.\n\nBut the other day I went for an afternoon's rest into the cottage of one\nof our country people of old statesman class; cottage lying nearly\nmidway between two village churches, but more conveniently for downhill\nwalk towards one than the other. I found, as the good housewife made tea\nfor me, that nevertheless she went up the hill to church. 'Why do not\nyou go to the nearer church?' I asked. 'Don't you like the clergyman?'\n'Oh no, sir,' she answered, 'it isn't that; but you know I couldn't\nleave my mother.' 'Your mother! she is buried at H---- then?' 'Yes, sir;\nand you know I couldn't go to church anywhere else.'\n\nThat feelings such as these existed among the peasants, not of\nCumberland only, but of all the tender earth that gives forth her fruit\nfor the living, and receives her dead to peace, might perhaps have been,\nto our great and endless comfort, discovered before now, if Wordsworth\nhad been content to tell us what he knew of his own villages and people,\nnot as the leader of a new and only correct school of poetry, but simply\nas a country gentleman of sense and feeling, fond of primroses, kind to\nthe parish children, and reverent of the spade with which Wilkinson had\ntilled his lands: and I am by no means sure that his influence on the\nstronger minds of his time was anywise hastened or extended by the\nspirit of tunefulness under whose guidance he discovered that heaven\nrhymed to seven, and Foy to boy.\n\nTuneful nevertheless at heart, and of the heavenly choir, I gladly and\nfrankly acknowledge him; and our English literature enriched with a new\nand a singular virtue in the aerial purity and healthful rightness of\nhis quiet song;--but _aerial_ only,--not ethereal; and lowly in its\nprivacy of light.\n\nA measured mind, and calm; innocent, unrepentant; helpful to sinless\ncreatures and scatheless, such of the flock as do not stray. Hopeful at\nleast, if not faithful; content with intimations of immortality such as\nmay be in skipping of lambs, and laughter of children,--incurious to see\nin the hands the print of the Nails.\n\nA gracious and constant mind; as the herbage of its native hills,\nfragrant and pure;--yet, to the sweep and the shadow, the stress and\ndistress, of the greater souls of men, as the tufted thyme to the laurel\nwilderness of Tempe,--as the gleaming euphrasy to the dark branches of\nDodona.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n[I am obliged to defer the main body of this paper to next\nmonth,--revises penetrating all too late into my lacustrine seclusion;\nas chanced also unluckily with the preceding paper, in which the reader\nwill perhaps kindly correct the consequent misprints, p. 29, l. 20, of\n'scarcely' to 'securely,' and p. 31, l. 34, 'full,' with comma, to\n'fall,' without one; noticing besides that _Redgauntlet_ has been\nomitted in the italicised list, p. 25, l. 16; and that the reference to\nnote 2 should not be at the word 'imagination,' p. 24, but at the word\n'trade,' p. 25, l. 7. My dear old friend, Dr. John Brown, sends me, from\nJamieson's _Dictionary_, the following satisfactory end to one of my\ndifficulties:--'Coup the crans.' The language is borrowed from the\n'cran,' or trivet on which small pots are placed in cookery, which is\nsometimes turned with its feet uppermost by an awkward assistant. Thus\nit signifies to be _completely_ upset.]\n\n    JOHN RUSKIN.\n\n\n[BYRON.]\n\n    'Parching summer hath no warrant\n      To consume this crystal well;\n    Rains, that make each brook a torrent,\n      Neither sully it, nor swell.'\n\nSo was it, year by year, among the unthought-of hills. Little Duddon and\nchild Rotha ran clear and glad; and laughed from ledge to pool, and\nopened from pool to mere, translucent, through endless days of peace.\n\nBut eastward, between her orchard plains, Loire locked her embracing\ndead in silent sands; dark with blood rolled Iser; glacial-pale,\nBeresina-Lethe, by whose shore the weary hearts forgot their people, and\ntheir father's house.\n\nNor unsullied, Tiber; nor unswoln, Arno and Aufidus; and Euroclydon high\non Helle's wave; meantime, let our happy piety glorify the garden rocks\nwith snowdrop circlet, and breathe the spirit of Paradise, where life is\nwise and innocent.\n\nMaps many have we, now-a-days clear in display of earth constituent, air\ncurrent, and ocean tide. Shall we ever engrave the map of meaner\nresearch, whose shadings shall content themselves in the task of showing\nthe depth, or drought,--the calm, or trouble, of Human Compassion?\n\nFor this is indeed all that is noble in the life of Man, and the source\nof all that is noble in the speech of Man. Had it narrowed itself then,\nin those days, out of all the world, into this peninsula between\nCockermouth and Shap?\n\nNot altogether so; but indeed the _Vocal_ piety seemed conclusively to\nhave retired (or excursed?) into that mossy hermitage, above Little\nLangdale. The _Un_vocal piety, with the uncomplaining sorrow, of Man,\nmay have had a somewhat wider range, for aught we know: but history\ndisregards those items; and of firmly proclaimed and sweetly canorous\nreligion, there really seemed at that juncture none to be reckoned upon,\neast of Ingleborough, or north of Criffel. Only under Furness Fells, or\nby Bolton Priory, it seems we can still write Ecclesiastical Sonnets,\nstanzas on the force of Prayer, Odes to Duty, and complimentary\naddresses to the Deity upon His endurance for adoration. Far otherwise,\nover yonder, by Spezzia Bay, and Ravenna Pineta, and in ravines of\nHartz. There, the softest voices speak the wildest words; and Keats\ndiscourses of Endymion, Shelley of Demogorgon, Goethe of Lucifer, and\nBuerger of the Resurrection of Death unto Death--while even Puritan\nScotland and Episcopal Anglia produce for us only these three minstrels\nof doubtful tone, who show but small respect for the 'unco guid,' put\nbut limited faith in gifted Gilfillan, and translate with unflinching\nfrankness the _Morgante Maggiore_.[184]\n\nDismal the aspect of the spiritual world, or at least the sound of it,\nmight well seem to the eyes and ears of Saints (such as we had) of the\nperiod--dismal in angels' eyes also assuredly! Yet is it possible that\nthe dismalness in angelic sight may be otherwise quartered, as it were,\nfrom the way of mortal heraldry; and that seen, and heard, of\nangels,--again I say--hesitatingly--_is_ it possible that the goodness\nof the Unco Guid, and the gift of Gilfillan, and the word of Mr.\nBlattergowl, may severally not have been the goodness of God, the gift\nof God, nor the word of God: but that in the much blotted and broken\nefforts at goodness, and in the careless gift which they themselves\ndespised,[185] and in the sweet ryme and murmur of their unpurposed\nwords, the Spirit of the Lord had, indeed, wandering, as in chaos days\non lightless waters, gone forth in the hearts and from the lips of those\nother three strange prophets, even though they ate forbidden bread by\nthe altar of the poured-out ashes, and even though the wild beast of the\ndesert found them, and slew.\n\nThis, at least, I know, that it had been well for England, though all\nher other prophets, of the Press, the Parliament, the Doctor's chair,\nand the Bishop's throne, had fallen silent; so only that she had been\nable to understand with her heart here and there the simplest line of\nthese, her despised.\n\nI take one at mere chance:\n\n    'Who thinks of self, when gazing on the sky?'[186]\n\nWell, I don't know; Mr. Wordsworth certainly did, and observed, with\ntruth, that its clouds took a sober colouring in consequence of his\nexperiences. It is much if, indeed, this sadness be unselfish, and our\neyes _have_ kept loving watch o'er Man's Mortality. I have found it\ndifficult to make any one now-a-days believe that such sobriety can be;\nand that Turner saw deeper crimson than others in the clouds of Goldau.\nBut that any should yet think the clouds brightened by Man's\n_Im_mortality instead of dulled by his death,--and, gazing on the sky,\nlook for the day when every eye must gaze also--for behold, He cometh\nwith the clouds--this it is no more possible for Christian England to\napprehend, however exhorted by her gifted and guid.\n\n'But Byron was not thinking of such things!'--He, the reprobate! how\nshould such as he think of Christ?\n\nPerhaps not wholly as you or I think of Him. Take, at chance, another\nline or two, to try:\n\n    'Carnage (so Wordsworth tells you) is God's daughter;[187]\n    If _he_ speak truth, she is Christ's sister, and\n    Just now, behaved as in the Holy Land.'\n\nBlasphemy, cry you, good reader? Are you sure you understand it? The\nfirst line I gave you was easy Byron--almost shallow Byron--these are of\nthe man in his depth, and you will not fathom them, like a tarn,--nor in\na hurry.\n\n'Just now behaved as in the Holy Land.' How _did_ Carnage behave in the\nHoly Land then? You have all been greatly questioning, of late, whether\nthe sun, which you find to be now going out, ever stood still. Did you\nin any lagging minute, on those scientific occasions, chance to reflect\nwhat he was bid stand still _for_? or if not--will you please look--and\nwhat, also, going forth again as a strong man to run his course, he saw,\nrejoicing?\n\n'Then Joshua passed from Makkedah unto Libnah--and fought against\nLibnah. And the Lord delivered it and the king thereof into the hand of\nIsrael, and he smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls\nthat were therein.' And from Lachish to Eglon, and from Eglon to\nKirjath-Arba, and Sarah's grave in the Amorites' land, 'and Joshua smote\nall the country of the hills and of the south--and of the vale and of\nthe springs, and all their kings; he left none remaining, but utterly\ndestroyed all that breathed--as the Lord God of Israel commanded.'\n\nThus 'it is written:' though you perhaps do not so often hear _these_\ntexts preached from, as certain others about taking away the sins of the\nworld. I wonder how the world would like to part with them! hitherto it\nhas always preferred parting first with its Life--and God has taken it\nat its word. But Death is not _His_ Begotten Son, for all that; nor is\nthe death of the innocent in battle carnage His 'instrument for working\nout a pure intent' as Mr. Wordsworth puts it; but Man's instrument for\nworking out an impure one, as Byron would have you to know. Theology\nperhaps less orthodox, but certainly more reverent;--neither is the\nWoolwich Infant a Child of God; neither does the iron-clad 'Thunderer'\nutter thunders of God--which facts, if you had had the grace or sense to\nlearn from Byron, instead of accusing him of blasphemy, it had been\nbetter at this day for _you_, and for many a savage soul also, by Euxine\nshore, and in Zulu and Afghan lands.\n\nIt was neither, however, for the theology, nor the use, of these lines\nthat I quoted them; but to note this main point of Byron's own\ncharacter. He was the first great Englishman who felt the cruelty of\nwar, and, in its cruelty, the shame. Its guilt had been known to George\nFox--its folly shown practically by Penn. But the _compassion_ of the\npious world had still for the most part been shown only in keeping its\nstock of Barabbases unhanged if possible: and, till Byron came, neither\nKunersdorf, Eylau, nor Waterloo, had taught the pity and the pride of\nmen that\n\n    'The drying up a single tear has more\n    Of honest fame than shedding seas of gore.'[188]\n\nSuch pacific verse would not indeed have been acceptable to the\nEdinburgh volunteers on Portobello sands. But Byron can write a battle\nsong too, when it is _his_ cue to fight. If you look at the introduction\nto the _Isles of Greece_, namely the 85th and 86th stanzas of the 3rd\ncanto of _Don Juan_,--you will find--what will you _not_ find, if only\nyou understand them! 'He' in the first line, remember, means the typical\nmodern poet.\n\n    'Thus usually, when he was asked to sing,\n      He gave the different nations something national.\n    'Twas all the same to him--\"God save the King\"\n      Or \"Ca ira\" according to the fashion all;\n    His muse made increment of anything\n      From the high lyric down to the low rational:\n    If Pindar sang horse races, what should hinder\n    Himself from being as pliable as Pindar?\n\n    'In France, for instance, he would write a chanson;\n      In England a six-canto quarto tale;\n    In Spain, he'd make a ballad or romance on\n      The last war--much the same in Portugal;\n    In Germany, the Pegasus he'd prance on\n      Would be old Goethe's--(see what says de Stael)\n    In Italy he'd ape the 'Trecentisti;'\n    In Greece, he'd sing some sort of hymn like this t' ye.\n\nNote first here, as we did in Scott, the concentrating and foretelling\npower. The 'God Save the Queen' in England, fallen hollow now, as the\n'Ca ira' in France--not a man in France knowing where either France or\n'that' (whatever 'that' may be) is going to; nor the Queen of England\ndaring, for her life, to ask the tiniest Englishman to do a single thing\nhe doesn't like;--nor any salvation, either of Queen or Realm, being any\nmore possible to God, unless under the direction of the Royal Society:\nthen, note the estimate of height and depth in poetry, swept in an\ninstant, 'high lyric to low rational.' Pindar to Pope (knowing Pope's\nheight, too, all the while, no man better); then, the poetic power of\nFrance--resumed in a word--Beranger; then the cut at Marmion, entirely\ndeserved, as we shall see, yet kindly given, for everything he names in\nthese two stanzas is the best of its kind; then Romance in Spain on--the\n_last_ war, (_present_ war not being to Spanish poetical taste), then,\nGoethe the real heart of all Germany, and last, the aping of the\nTrecentisti which has since consummated itself in Pre-Raphaelitism! that\nalso being the best thing Italy has done through England, whether in\nRossetti's 'blessed damozels' or Burne Jones's 'days of creation.'\nLastly comes the mock at himself--the modern English Greek--(followed up\nby the 'degenerate into hands like mine' in the song itself); and\nthen--to amazement, forth he thunders in his Achilles voice. We have had\none line of him in his clearness--five of him in his depth--sixteen of\nhim in his play. Hear now but these, out of his whole heart:--\n\n    'What,--silent yet? and silent _all_?\n      Ah no, the voices of the dead\n    Sound like a distant torrent's fall,\n      And answer, \"Let _one_ living head,\n    But one, arise--we come--we come:\"\n    --'Tis but the living who are dumb.'\n\nResurrection, this, you see like Buerger's; but not of death unto death.\n\n'Sound like a distant torrent's fall.' I said the _whole_ heart of Byron\nwas in this passage. First its compassion, then its indignation, and the\nthird element, not yet examined, that love of the beauty of this world\nin which the three--unholy--children, of its Fiery Furnace were like to\neach other; but Byron the widest-hearted. Scott and Burns love Scotland\nmore than Nature itself: for Burns the moon must rise over Cumnock\nHills,--for Scott, the Rymer's glen divide the Eildons; but, for Byron,\nLoch-na-Gar _with Ida_, looks o'er Troy, and the soft murmurs of the Dee\nand the Bruar change into voices of the dead on distant Marathon.\n\nYet take the parallel from Scott, by a field of homelier rest:--\n\n    'And silence aids--though the steep hills\n    Send to the lake a thousand rills;\n    In summer tide, so soft they weep,\n    The sound but lulls the ear asleep;\n    Your horse's hoof-tread sounds too rude,\n    So stilly is the solitude.\n\n    Naught living meets the eye or ear,\n    But well I ween the dead are near;\n    For though, in feudal strife, a foe\n    Hath laid our Lady's Chapel low,\n    Yet still beneath the hallowed soil,\n    The peasant rests him from his toil,\n    And, dying, bids his bones be laid\n    Where erst his simple fathers prayed.'\n\nAnd last take the same note of sorrow--with Burns's finger on the fall\nof it:\n\n    'Mourn, ilka grove the cushat kens,\n    Ye hazly shaws and briery dens,\n    Ye burnies, wimplin' down your glens\n                        Wi' toddlin' din,\n    Or foamin' strang wi' hasty stens\n                        Frae lin to lin.'\n\nAs you read, one after another, these fragments of chant by the great\nmasters, does not a sense come upon you of some element in their\npassion, no less than in their sound, different, specifically, from that\nof 'Parching summer hath no warrant'? Is it more profane, think you--or\nmore tender--nay, perhaps, in the core of it, more true?\n\nFor instance, when we are told that\n\n              'Wharfe, as he moved along,\n    To matins joined a mournful voice,'\n\nis this disposition of the river's mind to pensive psalmody quite\nlogically accounted for by the previous statement (itself by no means\nrhythmically dulcet,) that\n\n    'The boy is in the arms of Wharfe,\n    And strangled by a merciless force'?\n\nOr, when we are led into the improving reflection,\n\n    'How sweet were leisure, could it yield no more\n    Then 'mid this wave-washed churchyard to recline,\n    From pastoral graves extracting thoughts divine!'\n\n--is the divinity of the extract assured to us by its being made at\nleisure, and in a reclining attitude--as compared with the meditations\nof otherwise active men, in an erect one? Or are we perchance, many of\nus, still erring somewhat in our notions alike of Divinity and\nHumanity,--poetical extraction, and moral position?\n\nOn the chance of its being so, might I ask hearing for just a few words\nmore of the school of Belial?\n\nTheir occasion, it must be confessed, is a quite unjustifiable one. Some\nvery wicked people--mutineers, in fact--have retired, misanthropically,\ninto an unfrequented part of the country, and there find themselves\nsafe, indeed, but extremely thirsty. Whereupon Byron thus gives them to\ndrink:\n\n    'A little stream came tumbling from the height\n    And straggling into ocean as it might.\n    Its bounding crystal frolicked in the ray\n    And gushed from cliff to crag with saltless spray,\n    Close on the wild wide ocean,--yet as pure\n    And fresh as Innocence; and more secure.\n    Its silver torrent glittered o'er the deep\n    As the shy chamois' eye o'erlooks the steep,\n    While, far below, the vast and sullen swell\n    Of ocean's Alpine azure rose and fell.'[189]\n\nNow, I beg, with such authority as an old workman may take concerning\nhis trade, having also looked at a waterfall or two in my time, and not\nunfrequently at a wave, to assure the reader that here _is_ entirely\nfirst-rate literary work. Though Lucifer himself had written it, the\nthing is itself good, and not only so, but unsurpassably good, the\nclosing line being probably the best concerning the sea yet written by\nthe race of the sea-kings.\n\nBut Lucifer himself _could_ not have written it; neither any servant of\nLucifer. I do not doubt but that most readers were surprised at my\nsaying, in the close of my first paper, that Byron's 'style' depended in\nany wise on his views respecting the Ten Commandments. That so\nall-important a thing as 'style' should depend in the least upon so\nridiculous a thing as moral sense: or that Allegra's father, watching\nher drive by in Count G.'s coach and six, had any remnant of so\nridiculous a thing to guide,--or check,--his poetical passion, may alike\nseem more than questionable to the liberal and chaste philosophy of the\nexisting British public. But, first of all, putting the question of who\nwrites, or speaks, aside, do you, good reader, _know_ good 'style' when\nyou get it? Can you say, of half-a-dozen given lines taken anywhere out\nof a novel, or poem, or play, That is good, essentially, in style, or\nbad, essentially? and can you say why such half-dozen lines are good, or\nbad?\n\nI imagine that in most cases, the reply would be given with hesitation,\nyet if you will give me a little patience, and take some accurate pains,\nI can show you the main tests of style in the space of a couple of\npages.\n\nI take two examples of absolutely perfect, and in manner highest, _i.\ne._ kingly, and heroic, style: the first example in expression of anger,\nthe second of love.\n\n    (1)   'We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us,\n          His present, and your pains, we thank you for.\n          When we have match'd our rackets to these balls,\n          We will in France, by God's grace, play a set,\n          Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard.'\n\n    (2)   'My gracious Silence, hail!\n          Would'st thou have laughed, had I come coffin'd home\n          That weep'st to see me triumph? Ah, my dear,\n          Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear,\n          And mothers that lack sons.'\n\nLet us note, point by point, the conditions of greatness common to both\nthese passages, so opposite in temper.\n\nA. Absolute command over all passion, however intense; this the\nfirst-of-first conditions, (see the King's own sentence just before, 'We\nare no tyrant, but a Christian King, Unto _whose grace_ our passion is\nas subject As are our wretches fettered in our prisons'); and with this\nself-command, the supremely surveying grasp of every thought that is to\nbe uttered, before its utterance; so that each may come in its exact\nplace, time, and connection. The slightest hurry, the misplacing of a\nword, or the unnecessary accent on a syllable, would destroy the 'style'\nin an instant.\n\nB. Choice of the fewest and simplest words that can be found in the\ncompass of the language, to express the thing meant: these few words\nbeing also arranged in the most straightforward and intelligible way;\nallowing inversion only when the subject can be made primary without\nobscurity; thus, 'his present, and your pains, we thank you for' is\nbetter than 'we thank you for his present and your pains,' because the\nDauphin's gift is by courtesy put before the Ambassador's pains; but\n'when to these balls our rackets we have matched' would have spoiled the\nstyle in a moment, because--I was going to have said, ball and racket\nare of equal rank, and therefore only the natural order proper; but also\nhere the natural order is the desired one, the English racket to have\nprecedence of the French ball. In the fourth line the 'in France' comes\nfirst, as announcing the most important resolution of action; the 'by\nGod's grace' next, as the only condition rendering resolution possible;\nthe detail of issue follows with the strictest limit in the final word.\nThe King does not say 'danger,' far less 'dishonour,' but 'hazard' only;\nof _that_ he is, humanly speaking, sure.\n\nC. Perfectly emphatic and clear utterance of the chosen words; slowly\nin the degree of their importance, with omission however of every word\nnot absolutely required; and natural use of the familiar contractions of\nfinal dissyllable. Thus, 'play a set shall strike' is better than 'play\na set _that_ shall strike,' and 'match'd' is kingly short--no necessity\ncould have excused 'matched' instead. On the contrary, the three first\nwords, 'We are glad,' would have been spoken by the king more slowly and\nfully than any other syllables in the whole passage, first pronouncing\nthe kingly 'we' at its proudest, and then the 'are' as a continuous\nstate, and then the 'glad,' as the exact contrary of what the\nambassadors expected him to be.[190]\n\nD. Absolute spontaneity in doing all this, easily and necessarily as the\nheart beats. The king _cannot_ speak otherwise than he does--nor the\nhero. The words not merely come to them, but are compelled to them. Even\nlisping numbers 'come,' but mighty numbers are ordained, and inspired.\n\nE. Melody in the words, changeable with their passion fitted to it\nexactly and the utmost of which the language is capable--the melody in\nprose being Eolian and variable--in verse, nobler by submitting itself\nto stricter law. I will enlarge upon this point presently.\n\nF. Utmost spiritual contents in the words; so that each carries not only\nits instant meaning, but a cloudy companionship of higher or darker\nmeaning according to the passion--nearly always indicated by metaphor:\n'play a set'--sometimes by abstraction--(thus in the second passage\n'silence' for silent one) sometimes by description instead of direct\nepithet ('coffined' for dead) but always indicative of there being more\nin the speaker's mind than he has said, or than he can say, full though\nhis saying be. On the quantity of this attendant fulness depends the\nmajesty of style; that is to say, virtually, on the quantity of\ncontained thought in briefest words, such thought being primarily loving\nand true: and this the sum of all--that nothing can be well said, but\nwith truth, nor beautifully, but by love.\n\nThese are the essential conditions of noble speech in prose and verse\nalike, but the adoption of the form of verse, and especially rymed\nverse, means the addition to all these qualities of one more; of music,\nthat is to say, not Eolian merely, but Apolline; a construction or\narchitecture of words fitted and befitting, under external laws of time\nand harmony.\n\nWhen Byron says 'rhyme is of the rude,'[191] he means that Burns needs\nit,--while Henry the Fifth does not, nor Plato, nor Isaiah--yet in this\nneed of it by the simple, it becomes all the more religious: and thus\nthe loveliest pieces of Christian language are all in ryme--the best of\nDante, Chaucer, Douglas, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Sidney.\n\nI am not now able to keep abreast with the tide of modern scholarship;\n(nor, to say the truth, do I make the effort, the first edge of its\nwaves being mostly muddy, and apt to make a shallow sweep of the shore\nrefuse:) so that I have no better book of reference by me than the\nconfused essay on the antiquity of ryme at the end of Turner's\n_Anglo-Saxons_. I cannot however conceive a more interesting piece of\nwork, if not yet done, than the collection of sifted earliest fragments\nknown of rymed song in European languages. Of Eastern I know nothing;\nbut, this side Hellespont, the substance of the matter is all given in\nKing Canute's impromptu\n\n    'Gaily (or is it sweetly?--I forget which, and it's no matter)\n        sang the monks of Ely,\n    As Knut the king came sailing by;'\n\nmuch to be noted by any who make their religion lugubrious, and their\nSunday the eclipse of the week. And observe further, that if Milton does\nnot ryme, it is because his faculty of Song was concerning Loss,\nchiefly; and he has little more than faculty of Croak, concerning Gain;\nwhile Dante, though modern readers never go further with him than into\nthe Pit, is stayed only by Casella in the ascent to the Rose of Heaven.\nSo, Gibbon can write in _his_ manner the Fall of Rome; but Virgil, in\n_his_ manner, the rise of it; and finally Douglas, in _his_ manner,\nbursts into such rymed passion of praise both of Rome and Virgil, as\nbefits a Christian Bishop, and a good subject of the Holy See.\n\n    'Master of Masters--sweet source, and springing well,\n    Wide where over all ringes thy heavenly bell;\n\n      *    *    *    *\n\n    Why should I then with dull forehead and vain,\n    With rude ingene, and barane, emptive brain,\n    With bad harsh speech, and lewit barbare tongue\n    Presume to write, where thy sweet bell is rung,\n    Or counterfeit thy precious wordis dear?\n    Na, na--not so; but kneel when I them hear.\n    But farther more--and lower to descend\n    Forgive me, Virgil, if I thee offend\n    Pardon thy scolar, suffer him to ryme\n    Since _thou_ wast but ane mortal man sometime.'\n\n'Before honour is humility.' Does not clearer light come for you on that\nlaw after reading these nobly pious words? And note you _whose_\nhumility? How is it that the sound of the bell comes so instinctively\ninto his chiming verse? This gentle singer is the son of--Archibald\nBell-the-Cat!\n\nAnd now perhaps you can read with right sympathy the scene in _Marmion_\nbetween his father and King James.\n\n    'His hand the monarch sudden took--\n    Now, by the Bruce's soul,\n    Angus, my hasty speech forgive,\n    For sure as doth his spirit live\n    As he said of the Douglas old\n    I well may say of you,--\n    That never king did subject hold,\n    In speech more free, in war more bold,\n    More tender and more true:\n    And while the king his hand did strain\n    The old man's tears fell down like rain.'\n\nI believe the most infidel of scholastic readers can scarcely but\nperceive the relation between the sweetness, simplicity, and melody of\nexpression in these passages, and the gentleness of the passions they\nexpress, while men who are not scholastic, and yet are true scholars,\nwill recognise further in them that the simplicity of the educated is\nlovelier than the simplicity of the rude. Hear next a piece of Spenser's\nteaching how rudeness itself may become more beautiful even by its\nmistakes, if the mistakes are made lovingly.\n\n    'Ye shepherds' daughters that dwell on the green,\n          Hye you there apace;\n    Let none come there but that virgins been\n          To adorn her grace:\n    And when you come, whereas she in place,\n    See that your rudeness do not you disgrace;\n          Bind your fillets fast,\n          And gird in your waste,\n    For more fineness, with a taudry lace.'\n\n    'Bring hither the pink and purple cullumbine\n          With gylliflowers;\n    Bring coronations, and sops in wine,\n          Worn of paramours;\n    Strow me the ground with daffadowndillies\n    And cowslips, and kingcups, and loved lilies;\n          The pretty paunce\n          And the chevisaunce\n    Shall match with the fair flowre-delice.'[192]\n\nTwo short pieces more only of master song, and we have enough to test\nall by.\n\n    (2) 'No more, no more, since thou art dead,\n        Shall we e'er bring coy brides to bed,\n        No more, at yearly festivals,\n                    We cowslip balls\n        Or chains of columbines shall make,\n        For this or that occasion's sake.\n        No, no! our maiden pleasures be\n        Wrapt in thy winding-sheet with thee.'[193]\n\n    (3) 'Death is now the phoenix rest,\n        And the turtle's loyal breast\n        To eternity doth rest.\n        Truth may seem, but cannot be;\n        Beauty brag, but 'tis not she:\n        Truth and beauty buried be.'[194]\n\nIf now, with the echo of these perfect verses in your mind, you turn to\nByron, and glance over, or recall to memory, enough of him to give means\nof exact comparison, you will, or should, recognise these following\nkinds of mischief in him. First, if any one offends him--as for instance\nMr. Southey, or Lord Elgin--'his manners have not that repose that marks\nthe caste,' &c. _This_ defect in his Lordship's style, being myself\nscrupulously and even painfully reserved in the use of vituperative\nlanguage, I need not say how deeply I deplore.[195]\n\nSecondly. In the best and most violet-bedded bits of his work there is\nyet, as compared with Elizabethan and earlier verse, a strange taint;\nand indefinable--evening flavour of Covent Garden, as it were;--not to\nsay, escape of gas in the Strand. That is simply what it proclaims\nitself--London air. If he had lived all his life in Green-head Ghyll,\nthings would of course have been different. But it was his fate to come\nto town--modern town--like Michael's son; and modern London (and Venice)\nare answerable for the state of their drains, not Byron.\n\nThirdly. His melancholy is without any relief whatsoever; his jest\nsadder than his earnest; while, in Elizabethan work, all lament is full\nof hope, and all pain of balsam.\n\nOf this evil he has himself told you the cause in a single line,\nprophetic of all things since and now. 'Where _he_ gazed, a gloom\npervaded space.'[196]\n\nSo that, for instance, while Mr. Wordsworth, on a visit to town, being\nan exemplary early riser, could walk, felicitous, on Westminster Bridge,\nremarking how the city now did like a garment wear the beauty of the\nmorning; Byron, rising somewhat later, contemplated only the garment\nwhich the beauty of the morning had by that time received for wear from\nthe city: and again, while Mr. Wordsworth, in irrepressible religious\nrapture, calls God to witness that the houses seem asleep, Byron, lame\ndemon as he was, flying smoke-drifted, unroofs the houses at a glance,\nand sees what the mighty cockney heart of them contains in the still\nlying of it, and will stir up to purpose in the waking business of it,\n\n    'The sordor of civilisation, mixed\n    With all the passions which Man's fall hath fixed.'[197]\n\nFourthly, with this steadiness of bitter melancholy, there is joined a\nsense of the material beauty, both of inanimate nature, the lower\nanimals, and human beings, which in the iridescence, colour-depth, and\nmorbid (I use the word deliberately) mystery and softness of it,--with\nother qualities indescribable by any single words, and only to be\nanalysed by extreme care,--is found, to the full, only in five men that\nI know of in modern times; namely Rousseau, Shelley, Byron, Turner, and\nmyself,--differing totally and throughout the entire group of us, from\nthe delight in clear-struck beauty of Angelico and the Trecentisti; and\nseparated, much more singularly, from the cheerful joys of Chaucer,\nShakespeare, and Scott, by its unaccountable affection for 'Rokkes blak'\nand other forms of terror and power, such as those of the ice-oceans,\nwhich to Shakespeare were only Alpine rheum; and the Via Malas and\nDiabolic Bridges which Dante would have condemned none but lost souls to\nclimb, or cross;--all this love of impending mountains, coiled\nthunder-clouds, and dangerous sea, being joined in us with a sulky,\nalmost ferine, love of retreat in valleys of Charmettes, gulphs of\nSpezzia, ravines of Olympus, low lodgings in Chelsea, and close\nbrushwood at Coniston.\n\nAnd, lastly, also in the whole group of us, glows volcanic instinct of\nAstraean justice returning not to, but up out of, the earth, which will\nnot at all suffer us to rest any more in Pope's serene 'whatever is, is\nright;' but holds, on the contrary, profound conviction that about\nninety-nine hundredths of whatever at present is, is wrong: conviction\nmaking four of us, according to our several manners, leaders of\nrevolution for the poor, and declarers of political doctrine monstrous\nto the ears of mercenary mankind; and driving the fifth, less sanguine,\ninto mere painted-melody of lament over the fallacy of Hope and the\nimplacableness of Fate.\n\nIn Byron the indignation, the sorrow, and the effort are joined to the\ndeath: and they are the parts of his nature (as of mine also in its\nfeebler terms), which the selfishly comfortable public have, literally,\nno conception of whatever; and from which the piously sentimental\npublic, offering up daily the pure emotion of divine tranquillity,\nshrink with anathema not unembittered by alarm.\n\nConcerning which matters I hope to speak further and with more precise\nillustration in my next paper; but, seeing that this present one has\nbeen hitherto somewhat sombre, and perhaps, to gentle readers, not a\nlittle discomposing, I will conclude it with a piece of light biographic\nstudy, necessary to my plan, and as conveniently admissible in this\nplace as afterwards;--namely, the account of the manner in which\nScott--whom we shall always find, as aforesaid, to be in salient and\npalpable elements of character, of the World, worldly, as Burns is of\nthe Flesh, fleshly, and Byron of the Deuce, damnable,--spent his Sunday.\n\nAs usual, from Lockhart's farrago we cannot find out the first thing we\nwant to know,--whether Scott worked after his week-day custom, on the\nSunday morning. But, I gather, not; at all events his household and his\ncattle rested (L. iii. 108). I imagine he walked out into his woods, or\nread quietly in his study. Immediately after breakfast, whoever was in\nthe house, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I shall read prayers at eleven, when I\nexpect you all to attend' (vii. 306). Question of college and other\nexternally unanimous prayers settled for us very briefly: 'if you have\nno faith, have at least manners.' He read the Church of England service,\nlessons and all, the latter, if interesting, eloquently (_ibid._). After\nthe service, one of Jeremy Taylor's sermons (vi. 188). After the sermon,\nif the weather was fine, walk with his family, dogs included and guests,\nto _cold_ picnic (iii. 109), followed by short extempore biblical\nnovelettes; for he had his Bible, the Old Testament especially, by\nheart, it having been his mother's last gift to him (vi. 174). These\nlessons to his children in Bible history were always given, whether\nthere was picnic or not. For the rest of the afternoon he took his\npleasure in the woods with Tom Purdie, who also always appeared at his\nmaster's elbow on Sunday after dinner was over, and drank long life to\nthe laird and his lady and all the good company, in a quaigh of whiskey\nor a tumbler of wine, according to his fancy (vi. 195). Whatever might\nhappen on the other evenings of the week, Scott always dined at home on\nSunday; and with old friends: never, unless inevitably, receiving any\nperson with whom he stood on ceremony (v. 335). He came into the room\nrubbing his hands like a boy arriving at home for the holidays, his\nPeppers and Mustards gambolling about him, 'and even the stately Maida\ngrinning and wagging his tail with sympathy.' For the usquebaugh of the\nless honoured week-days, at the Sunday board he circulated the champagne\nbriskly during dinner, and considered a pint of claret each man's fair\nshare afterwards (v. 339). In the evening, music being to the Scottish\nworldly mind indecorous, he read aloud some favourite author, for the\namusement or edification of his little circle. Shakespeare it might be,\nor Dryden,--Johnson, or Joanna Baillie,--Crabbe, or Wordsworth. But in\nthose days 'Byron was pouring out his spirit fresh and full, and if a\nnew piece from _his_ hand had appeared, it was _sure to be read by Scott\nthe Sunday evening afterwards_; and that with such delighted emphasis as\nshowed how completely the elder bard had kept up his enthusiasm for\npoetry at pitch of youth, and all his admiration of genius, free, pure,\nand unstained by the least drop of literary jealousy' (v. 341).\n\nWith such necessary and easily imaginable varieties as chanced in having\nDandy Dinmont or Captain Brown for guests at Abbotsford, or Colonel\nMannering, Counsellor Pleydell, and Dr. Robertson in Castle Street, such\nwas Scott's habitual Sabbath: a day, we perceive, of eating the fat,\n(_dinner_, presumably not cold, being a work of necessity and\nmercy--thou also, even thou, Saint Thomas of Trumbull, hast thine!) and\ndrinking the sweet, abundant in the manner of Mr. Southey's cataract of\nLodore,--'Here it comes, sparkling.' A day bestrewn with coronations and\nsops in wine; deep in libations to good hope and fond memory; a day of\nrest to beast, and mirth to man, (as also to sympathetic beasts that can\nbe merry,) and concluding itself in an Orphic hour of delight,\nsignifying peace on Tweedside, and goodwill to men, there or far\naway;--always excepting the French, and Boney.\n\n'Yes, and see what it all came to in the end.'\n\nNot so, dark-virulent Minos-Mucklewrath; the end came of quite other\nthings: of _these_, came such length of days and peace as Scott had in\nhis Fatherland, and such immortality as he has in all lands.\n\nNathless, firm, though deeply courteous, rebuke, for his sometimes\novermuch light-mindedness, was administered to him by the more grave and\nthoughtful Byron. For the Lord Abbot of Newstead knew his Bible by heart\nas well as Scott, though it had never been given him by his mother as\nher dearest possession. Knew it, and, what was more, had thought of it,\nand sought in it what Scott had never cared to think, nor been fain to\nseek.\n\nAnd loving Scott well, and always doing him every possible pleasure in\nthe way he sees to be most agreeable to him--as, for instance,\nremembering with precision, and writing down the very next morning,\nevery blessed word that the Prince Regent had been pleased to say of him\nbefore courtly audience,--he yet conceived that such cheap ryming as his\nown _Bride of Abydos_, for instance, which he had written from beginning\nto end in four days, or even the travelling reflections of Harold and\nJuan on men and women, were scarcely steady enough Sunday afternoon's\nreading for a patriarch-Merlin like Scott. So he dedicates to him a work\nof a truly religious tendency, on which for his own part he has done his\nbest,--the drama of _Cain_. Of which dedication the virtual significance\nto Sir Walter might be translated thus. Dearest and last of Border\nsoothsayers, thou hast indeed told us of Black Dwarfs, and of White\nMaidens, also of Grey Friars, and Green Fairies; also of sacred hollies\nby the well, and haunted crooks in the glen. But of the bushes that the\nblack dogs rend in the woods of Phlegethon; and of the crooks in the\nglen, and the bickerings of the burnie where ghosts meet the mightiest\nof us; and of the black misanthrope, who is by no means yet a dwarfed\none, and concerning whom wiser creatures than Hobbie Elliot may\ntremblingly ask 'Gude guide us, what's yon?' hast thou yet known, seeing\nthat thou hast yet told, _nothing_.\n\nScott may perhaps have his answer. We shall in good time hear.\n\n    JOHN RUSKIN\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[154] Nell, in the _Old Curiosity Shop_, was simply killed for the\nmarket, as a butcher kills a lamb (see Forster's _Life_), and Paul was\nwritten under the same conditions of illness which affected Scott--a\npart of the ominous palsies, grasping alike author and subject, both in\n_Dombey_ and _Little Dorrit_.\n\n[155] Chourineur' not striking with dagger-point, but ripping with\nknife-edge. Yet I do him, and La Louve, injustice in classing them with\nthe two others; they are put together only as parts in the same\nphantasm. Compare with La Louve, the strength of wild virtue in the\n'Louvecienne' (Lucienne) of Gaboriau--she, province-born and bred; and\nopposed to Parisian civilisation in the character of her sempstress\nfriend. 'De ce Paris, ou elle etait nee, elle savait tout--elle\nconnaissait tout. Rien ne l'etonnait, nul ne l'intimidait. Sa science\ndes details materiels de l'existence etait inconcevable. Impossible de\nla duper!--Eh bien! cette fille si laborieuse et si econome n'avait meme\npas la plus vague notion des sentiments qui sont l'honneur de la femme.\nJe n'avais pas idee d'une si complete absence de sens moral; d'une si\ninconsciente depravation, d'une impudence si effrontement\nnaive.'--_L'Argent des autres_, vol. i. p. 358.\n\n[156] The reader who cares to seek it may easily find medical evidence\nof the physical effects of certain states of brain disease in producing\nespecially images of truncated and Hermes-like deformity, complicated\nwith grossness. Horace, in the _Epodes_, scoffs at it, but not without\nhorror. Luca Signorelli and Raphael in their arabesques are deeply\nstruck by it: Durer, defying and playing with it alternately, is almost\nbeaten down again and again in the distorted faces, hewing halberts, and\nsuspended satyrs of his arabesques round the polyglot Lord's Prayer; it\ntakes entire possession of Balzac in the _Contes Drolatiques_; it struck\nScott in the earliest days of his childish 'visions' intensified by the\naxe-stroke murder of his grand aunt; L. i. 142, and see close of this\nnote. It chose for him the subject of the _Heart of Midlothian_, and\nproduced afterwards all the recurrent ideas of executions, tainting\n_Nigel_, almost spoiling _Quentin Durward_--utterly the _Fair Maid of\nPerth_: and culminating in _Bizarro_, L. x. 149. It suggested all the\ndeaths by falling, or sinking, as in delirious sleep--Kennedy, Eveline\nNeville (nearly repeated in Clara Mowbray), Amy Robsart, the Master of\nRavenswood in the quicksand, Morris, and Corporal Grace-be-here--compare\nthe dream of Gride, in _Nicholas Nickleby_, and Dickens's own last\nwords, _on the ground_, (so also, in my own inflammation of the brain,\ntwo years ago, I dreamed that I fell through the earth and came out on\nthe other side). In its grotesque and distorting power, it produced all\nthe figures of the Lay Goblin, Pacolet, Flibbertigibbet, Cockledemoy,\nGeoffrey Hudson, Fenella, and Nectabanus; in Dickens it in like manner\ngives Quilp, Krook, Smike, Smallweed, Miss Mowcher, and the dwarfs and\nwax-work of Nell's caravan; and runs entirely wild in _Barnaby Rudge_,\nwhere, with a _corps de drame_ composed of one idiot, two madmen, a\ngentleman fool who is also a villain, a shop-boy fool who is also a\nblackguard, a hangman, a shrivelled virago, and a doll in\nribands--carrying this company through riot and fire, till he hangs the\nhangman, one of the madmen, his mother, and the idiot, runs the\ngentleman-fool through in a bloody duel, and burns and crushes the\nshop-boy fool into shapelessness, he cannot yet be content without\nshooting the spare lover's leg off, and marrying him to the doll in a\nwooden one; the shapeless shop-boy being finally also married in _two_\nwooden ones. It is this mutilation, observe, which is the very sign\nmanual of the plague; joined, in the artistic forms of it, with a love\nof thorniness--(in their mystic root, the truncation of the limbless\nserpent and the spines of the dragon's wing. Compare _Modern Painters_,\nvol. iv., 'Chapter on the Mountain Gloom,' s. 19); and in _all_ forms of\nit, with petrifaction or loss of power by cold in the blood, whence the\nlast Darwinian process of the witches' charm--'cool it with a baboon's\n_blood_, _then_ the charm is firm and good.' The two frescoes in the\ncolossal handbills which have lately decorated the streets of London\n(the baboon with the mirror, and the Maskelyne and Cooke decapitation)\nare the final English forms of Raphael's arabesque under this influence;\nand it is well worth while to get the number for the week ending April\n3, 1880, of _Young Folks_--'A magazine of instructive and entertaining\nliterature for boys and girls of all ages,' containing 'A Sequel to\nDesdichado' (the modern development of Ivanhoe), in which a quite\nmonumental example of the kind of art in question will be found as a\nleading illustration of this characteristic sentence, \"See, good\nCerberus,\" said Sir Rupert, \"_my hand has been struck off. You must make\nme a hand of iron, one with springs in it, so that I can make it grasp a\ndagger._\" The text is also, as it professes to be, instructive; being\nthe ultimate degeneration of what I have above called the 'folly' of\n_Ivanhoe_; for folly begets folly down, and down; and whatever Scott and\nTurner did wrong has thousands of imitators--their wisdom none will so\nmuch as hear, how much less follow!\n\nIn both of the Masters, it is always to be remembered that the evil and\ngood are alike conditions of literal _vision_: and therefore also,\ninseparably connected with the state of the health. I believe the first\nelements of all Scott's errors were in the milk of his consumptive\nnurse, which all but killed him as an infant, L. i. 19--and was without\ndoubt the cause of the teething fever that ended in his lameness (L. i.\n20). Then came (if the reader cares to know what I mean by Fors, let him\nread the page carefully) the fearful accidents to his only sister, and\nher death, L. i. 17; then the madness of his nurse, who planned his own\nmurder (21), then the stories continually told him of the executions at\nCarlisle (24), his aunt's husband having seen them; issuing, he himself\nscarcely knows how, in the unaccountable terror that came upon him at\nthe sight of statuary, 31--especially Jacob's ladder; then the murder of\nMrs. Swinton, and finally the nearly fatal bursting of the blood vessel\nat Kelso, with the succeeding nervous illness, 65-67--solaced, while he\nwas being 'bled and blistered till he had scarcely a pulse left,' by\nthat history of the Knights of Malta--fondly dwelt on and realised by\nactual modelling of their fortress, which returned to his mind for the\ntheme of its last effort in passing away.\n\n[157] 'Se dit par denigrement, d'un chretien qui ne croit pas les dogmes\nde sa religion.'--Fleming, vol. ii. p. 659.\n\n[158] 'A son nom,' properly. The sentence is one of Victor Cherbuliez's,\nin _Prosper Randoce_, which is full of other valuable ones. See the old\nnurse's 'ici bas les choses vont de travers, comme un chien qui va a\nvepres, p. 93; and compare Prosper's treasures, 'la petite Venus, et le\npetit Christ d'ivoire,' p. 121; also Madame Brehanne's request for the\ndivertissement of 'quelque belle batterie a coups de couteau' with\nDidier's answer. 'Helas! madame, vous jouez de malheur, ici dans la\nDrome, l'on se massacre aussi peu que possible,' p. 33.\n\n[159] Edgeworth's _Tales_ (Hunter, 1827), 'Harrington and Ormond,' vol.\niii. p. 260.\n\n[160] Alice of Salisbury, Alice Lee, Alice Bridgnorth.\n\n[161] Scott's father was habitually ascetic. 'I have heard his son tell\nthat it was common with him, if any one observed that the soup was good,\nto taste it again, and say, \"Yes--it is too good, bairns,\" and dash a\ntumbler of cold water into his plate.'--Lockhart's _Life_ (Black,\nEdinburgh, 1869), vol. i. p. 312. In other places I refer to this book\nin the simple form of 'L.'\n\n[162] A young lady sang to me, just before I copied out this page for\npress, a Miss Somebody's 'great song,' 'Live, and Love, and Die.' Had it\nbeen written for nothing better than silkworms, it should at least have\nadded--Spin.\n\n[163] See passage of introduction to _Ivanhoe_, wisely quoted in L. vi.\n106.\n\n[164] See below, note, p. 25, on the conclusion of _Woodstock_.\n\n[165] L. iv. 177.\n\n[166] L. vi. 67.\n\n[167] 'One other such novel, and there's an end; but who can last for\never? who ever lasted so long?'--Sydney Smith (of the _Pirate_) to\nJeffrey, December 30, 1821. (_Letters_, vol. ii. p. 223.)\n\n[168] L. vi. p. 188. Compare the description of Fairy Dean, vii. 192.\n\n[169] All, alas! were now in a great measure so written. _Ivanhoe_, _The\nMonastery_, _The Abbot_ and _Kenilworth_ were all published between\nDecember 1819 and January 1821, Constable & Co. giving five thousand\nguineas for the remaining copyright of them, Scott clearing ten thousand\nbefore the bargain was completed; and before the _Fortunes of Nigel_\nissued from the press Scott had exchanged instruments and received his\nbookseller's bills for no less than four 'works of fiction,' not one of\nthem otherwise described in the deeds of agreement, to be produced in\nunbroken succession, _each of them to fill up at least three volumes,\nbut with proper saving clauses as to increase of copy money in case any\nof them should run to four_; and within two years all this anticipation\nhad been wiped off by _Peveril of the Peak_, _Quentin Durward_, _St.\nRonan's Well_, and _Redgauntlet_.\n\n[170] _Woodstock_ was finished 26th March 1826. He knew then of his\nruin; and wrote in bitterness, but not in weakness. The closing pages\nare the most beautiful of the book. But a month afterwards Lady Scott\ndied; and he never wrote glad word more.\n\n[171] Compare Mr. Spurgeon's not unfrequent orations on the same\nsubject.\n\n[172] There are three definite and intentional portraits of himself, in\nthe novels, each giving a separate part of himself: Mr. Oldbuck, Frank\nOsbaldistone, and Alan Fairford.\n\n[173] Andrew knows Latin, and might have coined the word in his conceit;\nbut, writing to a kind friend in Glasgow, I find the brook was called\n'Molyndona' even before the building of the Sub-dean Mill in 1446. See\nalso account of the locality in Mr. George's admirable volume, _Old\nGlasgow_, pp. 129, 149, &c. The Protestantism of Glasgow, since throwing\nthat powder of saints into her brook Kidron, has presented it with other\npious offerings; and my friend goes on to say that the brook, once famed\nfor the purity of its waters (much used for bleaching), 'has for nearly\na hundred years been a crawling stream of loathsomeness. It is now\nbricked over, and a carriage way made on the top of it; underneath the\nfoul mess still passes through the heart of the city, till it falls into\nthe Clyde close to the harbour.'\n\n[174] The following fragments out of the letters in my own possession,\nwritten by Scott to the builder of Abbotsford, as the outer decorations\nof the house were in process of completion, will show how accurately\nScott had pictured himself in Monkbarns.\n\n    'Abbotsford: April 21, 1817.\n\n'Dear Sir,--Nothing can be more obliging than your attention to the old\nstones. You have been as true as the sundial itself.' [The sundial had\njust been erected.] 'Of the two I would prefer the larger one, as it is\nto be in front of a parapet quite in the old taste. But in case of\naccidents it will be safest in your custody till I come to town again on\nthe 12th of May. Your former favours (which were weighty as acceptable)\nhave come safely out here, and will be disposed of with great effect.'\n\n    'Abbotsford: July 30.\n\n'I fancy the Tolbooth still keeps its feet, but, as it must soon\ndescend, I hope you will remember me. I have an important use for the\nniche above the door; and though many a man has got a niche _in_ the\nTolbooth by building, I believe I am the first that ever got a niche out\nof it on such an occasion. For which I have to thank your kindness, and\nto remain very much your obliged humble servant,\n\n                              'WALTER SCOTT.'\n\n    'August 16.\n\n'My dear Sir,--I trouble you with this [_sic_] few lines to thank you\nfor the very accurate drawings and measurements of the Tolbooth door,\nand for your kind promise to attend to my interest and that of\nAbbotsford in the matter of the Thistle and Fleur de Lis. Most of our\nscutcheons are now mounted, and look very well, as the house is\nsomething after the model of an old hall (not a castle), where such\nthings are well in character.' [Alas--Sir Walter, Sir Walter!] 'I intend\nthe old lion to predominate over a well which the children have\nchristened the Fountain of the Lions. His present den, however,\ncontinues to be the hall at Castle Street.'\n\n    'September 5.\n\n'Dear Sir,--I am greatly obliged to you for securing the stone. I am not\nsure that I will put up the gate quite in the old form, but I would like\nto secure the means of doing so. The ornamental stones are now put up,\nand have a very happy effect. If you will have the kindness to let me\nknow when the Tolbooth door comes down, I will send in my carts for the\nstones; I have an admirable situation for it. I suppose the door itself'\n[he means, the wooden one] 'will be kept for the new jail; if not, and\nnot otherwise wanted, I would esteem it curious to possess it. Certainly\nI hope so many sore hearts will not pass through the celebrated door\nwhen in my possession as heretofore.'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n    'September 8.\n\n'I should esteem it very fortunate if I could have the door also, though\nI suppose it is modern, having been burned down at the time of\nPorteous-mob.\n\n'I am very much obliged to the gentlemen who thought these remains of\nthe Heart of Midlothian are not ill bestowed on their intended\npossessor.'\n\n[175] Henceforward, not in affectation, but for the reader's better\nconvenience, I shall continue to spell 'Ryme' without our wrongly added\n_h_.\n\n[176] L. ii. 278.\n\n[177] 'Che nella mente mia _ragiona_.' Love--you observe, the highest\n_Reasonableness_, instead of French _ivresse_, or even Shakespearian\n'mere folly'; and Beatrice as the Goddess of Wisdom in this third song\nof the _Convito_, to be compared with the Revolutionary Goddess of\nReason; remembering of the whole poem chiefly the line:--\n\n    'Costei penso chi che mosso l'universo.'\n\n(See Lyell's _Canzoniere_, p. 104.)\n\n[178] [Greek: horan tes terpsios]--Plato, _Laws_, ii., Steph. 669.\n'Hour' having here nearly the power of 'Fate' with added sense of being\na daughter of Themis.\n\n[179] 'Gunpowder is one of the greatest inventions of modern times, _and\nwhat has given such a superiority to civilised nations over barbarous_'!\n(_Evenings at Home_--fifth evening.) No man can owe more than I both to\nMrs. Barbauld and Miss Edgeworth; and I only wish that in the substance\nof what they wisely said, they had been more listened to. Nevertheless,\nthe germs of all modern conceit and error respecting manufacture and\nindustry, as rivals to Art and to Genius, are concentrated in '_Evenings\nat Home_' and '_Harry and Lucy_'--being all the while themselves works\nof real genius, and prophetic of things that have yet to be learned and\nfulfilled. See for instance the paper, 'Things by their Right Names,'\nfollowing the one from which I have just quoted (The Ship), and closing\nthe first volume of the old edition of the _Evenings_.\n\n[180] Carlyle, _French Revolution_ (Chapman, 1869), vol. ii. p. 70;\nconf. p. 25, and the _Ca ira_ at Arras, vol. iii. p. 276.\n\n[181] _Ibid._ iii. 26.\n\n[182] Carlyle, _French Revolution_, iii. 106, the last sentence altered\nin a word or two.\n\n[183] I have been greatly disappointed, in taking soundings of our most\nmajestic mountain pools, to find them, in no case, verge on the\nunfathomable.\n\n[184] 'It must be put by the original, stanza for stanza, and verse for\nverse; and you will see what was permitted in a Catholic country and a\nbigoted age to Churchmen, on the score of Religion--and so tell those\nbuffoons who accuse me of attacking the Liturgy.\n\n'I write in the greatest haste, it being the hour of the Corso, and I\nmust go and buffoon with the rest. My daughter Allegra is just gone with\nthe Countess G. in Count G.'s coach and six. Our old Cardinal is dead,\nand the new one not appointed yet--but the masquing goes on the same.'\n(Letter to Murray, 355th in Moore, dated Ravenna, Feb. 7, 1828.) 'A\ndreadfully moral place, for you must not look at anybody's wife, except\nyour neighbour's.'\n\n[185] See quoted _infra_ the mock, by Byron, of himself and all other\nmodern poets, _Juan_, canto iii. stanza 86, and compare canto xiv.\nstanza 8. In reference of future quotations the first numeral will stand\nalways for canto; the second for stanza; the third, if necessary, for\nline.\n\n[186] _Island_, ii. 16, where see context.\n\n[187] _Juan_, viii. 5; but, by your Lordship's quotation, Wordsworth\nsays 'instrument'--not 'daughter.' Your Lordship had better have said\n'Infant' and taken the Woolwich authorities to witness: only Infant\nwould not have rymed.\n\n[188] _Juan_, viii. 3; compare 14 and 63, with all its lovely context\n61--68: then 82, and afterwards slowly and with thorough attention, the\nDevil's speech, beginning, 'Yes, Sir, you forget' in scene 2 of _The\nDeformed Transformed_: then Sardanapalus's, act i. scene 2, beginning\n'he is gone, and on his finger bears my signet,' and finally, the\n_Vision of Judgment_, stanzas 3 to 5.\n\n[189] _Island_, iii. 3, and compare, of shore surf, the 'slings its high\nflakes, shivered into sleet' of stanza 7.\n\n[190] A modern editor--of whom I will not use the expressions which\noccur to me--finding the 'we' a redundant syllable in the iambic line,\nprints 'we're.' It is a little thing--but I do not recollect, in the\nforty years of my literary experience, any piece of editor's retouch\nquite so base. But I don't read the new editions much; that must be\nallowed for.\n\n[191] _Island_, ii. 5. I was going to say, 'Look to the context.' but am\nfain to give it here; for the stanza, learned by heart, ought to be our\nschool-introduction to the literature of the world.\n\n    'Such was this ditty of Tradition's days,\n    Which to the dead a lingering fame conveys\n    In song, where fame as yet hath left no sign\n    Beyond the sound whose charm is half divine;\n    Which leaves no record to the sceptic eye,\n    But yields young history all to harmony;\n    A boy Achilles, with the centaur's lyre\n    In hand, to teach him to surpass his sire.\n    For one long-cherish'd ballad's simple stave\n    Rung from the rock, or mingled with the wave,\n    Or from the bubbling streamlet's grassy side,\n    Or gathering mountain echoes as they glide,\n    Hath greater power o'er each true heart and ear,\n    Than all the columns Conquest's minions rear;\n    Invites, when hieroglyphics are a theme\n    For sages' labours or the student's dream;\n    Attracts, when History's volumes are a toil--\n    The first, the freshest bud of Feeling's soil.\n    Such was this rude rhyme--rhyme is of the rude,\n    But such inspired the Norseman's solitude,\n    Who came and conquer'd; such, wherever rise\n    Lands which no foes destroy or civilise,\n    Exist; and what can our accomplish'd art\n    Of verse do more than reach the a waken'd heart?'\n\n[192] _Shepherd's Calendar._ 'Coronation,' loyal-pastoral for Carnation;\n'sops in wine,' jolly-pastoral for double pink; 'paunce,' thoughtless\npastoral for pansy; 'chevisaunce' I don't know, (not in Gerarde);\n'flowre-delice'--pronounce dellice--half made up of 'delicate' and\n'delicious.'\n\n[193] Herrick, _Dirge for Jephthah's Daughter_.\n\n[194] _Passionate Pilgrim._\n\n[195] In this point, compare the _Curse of Minerva_ with the _Tears of\nthe Muses_.\n\n[196] 'He,'--Lucifer; (_Vision of Judgment_, 24). It is precisely\nbecause Byron was _not_ his servant, that he could see the gloom. To the\nDevil's true servants, their Master's presence brings both cheerfulness\nand prosperity;--with a delightful sense of their own wisdom and virtue;\nand of the 'progress' of things in general:--in smooth sea and fair\nweather,--and with no need either of helm touch, or oar toil: as when\nonce one is well within the edge of Maelstrom.\n\n[197] _Island_, ii. 4; perfectly orthodox theology, you observe; no\ndenial of the fall,--nor substitution of Bacterian birth for it. Nay,\nnearly Evangelical theology, in contempt for the human heart; but with\ndeeper than Evangelical humility, acknowledging also what is sordid in\nits civilisation.\n\n\n\n\nTHE\n\nELEMENTS OF DRAWING\n\nIN\n\nTHREE LETTERS TO BEGINNERS\n\nWITH ILLUSTRATIONS DRAWN BY THE AUTHOR\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nIt may perhaps be thought, that in prefacing a Manual of Drawing, I\nought to expatiate on the reasons why drawing should be learned; but\nthose reasons appear to me so many and so weighty, that I cannot quickly\nstate or enforce them. With the reader's permission, as this volume is\ntoo large already, I will waive all discussion respecting the importance\nof the subject, and touch only on those points which may appear\nquestionable in the method of its treatment.\n\nIn the first place, the book is not calculated for the use of children\nunder the age of twelve or fourteen. I do not think it advisable to\nengage a child in any but the most voluntary practice of art. If it has\ntalent for drawing, it will be continually scrawling on what paper it\ncan get; and should be allowed to scrawl at its own free will, due\npraise being given for every appearance of care, or truth, in its\nefforts. It should be allowed to amuse itself with cheap colours almost\nas soon as it has sense enough to wish for them. If it merely daubs the\npaper with shapeless stains, the colour-box may be taken away till it\nknows better: but as soon as it begins painting red coats on soldiers,\nstriped flags to ships, etc., it should have colours at command; and,\nwithout restraining its choice of subject in that imaginative and\nhistorical art, of a military tendency, which children delight in,\n(generally quite as valuable, by the way, as any historical art\ndelighted in by their elders,) it should be gently led by the parents to\ntry to draw, in such childish fashion as may be, the things it can see\nand likes,--birds, or butterflies, or flowers, or fruit. In later\nyears, the indulgence of using the colour should only be granted as a\nreward, after it has shown care and progress in its drawings with\npencil. A limited number of good and amusing prints should always be\nwithin a boy's reach: in these days of cheap illustration he can hardly\npossess a volume of nursery tales without good woodcuts in it, and\nshould be encouraged to copy what he likes best of this kind; but should\nbe firmly restricted to a _few_ prints and to a few books. If a child\nhas many toys, it will get tired of them and break them; if a boy has\nmany prints he will merely dawdle and scrawl over them; it is by the\nlimitation of the number of his possessions that his pleasure in them is\nperfected, and his attention concentrated. The parents need give\nthemselves no trouble in instructing him, as far as drawing is\nconcerned, beyond insisting upon economical and neat habits with his\ncolours and paper, showing him the best way of holding pencil and rule,\nand, so far as they take notice of his work, pointing out where a line\nis too short or too long, or too crooked, when compared with the copy;\n_accuracy_ being the first and last thing they look for. If the child\nshows talent for inventing or grouping figures, the parents should\nneither check, nor praise it. They may laugh with it frankly, or show\npleasure in what it has done, just as they show pleasure in seeing it\nwell, or cheerful; but they must not praise it for being clever, any\nmore than they would praise it for being stout. They should praise it\nonly for what costs it self-denial, namely attention and hard work;\notherwise they will make it work for vanity's sake, and always badly.\nThe best books to put into its hands are those illustrated by George\nCruikshank or by Richter. (See Appendix.) At about the age of twelve or\nfourteen, it is quite time enough to set youth or girl to serious work;\nand then this book will, I think, be useful to them; and I have good\nhope it may be so, likewise, to persons of more advanced age wishing to\nknow something of the first principles of art.\n\nYet observe, that the method of study recommended is not brought forward\nas absolutely the best, but only as the best which I can at present\ndevise for an isolated student. It is very likely that farther\nexperience in teaching may enable me to modify it with advantage in\nseveral important respects; but I am sure the main principles of it are\nsound, and most of the exercises as useful as they can be rendered\nwithout a master's superintendence. The method differs, however, so\nmaterially from that generally adopted by drawing-masters, that a word\nor two of explanation may be needed to justify what might otherwise be\nthought wilful eccentricity.\n\nThe manuals at present published on the subject of drawing are all\ndirected, as far as I know, to one or other of two objects. Either they\npropose to give the student a power of dexterous sketching with pencil\nor water-colour, so as to emulate (at considerable distance) the\nslighter work of our second-rate artists; or they propose to give him\nsuch accurate command of mathematical forms as may afterwards enable him\nto design rapidly and cheaply for manufactures. When drawing is taught\nas an accomplishment, the first is the aim usually proposed; while the\nsecond is the object kept chiefly in view at Marlborough House, and in\nthe branch Government Schools of Design.\n\nOf the fitness of the modes of study adopted in those schools, to the\nend specially intended, judgment is hardly yet possible; only, it seems\nto me, that we are all too much in the habit of confusing art as\n_applied_ to manufacture, with manufacture itself. For instance, the\nskill by which an inventive workman designs and moulds a beautiful cup,\nis skill of true art; but the skill by which that cup is copied and\nafterwards multiplied a thousandfold, is skill of manufacture: and the\nfaculties which enable one workman to design and elaborate his original\npiece, are not to be developed by the same system of instruction as\nthose which enable another to produce a maximum number of approximate\ncopies of it in a given time. Farther: it is surely inexpedient that any\nreference to purposes of manufacture should interfere with the education\nof the artist himself. Try first to manufacture a Raphael; then let\nRaphael direct your manufacture. He will design you a plate, or cup, or\na house, or a palace, whenever you want it, and design them in the most\nconvenient and rational way; but do not let your anxiety to reach the\nplatter and the cup interfere with your education of the Raphael. Obtain\nfirst the best work you can, and the ablest hands, irrespective of any\nconsideration of economy or facility of production. Then leave your\ntrained artist to determine how far art can be popularised, or\nmanufacture ennobled.\n\nNow, I believe that (irrespective of differences in individual temper\nand character) the excellence of an artist, as such, depends wholly on\nrefinement of perception, and that it is this, mainly, which a master or\na school can teach; so that while powers of invention distinguish man\nfrom man, powers of perception distinguish school from school. All great\nschools enforce delicacy of drawing and subtlety of sight: and the only\nrule which I have, as yet, found to be without exception respecting art,\nis that all great art is delicate.\n\nTherefore, the chief aim and bent of the following system is to obtain,\nfirst, a perfectly patient, and, to the utmost of the pupil's power, a\ndelicate method of work, such as may ensure his seeing truly. For I am\nnearly convinced, that when once we see keenly enough, there is very\nlittle difficulty in drawing what we see; but, even supposing that this\ndifficulty be still great, I believe that the sight is a more important\nthing than the drawing; and I would rather teach drawing that my pupils\nmay learn to love Nature, than teach the looking at Nature that they may\nlearn to draw. It is surely also a more important thing for young people\nand unprofessional students, to know how to appreciate the art of\nothers, than to gain much power in art themselves. Now the modes of\nsketching ordinarily taught are inconsistent with this power of\njudgment. No person trained to the superficial execution of modern\nwater-colour painting, can understand the work of Titian or Leonardo;\nthey must for ever remain blind to the refinement of such men's\npencilling, and the precision of their thinking. But, however slight a\ndegree of manipulative power the student may reach by pursuing the mode\nrecommended to him in these letters, I will answer for it that he cannot\ngo once through the advised exercises without beginning to understand\nwhat masterly work means; and, by the time he has gained some\nproficiency in them, he will have a pleasure in looking at the painting\nof the great schools, and a new perception of the exquisiteness of\nnatural scenery, such as would repay him for much more labour than I\nhave asked him to undergo.\n\nThat labour is, nevertheless, sufficiently irksome, nor is it possible\nthat it should be otherwise, so long as the pupil works unassisted by a\nmaster. For the smooth and straight road which admits unembarrassed\nprogress must, I fear, be dull as well as smooth; and the hedges need to\nbe close and trim when there is no guide to warn or bring back the\nerring traveller. The system followed in this work will, therefore, at\nfirst, surprise somewhat sorrowfully those who are familiar with the\npractice of our class at the Working Men's College; for there, the\npupil, having the master at his side to extricate him from such\nembarrassments as his first efforts may lead into, is _at once_ set to\ndraw from a solid object, and soon finds entertainment in his efforts\nand interest in his difficulties. Of course the simplest object which it\nis possible to set before the eye is a sphere; and practically, I find a\nchild's toy, a white leather ball, better than anything else; as the\ngradations on balls of plaster of Paris, which I use sometimes to try\nthe strength of pupils who have had previous practice, are a little too\ndelicate for a beginner to perceive. It has been objected that a circle,\nor the outline of a sphere, is one of the most difficult of all lines to\ndraw. It is so; but I do not want it to be drawn. All that his study of\nthe ball is to teach the pupil, is the way in which shade gives the\nappearance of projection. This he learns most satisfactorily from a\nsphere; because any solid form, terminated by straight lines or flat\nsurfaces, owes some of its appearance of projection to its perspective;\nbut in the sphere, what, without shade, was a flat circle, becomes,\nmerely by the added shade, the image of a solid ball; and this fact is\njust as striking to the learner, whether his circular outline be true or\nfalse. He is, therefore, never allowed to trouble himself about it; if\nhe makes the ball look as oval as an egg, the degree of error is simply\npointed out to him, and he does better next time, and better still the\nnext. But his mind is always fixed on the gradation of shade, and the\noutline left to take, in due time, care of itself. I call it outline,\nfor the sake of immediate intelligibility,--strictly speaking, it is\nmerely the edge of the shade; no pupil in my class being ever allowed to\ndraw an outline, in the ordinary sense. It is pointed out to him, from\nthe first, that Nature relieves one mass, or one tint, against another;\nbut outlines none. The outline exercise, the second suggested in this\nletter, is recommended, not to enable the pupil to draw outlines, but as\nthe only means by which, unassisted, he can test his accuracy of eye,\nand discipline his hand. When the master is by, errors in the form and\nextent of shadows can be pointed out as easily as in outline, and the\nhandling can be gradually corrected in details of the work. But the\nsolitary student can only find out his own mistakes by help of the\ntraced limit, and can only test the firmness of his hand by an exercise\nin which nothing but firmness is required; and during which all other\nconsiderations (as of softness, complexity, &c.) are entirely excluded.\n\nBoth the system adopted at the Working Men's College, and that\nrecommended here, agree, however, in one principle, which I consider the\nmost important and special of all that are involved in my teaching:\nnamely, the attaching its full importance, from the first, to local\ncolour. I believe that the endeavour to separate, in the course of\ninstruction, the observation of light and shade from that of local\ncolour, has always been, and must always be, destructive of the\nstudent's power of accurate sight, and that it corrupts his taste as\nmuch as it retards his progress. I will not occupy the reader's time by\nany discussion of the principle here, but I wish him to note it as the\nonly distinctive one in my system, so far as it is a system. For the\nrecommendation to the pupil to copy faithfully, and without alteration,\nwhatever natural object he chooses to study, is serviceable, among other\nreasons, just because it gets rid of systematic rules altogether, and\nteaches people to draw, as country lads learn to ride, without saddle or\nstirrups; my main object being, at first, not to get my pupils to hold\ntheir reins prettily, but to \"sit like a jackanapes, never off.\"\n\nIn these written instructions, therefore, it has always been with regret\nthat I have seen myself forced to advise anything like monotonous or\nformal discipline. But, to the unassisted student, such formalities are\nindispensable, and I am not without hope that the sense of secure\nadvancement, and the pleasure of independent effort, may render the\nfollowing out of even the more tedious exercises here proposed, possible\nto the solitary learner, without weariness. But if it should be\notherwise, and he finds the first steps painfully irksome, I can only\ndesire him to consider whether the acquirement of so great a power as\nthat of pictorial expression of thought be not worth some toil; or\nwhether it is likely, in the natural order of matters in this working\nworld, that so great a gift should be attainable by those who will give\nno price for it.\n\nOne task, however, of some difficulty, the student will find I have not\nimposed upon him: namely, learning the laws of perspective. It would be\nworth while to learn them, if he could do so easily; but without a\nmaster's help, and in the way perspective is at present explained in\ntreatises, the difficulty is greater than the gain. For perspective is\nnot of the slightest use, except in rudimentary work. You can draw the\nrounding line of a table in perspective, but you cannot draw the sweep\nof a sea bay; you can foreshorten a log of wood by it, but you cannot\nforeshorten an arm. Its laws are too gross and few to be applied to any\nsubtle form; therefore, as you must learn to draw the subtle forms by\nthe eye, certainly you may draw the simple ones. No great painters ever\ntrouble themselves about perspective, and very few of them know its\nlaws; they draw everything by the eye, and, naturally enough, disdain in\nthe easy parts of their work rules which cannot help them in difficult\nones. It would take about a month's labour to draw imperfectly, by laws\nof perspective, what any great Venetian will draw perfectly in five\nminutes, when he is throwing a wreath of leaves round a head, or bending\nthe curves of a pattern in and out among the folds of drapery. It is\ntrue that when perspective was first discovered, everybody amused\nthemselves with it; and all the great painters put fine saloons and\narcades behind their madonnas, merely to show that they could draw in\nperspective: but even this was generally done by them only to catch the\npublic eye, and they disdained the perspective so much, that though they\ntook the greatest pains with the circlet of a crown, or the rim of a\ncrystal cup, in the heart of their picture, they would twist their\ncapitals of columns and towers of churches about in the background in\nthe most wanton way, wherever they liked the lines to go, provided only\nthey left just perspective enough to please the public. In modern days,\nI doubt if any artist among us, except David Roberts, knows so much\nperspective as would enable him to draw a Gothic arch to scale, at a\ngiven angle and distance. Turner, though he was professor of perspective\nto the Royal Academy, did not know what he professed, and never, as far\nas I remember, drew a single building in true perspective in his life;\nhe drew them only with as much perspective as suited him. Prout also\nknew nothing of perspective, and twisted his buildings, as Turner did,\ninto whatever shapes he liked. I do not justify this; and would\nrecommend the student at least to treat perspective with common\ncivility, but to pay no court to it. The best way he can learn it, by\nhimself, is by taking a pane of glass, fixed in a frame, so that it can\nbe set upright before the eye, at the distance at which the proposed\nsketch is intended to be seen. Let the eye be placed at some fixed\npoint, opposite the middle of the pane of glass, but as high or as low\nas the student likes; then with a brush at the end of a stick, and a\nlittle body-colour that will adhere to the glass, the lines of the\nlandscape may be traced on the glass, as you see them through it. When\nso traced they are all in true perspective. If the glass be sloped in\nany direction, the lines are still in true perspective, only it is\nperspective calculated for a sloping plane, while common perspective\nalways supposes the plane of the picture to be vertical. It is good, in\nearly practice, to accustom yourself to enclose your subject, before\nsketching it, with a light frame of wood held upright before you; it\nwill show you what you may legitimately take into your picture, and\nwhat choice there is between a narrow foreground near you, and a wide\none farther off; also, what height of tree or building you can properly\ntake in, &c.[198]\n\nOf figure drawing, nothing is said in the following pages, because I do\nnot think figures, as chief subjects, can be drawn to any good purpose\nby an amateur. As accessaries in landscape, they are just to be drawn on\nthe same principles as anything else.\n\nLastly: If any of the directions given subsequently to the student\nshould be found obscure by him, or if at any stage of the recommended\npractice he finds himself in difficulties which I have not provided\nenough against, he may apply by letter to Mr. Ward, who is my under\ndrawing-master at the Working Men's College (45 Great Ormond Street),\nand who will give any required assistance, on the lowest terms that can\nremunerate him for the occupation of his time. I have not leisure myself\nin general to answer letters of inquiry, however much I may desire to do\nso; but Mr. Ward has always the power of referring any question to me\nwhen he thinks it necessary. I have good hope, however, that enough\nguidance is given in this work to prevent the occurrence of any serious\nembarrassment; and I believe that the student who obeys its directions\nwill find, on the whole, that the best answer of questions is\nperseverance; and the best drawing-masters are the woods and hills.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[198] If the student is fond of architecture, and wishes to know more of\nperspective than he can learn in this rough way, Mr. Runciman (of 40\nAccacia Road, St. John's Wood), who was my first drawing-master, and to\nwhom I owe many happy hours, can teach it him quickly, easily, and\nrightly.\n\n\n\n\nTHE\n\nELEMENTS OF DRAWING.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER I.\n\nON FIRST PRACTICE.\n\n\nMY DEAR READER:\n\nWhether this book is to be of use to you or not, depends wholly on your\nreason for wishing to learn to draw. If you desire only to possess a\ngraceful accomplishment, to be able to converse in a fluent manner about\ndrawing, or to amuse yourself listlessly in listless hours, I cannot\nhelp you: but if you wish to learn drawing that you may be able to set\ndown clearly, and usefully, records of such things as cannot be\ndescribed in words, either to assist your own memory of them, or to\nconvey distinct ideas of them to other people; if you wish to obtain\nquicker perceptions of the beauty of the natural world, and to preserve\nsomething like a true image of beautiful things that pass away, or which\nyou must yourself leave; if, also, you wish to understand the minds of\ngreat painters, and to be able to appreciate their work sincerely,\nseeing it for yourself, and loving it, not merely taking up the thoughts\nof other people about it; then I _can_ help you, or, which is better,\nshow you how to help yourself.\n\nOnly you must understand, first of all, that these powers which indeed\nare noble and desirable, cannot be got without work. It is much easier\nto learn to draw well, than it is to learn to play well on any musical\ninstrument; but you know that it takes three or four years of practice,\ngiving three or four hours a day, to acquire even ordinary command over\nthe keys of a piano; and you must not think that a masterly command of\nyour pencil, and the knowledge of what may be done with it, can be\nacquired without painstaking, or in a very short time. The kind of\ndrawing which is taught, or supposed to be taught, in our schools, in a\nterm or two, perhaps at the rate of an hour's practice a week, is not\ndrawing at all. It is only the performance of a few dexterous (not\nalways even that) evolutions on paper with a black-lead pencil;\nprofitless alike to performer and beholder, unless as a matter of\nvanity, and that the smallest possible vanity. If any young person,\nafter being taught what is, in polite circles, called \"drawing,\" will\ntry to copy the commonest piece of real _work_--suppose a lithograph on\nthe title-page of a new opera air, or a woodcut in the cheapest\nillustrated newspaper of the day--they will find themselves entirely\nbeaten. And yet that common lithograph was drawn with coarse chalk, much\nmore difficult to manage than the pencil of which an accomplished young\nlady is supposed to have command; and that woodcut was drawn in urgent\nhaste, and half spoiled in the cutting afterwards; and both were done by\npeople whom nobody thinks of as artists, or praises for their power;\nboth were done for daily bread, with no more artist's pride than any\nsimple handicraftsmen feel in the work they live by.\n\nDo not, therefore, think that you can learn drawing, any more than a new\nlanguage, without some hard and disagreeable labour. But do not, on the\nother hand, if you are ready and willing to pay this price, fear that\nyou may be unable to get on for want of special talent. It is indeed\ntrue that the persons who have peculiar talent for art, draw\ninstinctively and get on almost without teaching; though never without\ntoil. It is true, also, that of inferior talent for drawing there are\nmany degrees; it will take one person a much longer time than another to\nattain the same results, and the results thus painfully attained are\nnever quite so satisfactory as those got with greater ease when the\nfaculties are naturally adapted to the study. But I have never yet, in\nthe experiments I have made, met with a person who could not learn to\ndraw at all; and, in general, there is a satisfactory and available\npower in every one to learn drawing if he wishes, just as nearly all\npersons have the power of learning French, Latin, or arithmetic, in a\ndecent and useful degree, if their lot in life requires them to possess\nsuch knowledge.\n\nSupposing then that you are ready to take a certain amount of pains, and\nto bear a little irksomeness and a few disappointments bravely, I can\npromise you that an hour's practice a day for six months, or an hour's\npractice every other day for twelve months, or, disposed in whatever way\nyou find convenient, some hundred and fifty hours' practice, will give\nyou sufficient power of drawing faithfully whatever you want to draw,\nand a good judgment, up to a certain point, of other people's work: of\nwhich hours, if you have one to spare at present, we may as well begin\nat once.\n\n\nEXERCISE I.\n\nEverything that you can see, in the world around you, presents itself to\nyour eyes only as an arrangement of patches of different colours\nvariously shaded.[199] Some of these patches of colour have an\nappearance of lines or texture within them, as a piece of cloth or silk\nhas of threads, or an animal's skin shows texture of hairs; but whether\nthis be the case or not, the first broad aspect of the thing is that of\na patch of some definite colour; and the first thing to be learned is,\nhow to produce extents of smooth colour, without texture.\n\nThis can only be done properly with a brush; but a brush, being soft at\nthe point, causes so much uncertainty in the touch of an unpractised\nhand, that it is hardly possible to learn to draw first with it, and it\nis better to take, in early practice, some instrument with a hard and\nfine point, both that we may give some support to the hand, and that by\nworking over the subject with so delicate a point, the attention may be\nproperly directed to all the most minute parts of it. Even the best\nartists need occasionally to study subjects with a pointed instrument,\nin order thus to discipline their attention: and a beginner must be\ncontent to do so for a considerable period.\n\nAlso, observe that before we trouble ourselves about differences of\ncolour, we must be able to lay on _one_ colour properly, in whatever\ngradations of depth and whatever shapes we want. We will try, therefore,\nfirst to lay on tints or patches of _grey_, of whatever depth we want,\nwith a pointed instrument. Take any finely-pointed steel pen (one of\nGillott's lithographic crow-quills is best), and a piece of quite\nsmooth, but not shining, note-paper, cream-laid, and get some ink that\nhas stood already some time in the inkstand, so as to be quite black,\nand as thick as it can be without clogging the pen. Take a rule, and\ndraw four straight lines, so as to enclose a square or nearly a square,\nabout as large as _a_, Fig. 1. I say nearly a square, because it does\nnot in the least matter whether it is quite square or not, the object\nbeing merely to get a space enclosed by straight lines.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 1.]\n\nNow, try to fill in that square space with crossed lines, so completely\nand evenly that it shall look like a square patch of grey silk or cloth,\ncut out and laid on the white paper, as at _b_. Cover it quickly, first\nwith straightish lines, in any direction you like, not troubling\nyourself to draw them much closer or neater than those in the square\n_a_. Let them quite dry before retouching them. (If you draw three or\nfour squares side by side, you may always be going on with one while the\nothers are drying). Then cover these lines with others in a different\ndirection, and let those dry; then in another direction still, and let\nthose dry. Always wait long enough to run no risk of blotting, and then\ndraw the lines as quickly as you can. Each ought to be laid on as\nswiftly as the dash of the pen of a good writer; but if you try to reach\nthis great speed at first you will go over the edge of the square, which\nis a fault in this exercise. Yet it is better to do so now and then than\nto draw the lines very slowly; for if you do, the pen leaves a little\ndot of ink at the end of each line, and these dots spoil your work. So\ndraw each line quickly, stopping always as nearly as you can at the edge\nof the square. The ends of lines which go over the edge are afterwards\nto be removed with the penknife, but not till you have done the whole\nwork, otherwise you roughen the paper, and the next line that goes over\nthe edge makes a blot.\n\nWhen you have gone over the whole three or four times, you will find\nsome parts of the square look darker than other parts. Now try to make\nthe lighter parts as dark as the rest, so that the whole may be of equal\ndepth or darkness. You will find, on examining the work, that where it\nlooks darkest the lines are closest, or there are some much darker\nlines, than elsewhere; therefore you must put in other lines, or little\nscratches and dots, _between_ the lines in the paler parts; and where\nthere are very conspicuous dark lines, scratch them out lightly with the\npenknife, for the eye must not be attracted by any line in particular.\nThe more carefully and delicately you fill in the little gaps and holes\nthe better; you will get on faster by doing two or three squares\nperfectly than a great many badly. As the tint gets closer and begins to\nlook even, work with very little ink in your pen, so as hardly to make\nany mark on the paper; and at last, where it is too dark, use the edge\nof your penknife very lightly, and for some time, to wear it softly into\nan even tone. You will find that the greatest difficulty consists in\ngetting evenness: one bit will always look darker than another bit of\nyour square; or there will be a granulated and sandy look over the\nwhole. When you find your paper quite rough and in a mess, give it up\nand begin another square, but do not rest satisfied till you have done\nyour best with every square. The tint at last ought _at least_ to be as\nclose and even as that in _b_, Fig. 1. You will find, however, that it\nis very difficult to get a _pale_ tint; because, naturally, the ink\nlines necessary to produce a close tint at all, blacken the paper more\nthan you want. You must get over this difficulty not so much by leaving\nthe lines wide apart as by trying to draw them excessively fine, lightly\nand swiftly; being very cautious in filling in; and, at last, passing\nthe penknife over the whole. By keeping several squares in progress at\none time, and reserving your pen for the light one just when the ink is\nnearly exhausted, you may get on better. The paper ought, at last, to\nlook lightly and evenly toned all over, with no lines distinctly\nvisible.\n\n\nEXERCISE II.\n\nAs this exercise in shading is very tiresome, it will be well to vary it\nby proceeding with another at the same time. The power of shading\nrightly depends mainly on _lightness_ of hand and _keenness_ of sight;\nbut there are other qualities required in drawing, dependent not merely\non lightness, but steadiness of hand; and the eye, to be perfect in its\npower, must be made _accurate_ as well as keen, and not only see\nshrewdly, but measure justly.\n\nPossess yourself, therefore, of any cheap work on botany containing\n_outline_ plates of leaves and flowers, it does not matter whether bad\nor good: \"Baxter's British Flowering Plants\" is quite good enough. Copy\nany of the simplest outlines, first with a soft pencil, following it, by\nthe eye, as nearly as you can; if it does not look right in proportions,\nrub out and correct it, always by the eye, till you think it is right:\nwhen you have got it to your mind, lay tracing-paper on the book, on\nthis paper trace the outline you have been copying, and apply it to your\nown; and having thus ascertained the faults, correct them all patiently,\ntill you have got it as nearly accurate as may be. Work with a very soft\npencil, and do not rub out so hard[200] as to spoil the surface of your\npaper; never mind how _dirty_ the paper gets, but do not roughen it;\nand let the false outlines alone where they do not really interfere with\nthe true one. It is a good thing to accustom yourself to hew and shape\nyour drawing out of a dirty piece of paper. When you have got it as\nright as you can, take a quill pen, not very fine at the point; rest\nyour hand on a book about an inch and a half thick, so as to hold the\npen long; and go over your pencil outline with ink, raising your pen\npoint as seldom as possible, and never leaning more heavily on one part\nof the line than on another. In most outline drawings of the present\nday, parts of the curves are thickened to give an effect of shade; all\nsuch outlines are bad, but they will serve well enough for your\nexercises, provided you do not imitate this character: it is better,\nhowever, if you can, to choose a book of pure outlines. It does not in\nthe least matter whether your pen outline be thin or thick; but it\nmatters greatly that it should be _equal_, not heavier in one place than\nin another. The power to be obtained is that of drawing an even line\nslowly and in any direction; all _dashing_ lines, or approximations to\npenmanship, are bad. The pen should, as it were, walk slowly over the\nground, and you should be able at any moment to stop it, or to turn it\nin any other direction, like a well-managed horse.\n\nAs soon as you can copy every curve _slowly_ and accurately, you have\nmade satisfactory progress; but you will find the difficulty is in the\n_slowness_. It is easy to draw what appears to be a good line with a\nsweep of the hand, or with what is called freedom;[201] the real\ndifficulty and masterliness is in never letting the hand _be_ free, but\nkeeping it under entire control at every part of the line.\n\n\nEXERCISE III.\n\nMeantime, you are always to be going on with your shaded squares, and\nchiefly with these, the outline exercises being taken up only for rest.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 2.]\n\nAs soon as you find you have some command of the pen as a shading\ninstrument, and can lay a pale or dark tint as you choose, try to\nproduce gradated spaces like Fig. 2., the dark tint passing gradually\ninto the lighter ones. Nearly _all_ expression of form, in drawing,\ndepends on your power of gradating delicately; and the gradation is\nalways most skilful which passes from one tint into another _very\nlittle_ paler. Draw, therefore, two parallel lines for limits to your\nwork, as in Fig. 2., and try to gradate the shade evenly from white to\nblack, passing over the greatest possible distance, yet so that every\npart of the band may have visible change in it. The perception of\ngradation is very deficient in all beginners (not to say, in many\nartists), and you will probably, for some time, think your gradation\nskilful enough when it is quite patchy and imperfect. By getting a piece\nof grey shaded riband, and comparing it with your drawing, you may\narrive, in early stages of your work, at a wholesome dissatisfaction\nwith it. Widen your band little by little as you get more skilful, so as\nto give the gradation more lateral space, and accustom yourself at the\nsame time to look for gradated spaces in Nature. The sky is the largest\nand the most beautiful; watch it at twilight, after the sun is down, and\ntry to consider each pane of glass in the window you look through as a\npiece of paper coloured blue, or grey, or purple, as it happens to be,\nand observe how quietly and continuously the gradation extends over the\nspace in the window, of one or two feet square. Observe the shades on\nthe outside and inside of a common white cup or bowl, which make it look\nround and hollow;[202] and then on folds of white drapery; and thus\ngradually you will be led to observe the more subtle transitions of the\nlight as it increases or declines on flat surfaces. At last, when your\neye gets keen and true, you will see gradation on everything in Nature.\n\nBut it will not be in your power yet awhile to draw from any objects in\nwhich the gradations are varied and complicated; nor will it be a bad\nomen for your future progress, and for the use that art is to be made of\nby you, if the first thing at which you aim should be a little bit of\nsky. So take any narrow space of evening sky, that you can usually see,\nbetween the boughs of a tree, or between two chimneys, or through the\ncorner of a pane in the window you like best to sit at, and try to\ngradate a little space of white paper as evenly as that is gradated--as\n_tenderly_ you cannot gradate it without colour, no, nor with colour\neither; but you may do it as evenly; or, if you get impatient with your\nspots and lines of ink, when you look at the beauty of the sky, the\nsense you will have gained of that beauty is something to be thankful\nfor. But you ought not to be impatient with your pen and ink; for all\ngreat painters, however delicate their perception of colour, are fond of\nthe peculiar effect of light which may be got in a pen-and-ink sketch,\nand in a woodcut, by the gleaming of the white paper between the black\nlines; and if you cannot gradate well with pure black lines, you will\nnever gradate well with pale ones. By looking at any common woodcuts, in\nthe cheap publications of the day, you may see how gradation is given to\nthe sky by leaving the lines farther and farther apart; but you must\nmake your lines as _fine_ as you can, as well as far apart, towards the\nlight; and do not try to make them long or straight, but let them cross\nirregularly in any direction easy to your hand, depending on nothing but\ntheir gradation for your effect. On this point of direction of lines,\nhowever, I shall have to tell you more presently; in the meantime, do\nnot trouble yourself about it.\n\n\nEXERCISE IV.\n\nAs soon as you find you can gradate tolerably with the pen, take an H.\nor HH. pencil, using its point to produce shade, from the darkest\npossible to the palest, in exactly the same manner as the pen,\nlightening, however, now with India-rubber instead of the penknife. You\nwill find that all _pale_ tints of shade are thus easily producible with\ngreat precision and tenderness, but that you cannot get the same dark\npower as with the pen and ink, and that the surface of the shade is apt\nto become glossy and metallic, or dirty-looking, or sandy. Persevere,\nhowever, in trying to bring it to evenness with the fine point, removing\nany single speck or line that may be too black, with the _point_ of the\nknife: you must not scratch the whole with the knife as you do the ink.\nIf you find the texture very speckled-looking, lighten it all over with\nIndia-rubber, and recover it again with sharp, and excessively fine\ntouches of the pencil point, bringing the parts that are too pale to\nperfect evenness with the darker spots.\n\nYou cannot use the point too delicately or cunningly in doing this; work\nwith it as if you were drawing the down on a butterfly's wing.\n\nAt this stage of your progress, if not before, you may be assured that\nsome clever friend will come in, and hold up his hands in mocking\namazement, and ask you who could set you to that \"niggling;\" and if you\npersevere in it, you will have to sustain considerable persecution from\nyour artistical acquaintances generally, who will tell you that all good\ndrawing depends on \"boldness.\" But never mind them. You do not hear them\ntell a child, beginning music, to lay its little hand with a crash among\nthe keys, in imitation of the great masters; yet they might, as\nreasonably as they may tell you to be bold in the present state of your\nknowledge. Bold, in the sense of being undaunted, yes; but bold in the\nsense of being careless, confident, or exhibitory,--no,--no, and a\nthousand times no; for, even if you were not a beginner, it would be bad\nadvice that made you bold. Mischief may easily be done quickly, but good\nand beautiful work is generally done slowly; you will find no boldness\nin the way a flower or a bird's wing is painted; and if Nature is not\nbold at _her_ work, do you think you ought to be at _yours_? So never\nmind what people say, but work with your pencil point very patiently;\nand if you can trust me in anything, trust me when I tell you, that\nthough there are all kinds and ways of art,--large work for large\nplaces, small work for narrow places, slow work for people who can wait,\nand quick work for people who cannot,--there is one quality, and, I\nthink, only one, in which all great and good art agrees;--it is all\n_delicate_ art. Coarse art is always bad art. You cannot understand this\nat present, because you do not know yet how much tender thought, and\nsubtle care, the great painters put into touches that at first look\ncoarse; but, believe me, it is true, and you will find it is so in due\ntime.\n\nYou will be perhaps also troubled, in these first essays at pencil\ndrawing, by noticing that more delicate gradations are got in an instant\nby a chance touch of the India-rubber, than by an hour's labour with the\npoint; and you may wonder why I tell you to produce tints so painfully,\nwhich might, it appears, be obtained with ease. But there are two\nreasons: the first, that when you come to draw forms, you must be able\nto gradate with absolute precision, in whatever place and direction you\nwish; not in any wise vaguely, as the India-rubber does it; and,\nsecondly, that all natural shadows are more or less mingled with gleams\nof light. In the darkness of ground there is the light of the little\npebbles or dust; in the darkness of foliage, the glitter of the leaves;\nin the darkness of flesh, transparency; in that of a stone, granulation:\nin every case there is some mingling of light, which cannot be\nrepresented by the leaden tone which you get by rubbing, or by an\ninstrument known to artists as the \"stump.\" When you can manage the\npoint properly, you will indeed be able to do much also with this\ninstrument, or with your fingers; but then you will have to retouch the\nflat tints afterwards, so as to put life and light into them, and that\ncan only be done with the point. Labour on, therefore, courageously,\nwith that only.\n\n\nEXERCISE V.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 3.]\n\nWhen you can manage to tint and gradate tenderly with the pencil point,\nget a good large alphabet, and try to _tint_ the letters into shape with\nthe pencil point. Do not outline them first, but measure their height\nand extreme breadth with the compasses, as _a b_, _a c_, Fig. 3., and\nthen scratch in their shapes gradually; the letter A, enclosed within\nthe lines, being in what Turner would have called a \"state of\nforwardness.\"\n\nThen, when you are satisfied with the shape of the letter, draw pen and\nink lines firmly round the tint, as at _d_, and remove any touches\noutside the limit, first with the India-rubber, and then with the\npenknife, so that all may look clear and right. If you rub out any of\nthe pencil inside the outline of the letter, retouch it, closing it up\nto the inked line. The straight lines of the outline are all to be\n_ruled_,[203] but the curved lines are to be drawn by the eye and hand;\nand you will soon find what good practice there is in getting the curved\nletters, such as Bs, Cs, &c., to stand quite straight, and come into\naccurate form.\n\nAll these exercises are very irksome, and they are not to be persisted\nin alone; neither is it necessary to acquire perfect power in any of\nthem. An entire master of the pencil or brush ought, indeed, to be able\nto draw any form at once, as Giotto his circle; but such skill as this\nis only to be expected of the consummate master, having pencil in hand\nall his life, and all day long, hence the force of Giotto's proof of his\nskill; and it is quite possible to draw very beautifully, without\nattaining even an approximation to such a power; the main point being,\nnot that every line should be precisely what we intend or wish, but that\nthe line which we intended or wished to draw should be right. If we\nalways see rightly and mean rightly, we shall get on, though the hand\nmay stagger a little; but if we mean wrongly, or mean nothing, it does\nnot matter how firm the hand is. Do not, therefore, torment yourself\nbecause you cannot do as well as you would like; but work patiently,\nsure that every square and letter will give you a certain increase of\npower; and as soon as you can draw your letters pretty well, here is a\nmore amusing exercise for you.\n\n\nEXERCISE VI.\n\nChoose any tree that you think pretty, which is nearly bare of leaves,\nand which you can see against the sky, or against a pale wall, or other\nlight ground: it must not be against strong light, or you will find the\nlooking at it hurts your eyes; nor must it be in sunshine, or you will\nbe puzzled by the lights on the boughs. But the tree must be in shade;\nand the sky blue, or grey, or dull white. A wholly grey or rainy day is\nthe best for this practice.\n\nYou will see that _all_ the boughs of the tree are _dark_ against the\nsky. Consider them as so many dark rivers, to be laid down in a map with\nabsolute accuracy; and, without the least thought about the _roundness_\nof the stems, map them all out in flat shade, scrawling them in with\npencil, just as you did the limbs of your letters; then correct and\nalter them, rubbing out and out again, never minding how much your paper\nis dirtied (only not destroying its surface), until every bough is\nexactly, or as near as your utmost power can bring it, right in\ncurvature and in thickness. Look at the white interstices between them\nwith as much scrupulousness as if they were little estates which you had\nto survey, and draw maps of, for some important lawsuit, involving heavy\npenalties if you cut the least bit of a corner off any of them, or gave\nthe hedge anywhere too deep a curve; and try continually to fancy the\nwhole tree nothing but a flat ramification on a white ground. Do not\ntake any trouble about the little twigs, which look like a confused\nnetwork or mist; leave them all out,[204] drawing only the main branches\nas far as you can see them distinctly, your object at present being not\nto draw a tree, but to _learn how_ to do so. When you have got the thing\nas nearly right as you can--and it is better to make one good study than\ntwenty left unnecessarily inaccurate--take your pen, and put a fine\noutline to all the boughs, as you did to your letter, taking care, as\nfar as possible, to put the outline within the edge of the shade, so as\nnot to make the boughs thicker: the main use of the outline is to\n_affirm_ the whole more clearly; to do away with little accidental\nroughnesses and excrescences, and especially to mark where boughs cross,\nor come in front of each other, as at such points their arrangement in\nthis kind of sketch is unintelligible without the outline. It may\nperfectly well happen that in Nature it should be less distinct than\nyour outline will make it; but it is better in this kind of sketch to\nmark the facts clearly. The temptation is always to be slovenly and\ncareless, and the outline is like a bridle, and forces our indolence\ninto attention and precision. The outline should be about the thickness\nof that in Fig. 4, which represents the ramification of a small stone\npine, only I have not endeavoured to represent the pencil shading within\nthe outline, as I could not easily express it in a woodcut; and you have\nnothing to do at present with the indication of the foliage above, of\nwhich in another place. You may also draw your trees as much larger\nthan this figure as you like; only, however large they may be, keep the\noutline as delicate, and draw the branches far enough into their outer\nsprays to give quite as slender ramification as you have in this figure,\notherwise you do not get good enough practice out of them.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 4.]\n\nYou cannot do too many studies of this kind: every one will give you\nsome new notion about trees: but when you are tired of tree boughs, take\nany forms whatever which are drawn in flat colour, one upon another; as\npatterns on any kind of cloth, or flat china (tiles, for instance),\nexecuted in two colours only; and practice drawing them of the right\nshape and size by the eye, and filling them in with shade of the depth\nrequired.\n\nIn doing this, you will first have to meet the difficulty of\nrepresenting depth of colour by depth of shade. Thus a pattern of\nultramarine blue will have to be represented by a darker tint of grey\nthan a pattern of yellow.\n\nAnd now it is both time for you to begin to learn the mechanical use of\nthe brush, and necessary for you to do so in order to provide yourself\nwith the gradated scale of colour which you will want. If you can, by\nany means, get acquainted with any ordinarily skilful water-colour\npainter, and prevail on him to show you how to lay on tints with a\nbrush, by all means do so; not that you are yet, nor for a long while\nyet, to begin to colour, but because the brush is often more convenient\nthan the pencil for laying on masses or tints of shade, and the sooner\nyou know how to manage it as an instrument the better. If, however, you\nhave no opportunity of seeing how water-colour is laid on by a workman\nof any kind, the following directions will help you:--\n\n\nEXERCISE VII.\n\nGet a shilling cake of Prussian blue. Dip the end of it in water so as\nto take up a drop, and rub it in a white saucer till you cannot rub much\nmore, and the colour gets dark, thick, and oily-looking. Put two\nteaspoonfuls of water to the colour you have rubbed down, and mix it\nwell up with a camel's-hair brush about three quarters of an inch long.\n\nThen take a piece of smooth, but not glossy, Bristol board or\npasteboard; divide it, with your pencil and rule, into squares as large\nas those of the very largest chess-board: they need not be perfect\nsquares, only as nearly so as you can quickly guess. Rest the pasteboard\non something sloping as much as an ordinary desk; then, dipping your\nbrush into the colour you have mixed, and taking up as much of the\nliquid as it will carry, begin at the top of one of the squares, and lay\na pond or runlet of colour along the top edge. Lead this pond of colour\ngradually downwards, not faster at one place than another, but as if you\nwere adding a row of bricks to a building, all along (only building down\ninstead of up), dipping the brush frequently so as to keep the colour as\nfull in that, and in as great quantity on the paper, as you can, so only\nthat it does not run down anywhere in a little stream. But if it should,\nnever mind; go on quietly with your square till you have covered it all\nin. When you get to the bottom, the colour will lodge there in a great\nwave. Have ready a piece of blotting-paper; dry your brush on it, and\nwith the dry brush take up the superfluous colour as you would with a\nsponge, till it all looks even.\n\nIn leading the colour down, you will find your brush continually go over\nthe edge of the square, or leave little gaps within it. Do not endeavour\nto retouch these, nor take much care about them; the great thing is to\nget the colour to lie smoothly where it reaches, not in alternate blots\nand pale patches; try, therefore, to lead it over the square as fast as\npossible, with such attention to your limit as you are able to give. The\nuse of the exercise is, indeed, to enable you finally to strike the\ncolour up to the limit with perfect accuracy; but the first thing is to\nget it even, the power of rightly striking the edge comes only by time\nand practice; even the greatest artists rarely can do this quite\nperfectly.\n\nWhen you have done one square, proceed to do another which does not\ncommunicate with it. When you have thus done all the alternate squares,\nas on a chess-board, turn the pasteboard upside down, begin again with\nthe first, and put another coat over it, and so on over all the others.\nThe use of turning the paper upside down is to neutralise the increase\nof darkness towards the bottom of the squares, which would otherwise\ntake place from the ponding of the colour.\n\nBe resolved to use blotting-paper, or a piece of rag, instead of your\nlips, to dry the brush. The habit of doing so, once acquired, will save\nyou from much partial poisoning. Take care, however, always to draw the\nbrush from root to point, otherwise you will spoil it. You may even wipe\nit as you would a pen when you want it very dry, without doing harm,\nprovided you do not crush it upwards. Get a good brush at first, and\ncherish it; it will serve you longer and better than many bad ones.\n\nWhen you have done the squares all over again, do them a third time,\nalways trying to keep your edges as neat as possible. When your colour\nis exhausted, mix more in the same proportions, two teaspoonfuls to as\nmuch as you can grind with a drop; and when you have done the alternate\nsquares three times over, as the paper will be getting very damp, and\ndry more slowly, begin on the white squares, and bring them up to the\nsame tint in the same way. The amount of jagged dark line which then\nwill mark the limits of the squares will be the exact measure of your\nunskilfulness.\n\nAs soon as you tire of squares draw circles (with compasses); and then\ndraw straight lines irregularly across circles, and fill up the spaces\nso produced between the straight line and the circumference; and then\ndraw any simple shapes of leaves, according to the exercise No. 2., and\nfill up those, until you can lay on colour quite evenly in any shape you\nwant.\n\nYou will find in the course of this practice, as you cannot always put\nexactly the same quantity of water to the colour, that the darker the\ncolour is, the more difficult it becomes to lay it on evenly. Therefore,\nwhen you have gained some definite degree of power, try to fill in the\nforms required with a full brush, and a dark tint, at once, instead of\nlaying several coats one over another; always taking care that the tint,\nhowever dark, be quite liquid; and that, after being laid on, so much of\nit is absorbed as to prevent its forming a black line at the edge as it\ndries. A little experience will teach you how apt the colour is to do\nthis, and how to prevent it; not that it needs always to be prevented,\nfor a great master in water-colours will sometimes draw a firm outline,\nwhen he _wants_ one, simply by letting the colour dry in this way at the\nedge.\n\nWhen, however, you begin to cover complicated forms with the darker\ncolour, no rapidity will prevent the tint from drying irregularly as it\nis led on from part to part. You will then find the following method\nuseful. Lay in the colour very pale and liquid; so pale, indeed, that\nyou can only just see where it is on the paper. Lead it up to all the\noutlines, and make it precise in form, keeping it thoroughly wet\neverywhere. Then, when it is all in shape, take the darker colour, and\nlay some of it _into_ the middle of the liquid colour. It will spread\ngradually in a branchy kind of way, and you may now lead it up to the\noutlines already determined, and play it with the brush till it fills\nits place well; then let it dry, and it will be as flat and pure as a\nsingle dash, yet defining all the complicated forms accurately.\n\nHaving thus obtained the power of laying on a tolerably flat tint, you\nmust try to lay on a gradated one. Prepare the colour with three or four\nteaspoonfuls of water; then, when it is mixed, pour away about\ntwo-thirds of it, keeping a teaspoonful of pale colour. Sloping your\npaper as before, draw two pencil lines all the way down, leaving a space\nbetween them of the width of a square on your chess-board. Begin at the\ntop of your paper, between the lines; and having struck on the first\nbrushful of colour, and led it down a little, dip your brush deep in\nwater, and mix up the colour on the plate quickly with as much more\nwater as the brush takes up at that one dip: then, with this paler\ncolour, lead the tint farther down. Dip in water again, mix the colour\nagain, and thus lead down the tint, always dipping in water once between\neach replenishing of the brush, and stirring the colour on the plate\nwell, but as quickly as you can. Go on until the colour has become so\npale that you cannot see it; then wash your brush thoroughly in water,\nand carry the wave down a little farther with that, and then absorb it\nwith the dry brush, and leave it to dry.\n\nIf you get to the bottom of your paper before your colour gets pale, you\nmay either take longer paper, or begin, with the tint as it was when you\nleft off, on another sheet; but be sure to exhaust it to pure whiteness\nat last. When all is quite dry, recommence at the top with another\nsimilar mixture of colour, and go down in the same way. Then again, and\nthen again, and so continually until the colour at the top of the paper\nis as dark as your cake of Prussian blue, and passes down into pure\nwhite paper at the end of your column, with a perfectly smooth gradation\nfrom one into the other.\n\nYou will find at first that the paper gets mottled or wavy, instead of\nevenly gradated; this is because at some places you have taken up more\nwater in your brush than at others, or not mixed it thoroughly on the\nplate, or led one tint too far before replenishing with the next.\nPractice only will enable you to do it well; the best artists cannot\nalways get gradations of this kind quite to their minds; nor do they\never leave them on their pictures without after touching.\n\nAs you get more power, and can strike the colour more quickly down, you\nwill be able to gradate in less compass;[205] beginning with a small\nquantity of colour, and adding a drop of water, instead of a brushful;\nwith finer brushes, also, you may gradate to a less scale. But slight\nskill will enable you to test the relations of colour to shade as far as\nis necessary for your immediate progress, which is to be done thus:--\n\nTake cakes of lake, of gamboge, of sepia, of blue-black, of cobalt, and\nvermilion; and prepare gradated columns (exactly as you have done with\nthe Prussian blue) of the lake and blue-black.[206] Cut a narrow slip\nall the way down, of each gradated colour, and set the three slips side\nby side; fasten them down, and rule lines at equal distances across all\nthe three, so as to divide them into fifty degrees, and number the\ndegrees of each, from light to dark, 1, 2, 3, &c. If you have gradated\nthem rightly, the darkest part either of the red or blue will be nearly\nequal in power to the darkest part of the blue-black, and any degree of\nthe black slip will also, accurately enough for our purpose, balance in\nweight the degree similarly numbered in the red or the blue slip. Then,\nwhen you are drawing from objects of a crimson or blue colour, if you\ncan match their colour by any compartment of the crimson or blue in your\nscales, the grey in the compartment of the grey scale marked with the\nsame number is the grey which must represent that crimson or blue in\nyour light and shade drawing.\n\nNext, prepare scales with gamboge, cobalt, and vermilion. You will find\nthat you cannot darken these beyond a certain point;[207] for yellow and\nscarlet, so long as they remain yellow and scarlet, cannot approach to\nblack; we cannot have, properly speaking, a dark yellow or dark scarlet.\nMake your scales of full yellow, blue, and scarlet, half-way down;\npassing _then_ gradually to white. Afterwards use lake to darken the\nupper half of the vermilion and gamboge; and Prussian blue to darken the\ncobalt. You will thus have three more scales, passing from white nearly\nto black, through yellow and orange, through sky-blue, and through\nscarlet. By mixing the gamboge and Prussian blue you may make another\nwith green; mixing the cobalt and lake, another with violet; the sepia\nalone will make a forcible brown one; and so on, until you have as many\nscales as you like, passing from black to white through different\ncolours. Then, supposing your scales properly gradated and equally\ndivided, the compartment or degree No. 1. of the grey will represent in\nchiaroscuro the No. 1. of all the other colours; No. 2. of grey the No.\n2. of the other colours, and so on.\n\nIt is only necessary, however, in this matter that you should understand\nthe principle; for it would never be possible for you to gradate your\nscales so truly as to make them practically accurate and serviceable;\nand even if you could, unless you had about ten thousand scales, and\nwere able to change them faster than ever juggler changed cards, you\ncould not in a day measure the tints on so much as one side of a\nfrost-bitten apple: but when once you fully understand the principle,\nand see how all colours contain as it were a certain quantity of\ndarkness, or power of dark relief from white--some more, some less; and\nhow this pitch or power of each may be represented by equivalent values\nof grey, you will soon be able to arrive shrewdly at an approximation by\na glance of the eye, without any measuring scale at all.\n\nYou must now go on, again with the pen, drawing patterns, and any shapes\nof shade that you think pretty, as veinings in marble, or\ntortoise-shell, spots in surfaces of shells, &c., as tenderly as you\ncan, in the darknesses that correspond to their colours; and when you\nfind you can do this successfully, it is time to begin rounding.\n\n\nEXERCISE VIII.\n\nGo out into your garden, or into the road, and pick up the first round\nor oval stone you can find, not very white, nor very dark; and the\nsmoother it is the better, only it must not _shine_. Draw your table\nnear the window, and put the stone, which I will suppose is about the\nsize of _a_ in Fig. 5. (it had better not be much larger), on a piece of\nnot very white paper, on the table in front of you. Sit so that the\nlight may come from your left, else the shadow of the pencil point\ninterferes with your sight of your work. You must not let the _sun_ fall\non the stone, but only ordinary light: therefore choose a window which\nthe sun does not come in at. If you can shut the shutters of the other\nwindows in the room it will be all the better; but this is not of much\nconsequence.\n\nNow, if you can draw that stone, you can draw anything: I mean, anything\nthat is drawable. Many things (sea foam, for instance) cannot be drawn\nat all, only the idea of them more or less suggested; but if you can\ndraw the stone _rightly_, every thing within reach of art is also within\nyours.\n\nFor all drawing depends, primarily, on your power of representing\n_Roundness_. If you can once do that, all the rest is easy and\nstraightforward; if you cannot do that, nothing else that you may be\nable to do will be of any use. For Nature is all made up of roundnesses;\nnot the roundness of perfect globes, but of variously curved surfaces.\nBoughs are rounded, leaves are rounded, stones are rounded, clouds are\nrounded, cheeks are rounded, and curls are rounded: there is no more\nflatness in the natural world than there is vacancy. The world itself is\nround, and so is all that is in it, more or less, except human work,\nwhich is often very flat indeed.\n\nTherefore, set yourself steadily to conquer that round stone, and you\nhave won the battle.\n\nLook your stone antagonist boldly in the face. You will see that the\nside of it next the window is lighter than most of the paper: that the\nside of it farthest from the window is darker than the paper; and that\nthe light passes into the dark gradually, while a shadow is thrown to\nthe right _on_ the paper itself by the stone: the general appearance of\nthings being more or less as in _a_, Fig. 5., the spots on the stone\nexcepted, of which more presently.\n\nNow, remember always what was stated in the outset, that every thing you\ncan see in Nature is seen only so far as it is lighter or darker than\nthe things about it, or of a different colour from them. It is either\nseen as a patch of one colour on a ground of another; or as a pale thing\nrelieved from a dark thing, or a dark thing from a pale thing. And if\nyou can put on patches of colour or shade of exactly the same size,\nshape, and gradations as those on the object and its ground, you will\nproduce the appearance of the object and its ground. The best\ndraughtsman--Titian and Paul Veronese themselves--could do no more than\nthis; and you will soon be able to get some power of doing it in an\ninferior way, if you once understand the exceeding simplicity of what is\nto be done. Suppose you have a brown book on a white sheet of paper, on\na red tablecloth. You have nothing to do but to put on spaces of red,\nwhite, and brown, in the same shape, and gradated from dark to light in\nthe same degrees, and your drawing is done. If you will not look at what\nyou see, if you try to put on brighter or duller colours than are there,\nif you try to put them on with a dash or a blot, or to cover your paper\nwith \"vigorous\" lines, or to produce anything, in fact, but the plain,\nunaffected, and finished tranquillity of the thing before you, you need\nnot hope to get on. Nature will show you nothing if you set yourself up\nfor her master. But forget yourself, and try to obey _her_, and you will\nfind obedience easier and happier than you think.\n\nThe real difficulties are to get the _refinement_ of the forms and the\n_evenness_ of the gradations. You may depend upon it, when you are\ndissatisfied with your work, it is always too coarse or too uneven. It\nmay not be wrong--in all probability is not wrong, in any (so-called)\n_great_ point. But its edges are not true enough in outline; and its\nshades are in blotches, or scratches, or full of white holes. Get it\nmore tender and more true, and you will find it is more powerful.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 5.]\n\nDo not, therefore, think your drawing must be weak because you have a\nfinely pointed pen in your hand. Till you can draw with that, you can\ndraw with nothing; when you can draw with that, you can draw with a log\nof wood charred at the end. True boldness and power are only to be\ngained by care. Even in fencing and dancing, all ultimate ease depends\non early precision in the commencement; much more in singing or\ndrawing.\n\nNow, I do not want you to copy Fig. 5., but to copy the stone before you\nin the way that Fig. 5. is done. To which end, first measure the extreme\nlength of the stone with compasses, and mark that length on your paper;\nthen, between the points marked, leave something like the form of the\nstone in light, scrawling the paper all over, round it, as at _b_, Fig.\n5. You cannot rightly see what the form of the stone really is till you\nbegin finishing, so sketch it in quite rudely; only rather leave too\n_much_ room for the high light, than too little: and then more\ncautiously fill in the shade, shutting the light gradually up, and\nputting in the dark cautiously on the dark side. You need not plague\nyourself about accuracy of shape, because, till you have practised a\ngreat deal, it is impossible for you to draw that shape quite truly, and\nyou must gradually gain correctness by means of these various exercises:\nwhat you have mainly to do at present is, to get the stone to look solid\nand round, not much minding what its exact contour is--only draw it as\nnearly right as you can without vexation; and you will get it _more_\nright by thus feeling your way to it in shade, than if you tried to draw\nthe outline at first. For you can _see_ no outline; what you see is only\na certain space of gradated shade, with other such spaces about it; and\nthose pieces of shade you are to imitate as nearly as you can, by\nscrawling the paper over till you get them to the right shape, with the\nsame gradations which they have in Nature. And this is really more\nlikely to be done well, if you have to fight your way through a little\nconfusion in the sketch, than if you have an accurately traced outline.\nFor instance, I was going to draw, beside _a_, another effect on the\nstone; reflected light bringing its dark side out from the background:\nbut when I had laid on the first few touches, I thought it would be\nbetter to stop, and let you see how I had begun it, at _b_. In which\nbeginning it will be observed that nothing is so determined but that I\ncan more or less modify, and add to or diminish the contour as I work\non, the lines which suggest the outline being blended with the others if\nI do not want them; and the having to fill up the vacancies and conquer\nthe irregularities of such a sketch, will probably secure a higher\ncompletion at last, than if half an hour had been spent in getting a\ntrue outline before beginning.\n\nIn doing this, however, take care not to get the drawing too dark. In\norder to ascertain what the shades of it really are, cut a round hole,\nabout half the size of a pea, in a piece of white paper, the colour of\nthat you use to draw on. Hold this bit of paper, with the hole in it,\nbetween you and your stone; and pass the paper backwards and forwards,\nso as to see the different portions of the stone (or other subject)\nthrough the hole. You will find that, thus, the circular hole looks like\none of the patches of colour you have been accustomed to match, only\nchanging in depth as it lets different pieces of the stone be seen\nthrough it. You will be able thus actually to _match_ the colour of the\nstone, at any part of it, by tinting the paper beside the circular\nopening. And you will find that this opening never looks quite _black_,\nbut that all the roundings of the stone are given by subdued greys.[208]\n\nYou will probably find, also, that some parts of the stone, or of the\npaper it lies on, look luminous through the opening, so that the little\ncircle then tells as a light spot instead of a dark spot. When this is\nso, you cannot imitate it, for you have no means of getting light\nbrighter than white paper: but by holding the paper more sloped towards\nthe light, you will find that many parts of the stone, which before\nlooked light through the hole, then look dark through it; and if you can\nplace the paper in such a position that every part of the stone looks\nslightly dark, the little hole will tell always as a spot of shade, and\nif your drawing is put in the same light, you can imitate or match every\ngradation. You will be amazed to find, under these circumstances, how\nslight the differences of tint are, by which, through infinite delicacy\nof gradation, Nature can express form.\n\nIf any part of your subject will obstinately show itself as a light\nthrough the hole, that part you need not hope to imitate. Leave it\nwhite, you can do no more.\n\nWhen you have done the best you can to get the general form, proceed to\nfinish, by imitating the texture and all the cracks and stains of the\nstone as closely as you can; and note, in doing this, that cracks or\nfissures of any kind, whether between stones in walls, or in the grain\nof timber or rocks, or in any of the thousand other conditions they\npresent, are never expressible by single black lines, or lines of simple\nshadow. A crack must always have its complete system of light and shade,\nhowever small its scale. It is in reality a little _ravine_, with a dark\nor shady side, and light or sunny side, and, usually, shadow in the\nbottom. This is one of the instances in which it may be as well to\nunderstand the reason of the appearance; it is not often so in drawing,\nfor the aspects of things are so subtle and confused that they cannot in\ngeneral be explained; and in the endeavour to explain some, we are sure\nto lose sight of others, while the natural overestimate of the\nimportance of those on which the attention is fixed, causes us to\nexaggerate them, so that merely _scientific_ draughtsmen caricature a\nthird part of Nature, and miss two-thirds. The best scholar is he whose\neye is so keen as to see at once how the thing looks, and who need not,\ntherefore, trouble himself with any reasons why it looks so: but few\npeople have this acuteness of perception; and to those who are destitute\nof it, a little pointing out of rule and reason will be a help,\nespecially when a master is not near them. I never allow my own pupils\nto ask the reason of anything, because, as I watch their work, I can\nalways show them how the thing is, and what appearance they are missing\nin it; but when a master is not by to direct the sight, science may,\nhere and there, be allowed to do so in his stead.\n\nGenerally, then, every solid illumined object--for instance, the stone\nyou are drawing--has a light side turned towards the light, a dark side\nturned away from the light, and a shadow, which is cast on something\nelse (as by the stone on the paper it is set upon). You may sometimes be\nplaced so as to see only the light side and shadow, and sometimes only\nthe dark side and shadow, and sometimes both, or either, without the\nshadow; but in most positions solid objects will show all the three, as\nthe stone does here.\n\nHold up your hand with the edge of it towards you, as you sit now with\nyour side to the window, so that the flat of your hand is turned to the\nwindow. You will see one side of your hand distinctly lighted, the other\ndistinctly in shade. Here are light side and dark side, with no seen\nshadow; the shadow being detached, perhaps on the table, perhaps on the\nother side of the room; you need not look for it at present.\n\nTake a sheet of note-paper, and holding it edgeways, as you hold your\nhand, wave it up and down past the side of your hand which is turned\nfrom the light, the paper being, of course, farther from the window. You\nwill see, as it passes a strong gleam of light strike on your hand, and\nlight it considerably on its dark side. This light is _reflected_ light.\nIt is thrown back from the paper (on which it strikes first in coming\nfrom the window) to the surface of your hand, just as a ball would be if\nsomebody threw it through the window at the wall and you caught it at\nthe rebound.\n\nNext, instead of the note-paper, take a red book, or a piece of scarlet\ncloth. You will see that the gleam of light falling on your hand, as you\nwave the book is now reddened. Take a blue book, and you will find the\ngleam is blue. Thus every object will cast some of its own colour back\nin the light that it reflects.\n\nNow it is not only these books or papers that reflect light to your\nhand: every object in the room, on that side of it, reflects some, but\nmore feebly, and the colours mixing all together form a neutral[209]\nlight, which lets the colour of your hand itself be more distinctly seen\nthan that of any object which reflects light to it; but if there were no\nreflected light, that side of your hand would look as black as a coal.\n\nObjects are seen, therefore in general, partly by direct light, and\npartly by light reflected from the objects around them, or from the\natmosphere and clouds. The colour of their light sides depends much on\nthat of the direct light, and that of the dark sides on the colours of\nthe objects near them. It is therefore impossible to say beforehand\nwhat colour an object will have at any point of its surface, that colour\ndepending partly on its own tint, and partly on infinite combinations of\nrays reflected from other things. The only certain fact about dark sides\nis, that their colour will be changeful, and that a picture which gives\nthem merely darker shades of the colour of the light sides must\nassuredly be bad.\n\nNow, lay your hand flat on the white paper you are drawing on. You will\nsee one side of each finger lighted, one side dark, and the shadow of\nyour hand on the paper. Here, therefore, are the three divisions of\nshade seen at once. And although the paper is white, and your hand of a\nrosy colour somewhat darker than white, yet you will see that the shadow\nall along, just under the finger which casts it, is darker than the\nflesh, and is of a very deep grey. The reason of this is, that much\nlight is reflected from the paper to the dark side of your finger, but\nvery little is reflected from other things to the paper itself in that\nchink under your finger.\n\nIn general, for this reason, a shadow, or, at any rate, the part of the\nshadow nearest the object, is darker than the dark side of the object. I\nsay in general, because a thousand accidents may interfere to prevent\nits being so. Take a little bit of glass, as a wine-glass, or the\nink-bottle, and play it about a little on the side of your hand farthest\nfrom the window; you will presently find you are throwing gleams of\nlight all over the dark side of your hand, and in some positions of the\nglass the reflection from it will annihilate the shadow altogether, and\nyou will see your hand dark on the white paper. Now a stupid painter\nwould represent, for instance, a drinking-glass beside the hand of one\nof his figures, and because he had been taught by rule that \"shadow was\ndarker than the dark side,\" he would never think of the reflection from\nthe glass, but paint a dark grey under the hand, just as if no glass\nwere there. But a great painter would be sure to think of the true\neffect, and paint it; and then comes the stupid critic, and wonders why\nthe hand is so light on its dark side.\n\nThus it is always dangerous to assert anything as a _rule_ in matters of\nart; yet it is useful for you to remember that, in a general way, a\nshadow is darker than the dark side of the thing that casts it,\nsupposing the colours otherwise the same; that is to say, when a white\nobject casts a shadow on a white surface, or a dark object on a dark\nsurface: the rule will not hold if the colours are different, the shadow\nof a black object on a white surface being, of course, not so dark,\nusually, as the black thing casting it. The only way to ascertain the\nultimate truth in such matters is to _look_ for it; but, in the\nmeantime, you will be helped by noticing that the cracks in the stone\nare little ravines, on one side of which the light strikes sharply,\nwhile the other is in shade. This dark side usually casts a little\ndarker shadow at the bottom of the crack; and the general tone of the\nstone surface is not so bright as the light bank of the ravine. And,\ntherefore, if you get the surface of the object of a uniform tint, more\nor less indicative of shade, and then scratch out a white spot or streak\nin it of any shape; by putting a dark touch beside this white one, you\nmay turn it, as you choose, into either a ridge or an incision, into\neither a boss or a cavity. If you put the dark touch on the side of it\nnearest the sun, or rather, nearest the place that the light comes from,\nyou will make it a cut or cavity; if you put it on the opposite side,\nyou will make it a ridge or mound: and the complete success of the\neffect depends less on depth of shade than on the rightness of the\ndrawing; that is to say, on the evident correspondence of the form of\nthe shadow with the form that casts it. In drawing rocks, or wood, or\nanything irregularly shaped, you will gain far more by a little patience\nin following the forms carefully, though with slight touches, than by\nlaboured finishing of textures of surface and transparencies of shadow.\n\nWhen you have got the whole well into shape, proceed to lay on the\nstains and spots with great care, quite as much as you gave to the\nforms. Very often, spots or bars of local colour do more to express form\nthan even the light and shade, and they are always interesting as the\nmeans by which Nature carries light into her shadows, and shade into her\nlights, an art of which we shall have more to say hereafter, in speaking\nof composition. Fig. 5. is a rough sketch of a fossil sea-urchin, in\nwhich the projections of the shell are of black flint, coming through a\nchalky surface. These projections form dark spots in the light; and\ntheir sides, rising out of the shadow, form smaller whitish spots in the\ndark. You may take such scattered lights as these out with the penknife,\nprovided you are just as careful to place them rightly, as if you got\nthem by a more laborious process.\n\nWhen you have once got the feeling of the way in which gradation\nexpresses roundness and projection, you may try your strength on\nanything natural or artificial that happens to take your fancy, provided\nit be not too complicated in form. I have asked you to draw a stone\nfirst, because any irregularities and failures in your shading will be\nless offensive to you, as being partly characteristic of the rough stone\nsurface, than they would be in a more delicate subject; and you may as\nwell go on drawing rounded stones of different shapes for a little\nwhile, till you find you can really shade delicately. You may then take\nup folds of thick white drapery, a napkin or towel thrown carelessly on\nthe table is as good as anything, and try to express them in the same\nway; only now you will find that your shades must be wrought with\nperfect unity and tenderness, or you will lose the flow of the folds.\nAlways remember that a little bit perfected is worth more than many\nscrawls; whenever you feel yourself inclined to scrawl, give up work\nresolutely, and do not go back to it till next day. Of course your towel\nor napkin must be put on something that may be locked up, so that its\nfolds shall not be disturbed till you have finished. If you find that\nthe folds will not look right, get a photograph of a piece of drapery\n(there are plenty now to be bought, taken from the sculpture of the\ncathedrals of Rheims, Amiens, and Chartres, which will at once educate\nyour hand and your taste), and copy some piece of that; you will then\nascertain what it is that is wanting in your studies from nature,\nwhether more gradation, or greater watchfulness of the disposition of\nthe folds. Probably for some time you will find yourself failing\npainfully in both, for drapery is very difficult to follow in its\nsweeps; but do not lose courage, for the greater the difficulty, the\ngreater the gain in the effort. If your eye is more just in measurement\nof form than delicate in perception of tint, a pattern on the folded\nsurface will help you. Try whether it does or not; and if the patterned\ndrapery confuses you, keep for a time to the simple white one; but if it\nhelps you, continue to choose patterned stuffs (tartans, and simple\nchequered designs are better at first than flowered ones), and even\nthough it should confuse you, begin pretty soon to use a pattern\noccasionally, copying all the distortions and perspective modifications\nof it among the folds with scrupulous care.\n\nNeither must you suppose yourself condescending in doing this. The\ngreatest masters are always fond of drawing patterns; and the greater\nthey are, the more pains they take to do it truly.[210] Nor can there be\nbetter practice at any time, as introductory to the nobler complication\nof natural detail. For when you can draw the spots which follow the\nfolds of a printed stuff, you will have some chance of following the\nspots which fall into the folds of the skin of a leopard as he leaps;\nbut if you cannot draw the manufacture, assuredly you will never be able\nto draw the creature. So the cloudings on a piece of wood, carefully\ndrawn, will be the best introduction to the drawing of the clouds of the\nsky, or the waves of the sea; and the dead leaf-patterns on a damask\ndrapery, well rendered, will enable you to disentangle masterfully the\nliving leaf-patterns of a thorn thicket, or a violet bank.\n\nObserve, however, in drawing any stuffs, or bindings of books, or other\nfinely textured substances, do not trouble yourself, as yet, much about\nthe woolliness or gauziness of the thing; but get it right in shade and\nfold, and true in pattern. We shall see, in the course of\nafter-practice, how the penned lines may be made indicative of texture;\nbut at present attend only to the light, and shade, and pattern. You\nwill be puzzled at first by _lustrous_ surfaces, but a little attention\nwill show you that the expression of these depends merely on the right\ndrawing of their light, and shade, and reflections. Put a small black\njapanned tray on the table in front of some books; and you will see it\nreflects the objects beyond it as in a little black rippled pond; its\nown colour mingling always with that of the reflected objects. Draw\nthese reflections of the books properly, making them dark and distorted,\nas you will see that they are, and you will find that this gives the\nlustre to your tray. It is not well, however, to draw polished objects\nin general practice; only you should do one or two in order to\nunderstand the aspect of any lustrous portion of other things, such as\nyou cannot avoid; the gold, for instance, on the edges of books, or the\nshining of silk and damask, in which lies a great part of the expression\nof their folds. Observe, also, that there are very few things which are\ntotally without lustre: you will frequently find a light which puzzles\nyou, on some apparently dull surface, to be the dim image of another\nobject.\n\nAnd now, as soon as you can conscientiously assure me that with the\npoint of the pen or pencil you can lay on any form and shade you like, I\ngive you leave to use the brush with one colour,--sepia, or blue-black,\nor mixed cobalt and blue-black, or neutral tint; and this will much\nfacilitate your study, and refresh you. But, preliminarily, you must do\none or two more exercises in tinting.\n\n\nEXERCISE IX.\n\nPrepare your colour as before directed. Take a brush full of it, and\nstrike it on the paper in any irregular shape; as the brush gets dry\nsweep the surface of the paper with it as if you were dusting the paper\nvery lightly; every such sweep of the brush will leave a number of more\nor less minute interstices in the colour. The lighter and faster every\ndash the better. Then leave the whole to dry, and as soon as it is dry,\nwith little colour in your brush, so that you can bring it to a fine\npoint, fill up all the little interstices one by one, so as to make the\nwhole as even as you can, and fill in the larger gaps with more colour,\nalways trying to let the edges of the first and of the newly applied\ncolour exactly meet, and not lap over each other. When your new colour\ndries, you will find it in places a little paler than the first. Retouch\nit, therefore, trying to get the whole to look quite one piece. A very\nsmall bit of colour thus filled up with your very best care, and brought\nto look as if it had been quite even from the first, will give you\nbetter practice and more skill than a great deal filled in carelessly;\nso do it with your best patience, not leaving the most minute spot of\nwhite; and do not fill in the large pieces first and then go to the\nsmall, but quietly and steadily cover in the whole up to a marked limit;\nthen advance a little farther, and so on; thus always seeing distinctly\nwhat is done and what undone.\n\n\nEXERCISE X.\n\nLay a coat of the blue, prepared as usual, over a whole square of paper.\nLet it dry. Then another coat over four-fifths of the square, or\nthereabouts, leaving the edge rather irregular than straight, and let it\ndry. Then another coat over three-fifths; another over two-fifths; and\nthe last over one-fifth; so that the square may present the appearance\nof gradual increase in darkness in five bands, each darker than the one\nbeyond it. Then, with the brush rather dry (as in the former exercise,\nwhen filling up the interstices), try, with small touches, like those\nused in the pen etching, only a little broader, to add shade delicately\nbeyond each edge, so as to lead the darker tints into the paler ones\nimperceptibly. By touching the paper very lightly, and putting a\nmultitude of little touches, crossing and recrossing in every direction,\nyou will gradually be able to work up to the darker tints, outside of\neach, so as quite to efface their edges, and unite them tenderly with\nthe next tint. The whole square, when done, should look evenly shaded\nfrom dark to pale, with no bars; only a crossing texture of touches,\nsomething like chopped straw, over the whole.[211]\n\nNext, take your rounded pebble; arrange it in any light and shade you\nlike; outline it very loosely with the pencil. Put on a wash of colour,\nprepared _very_ pale, quite flat over all of it, except the highest\nlight, leaving the edge of your colour quite sharp. Then another wash,\nextending only over the darker parts, leaving the edge of that sharp\nalso, as in tinting the square. Then another wash over the still darker\nparts, and another over the darkest, leaving each edge to dry sharp.\nThen, with the small touches, efface the edges, reinforce the darks, and\nwork the whole delicately together, as you would with the pen, till you\nhave got it to the likeness of the true light and shade. You will find\nthat the tint underneath is a great help, and that you can now get\neffects much more subtle and complete than with the pen merely.\n\nThe use of leaving the edges always sharp is that you may not trouble or\nvex the colour, but let it lie as it falls suddenly on the paper; colour\nlooks much more lovely when it has been laid on with a dash of the\nbrush, and left to dry in its own way, than when it has been dragged\nabout and disturbed; so that it is always better to let the edges and\nforms be a _little_ wrong, even if one cannot correct them afterwards,\nthan to lose this fresh quality of the tint. Very great masters in\nwater-colour can lay on the true forms at once with a dash, and _bad_\nmasters in water-colour lay on grossly false forms with a dash, and\nleave them false; for people in general, not knowing false from true,\nare as much pleased with the appearance of power in the irregular blot\nas with the presence of power in the determined one; but _we_, in our\nbeginnings, must do as much as we can with the broad dash, and then\ncorrect with the point, till we are quite right. We must take care to be\nright, at whatever cost of pains; and then gradually we shall find we\ncan be right with freedom.\n\nI have hitherto limited you to colour mixed with two or three\nteaspoonfuls of water; but in finishing your light and shade from the\nstone, you may, as you efface the edge of the palest coat towards the\nlight, use the colour for the small touches with more and more water,\ntill it is so pale as not to be perceptible. Thus you may obtain a\n_perfect_ gradation to the light. And in reinforcing the darks, when\nthey are very dark, you may use less and less water. If you take the\ncolour tolerably dark on your brush, only always liquid (not pasty), and\ndash away the superfluous colour on blotting-paper, you will find that,\ntouching the paper very lightly with the dry brush, you can, by repeated\ntouches, produce a dusty kind of bloom, very valuable in giving depth to\nshadow; but it requires great patience and delicacy of hand to do this\nproperly. You will find much of this kind of work in the grounds and\nshadows of William Hunt's drawings.[212]\n\nAs you get used to the brush and colour, you will gradually find out\ntheir ways for yourself, and get the management of them. Nothing but\npractice will do this perfectly; but you will often save yourself much\ndiscouragement by remembering what I have so often asserted,--that if\nanything goes wrong, it is nearly sure to be refinement that is wanting,\nnot force; and connexion, not alteration. If you dislike the state your\ndrawing is in, do not lose patience with it, nor dash at it, nor alter\nits plan, nor rub it desperately out, at the place you think wrong; but\nlook if there are no shadows you can gradate more perfectly; no little\ngaps and rents you can fill; no forms you can more delicately define:\nand do not _rush_ at any of the errors or incompletions thus discerned,\nbut efface or supply slowly, and you will soon find your drawing take\nanother look. A very useful expedient in producing some effects, is to\nwet the paper, and then lay the colour on it, more or less wet,\naccording to the effect you want. You will soon see how prettily it\ngradates itself as it dries; when dry, you can reinforce it with\ndelicate stippling when you want it darker. Also, while the colour is\nstill damp on the paper, by drying your brush thoroughly, and touching\nthe colour with the brush so dried, you may take out soft lights with\ngreat tenderness and precision. Try all sorts of experiments of this\nkind, noticing how the colour behaves; but remembering always that your\nfinal results must be obtained, and can only be obtained, by pure work\nwith the point, as much as in the pen drawing.\n\nYou will find also, as you deal with more and more complicated subjects,\nthat Nature's resources in light and shade are so much richer than\nyours, that you cannot possibly get all, or anything _like_ all, the\ngradations of shadow in any given group. When this is the case,\ndetermine first to keep the broad masses of things distinct: if, for\ninstance, there is a green book, and a white piece of paper, and a black\ninkstand in the group, be sure to keep the white paper as a light mass,\nthe green book as a middle tint mass, the black inkstand as a dark mass;\nand do not shade the folds in the paper, or corners of the book, so as\nto equal in depth the darkness of the inkstand. The great difference\nbetween the masters of light and shade, and imperfect artists, is the\npower of the former to draw so delicately as to express form in a\ndark-coloured object with little light, and in a light-coloured object\nwith little darkness; and it is better even to leave the forms here and\nthere unsatisfactorily rendered than to lose the general relations of\nthe great masses. And this observe, not because masses are grand or\ndesirable things in your composition (for with composition at present\nyou have nothing whatever to do), but because it is a _fact_ that things\ndo so present themselves to the eyes of men, and that we see paper,\nbook, and inkstand as three separate things, before we see the wrinkles,\nor chinks, or corners of any of the three. Understand, therefore, at\nonce, that no detail can be as strongly expressed in drawing as it is in\nthe reality; and strive to keep all your shadows and marks and minor\nmarkings on the masses, lighter than they appear to be in Nature, you\nare sure otherwise to get them too dark. You will in doing this find\nthat you cannot get the _projection_ of things sufficiently shown; but\nnever mind that; there is no need that they should appear to project,\nbut great need that their relations of shade to each other should be\npreserved. All deceptive projection is obtained by partial exaggeration\nof shadow; and whenever you see it, you may be sure the drawing is more\nor less bad; a thoroughly fine drawing or painting will always show a\nslight tendency towards _flatness_.\n\nObserve, on the other hand, that however white an object may be, there\nis always some small point of it whiter than the rest. You must\ntherefore have a slight tone of grey over everything in your picture\nexcept on the extreme high lights; even the piece of white paper, in\nyour subject, must be toned slightly down, unless (and there are a\nthousand chances to one against its being so) it should all be turned so\nas fully to front the light. By examining the treatment of the white\nobjects in any pictures accessible to you by Paul Veronese or Titian,\nyou will soon understand this.[213]\n\nAs soon as you feel yourself capable of expressing with the brush the\nundulations of surfaces and the relations of masses, you may proceed to\ndraw more complicated and beautiful things.[214] And first, the boughs\nof trees, now not in mere dark relief, but in full rounding. Take the\nfirst bit of branch or stump that comes to hand, with a fork in it; cut\noff the ends of the forking branches, so as to leave the whole only\nabout a foot in length; get a piece of paper the same size, fix your bit\nof branch in some place where its position will not be altered, and draw\nit thoroughly, in all its light and shade, full size; striving, above\nall things, to get an accurate expression of its structure at the fork\nof the branch. When once you have mastered the tree at its _armpits_,\nyou will have little more trouble with it.\n\nAlways draw whatever the background happens to be, exactly as you see\nit. Wherever you have fastened the bough, you must draw whatever is\nbehind it, ugly or not, else you will never know whether the light and\nshade are right; they may appear quite wrong to you, only for want of\nthe background. And this general law is to be observed in all your\nstudies: whatever you draw, draw completely and unalteringly, else you\nnever know if what you have done is right, or whether you _could_ have\ndone it rightly had you tried. There is nothing _visible_ out of which\nyou may not get useful practice.\n\nNext, to put the leaves on your boughs. Gather a small twig with four or\nfive leaves on it, put it into water, put a sheet of light-coloured or\nwhite paper behind it, so that all the leaves may be relieved in dark\nfrom the white field; then sketch in their dark shape carefully with\npencil as you did the complicated boughs, in order to be sure that all\ntheir masses and interstices are right in shape before you begin\nshading, and complete as far as you can with pen and ink, in the manner\nof Fig. 6., which is a young shoot of lilac.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 6.]\n\nYou will probably, in spite of all your pattern drawings, be at first\npuzzled by leaf foreshortening; especially because the look of\nretirement or projection depends not so much on the perspective of the\nleaves themselves as on the double sight of the two eyes. Now there are\ncertain artifices by which good painters can partly conquer this\ndifficulty; as slight exaggerations of force or colour in the nearer\nparts, and of obscurity in the more distant ones; but you must not\nattempt anything of this kind. When you are first sketching the leaves,\nshut one of your eyes, fix a point in the background, to bring the point\nof one of the leaves against, and so sketch the whole bough as you see\nit in a fixed position, looking with one eye only. Your drawing never\ncan be made to look like the object itself, as you see that object with\n_both_ eyes,[215] but it can be made perfectly like the object seen with\none, and you must be content when you have got a resemblance on these\nterms.\n\nIn order to get clearly at the notion of the thing to be done, take a\nsingle long leaf, hold it with its point towards you, and as flat as you\ncan, so as to see nothing of it but its thinness, as if you wanted to\nknow how thin it was; outline it so. Then slope it down gradually\ntowards you, and watch it as it lengthens out to its full length, held\nperpendicularly down before you. Draw it in three or four different\npositions between these extremes, with its ribs as they appear in each\nposition, and you will soon find out how it must be.\n\nDraw first only two or three of the leaves; then larger clusters; and\npractise, in this way, more and more complicated pieces of bough and\nleafage, till you find you can master the most difficult arrangements,\nnot consisting of more than ten or twelve leaves. You will find as you\ndo this, if you have an opportunity of visiting any gallery of pictures,\nthat you take a much more lively interest than before in the work of the\ngreat masters; you will see that very often their best backgrounds are\ncomposed of little more than a few sprays of leafage, carefully studied,\nbrought against the distant sky; and that another wreath or two form the\nchief interest of their foregrounds. If you live in London you may test\nyour progress _accurately_ by the degree of admiration you feel for the\nleaves of vine round the head of the Bacchus, in Titian's Bacchus and\nAriadne. All this, however, will not enable you to draw a mass of\nfoliage. You will find, on looking at any rich piece of vegetation, that\nit is only one or two of the nearer clusters that you can by any\npossibility draw in this complete manner. The mass is too vast, and too\nintricate, to be thus dealt with.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 7. a b c]\n\nYou must now therefore have recourse to some confused mode of execution,\ncapable of expressing the confusion of Nature. And, first, you must\nunderstand what the character of that confusion is. If you look\ncarefully at the outer sprays of any tree at twenty or thirty yards'\ndistance, you will see them defined against the sky in masses, which, at\nfirst, look quite definite; but if you examine them, you will see,\nmingled with the real shapes of leaves, many indistinct lines, which\nare, some of them, stalks of leaves, and some, leaves seen with the edge\nturned towards you, and coming into sight in a broken way; for,\nsupposing the real leaf shape to be as at _a_, Fig. 7., this, when\nremoved some yards from the eye, will appear dark against the sky, as at\n_b_; then, when removed some yards farther still, the stalk and point\ndisappear altogether, the middle of the leaf becomes little more than a\nline; and the result is the condition at _c_, only with this farther\nsubtlety in the look of it, inexpressible in the woodcut, that the stalk\nand point of the leaf, though they have disappeared to the eye, have yet\nsome influence in _checking the light_ at the places where they exist,\nand cause a slight dimness about the part of the leaf which remains\nvisible, so that its perfect effect could only be rendered by two layers\nof colour, one subduing the sky tone a little, the next drawing the\nbroken portions of the leaf, as at _c_, and carefully indicating the\ngreater darkness of the spot in the middle, where the under side of the\nleaf is.\n\nThis is the perfect theory of the matter. In practice we cannot reach\nsuch accuracy; but we shall be able to render the general look of the\nfoliage satisfactorily by the following mode of practice.\n\nGather a spray of any tree, about a foot or eighteen inches long. Fix it\nfirmly by the stem in anything that will support it steadily; put it\nabout eight feet away from you, or ten if you are far-sighted. Put a\nsheet of not very white paper behind it, as usual. Then draw very\ncarefully, first placing them with pencil, and then filling them up with\nink, every leaf, mass and stalk of it in simple black profile, as you\nsee them against the paper: Fig. 8. is a bough of Phillyrea so drawn. Do\nnot be afraid of running the leaves into a black mass when they come\ntogether; this exercise is only to teach you what the actual shapes of\nsuch masses are when seen against the sky.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 8.]\n\nMake two careful studies of this kind of one bough of every common\ntree--oak, ash, elm, birch, beech, &c.; in fact, if you are good, and\nindustrious, you will make one such study carefully at least three times\na week, until you have examples of every sort of tree and shrub you can\nget branches of. You are to make two studies of each bough, for this\nreason--all masses of foliage have an upper and under surface, and the\nside view of them, or profile, shows a wholly different organisation of\nbranches from that seen in the view from above. They are generally seen\nmore or less in profile, as you look at the whole tree, and Nature puts\nher best composition into the profile arrangement. But the view from\nabove or below occurs not unfrequently, also, and it is quite necessary\nyou should draw it if you wish to understand the anatomy of the tree.\nThe difference between the two views is often far greater than you could\neasily conceive. For instance, in Fig. 9., _a_ is the upper view, and\n_b_ the profile, of a single spray of Phillyrea. Fig. 8. is an\nintermediate view of a larger bough; seen from beneath, but at some\nlateral distance also.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 9.]\n\nWhen you have done a few branches in this manner, take one of the\n_drawings_, and put it first a yard away from you, then a yard and a\nhalf, then two yards; observe how the thinner stalks and leaves\ngradually disappear, leaving only a vague and slight darkness where they\nwere, and make another study of the effect at each distance, taking care\nto draw nothing more than you really see, for in this consists all the\ndifference between what would be merely a _miniature_ drawing of the\nleaves seen _near_, and a _full-size_ drawing of the same leaves at a\ndistance. By full size, I mean the size which they would really appear\nof if their outline were traced through a pane of glass held at the\nsame distance from the eye at which you mean to hold your drawing. You\ncan always ascertain this full size of any object by holding your paper\nupright before you, at the distance from your eye at which you wish your\ndrawing to be seen. Bring its edge across the object you have to draw,\nand mark upon this edge the points where the outline of the object\ncrosses, or goes behind, the edge of the paper. You will always find it,\nthus measured, smaller than you supposed.\n\nWhen you have made a few careful experiments of this kind on your own\ndrawings, (which are better for practice, at first, than the real trees,\nbecause the black profile in the drawing is quite stable, and does not\nshake, and is not confused by sparkles of lustre on the leaves,) you may\ntry the extremities of the real trees, only not doing much at a time,\nfor the brightness of the sky will dazzle and perplex your sight. And\nthis brightness causes, I believe, some loss of the outline itself; at\nleast the chemical action of the light in a photograph extends much\nwithin the edges of the leaves, and, as it were, eats them away so that\nno tree extremity, stand it ever so still, nor any other form coming\nagainst bright sky, is truly drawn by a photograph; and if you once\nsucceed in drawing a few sprays rightly, you will find the result much\nmore lovely and interesting than any photograph can be.\n\nAll this difficulty, however, attaches to the rendering merely the dark\nform of the sprays as they come against the sky. Within those sprays,\nand in the heart of the tree, there is a complexity of a much more\nembarrassing kind; for nearly all leaves have some lustre, and _all_ are\nmore or less translucent (letting light through them); therefore, in any\ngiven leaf, besides the intricacies of its own proper shadows and\nforeshortenings, there are three series of circumstances which alter or\nhide its forms. First, shadows cast on it by other leaves--often very\nforcibly. Secondly, light reflected from its lustrous surface, sometimes\nthe blue of the sky, sometimes the white of clouds, or the sun itself\nflashing like a star. Thirdly, forms and shadows of other leaves, seen\nas darkness _through_ the translucent parts of the leaf; a most\nimportant element of foliage effect, but wholly neglected by landscape\nartists in general.\n\nThe consequence of all this is, that except now and then by chance, the\nform of a complete leaf is never seen; but a marvellous and quaint\nconfusion, very definite, indeed, in its evidence of direction of\ngrowth, and unity of action, but wholly indefinable and inextricable,\npart by part, by any amount of patience. You cannot possibly work it out\nin fac simile, though you took a twelvemonth's time to a tree; and you\nmust therefore try to discover some mode of execution which will more or\nless imitate, by its own variety and mystery, the variety and mystery of\nNature, without absolute delineation of detail.\n\nNow I have led you to this conclusion by observation of tree form only,\nbecause in that the thing to be proved is clearest. But no natural\nobject exists which does not involve in some part or parts of it this\ninimitableness, this mystery of quantity, which needs peculiarity of\nhandling and trick of touch to express it completely. If leaves are\nintricate, so is moss, so is foam, so is rock cleavage, so are fur and\nhair, and texture of drapery, and of clouds. And although methods and\ndexterities of handling are wholly useless if you have not gained first\nthe thorough knowledge of the form of the thing; so that if you cannot\ndraw a branch perfectly, then much less a tree; and if not a wreath of\nmist perfectly, much less a flock of clouds; and if not a single grass\nblade perfectly, much less a grass bank; yet having once got this power\nover decisive form, you may safely--and must, in order to perfection of\nwork--carry out your knowledge by every aid of method and dexterity of\nhand.\n\nBut, in order to find out what method can do, you must now look at Art\nas well as at Nature, and see what means painters and engravers have\nactually employed for the expression of these subtleties. Whereupon\narises the question, what opportunity have you to obtain engravings? You\nought, if it is at all in your power, to possess yourself of a certain\nnumber of good examples of Turner's engraved works: if this be not in\nyour power, you must just make the best use you can of the shop\nwindows, or of any plates of which you can obtain a loan. Very possibly,\nthe difficulty of getting sight of them may stimulate you to put them to\nbetter use. But, supposing your means admit of your doing so, possess\nyourself, first, of the illustrated edition either of Rogers's Italy or\nRogers's Poems, and then of about a dozen of the plates named in the\nannexed lists. The prefixed letters indicate the particular points\ndeserving your study in each engraving.[216] Be sure, therefore, that\nyour selection includes, at all events, one plate marked with each\nletter--of course the plates marked with two or three letters are, for\nthe most part, the best. Do not get more than twelve of these plates,\nnor even all the twelve at first. For the more engravings you have, the\nless attention you will pay to them. It is a general truth, that the\nenjoyment derivable from art cannot be increased in quantity, beyond a\ncertain point, by quantity of possession; it is only spread, as it were,\nover a larger surface, and very often dulled by finding ideas repeated\nin different works. Now, for a beginner, it is always better that his\nattention should be concentrated on one or two good things, and all his\nenjoyment founded on them, than that he should look at many, with\ndivided thoughts. He has much to discover; and his best way of\ndiscovering it is to think long over few things, and watch them\nearnestly. It is one of the worst errors of this age to try to know and\nto see too much: the men who seem to know everything, never in reality\nknow anything rightly. Beware of _hand-book_ knowledge.\n\nThese engravings are, in general, more for you to look at than to copy;\nand they will be of more use to you when we come to talk of composition,\nthan they are at present; still, it will do you a great deal of good,\nsometimes to try how far you can get their delicate texture, or\ngradations of tone; as your pen-and-ink drawing will be apt to incline\ntoo much to a scratchy and broken kind of shade. For instance, the\ntexture of the white convent wall, and the drawing of its tiled roof, in\nthe vignette at p. 227. of Rogers's Poems, is as exquisite as work can\npossibly be; and it will be a great and profitable achievement if you\ncan at all approach it. In like manner, if you can at all imitate the\ndark distant country at p. 7., or the sky at p. 80., of the same volume,\nor the foliage at pp. 12. and 144., it will be good gain; and if you can\nonce draw the rolling clouds and running river at p. 9. of the \"Italy,\"\nor the city in the vignette of Aosta at p. 25., or the moonlight at p.\n223., you will find that even Nature herself cannot afterwards very\nterribly puzzle you with her torrents, or towers, or moonlight.\n\nYou need not copy touch for touch, but try to get the same effect. And\nif you feel discouraged by the delicacy required, and begin to think\nthat engraving is not drawing, and that copying it cannot help you to\ndraw, remember that it differs from common drawing only by the\ndifficulties it has to encounter. You perhaps have got into a careless\nhabit of thinking that engraving is a mere _business_, easy enough when\none has got into the knack of it. On the contrary, it is a form of\ndrawing more difficult than common drawing, by exactly so much as it is\nmore difficult to cut steel than to move the pencil over paper. It is\ntrue that there are certain mechanical aids and methods which reduce it\nat certain stages either to pure machine work, or to more or less a\nhabit of hand and arm; but this is not so in the foliage you are trying\nto copy, of which the best and prettiest parts are always etched--that\nis, drawn with a fine steel point and free hand: only the line made is\nwhite instead of black, which renders it much more difficult to judge of\nwhat you are about. And the trying to copy these plates will be good for\nyou, because it will awaken you to the real labour and skill of the\nengraver, and make you understand a little how people must work, in\nthis world, who have really to _do_ anything in it.\n\nDo not, however, suppose that I give you the engraving as a model--far\nfrom it; but it is necessary you should be able to do as well[217]\nbefore you think of doing better, and you will find many little helps\nand hints in the various work of it. Only remember that _all_ engravers'\nforegrounds are bad; whenever you see the peculiar wriggling parallel\nlines of modern engravings become distinct, you must not copy; nor\nadmire: it is only the softer masses, and distances; and portions of the\nfoliage in the plates marked _f_, which you may copy. The best for this\npurpose, if you can get it, is the \"Chain bridge over the Tees,\" of the\nEngland series; the thicket on the right is very beautiful and\ninstructive, and very like Turner. The foliage in the \"Ludlow\" and\n\"Powis\" is also remarkably good.\n\nBesides these line engravings, and to protect you from what harm there\nis in their influence, you are to provide yourself, if possible, with a\nRembrandt etching, or a photograph of one (of figures, not landscape).\nIt does not matter of what subject, or whether a sketchy or finished\none, but the sketchy ones are generally cheapest, and will teach you\nmost. Copy it as well as you can, noticing especially that Rembrandt's\nmost rapid lines have steady purpose; and that they are laid with almost\ninconceivable precision when the object becomes at all interesting. The\n\"Prodigal Son,\" \"Death of the Virgin,\" \"Abraham and Isaac,\" and such\nothers, containing incident and character rather than chiaroscuro, will\nbe the most instructive. You can buy one; copy it well; then exchange\nit, at little loss, for another; and so, gradually, obtain a good\nknowledge of his system. Whenever you have an opportunity of examining\nhis work at museums, &c., do so with the greatest care, not looking at\n_many_ things, but a long time at each. You must also provide yourself,\nif possible, with an engraving of Albert Durer's. This you will not be\nable to copy; but you must keep it beside you, and refer to it as a\nstandard of precision in line. If you can get one with a _wing_ in it,\nit will be best. The crest with the cock, that with the skull and satyr,\nand the \"Melancholy,\" are the best you could have, but any will do.\nPerfection in chiaroscuro drawing lies between these two masters,\nRembrandt and Durer. Rembrandt is often too loose and vague; and Durer\nhas little or no effect of mist or uncertainty. If you can see anywhere\na drawing by Leonardo, you will find it balanced between the two\ncharacters; but there are no engravings which present this perfection,\nand your style will be best formed, therefore, by alternate study of\nRembrandt and Durer. Lean rather to Durer; it is better for amateurs to\nerr on the side of precision than on that of vagueness: and though, as I\nhave just said, you cannot copy a Durer, yet try every now and then a\nquarter of an inch square or so, and see how much nearer you can come;\nyou cannot possibly try to draw the leafly crown of the \"Melancholia\"\ntoo often.\n\nIf you cannot get either a Rembrandt or a Durer, you may still learn\nmuch by carefully studying any of George Cruikshank's etchings, or\nLeech's woodcuts in Punch, on the free side; with Alfred Rethel's and\nRichter's[218] on the severe side. But in so doing you will need to\nnotice the following points:\n\nWhen either the material (as the copper or wood) or the time of an\nartist, does not permit him to make a perfect drawing,--that is to say,\none in which no lines shall be prominently visible,--and he is reduced\nto show the black lines, either drawn by the pen, or on the wood, it is\nbetter to make these lines help, as far as may be, the expression of\ntexture and form. You will thus find many textures, as of cloth or grass\nor flesh, and many subtle effects of light, expressed by Leech with\nzigzag or crossed or curiously broken lines; and you will see that\nAlfred Rethel and Richter constantly express the direction and rounding\nof surfaces by the direction of the lines which shade them. All these\nvarious means of expression will be useful to you, as far as you can\nlearn them, provided you remember that they are merely a kind of\nshorthand; telling certain facts, not in quite the _right_ way, but in\nthe only possible way under the conditions: and provided in any after\nuse of such means, you never try to show your own dexterity; but only to\nget as much record of the object as you can in a given time; and that\nyou continually make efforts to go beyond shorthand, and draw portions\nof the objects rightly.\n\nAnd touching this question of _direction_ of lines as indicating that of\nsurface, observe these few points:\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 10.]\n\nIf lines are to be distinctly shown, it is better that, so far as they\n_can_ indicate any thing by their direction, they should explain rather\nthan oppose the general character of the object. Thus, in the piece of\nwoodcut from Titian, Fig. 10., the lines are serviceable by expressing,\nnot only the shade of the trunk, but partly also its roundness, and the\nflow of its grain. And Albert Durer, whose work was chiefly engraving,\nsets himself always thus to make his lines as _valuable_ as possible;\ntelling much by them, both of shade and direction of surface: and if you\nwere always to be limited to engraving on copper (and did not want to\nexpress effects of mist or darkness, as well as delicate forms), Albert\nDurer's way of work would be the best example for you. But, inasmuch as\nthe perfect way of drawing is by shade without lines, and the great\npainters always conceive their subject as complete, even when they are\nsketching it most rapidly, you will find that, when they are not\nlimited in means, they do not much trust to direction of line, but will\noften scratch in the shade of a rounded surface with nearly straight\nlines, that is to say, with the easiest and quickest lines possible to\nthemselves. When the hand is free, the easiest line for it to draw is\none inclining from the left upward to the right, or _vice versa_, from\nthe right downwards to the left; and when done very quickly, the line is\nhooked a little at the end by the effort at return to the next. Hence,\nyou will always find the pencil, chalk, or pen sketch of a _very_ great\nmaster full of these kind of lines; and even if he draws carefully, you\nwill find him using simple straight lines from left to right, when an\ninferior master will have used curved ones. Fig. 11. is a fair facsimile\nof part of a sketch of Raphael's, which exhibits these characters very\ndistinctly. Even the careful drawings of Leonardo da Vinci are shaded\nmost commonly with straight lines; and you may always assume it as a\npoint increasing the probability of a drawing being by a great master if\nyou find rounded surfaces, such as those of cheeks or lips, shaded with\nstraight lines.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 11.]\n\nBut you will also now understand how easy it must be for dishonest\ndealers to forge or imitate scrawled sketches like Figure 11., and pass\nthem for the work of great masters; and how the power of determining the\ngenuineness of a drawing depends entirely on your knowing the _facts_ of\nthe object drawn, and perceiving whether the hasty handling is _all_\nconducive to the expression of those truths. In a great man's work, at\nits fastest, no line is thrown away, and it is not by the rapidity, but\nthe _economy_ of the execution that you know him to be great. Now to\njudge of this economy, you must know exactly what he meant to do,\notherwise you cannot of course discern how far he has done it; that is,\nyou must know the beauty and nature of the thing he was drawing. All\njudgment of art thus finally founds itself on knowledge of Nature.\n\nBut farther observe, that this scrawled, or economic, or impetuous\nexecution is never _affectedly_ impetuous. If a great man is not in a\nhurry, he never pretends to be; if he has no eagerness in his heart, he\nputs none into his hand; if he thinks his effect would be better got\nwith _two_ lines, he never, to show his dexterity, tries to do it with\none. Be assured, therefore (and this is a matter of great importance),\nthat you will never produce a great drawing by imitating the _execution_\nof a great master. Acquire his knowledge and share his feelings, and the\neasy execution will fall from your hand as it did from his; but if you\nmerely scrawl because he scrawled, or blot because he blotted, you will\nnot only never advance in power, but every able draughtsman, and every\njudge whose opinion is worth having, will know you for a cheat, and\ndespise you accordingly.\n\nAgain, observe respecting the use of outline:\n\nAll merely outlined drawings are bad, for the simple reason, that an\nartist of any power can always do more, and tell more, by quitting his\noutlines occasionally, and scratching in a few lines for shade, than he\ncan by restricting himself to outline only. Hence the fact of his so\nrestricting himself, whatever may be the occasion, shows him to be a bad\ndraughtsman, and not to know how to apply his power economically. This\nhard law, however, bears only on drawings meant to remain in the state\nin which you see them; not on those which were meant to be proceeded\nwith, or for some mechanical use. It is sometimes necessary to draw pure\noutlines, as an incipient arrangement of a composition, to be filled up\nafterwards with colour, or to be pricked through and used as patterns or\ntracings; but if, with no such ultimate object, making the drawing\nwholly for its own sake, and meaning it to remain in the state he leaves\nit, an artist restricts himself to outline, he is a bad draughtsman, and\nhis work is bad. There is no exception to this law. A good artist\nhabitually sees masses, not edges, and can in every case make his\ndrawing more expressive (with any given quantity of work) by rapid shade\nthan by contours; so that all good work whatever is more or less touched\nwith shade, and more or less interrupted as outline.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 12.]\n\nHence, the published works of Retsch, and all the English imitations of\nthem, and all outline engravings from pictures, are bad work, and only\nserve to corrupt the public taste, and of such outlines, the worst are\nthose which are darkened in some part of their course by way of\nexpressing the dark side, as Flaxman's from Dante, and such others;\nbecause an outline can only be true so long as it accurately represents\nthe form of the given object with _one_ of its edges. Thus, the outline\n_a_ and the outline _b_, Fig. 12., are both _true_ outlines of a ball;\nbecause, however thick the line may be, whether we take the interior or\nexterior edge of it, that edge of it always draws a true circle. But _c_\nis a false outline of a ball, because either the inner or outer edge of\nthe black line must be an untrue circle, else the line could not be\nthicker in one place than another. Hence all \"force,\" as it is called,\nis gained by falsification of the contours; so that no artist whose eye\nis true and fine could endure to look at it. It does indeed often happen\nthat a painter, sketching rapidly, and trying again and again for some\nline which he cannot quite strike, blackens or loads the first line by\nsetting others beside and across it; and then a careless observer\nsupposes it has been thickened on purpose; or, sometimes also, at a\nplace where shade is afterwards to enclose the form, the painter will\nstrike a broad dash of this shade beside his outline at once, looking as\nif he meant to thicken the outline; whereas this broad line is only the\nfirst instalment of the future shadow, and the outline is really drawn\nwith its inner edge. And thus, far from good draughtsmen darkening the\nlines which turn away from the light, the _tendency_ with them is rather\nto darken them towards the light, for it is there in general that shade\nwill ultimately enclose them. The best example of this treatment that I\nknow is Raphael's sketch, in the Louvre, of the head of the angel\npursuing Heliodorus, the one that shows part of the left eye; where the\ndark strong lines which terminate the nose and forehead towards the\nlight are opposed to tender and light ones behind the ear, and in other\nplaces towards the shade. You will see in Fig. 11. the same principle\nvariously exemplified; the principal dark lines, in the head and drapery\nof the arms, being on the side turned to the light.\n\nAll these refinements and ultimate principles, however, do not affect\nyour drawing for the present. You must try to make your outlines as\n_equal_ as possible; and employ pure outline only for the two following\npurposes: either (1.) to steady your hand, as in Exercise II., for if\nyou cannot draw the line itself, you will never be able to terminate\nyour shadow in the precise shape required, when the line is absent; or\n(2.) to give you shorthand memoranda of forms, when you are pressed for\ntime. Thus the forms of distant trees in groups are defined, for the\nmost part, by the light edge of the rounded mass of the nearer one being\nshown against the darker part of the rounded mass of a more distant one;\nand to draw this properly, nearly as much work is required to round each\ntree as to round the stone in Fig. 5. Of course you cannot often get\ntime to do this; but if you mark the terminal line of each tree as is\ndone by Durer in Fig. 13., you will get a most useful memorandum of\ntheir arrangement, and a very interesting drawing. Only observe in doing\nthis, you must not, because the procedure is a quick one, hurry that\nprocedure itself. You will find, on copying that bit of Durer, that\nevery one of his lines is firm, deliberate, and accurately descriptive\nas far as it goes. It means a bush of such a size and such a shape,\ndefinitely observed and set down; it contains a true \"signalement\" of\nevery nut-tree, and apple-tree, and higher bit of hedge, all round that\nvillage. If you have not time to draw thus carefully, do not draw at\nall--you are merely wasting your work and spoiling your taste. When you\nhave had four or five years' practice you may be able to make useful\nmemoranda at a rapid rate, but not yet; except sometimes of light and\nshade, in a way of which I will tell you presently. And this use of\noutline, note farther, is wholly confined to objects which have _edges_\nor _limits_. You can outline line a tree or a stone, when it rises\nagainst another tree or stone; but you cannot outline folds in drapery,\nor waves in water; if these are to be expressed at all it must be by\nsome sort of shade, and therefore the rule that no good drawing can\nconsist throughout of pure outline remains absolute. You see, in that\nwoodcut of Durer's, his reason for even limiting himself so much to\noutline as he has, in those distant woods and plains, is that he may\nleave them in bright light, to be thrown out still more by the dark sky\nand the dark village spire; and the scene becomes real and sunny only by\nthe addition of these shades.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 13.]\n\nUnderstanding, then, thus much of the use of outline, we will go back to\nour question about tree drawing left unanswered at page 60.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 14.]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 15.]\n\nWe were, you remember, in pursuit of mystery among the leaves. Now, it\nis quite easy to obtain mystery and disorder, to any extent; but the\ndifficulty is to keep organisation in the midst of mystery. And you will\nnever succeed in doing this unless you lean always to the definite side,\nand allow yourself rarely to become quite vague, at least through all\nyour early practice. So, after your single groups of leaves, your first\nstep must be to conditions like Figs. 14. and 15., which are careful\nfacsimiles of two portions of a beautiful woodcut of Durer's, the Flight\ninto Egypt. Copy these carefully,--never mind how little at a time, but\nthoroughly; then trace the Durer, and apply it to your drawing, and do\nnot be content till the one fits the other, else your eye is not true\nenough to carry you safely through meshes of real leaves. And in the\ncourse of doing this, you will find that not a line nor dot of Durer's\ncan be displaced without harm; that all add to the effect, and either\nexpress something, or illumine something, or relieve something. If,\nafterwards, you copy any of the pieces of modern tree drawing, of which\nso many rich examples are given constantly in our cheap illustrated\nperiodicals (any of the Christmas numbers of last year's _Illustrated\nNews_ or _Times_ are full of them), you will see that, though good and\nforcible general effect is produced, the lines are thrown in by\nthousands without special intention, and might just as well go one way\nas another, so only that there be enough of them to produce all together\na well-shaped effect of intricacy: and you will find that a little\ncareless scratching about with your pen will bring you very near the\nsame result without an effort; but that no scratching of pen, nor any\nfortunate chance, nor anything but downright skill and thought, will\nimitate so much as one leaf of Durer's. Yet there is considerable\nintricacy and glittering confusion in the interstices of those vine\nleaves of his, as well as of the grass.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 16.]\n\nWhen you have got familiarised to this firm manner, you may draw from\nNature as much as you like in the same way, and when you are tired of\nthe intense care required for this, you may fall into a little more easy\nmassing of the leaves, as in Fig. 10. p. 66. This is facsimiled from an\nengraving after Titian, but an engraving not quite first-rate in manner,\nthe leaves being a little too formal; still, it is a good enough model\nfor your times of rest; and when you cannot carry the thing even so far\nas this, you may sketch the forms of the masses, as in Fig. 16.,[219]\ntaking care always to have thorough command over your hand; that is, not\nto let the mass take a free shape because your hand ran glibly over the\npaper, but because in nature it has actually a free and noble shape, and\nyou have faithfully followed the same.\n\nAnd now that we have come to questions of _noble_ shape, as well as true\nshape, and that we are going to draw from nature at our pleasure, other\nconsiderations enter into the business, which are by no means confined\nto _first_ practice, but extend to all practice; these (as this letter\nis long enough, I should think, to satisfy even the most exacting of\ncorrespondents) I will arrange in a second letter; praying you only to\nexcuse the tiresomeness of this first one--tiresomeness inseparable from\ndirections touching the beginning of any art,--and to believe me, even\nthough I am trying to set you to dull and hard work.\n\n    Very faithfully yours,\n    J. RUSKIN.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[199] (N. B. This note is only for the satisfaction of incredulous or\ncurious readers. You may miss it if you are in a hurry, or are willing\nto take the statement in the text on trust.)\n\nThe perception of solid Form is entirely a matter of experience. We\n_see_ nothing but flat colours; and it is only by a series of\nexperiments that we find out that a stain of black or grey indicates the\ndark side of a solid substance, or that a faint hue indicates that the\nobject in which it appears is far away. The whole technical power of\npainting depends on our recovery of what may be called the _innocence of\nthe eye_; that is to say, a sort of childish perception of these flat\nstains of colour, merely as such, without consciousness of what they\nsignify, as a blind man would see them if suddenly gifted with sight.\n\nFor instance; when grass is lighted strongly by the sun in certain\ndirections, it is turned from green into a peculiar and somewhat\ndusty-looking yellow. If we had been born blind, and were suddenly\nendowed with sight on a piece of grass thus lighted in some parts by the\nsun, it would appear to us that part of the grass was green, and part a\ndusty yellow (very nearly of the colour of primroses); and, if there\nwere primroses near, we should think that the sunlighted grass was\nanother mass of plants of the same sulphur-yellow colour. We should try\nto gather some of them, and then find that the colour went away from the\ngrass when we stood between it and the sun, but not from the primroses;\nand by a series of experiments we should find out that the sun was\nreally the cause of the colour in the one,--not in the other. We go\nthrough such processes of experiment unconsciously in childhood; and\nhaving once come to conclusions touching the signification of certain\ncolours, we always suppose that we _see_ what we only know, and have\nhardly any consciousness of the real aspect of the signs we have learned\nto interpret. Very few people have any idea that sunlighted grass is\nyellow.\n\nNow, a highly accomplished artist has always reduced himself as nearly\nas possible to this condition of infantine sight. He sees the colours of\nnature exactly as they are, and therefore perceives at once in the\nsunlighted grass the precise relation between the two colours that form\nits shade and light. To him it does not seem shade and light, but bluish\ngreen barred with gold.\n\nStrive, therefore, first of all, to convince yourself of this great fact\nabout sight. This, in your hand, which you know by experience and touch\nto be a book, is to your eye nothing but a patch of white, variously\ngradated and spotted; this other thing near you, which by experience you\nknow to be a table, is to your eye only a patch of brown, variously\ndarkened and veined; and so on: and the whole art of Painting consists\nmerely in perceiving the shape and depth of these patches of colour, and\nputting patches of the same size, depth, and shape on canvas. The only\nobstacle to the success of painting is, that many of the real colours\nare brighter and paler than it is possible to put on canvas: we must put\ndarker ones to represent them.\n\n[200] Stale crumb of bread is better, if you are making a delicate\ndrawing, than India-rubber, for it disturbs the surface of the paper\nless: but it crumbles about the room and makes a mess; and, besides, you\nwaste the good bread, which is wrong; and your drawing will not for a\nlong while be worth the crumbs. So use India-rubber very lightly; or, if\nheavily pressing it only, not passing it over the paper, and leave what\npencil marks that will not come away so, without minding them. In a\nfinished drawing the uneffaced penciling is often serviceable, helping\nthe general tone, and enabling you to take out little bright lights.\n\n[201] What is usually so much sought after under the term \"freedom\" is\nthe character of the drawing of a great master in a hurry, whose hand is\nso thoroughly disciplined, that when pressed for time he can let it fly\nas it will, and it will not go far wrong. But the hand of a great master\nat real _work_ is _never_ free: its swiftest dash is under perfect\ngovernment. Paul Veronese or Tintoret could pause within a hair's\nbreadth of any appointed mark, in their fastest touches; and follow,\nwithin a hair's breadth, the previously intended curve. You must never,\ntherefore, aim at freedom. It is not required of your drawing that it\nshould be free, but that it should be _right_: in time you will be able\nto do right easily, and then your work will be free in the best sense;\nbut there is no merit in doing _wrong_ easily.\n\nThese remarks, however, do not apply to the lines used in shading,\nwhich, it will be remembered, are to be made as _quickly_ as possible.\nThe reason of this is, that the quicker a line is drawn, the lighter it\nis at the ends, and therefore the more easily joined with other lines,\nand concealed by them; the object in perfect shading being to conceal\nthe lines as much as possible.\n\nAnd observe, in this exercise, the object is more to get firmness of\nhand than accuracy of eye for outline; for there are no outlines in\nNature, and the ordinary student is sure to draw them falsely if he\ndraws them at all. Do not, therefore, be discouraged if you find\nmistakes continue to occur in your outlines; be content at present if\nyou find your hand gaining command over the curves.\n\n[202] If you can get any pieces of _dead_ white porcelain, not glazed,\nthey will be useful models.\n\n[203] Artists who glance at this book may be surprised at this\npermission. My chief reason is, that I think it more necessary that the\npupil's eye should be trained to accurate perception of the relations of\ncurve and right lines, by having the latter absolutely true, than that\nhe should practice drawing straight lines. But also, I believe, though I\nam not quite sure of this, that he never _ought_ to be able to draw a\nstraight line. I do not believe a perfectly trained hand ever can draw a\nline without some curvature in it, or some variety of direction. Prout\ncould draw a straight line, but I do not believe Raphael could, nor\nTintoret. A great draughtsman can, as far as I have observed, draw every\nline _but_ a straight one.\n\n[204] Or, if you feel able to do so, scratch them in with confused quick\ntouches, indicating the general shape of the cloud or mist of twigs\nround the main branches; but do not take much trouble about them.\n\n[205] It is more difficult, at first, to get, in colour, a narrow\ngradation than an extended one; but the ultimate difficulty is, as with\nthe pen, to make the gradation go _far_.\n\n[206] Of course, all the columns of colour are to be of equal length.\n\n[207] The degree of darkness you can reach with the given colour is\nalways indicated by the colour of the solid cake in the box.\n\n[208] The figure _a_, Fig. 5., is very dark, but this is to give an\nexample of all kinds of depth of tint, without repeated figures.\n\n[209] Nearly neutral in ordinary circumstances, but yet with quite\ndifferent tones in its neutrality, according to the colours of the\nvarious reflected rays that compose it.\n\n[210] If we had any business with the reasons of this, I might, perhaps,\nbe able to show you some metaphysical ones for the enjoyment, by truly\nartistical minds, of the changes wrought by light, and shade, and\nperspective in patterned surfaces; but this is at present not to the\npoint; and all that you need to know is that the drawing of such things\nis good exercise, and moreover a kind of exercise which Titian,\nVeronese, Tintoret, Giorgione, and Turner, all enjoyed, and strove to\nexcel in.\n\n[211] The use of acquiring this habit of execution is that you may be\nable, when you begin to colour, to let one hue be seen in minute\nportions, gleaming between the touches of another.\n\n[212] William Hunt, of the Old Water-colour Society.\n\n[213] At Marlborough House, among the four principal examples of\nTurner's later water-colour drawing, perhaps the most neglected is that\nof fishing-boats and fish at sunset. It is one of his most wonderful\nworks, though unfinished. If you examine the larger white fishing-boat\nsail, you will find it has a little spark of pure white in its\nright-hand upper corner, about as large as a minute pin's head, and that\nall the surface of the sail is gradated to that focus. Try to copy this\nsail once or twice, and you will begin to understand Turner's work.\nSimilarly, the wing of the Cupid in Correggio's large picture in the\nNational Gallery is focussed to two little grains of white at the top of\nit. The points of light on the white flower in the wreath round the head\nof the dancing child-faun, in Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, exemplify\nthe same thing.\n\n[214] I shall not henceforward _number_ the exercises recommended; as\nthey are distinguished only by increasing difficulty of subject, not by\ndifference of method.\n\n[215] If you understand the principle of the stereoscope you will know\nwhy; if not, it does not matter; trust me for the truth of the\nstatement, as I cannot explain the principle without diagrams and much\nloss of time.\n\n[216] If you can, get first the plates marked with a star. The letters\nmean as follows:--\n\n    _a_ stands for architecture, including distant grouping of towns,\n    cottages, &c.\n    _c_ clouds, including mist and aerial effects.\n    _f_ foliage.\n    _g_ ground, including low hills, when not rocky.\n    _l_ effects of light.\n    _m_ mountains, or bold rocky ground.\n    _p_ power of general arrangement and effect.\n    _q_ quiet water.\n    _r_ running or rough water; or rivers, even if calm, when their line of\n    flow is beautifully marked.\n\n\n_From the England Series._\n\n    _a c f r._ Arundel.\n    _a f l._ Ashby de la Zouche.\n    _a l q r._ Barnard Castle.*\n    _f m r._ Bolton Abbey.\n    _f g r._ Buckfastleigh.*\n    _a l p._ Caernarvon.\n    _c l q._ Castle Upnor.\n    _a f l._ Colchester.\n    _l q._ Cowes.\n    _c f p._ Dartmouth Cove.\n    _c l q._ Flint Castle.*\n    _a f g l._ Knaresborough.*\n    _m r._ High Force of Tees.*\n    _a f q._ Trematon.\n    _a f p._ Lancaster.\n    _c l m r._ Lancaster Sands.*\n    _a g f._ Launceston.\n    _c f l r._ Leicester Abbey.\n    _f r._ Ludlow.\n    _a f l._ Margate.\n    _a l q._ Orford.\n    _c p._ Plymouth.\n    _f._ Powis Castle.\n    _l m q._ Prudhoe Castle.\n    _f l m r._ Chain Bridge over Tees.*\n    _m q._ Ulleswater.\n    _f m._ Valle Crucis.\n\n\n_From the Keepsake._\n\n    _m p q._ Arona.\n    _m._ Drachenfells.\n    _f l._ Marley.*\n    _p._ St. Germain en Laye.\n    _l p q._ Florence.\n    _l m._ Ballyburgh Ness.*\n\n_From the Bible Series._\n\n    _f m._ Mount Lebanon.\n    _m._ Rock of Moses at Sinai.\n    _a l m._ Jericho.\n    _a c g._ Joppa.\n    _c l p q._ Solomon's Pools.*\n    _a l._ Santa Saba.\n    _a l._ Pool of Bethesda.\n\n\n_From Scott's Works._\n\n    _p r._ Melrose.\n    _f r._ Dryburgh.*\n    _c m._ Glencoe.\n    _c m._ Loch Coriskin.\n    _a l._ Caerlaverock.\n\n_From the \"Rivers of France.\"_\n\n    _a q._ Chateau of Amboise, with large bridge on right.\n    _l p r._ Rouen, looking down the river, poplars on right.*\n    _a l p._ Rouen, with cathedral and rainbow, avenue on the left.\n    _a p._ Rouen Cathedral.\n    _f p._ Pont de l'Arche.\n    _f l p._ View on the Seine, with avenue.\n    _a c p._ Bridge of Meulan.\n    _c g p r._ Caudebec.*\n\n[217] As _well_;--not as minutely: the diamond cuts finer lines on the\nsteel than you can draw on paper with your pen; but you must be able to\nget tones as even, and touches as firm.\n\n[218] See, for account of these plates, the Appendix on \"Works to be\nstudied.\"\n\n[219] This sketch is not of a tree standing on its head, though it looks\nlike it. You will find it explained presently.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER II.\n\nSKETCHING FROM NATURE.\n\n\nMY DEAR READER:--\n\nThe work we have already gone through together has, I hope, enabled you\nto draw with fair success, either rounded and simple masses, like\nstones, or complicated arrangements of form, like those of leaves;\nprovided only these masses or complexities will stay quiet for you to\ncopy, and do not extend into quantity so great as to baffle your\npatience. But if we are now to go out to the fields, and to draw\nanything like a complete landscape, neither of these conditions will any\nmore be observed for us. The clouds will not wait while we copy their\nheaps or clefts; the shadows will escape from us as we try to shape\nthem, each, in its stealthy minute march, still leaving light where its\ntremulous edge had rested the moment before, and involving in eclipse\nobjects that had seemed safe from its influence; and instead of the\nsmall clusters of leaves which we could reckon point by point,\nembarrassing enough even though numerable, we have now leaves as little\nto be counted as the sands of the sea, and restless, perhaps, as its\nfoam.\n\nIn all that we have to do now, therefore, direct imitation becomes more\nor less impossible. It is always to be aimed at so far as it _is_\npossible; and when you have time and opportunity, some portions of a\nlandscape may, as you gain greater skill, be rendered with an\napproximation almost to mirrored portraiture. Still, whatever skill you\nmay reach, there will always be need of judgment to choose, and of speed\nto seize, certain things that are principal or fugitive; and you must\ngive more and more effort daily to the observance of characteristic\npoints, and the attainment of concise methods.\n\nI have directed your attention early to foliage for two reasons. First,\nthat it is always accessible as a study; and secondly, that its modes of\ngrowth present simple examples of the importance of leading or\ngoverning lines. It is by seizing these leading lines, when we cannot\nseize _all_, that likeness and expression are given to a portrait, and\ngrace and a kind of _vital_ truth to the rendering of every natural\nform. I call it _vital_ truth, because these chief lines are always\nexpressive of the past history and present action of the thing. They\nshow in a mountain, first, how it was built or heaped up; and secondly,\nhow it is now being worn away, and from what quarter the wildest storms\nstrike it. In a tree, they show what kind of fortune it has had to\nendure from its childhood; how troublesome trees have come in its way,\nand pushed it aside, and tried to strangle or starve it; where and when\nkind trees have sheltered it, and grown up lovingly together with it,\nbending as it bent; what winds torment it most; what boughs of it behave\nbest, and bear most fruit; and so on. In a wave or cloud, these leading\nlines show the run of the tide and of the wind, and the sort of change\nwhich the water or vapour is at any moment enduring in its form, as it\nmeets shore, or counterwave, or melting sunshine. Now remember, nothing\ndistinguishes great men from inferior men more than their always,\nwhether in life or in art, _knowing the way things are going_. Your\ndunce thinks they are standing still, and draws them all fixed; your\nwise man sees the change or changing in them, and draws them so--the\nanimal in its motion, the tree in its growth, the cloud in its course,\nthe mountain in its wearing away. Try always, whenever you look at a\nform, to see the lines in it which have had power over its past fate,\nand will have power over its futurity. Those are its _awful_ lines; see\nthat you seize on those, whatever else you miss. Thus, the leafage in\nFig. 16. (p. 291.) grew round the root of a stone pine, on the brow of a\ncrag at Sestri, near Genoa, and all the sprays of it are thrust away in\ntheir first budding by the great rude root, and spring out in every\ndirection round it, as water splashes when a heavy stone is thrown into\nit. Then, when they have got clear of the root, they begin to bend up\nagain; some of them, being little stone pines themselves, have a great\nnotion of growing upright, if they can; and this struggle of theirs to\nrecover their straight road towards the sky, after being obliged to\ngrow sideways in their early years, is the effort that will mainly\ninfluence their future destiny, and determine if they are to be crabbed,\nforky pines, striking from that rock of Sestri, whose clefts nourish\nthem, with bared red lightning of angry arms towards the sea; or if they\nare to be goodly and solemn pines, with trunks like pillars of temples,\nand the purple burning of their branches sheathed in deep globes of\ncloudy green. Those, then, are their fateful lines; see that you give\nthat spring and resilience, whatever you leave ungiven: depend upon it,\ntheir chief beauty is in these.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 17.]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 18.]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 19.]\n\nSo in trees in general and bushes, large or small, you will notice that,\nthough the boughs spring irregularly and at various angles, there is a\ntendency in all to stoop less and less as they near the top of the tree.\nThis structure, typified in the simplest possible terms at _c_, Fig.\n17., is common to all trees, that I know of, and it gives them a certain\nplumy character, and aspect of unity in the hearts of their branches,\nwhich are essential to their beauty. The stem does not merely send off a\nwild branch here and there to take its own way, but all the branches\nshare in one great fountain-like impulse; each has a curve and a path to\ntake which fills a definite place, and each terminates all its minor\nbranches at its outer extremity, so as to form a great outer curve,\nwhose character and proportion are peculiar for each species; that is to\nsay, the general type or idea of a tree is not as _a_, Fig. 17., but as\n_b_, in which, observe, the boughs all carry their minor divisions right\nout to the bounding curve; not but that smaller branches, by thousands,\nterminate in the heart of the tree, but the idea and main purpose in\nevery branch are to carry all its child branches well out to the air and\nlight, and let each of them, however small, take its part in filling the\nunited flow of the bounding curve, so that the type of each separate\nbough is again not _a_ but _b_, Fig. 18.; approximating, that is to\nsay, so far to the structure of a plant of broccoli as to throw the\ngreat mass of spray and leafage out to a rounded surface; therefore,\nbeware of getting into a careless habit of drawing boughs with\nsuccessive sweeps of the pen or brush, one hanging to the other, as in\nFig. 19. If you look at the tree-boughs in any painting of Wilson's, you\nwill see this structure, and nearly every other that is to be avoided,\nin their intensest types. You will also notice that Wilson never\nconceives a tree as a round mass, but flat, as if it had been pressed\nand dried. Most people, in drawing pines, seem to fancy, in the same\nway, that the boughs come out only on two sides of the trunk, instead of\nall round it; always, therefore, take more pains in trying to draw the\nboughs of trees that grow _towards_ you, than those that go off to the\nsides; anybody can draw the latter, but the foreshortened ones are not\nso easy. It will help you in drawing them to observe that in most trees\nthe ramification of each branch, though not of the tree itself, is more\nor less flattened, and approximates, in its position, to the look of a\nhand held out to receive something, or shelter something. If you take a\nlooking-glass, and hold your hand before it slightly hollowed, with the\npalm upwards, and the fingers open, as if you were going to support the\nbase of some great bowl, larger than you could easily hold, and sketch\nyour hand as you see it in the glass, with the points of the fingers\ntowards you, it will materially help you in understanding the way trees\ngenerally hold out their hands; and if then you will turn yours with its\npalm downwards, as if you were going to try to hide something, but with\nthe fingers expanded, you will get a good type of the action of the\nlower boughs in cedars and such other spreading trees.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 20.]\n\nFig. 20. will give you a good idea of the simplest way in which these\nand other such facts can be rapidly expressed; if you copy it carefully,\nyou will be surprised to find how the touches all group together, in\nexpressing the plumy toss of the tree branches, and the springing of the\nbushes out of the bank, and the undulation of the ground: note the\ncareful drawing of the footsteps made by the climbers of the little\nmound on the left.[220] It is facsimiled from an etching of Turner's,\nand is as good an example as you can have of the use of pure and firm\nlines; it will also show you how the particular action in foliage, or\nanything else to which you wish to direct attention, may be intensified\nby the adjuncts. The tall and upright trees are made to look more tall\nand upright still, because their line is continued below by the figure\nof the farmer with his stick; and the rounded bushes on the bank are\nmade to look more rounded because their line is continued in one broad\nsweep by the black dog and the boy climbing the wall. These figures are\nplaced entirely with this object, as we shall see more fully hereafter\nwhen we come to talk about composition; but, if you please, we will not\ntalk about that yet awhile. What I have been telling you about the\nbeautiful lines and action of foliage has nothing to do with\ncomposition, but only with fact, and the brief and expressive\nrepresentation of fact. But there will be no harm in your looking\nforward, if you like to do so, to the account, in Letter III. of the\n\"Law of Radiation,\" and reading what it said there about tree growth:\nindeed it would in some respects have been better to have said it here\nthan there, only it would have broken up the account of the principles\nof composition somewhat awkwardly.\n\nNow, although the lines indicative of action are not always quite so\nmanifest in other things as in trees, a little attention will soon\nenable you to see that there _are_ such lines in everything. In an old\nhouse roof, a bad observer and bad draughtsman will only see and draw\nthe spotty irregularity of tiles or slates all over; but a good\ndraughtsman will see all the bends of the under timbers, where they are\nweakest and the weight is telling on them most, and the tracks of the\nrun of the water in time of rain, where it runs off fastest, and where\nit lies long and feeds the moss; and he will be careful, however few\nslates he draws, to mark the way they bend together towards those\nhollows (which have the future fate of the roof in them), and crowd\ngradually together at the top of the gable, partly diminishing in\nperspective, partly, perhaps, diminished on purpose (they are so in most\nEnglish old houses) by the slate-layer. So in ground, there is always\nthe direction of the run of the water to be noticed, which rounds the\nearth and cuts it into hollows; and, generally, in any bank, or height\nworth drawing, a trace of bedded or other internal structure besides.\nThe figure 20. will give you some idea of the way in which such facts\nmay be expressed by a few lines. Do you not feel the depression in the\nground all down the hill where the footsteps are, and how the people\nalways turn to the left at the top, losing breath a little, and then how\nthe water runs down in that other hollow towards the valley, behind the\nroots of the trees?\n\nNow, I want you in your first sketches from nature to aim exclusively at\nunderstanding and representing these vital facts of form; using the\npen--not now the steel, but the quill--firmly and steadily, never\nscrawling with it, but saying to yourself before you lay on a single\ntouch,--\"_That_ leaf is the main one, _that_ bough is the guiding one,\nand this touch, _so_ long, _so_ broad, means that part of it,\"--point or\nside or knot, as the case may be. Resolve always, as you look at the\nthing, what you will take, and what miss of it, and never let your hand\nrun away with you, or get into any habit or method of touch. If you want\na continuous line, your hand should pass calmly from one end of it to\nthe other, without a tremor; if you want a shaking and broken line, your\nhand should shake, or break off, as easily as a musician's finger shakes\nor stops on a note: only remember this, that there is no general way of\ndoing _any_ thing; no recipe can be given you for so much as the drawing\nof a cluster of grass. The grass may be ragged and stiff, or tender and\nflowing; sunburnt and sheep-bitten, or rank and languid; fresh or dry;\nlustrous or dull: look at it, and try to draw it as it is, and don't\nthink how somebody \"told you to _do_ grass.\" So a stone may be round and\nangular, polished or rough, cracked all over like an ill-glazed teacup,\nor as united and broad as the breast of Hercules. It may be as flaky as\na wafer, as powdery as a field puff-ball; it may be knotted like a\nship's hawser, or kneaded like hammered iron, or knit like a Damascus\nsabre, or fused like a glass bottle, or crystallised like a hoar-frost,\nor veined like a forest leaf: look at it, and don't try to remember how\nanybody told you to \"do a stone.\"\n\nAs soon as you find that your hand obeys you thoroughly and that you can\nrender any form with a firmness and truth approaching that of Turner's\nand Durer's work,[221] you must add a simple but equally careful light\nand shade to your pen drawing, so as to make each study as complete as\npossible: for which you must prepare yourself thus. Get, if you have the\nmeans, a good impression of one plate of Turner's Liber Studiorum; if\npossible, one of the subjects named in the note below.[222]\n\nIf you cannot obtain, or even borrow for a little while, any of these\nengravings, you must use a photograph instead (how, I will tell you\npresently); but, if you can get the Turner, it will be best. You will\nsee that it is composed of a firm etching in line, with mezzotint shadow\nlaid over it. You must first copy the etched part of it accurately; to\nwhich end put the print against the window, and trace slowly with the\n_greatest_ care every black line; retrace this on smooth drawing-paper;\nand, finally, go over the whole with your pen, looking at the original\nplate always, so that if you err at all, it may be on the right side,\nnot making a line which is too curved or too straight already in the\ntracing, _more_ curved or _more_ straight, as you go over it. And in\ndoing this, never work after you are tired, nor to \"get the thing done,\"\nfor if it is badly done, it will be of no use to you. The true zeal and\npatience of a quarter of an hour are better than the sulky and\ninattentive labour of a whole day. If you have not made the touches\nright at the first going over with the pen, retouch them delicately,\nwith little ink in your pen, thickening or reinforcing them as they\nneed: you cannot give too much care to the facsimile. Then keep this\netched outline by you, in order to study at your ease the way in which\nTurner uses his line as preparatory for the subsequent shadow;[223] it\nis only in getting the two separate that you will be able to reason on\nthis. Next, copy once more, though for the fourth time, any part of this\netching which you like, and put on the light and shade with the brush,\nand any brown colour that matches that of the plate;[224] working it\nwith the point of the brush as delicately as if you were drawing with\npencil, and dotting and cross-hatching as lightly as you can touch the\npaper, till you get the gradations of Turner's engraving. In this\nexercise, as in the former one, a quarter of an inch worked to close\nresemblance of the copy is worth more than the whole subject carelessly\ndone. Not that in drawing afterwards from nature, you are to be obliged\nto finish every gradation in this way, but that, once having fully\naccomplished the drawing _something_ rightly, you will thenceforward\nfeel and aim at a higher perfection than you could otherwise have\nconceived, and the brush will obey you, and bring out quickly and\nclearly the loveliest results, with a submissiveness which it would have\nwholly refused if you had not put it to severest work. Nothing is more\nstrange in art than the way that chance and materials seem to favour\nyou, when once you have thoroughly conquered them. Make yourself quite\nindependent of chance, get your result in spite of it, and from that day\nforward all things will somehow fall as you would have them. Show the\ncamel's-hair, and the colour in it, that no bending nor blotting are of\nany use to escape your will; that the touch and the shade _shall_\nfinally be right, if it cost you a year's toil; and from that hour of\ncorrective conviction, said camel's-hair will bend itself to all your\nwishes, and no blot will dare to transgress its appointed border. If you\ncannot obtain a print from the Liber Studiorum, get a photograph[225]\nof some general landscape subject, with high hills and a village, or\npicturesque town, in the middle distance, and some calm water of varied\ncharacter (a stream with stones in it, if possible), and copy any part\nof it you like, in this same brown colour, working, as I have just\ndirected you to do from the Liber, a great deal with the point of the\nbrush. You are under a twofold disadvantage here, however; first, there\nare portions in every photograph too delicately done for you at present\nto be at all able to copy; and secondly, there are portions always more\nobscure or dark than there would be in the real scene, and involved in a\nmystery which you will not be able, as yet, to decipher. Both these\ncharacters will be advantageous to you for future study, after you have\ngained experience, but they are a little against you in early attempts\nat tinting; still you must fight through the difficulty, and get the\npower of producing delicate gradations with brown or grey, like those of\nthe photograph.\n\nNow observe; the perfection of work would be tinted shadow, like\nphotography, _without_ any obscurity or exaggerated darkness; and as\nlong as your effect depends in anywise on visible _lines_, your art is\nnot perfect, though it may be first-rate of its kind. But to get\ncomplete results in tints merely, requires both long time and consummate\nskill; and you will find that a few well-put pen lines, with a tint\ndashed over or under them, get more expression of facts than you could\nreach in any other way, by the same expenditure of time. The use of the\nLiber Studiorum print to you is chiefly as an example of the simplest\nshorthand of this kind, a shorthand which is yet capable of dealing with\nthe most subtle natural effects; for the firm etching gets at the\nexpression of complicated details, as leaves, masonry, textures of\nground, &c., while the overlaid tint enables you to express the most\ntender distances of sky, and forms of playing light, mist or cloud. Most\nof the best drawings by the old masters are executed on this principle,\nthe touches of the pen being useful also to give a look of transparency\nto shadows, which could not otherwise be attained but by great finish\nof tinting; and if you have access to any ordinarily good public\ngallery, or can make friends of any print-sellers who have folios of old\ndrawings, or facsimiles of them, you will not be at a loss to find some\nexample of this unity of pen with tinting. Multitudes of photographs\nalso are now taken from the best drawings by the old masters, and I hope\nthat our Mechanics' Institutes, and other societies organized with a\nview to public instruction, will not fail to possess themselves of\nexamples of these, and to make them accessible to students of drawing in\nthe vicinity; a single print from Turner's Liber, to show the unison of\ntint with pen etching, and the \"St. Catherine,\" lately photographed by\nThurston Thompson, from Raphael's drawing in the Louvre, to show the\nunity of the soft tinting of the stump with chalk, would be all that is\nnecessary, and would, I believe, be in many cases more serviceable than\na larger collection, and certainly than a whole gallery of second-rate\nprints. Two such examples are peculiarly desirable, because all other\nmodes of drawing, with pen separately, or chalk separately, or colour\nseparately, may be seen by the poorest student in any cheap illustrated\nbook, or in shop windows. But this unity of tinting with line he cannot\ngenerally see but by some especial enquiry, and in some out of the way\nplaces he could not find a single example of it. Supposing that this\nshould be so in your own case, and that you cannot meet with any example\nof this kind, try to make the matter out alone, thus:\n\nTake a small and simple photograph; allow yourself half an hour to\nexpress its subjects with the pen only, using some permanent liquid\ncolour instead of ink, outlining its buildings or trees firmly, and\nlaying in the deeper shadows, as you have been accustomed to do in your\nbolder pen drawings; then, when this etching is dry, take your sepia or\ngrey, and tint it over, getting now the finer gradations of the\nphotograph; and finally, taking out the higher lights with penknife or\nblotting-paper. You will soon find what can be done in this way; and by\na series of experiments you may ascertain for yourself how far the pen\nmay be made serviceable to reinforce shadows, mark characters of\ntexture, outline unintelligible masses, and so on. The more time you\nhave, the more delicate you may make the pen drawing, blending it with\nthe tint; the less you have, the more distinct you must keep the two.\nPractice in this way from one photograph, allowing yourself sometimes\nonly a quarter of an hour for the whole thing, sometimes an hour,\nsometimes two or three hours; in each case drawing the whole subject in\nfull depth of light and shade, but with such degree of finish in the\nparts as is possible in the given time. And this exercise, observe, you\nwill do well to repeat frequently whether you can get prints and\ndrawings as well as photographs, or not.\n\nAnd now at last, when you can copy a piece of Liber Studiorum, or its\nphotographic substitute, faithfully, you have the complete means in your\npower of working from nature on all subjects that interest you, which\nyou should do in four different ways.\n\nFirst. When you have full time, and your subject is one that will stay\nquiet for you, make perfect light and shade studies, or as nearly\nperfect as you can, with grey or brown colour of any kind, reinforced\nand defined with the pen.\n\nSecondly. When your time is short, or the subject is so rich in detail\nthat you feel you cannot complete it intelligibly in light and shade,\nmake a hasty study of the effect, and give the rest of the time to a\nDureresque expression of the details. If the subject seems to you\ninteresting, and there are points about it which you cannot understand,\ntry to get five spare minutes to go close up to it, and make a nearer\nmemorandum; not that you are ever to bring the details of this nearer\nsketch into the farther one, but that you may thus perfect your\nexperience of the aspect of things, and know that such and such a look\nof a tower or cottage at five hundred yards off means _that_ sort of\ntower or cottage near; while, also, this nearer sketch will be useful to\nprevent any future misinterpretation of your own work. If you have time,\nhowever far your light and shade study in the distance may have been\ncarried, it is always well, for these reasons, to make also your\nDureresque and your near memoranda; for if your light and shade drawing\nbe good, much of the interesting detail must be lost in it, or\ndisguised.\n\nYour hasty study of effect may be made most easily and quickly with a\nsoft pencil, dashed over when done with one tolerably deep tone of grey,\nwhich will fix the pencil. While this fixing colour is wet, take out the\nhigher lights with the dry brush; and, when it is quite dry, scratch out\nthe highest lights with the penknife. Five minutes, carefully applied,\nwill do much by these means. Of course the paper is to be white. I do\nnot like studies on grey paper so well; for you can get more gradation\nby the taking off your wet tint, and laying it on cunningly a little\ndarker here and there, than you can with body-colour white, unless you\nare consummately skilful. There is no objection to your making your\nDureresque memoranda on grey or yellow paper, and touching or relieving\nthem with white; only, do not depend much on your white touches, nor\nmake the sketch for their sake.\n\nThirdly. When you have neither time for careful study nor for Dureresque\ndetail, sketch the outline with pencil, then dash in the shadows with\nthe brush boldly, trying to do as much as you possibly can at once, and\nto get a habit of expedition and decision; laying more colour again and\nagain into the tints as they dry, using every expedient which your\npractice has suggested to you of carrying out your chiaroscuro in the\nmanageable and moist material, taking the colour off here with the dry\nbrush, scratching out lights in it there with the wooden handle of the\nbrush, rubbing it in with your fingers, drying it off with your sponge,\n&c. Then, when the colour is in, take your pen and mark the outline\ncharacters vigorously, in the manner of the Liber Studiorum. This kind\nof study is very convenient for carrying away pieces of effect which\ndepend not so much on refinement as on complexity, strange shapes of\ninvolved shadows, sudden effects of sky, &c.; and it is most useful as a\nsafeguard against any too servile or slow habits which the minute\ncopying may induce in you; for although the endeavour to obtain velocity\nmerely for velocity's sake, and dash for display's sake, is as baneful\nas it is despicable; there _are_ a velocity and a dash which not only\nare compatible with perfect drawing, but obtain certain results which\ncannot be had otherwise. And it is perfectly safe for you to study\noccasionally for speed and decision, while your continual course of\npractice is such as to ensure your retaining an accurate judgment and a\ntender touch. Speed, under such circumstances, is rather fatiguing than\ntempting; and you will find yourself always beguiled rather into\nelaboration than negligence.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 21.]\n\nFourthly. You will find it of great use, whatever kind of landscape\nscenery you are passing through, to get into the habit of making\nmemoranda of the shapes of shadows. You will find that many objects of\nno essential interest in themselves, and neither deserving a finished\nstudy, nor a Dureresque one, may yet become of singular value in\nconsequence of the fantastic shapes of their shadows; for it happens\noften, in distant effect, that the shadow is by much a more important\nelement than the substance. Thus, in the Alpine bridge, Fig. 21., seen\nwithin a few yards of it, as in the figure, the arrangement of timbers\nto which the shadows are owing is perceptible; but at half a mile's\ndistance, in bright sunlight, the timbers would not be seen; and a good\npainter's expression of the bridge would be merely the large spot, and\nthe crossed bars, of pure grey; wholly without indication of their\ncause, as in Fig. 22. _a_; and if we saw it at still greater distances,\nit would appear, as in Fig. 22. _b_ and _c_, diminishing at last to a\nstrange, unintelligible, spider-like spot of grey on the light\nhill-side. A perfectly great painter, throughout his distances,\ncontinually reduces his objects to these shadow abstracts; and the\nsingular, and to many persons unaccountable, effect of the confused\ntouches in Turner's distances, is owing chiefly to this thorough\naccuracy and intense meaning of the shadow abstracts.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 22.]\n\nStudies of this kind are easily made when you are in haste, with an F.\nor HB. pencil: it requires some hardness of the point to ensure your\ndrawing delicately enough when the forms of the shadows are very subtle;\nthey are sure to be so somewhere, and are generally so everywhere. The\npencil is indeed a very precious instrument after you are master of the\npen and brush, for the pencil, cunningly used, is both, and will draw a\nline with the precision of the one and the gradation of the other;\nnevertheless, it is so unsatisfactory to see the sharp touches, on which\nthe best of the detail depends, getting gradually deadened by time, or\nto find the places where force was wanted look shiny, and like a\nfire-grate, that I should recommend rather the steady use of the pen, or\nbrush, and colour, whenever time admits of it; keeping only a small\nmemorandum-book in the breast-pocket, with its well-cut, sheathed\npencil, ready for notes on passing opportunities: but never being\nwithout this.\n\nThus much, then, respecting the _manner_ in which you are at first to\ndraw from nature. But it may perhaps be serviceable to you, if I also\nnote one or two points respecting your _choice_ of subjects for study,\nand the best special methods of treating some of them; for one of by no\nmeans the least difficulties which you have at first to encounter is a\npeculiar instinct, common, as far as I have noticed, to all beginners,\nto fix on exactly the most unmanageable feature in the given scene.\nThere are many things in every landscape which can be drawn, if at all,\nonly by the most accomplished artists; and I have noticed that it is\nnearly always these which a beginner will dash at; or, if not these, it\nwill be something which, though pleasing to him in itself, is unfit for\na picture, and in which, when he has drawn it, he will have little\npleasure. As some slight protection against this evil genius of\nbeginners, the following general warnings may be useful:\n\n1. Do not draw things that you love, on account of their associations;\nor at least do not draw them because you love them; but merely when you\ncannot get anything else to draw. If you try to draw places that you\nlove, you are sure to be always entangled amongst neat brick walls, iron\nrailings, gravel walks, greenhouses, and quickset hedges; besides that\nyou will be continually led into some endeavour to make your drawing\npretty, or complete, which will be fatal to your progress. You need\nnever hope to get on, if you are the least anxious that the drawing you\nare actually at work upon should look nice when it is done. All you have\nto care about is to make it _right_, and to learn as much in doing it as\npossible. So then, though when you are sitting in your friend's parlour,\nor in your own, and have nothing else to do, you may draw any thing that\nis there, for practice; even the fire-irons or the pattern on the\ncarpet: be sure that it _is_ for practice, and not because it is a\nbeloved carpet, nor a friendly poker and tongs, nor because you wish to\nplease your friend by drawing her room.\n\nAlso, never make presents of your drawings. Of course I am addressing\nyou as a _beginner_--a time may come when your work will be precious to\neverybody; but be resolute not to give it away till you know that it is\nworth something (as soon as it is worth anything you will know that it\nis so). If any one asks you for a present of a drawing, send them a\ncouple of cakes of colour and a piece of Bristol board: those materials\nare, for the present, of more value in that form than if you had spread\nthe one over the other.\n\nThe main reason for this rule is, however, that its observance will\nmuch protect you from the great danger of trying to make your drawings\npretty.\n\n2. Never, by choice, draw anything polished; especially if complicated\nin form. Avoid all brass rods and curtain ornaments, chandeliers, plate,\nglass, and fine steel. A shining knob of a piece of furniture does not\nmatter if it comes in your way; but do not fret yourself if it will not\nlook right, and choose only things that do not shine.\n\n3. Avoid all very neat things. They are exceedingly difficult to draw,\nand very ugly when drawn. Choose rough, worn, and clumsy-looking things\nas much as possible; for instance, you cannot have a more difficult or\nprofitless study than a newly-painted Thames wherry, nor a better study\nthan an old empty coal-barge, lying ashore at low-tide: in general,\neverything that you think very ugly will be good for you to draw.\n\n4. Avoid, as much as possible, studies in which one thing is seen\n_through_ another. You will constantly find a thin tree standing before\nyour chosen cottage, or between you and the turn of the river; its near\nbranches all entangled with the distance. It is intensely difficult to\nrepresent this; and though, when the tree _is_ there, you must not\nimaginarily cut it down, but do it as well as you can, yet always look\nfor subjects that fall into definite masses, not into network; that is,\nrather for a cottage with a dark tree _beside_ it, than for one with a\nthin tree in front of it; rather for a mass of wood, soft, blue, and\nrounded, than for a ragged copse, or confusion of intricate stems.\n\n5. Avoid, as far as possible, country divided by hedges. Perhaps nothing\nin the whole compass of landscape is so utterly unpicturesque and\nunmanageable as the ordinary English patchwork of field and hedge, with\ntrees dotted over it in independent spots, gnawed straight at the cattle\nline.\n\nStill, do not be discouraged if you find you have chosen ill, and that\nthe subject overmasters you. It is much better that it should, than that\nyou should think you had entirely mastered _it_. But at first, and even\nfor some time, you must be prepared for very discomfortable failure;\nwhich, nevertheless, will not be without some wholesome result.\n\nAs, however, I have told you what most definitely to avoid, I may,\nperhaps, help you a little by saying what to seek. In general, all\n_banks_ are beautiful things, and will reward work better than large\nlandscapes. If you live in a lowland country, you must look for places\nwhere the ground is broken to the river's edges, with decayed posts, or\nroots of trees; or, if by great good luck there should be such things\nwithin your reach, for remnants of stone quays or steps, mossy\nmill-dams, &c. Nearly every other mile of road in chalk country will\npresent beautiful bits of broken bank at its sides; better in form and\ncolour than high chalk cliffs. In woods, one or two trunks, with the\nflowery ground below, are at once the richest and easiest kind of study:\na not very thick trunk, say nine inches or a foot in diameter, with ivy\nrunning up it sparingly, is an easy, and always a rewarding subject.\n\nLarge nests of buildings in the middle distance are always beautiful,\nwhen drawn carefully, provided they are not modern rows of pattern\ncottages; or villas with Ionic and Doric porticos. Any old English\nvillage, or cluster of farm-houses, drawn with all its ins and outs, and\nhaystacks, and palings, is sure to be lovely; much more a French one.\nFrench landscape is generally as much superior to English as Swiss\nlandscape is to French; in some respects, the French is incomparable.\nSuch scenes as that avenue on the Seine, which I have recommended you to\nbuy the engraving of, admit no rivalship in their expression of graceful\nrusticity and cheerful peace, and in the beauty of component lines.\n\nIn drawing villages, take great pains with the gardens; a rustic garden\nis in every way beautiful. If you have time, draw all the rows of\ncabbages, and hollyhocks, and broken fences, and wandering eglantines,\nand bossy roses: you cannot have better practice, nor be kept by\nanything in purer thoughts.\n\nMake intimate friends of all the brooks in your neighbourhood, and study\nthem ripple by ripple.\n\nVillage churches in England are not often good subjects; there is a\npeculiar meanness about most of them, and awkwardness of line. Old\nmanor-houses are often pretty. Ruins are usually, with us, too prim, and\ncathedrals too orderly. I do not think there is a single cathedral in\nEngland from which it is possible to obtain _one_ subject for an\nimpressive drawing. There is always some discordant civility, or jarring\nvergerism about them.\n\nIf you live in a mountain or hill country, your only danger is\nredundance of subject. Be resolved, in the first place, to draw a piece\nof rounded rock, with its variegated lichens, quite rightly, getting its\ncomplete roundings, and all the patterns of the lichen in true local\ncolour. Till you can do this, it is of no use your thinking of sketching\namong hills; but when once you have done this, the forms of distant\nhills will be comparatively easy.\n\nWhen you have practised for a little time from such of these subjects as\nmay be accessible to you, you will certainly find difficulties arising\nwhich will make you wish more than ever for a master's help: these\ndifficulties will vary according to the character of your own mind (one\nquestion occurring to one person, and one to another), so that it is\nimpossible to anticipate them all; and it would make this too large a\nbook if I answered all that I _can_ anticipate; you must be content to\nwork on, in good hope that nature will, in her own time, interpret to\nyou much for herself; that farther experience on your own part will make\nsome difficulties disappear; and that others will be removed by the\noccasional observation of such artists' work as may come in your way.\nNevertheless, I will not close this letter without a few general\nremarks, such as may be useful to you after you are somewhat advanced in\npower; and these remarks may, I think, be conveniently arranged under\nthree heads, having reference to the drawing of vegetation, water, and\nskies.\n\nAnd, first, of vegetation. You may think, perhaps, we have said enough\nabout trees already; yet if you have done as you were bid, and tried to\ndraw them frequently enough, and carefully enough, you will be ready by\nthis time to hear a little more of them. You will also recollect that we\nleft our question, respecting the mode of expressing intricacy of\nleafage, partly unsettled in the first letter. I left it so because I\nwanted you to learn the real structure of leaves, by drawing them for\nyourself, before I troubled you with the most subtle considerations as\nto _method_ in drawing them. And by this time, I imagine, you must have\nfound out two principal things, universal facts, about leaves; namely,\nthat they always, in the main tendencies of their lines, indicate a\nbeautiful divergence of growth, according to the law of radiation,\nalready referred to;[226] and the second, that this divergence is never\nformal, but carried out with endless variety of individual line. I must\nnow press both these facts on your attention a little farther.\n\nYou may perhaps have been surprised that I have not yet spoken of the\nworks of J. D. Harding, especially if you happen to have met with the\npassages referring to them in \"Modern Painters,\" in which they are\nhighly praised. They are deservedly praised, for they are the only works\nby a modern draughtsman which express in any wise the energy of trees,\nand the laws of growth, of which we have been speaking. There are no\nlithographic sketches which, for truth of general character, obtained\nwith little cost of time, at all rival Harding's. Calame, Robert, and\nthe other lithographic landscape sketchers are altogether inferior in\npower, though sometimes a little deeper in meaning. But you must not\ntake even Harding for a model, though you may use his works for\noccasional reference; and if you can afford to buy his \"Lessons on\nTrees,\"[227] it will be serviceable to you in various ways, and will at\npresent help me to explain the point under consideration. And it is well\nthat I should illustrate this point by reference to Harding's works,\nbecause their great influence on young students renders it desirable\nthat their real character should be thoroughly understood.\n\nYou will find, first, in the title-page of the \"Lessons on Trees,\" a\npretty woodcut, in which the tree stems are drawn with great truth, and\nin a very interesting arrangement of lines. Plate 1. is not quite worthy\nof Mr. Harding, tending too much to make his pupil, at starting, think\neverything depends on black dots; still the main lines are good, and\nvery characteristic of tree growth. Then, in Plate 2., we come to the\npoint at issue. The first examples in that plate are given to the pupil\nthat he may practise from them till his hand gets into the habit of\narranging lines freely in a similar manner; and they are stated by Mr.\nHarding to be universal in application; \"all outlines expressive of\nfoliage,\" he says, \"are but modifications of them.\" They consist of\ngroups of lines, more or less resembling our Fig. 23.; and the\ncharacters especially insisted upon are, that they \"tend at their inner\nends to a common centre;\" that \"their ends terminate in [are enclosed\nby] ovoid curves;\" and that \"the outer ends are most emphatic.\"\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 23.]\n\nNow, as thus expressive of the great laws of radiation and enclosure,\nthe main principle of this method of execution confirms, in a very\ninteresting way, our conclusions respecting foliage composition. The\nreason of the last rule, that the outer end of the line is to be most\nemphatic, does not indeed at first appear; for the line at one end of a\nnatural leaf is not more emphatic than the line at the other: but\nultimately, in Harding's method, this darker part of the touch stands\nmore or less for the shade at the outer extremity of the leaf mass; and,\nas Harding uses these touches, they express as much of tree character as\nany mere habit of touch _can_ express. But, unfortunately, there is\nanother law of tree growth, quite as fixed as the law of radiation,\nwhich this and all other conventional modes of execution wholly lose\nsight of. This second law is, that the radiating tendency shall be\ncarried out only as a ruling spirit in reconcilement with perpetual\nindividual caprice on the part of the separate leaves. So that the\nmoment a touch is monotonous, it must be also false, the liberty of the\nleaf individually being just as essential a truth, as its unity of\ngrowth with its companions in the radiating group.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 24.]\n\nIt does not matter how small or apparently symmetrical the cluster may\nbe, nor how large or vague. You can hardly have a more formal one than\n_b_ in Fig. 9. p. 276., nor a less formal one than this shoot of Spanish\nchestnut, shedding its leaves, Fig. 24.; but in either of them, even the\ngeneral reader, unpractised in any of the previously recommended\nexercises, must see that there are wandering lines mixed with the\nradiating ones, and radiating lines with the wild ones: and if he takes\nthe pen and tries to copy either of these examples, he will find that\nneither play of hand to left nor to right, neither a free touch nor a\nfirm touch, nor any learnable or describable touch whatsoever, will\nenable him to produce, currently, a resemblance of it; but that he must\neither draw it slowly, or give it up. And (which makes the matter worse\nstill) though gathering the bough, and putting it close to you, or\nseeing a piece of near foliage against the sky, you may draw the entire\noutline of the leaves, yet if the spray has light upon it, and is ever\nso little a way off, you will miss, as we have seen, a point of a leaf\nhere, and an edge there; some of the surfaces will be confused by\nglitter, and some spotted with shade; and if you look carefully through\nthis confusion for the edges or dark stems which you really _can see_,\nand put only those down, the result will be neither like Fig. 9. nor\nFig. 24., but such an interrupted and puzzling piece of work as Fig.\n25.[228]\n\nNow, it is in the perfect acknowledgment and expression of these _three_\nlaws that all good drawing of landscape consists. There is, first, the\norganic unity; the law, whether of radiation, or parallelism, or\nconcurrent action, which rules the masses of herbs and trees, of rocks,\nand clouds, and waves; secondly, the individual liberty of the members\nsubjected to these laws of unity; and, lastly, the mystery under which\nthe separate character of each is more or less concealed.\n\nI say, first, there must be observance of the ruling organic law. This\nis the first distinction between good artists and bad artists. Your\ncommon sketcher or bad painter puts his leaves on the trees as if they\nwere moss tied to sticks; he cannot see the lines of action or growth;\nhe scatters the shapeless clouds over his sky, not perceiving the sweeps\nof associated curves which the real clouds are following as they fly;\nand he breaks his mountain side into rugged fragments, wholly\nunconscious of the lines of force with which the real rocks have risen,\nor of the lines of couch in which they repose. On the contrary, it is\nthe main delight of the great draughtsman to trace these laws of\ngovernment; and his tendency to error is always in the exaggeration of\ntheir authority rather than in its denial.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 25.]\n\nSecondly, I say, we have to show the individual character and liberty of\nthe separate leaves, clouds, or rocks. And herein the great masters\nseparate themselves finally from the inferior ones; for if the men of\ninferior genius ever express law at all, it is by the sacrifice of\nindividuality. Thus, Salvator Rosa has great perception of the sweep of\nfoliage and rolling of clouds, but never draws a single leaflet or mist\nwreath accurately. Similarly, Gainsborough, in his landscape, has great\nfeeling for masses of form and harmony of colour; but in the detail\ngives nothing but meaningless touches; not even so much as the species\nof tree, much less the variety of its leafage, being ever discernable.\nNow, although both these expressions of government and individuality are\nessential to masterly work, the individuality is the _more_ essential,\nand the more difficult of attainment; and, therefore, that attainment\nseparates the great masters _finally_ from the inferior ones. It is the\nmore essential, because, in these matters of beautiful arrangement in\nvisible things, the same rules hold that hold in moral things. It is a\nlamentable and unnatural thing to see a number of men subject to no\ngovernment, actuated by no ruling principle, and associated by no common\naffection: but it would be a more lamentable thing still, were it\npossible to see a number of men so oppressed into assimilation as to\nhave no more any individual hope or character, no differences in aim, no\ndissimilarities of passion, no irregularities of judgment; a society in\nwhich no man could help another, since none would be feebler than\nhimself; no man admire another, since none would be stronger than\nhimself; no man be grateful to another, since by none he could be\nrelieved; no man reverence another, since by none he could be\ninstructed; a society in which every soul would be as the syllable of a\nstammerer instead of the word of a speaker, in which every man would\nwalk as in a frightful dream, seeing spectres of himself, in everlasting\nmultiplication, gliding helplessly around him in a speechless darkness.\nTherefore it is that perpetual difference, play, and change in groups of\nform are more essential to them even than their being subdued by some\ngreat gathering law: the law is needful to them for their perfection and\ntheir power, but the difference is needful to them for their _life_.\n\nAnd here it may be noted in passing, that if you enjoy the pursuit of\nanalogies and types, and have any ingenuity of judgment in discerning\nthem, you may always accurately ascertain what are the noble characters\nin a piece of painting, by merely considering what are the noble\ncharacters of man in his association with his fellows. What grace of\nmanner and refinement of habit are in society, grace of line and\nrefinement of form are in the association of visible objects. What\nadvantage or harm there may be in sharpness, ruggedness, or quaintness\nin the dealings or conversations of men; precisely that relative degree\nof advantage or harm there is in them as elements of pictorial\ncomposition. What power is in liberty or relaxation to strengthen or\nrelieve human souls; that power, precisely in the same relative degree,\nplay and laxity of line have to strengthen or refresh the expression of\na picture. And what goodness or greatness we can conceive to arise in\ncompanies of men, from chastity of thought, regularity of life,\nsimplicity of custom, and balance of authority; precisely that kind of\ngoodness and greatness may be given to a picture by the purity of its\ncolour, the severity of its forms, and the symmetry of its masses.\n\nYou need not be in the least afraid of pushing these analogies too far.\nThey cannot be pushed too far; they are so precise and complete, that\nthe farther you pursue them, the clearer, the more certain, the more\nuseful you will find them. They will not fail you in one particular, or\nin any direction of enquiry. There is no moral vice, no moral virtue,\nwhich has not its _precise_ prototype in the art of painting; so that\nyou may at your will illustrate the moral habit by the art, or the art\nby the moral habit. Affection and discord, fretfulness and quietness,\nfeebleness and firmness, luxury and purity, pride and modesty, and all\nother such habits, and every conceivable modification and mingling of\nthem, may be illustrated, with mathematical exactness, by conditions of\nline and colour; and not merely these definable vices and virtues, but\nalso every conceivable shade of human character and passion, from the\nrighteous or unrighteous majesty of the king, to the innocent or\nfaultful simplicity of the shepherd boy.\n\nThe pursuit of this subject belongs properly, however, to the\ninvestigation of the higher branches of composition, matters which it\nwould be quite useless to treat of in this book; and I only allude to\nthem here, in order that you may understand how the utmost nobleness of\nart are concerned in this minute work, to which I have set you in your\nbeginning of it. For it is only by the closest attention, and the most\nnoble execution, that it is possible to express these varieties of\nindividual character, on which all excellence of portraiture depends,\nwhether of masses of mankind, or of groups of leaves.\n\nNow you will be able to understand, among other matters, wherein\nconsists the excellence, and wherein the shortcoming, of the\ntree-drawing of Harding. It is excellent in so far as it fondly\nobserves, with more truth than any other work of the kind, the great\nlaws of growth and action in trees: it fails--and observe, not in a\nminor, but in a principal point--because it cannot rightly render any\none individual detail or incident of foliage. And in this it fails, not\nfrom mere carelessness or incompletion, but of necessity; the true\ndrawing of detail being for evermore _impossible_ to a hand which has\ncontracted a _habit_ of execution. The noble draughtsman draws a leaf,\nand stops, and says calmly--That leaf is of such and such a character; I\nwill give him a friend who will entirely suit him: then he considers\nwhat his friend ought to be, and having determined, he draws his friend.\nThis process may be as quick as lightning when the master is great--one\nof the sons of the giants; or it may be slow and timid: but the process\nis always gone through, no touch or form is ever added to another by a\ngood painter without a mental determination and affirmation. But when\nthe hand has got into a habit, leaf No. 1. necessitates leaf No. 2.; you\ncannot stop, your hand is as a horse with the bit in its teeth; or\nrather is, for the time, a machine, throwing out leaves to order and\npattern, all alike. You must stop that hand of yours, however painfully;\nmake it understand that it is not to have its own way any more, that it\nshall never more slip from, one touch to another without orders;\notherwise it is not you who are the master, but your fingers. You may\ntherefore study Harding's drawing, and take pleasure in it;[229] and you\nmay properly admire the dexterity which applies the habit of the hand\nso well, and produces results on the whole so satisfactory: but you\nmust never copy it, otherwise your progress will be at once arrested.\nThe utmost you can ever hope to do, would be a sketch in Harding's\nmanner, but of far inferior dexterity; for he has given his life's toil\nto gain his dexterity, and you, I suppose, have other things to work at\nbesides drawing. You would also incapacitate yourself from ever\nunderstanding what truly great work was, or what Nature was; but by the\nearnest and complete study of facts, you will gradually come to\nunderstand the one and love the other more and more, whether you can\ndraw well yourself or not.\n\nI have yet to say a few words respecting the third law above stated,\nthat of mystery; the law, namely, that nothing is ever seen perfectly,\nbut only by fragments, and under various conditions of obscurity.[230]\nThis last fact renders the visible objects of Nature complete as a type\nof the human nature. We have, observe, first, Subordination; secondly,\nIndividuality; lastly, and this not the least essential character,\nIncomprehensibility; a perpetual lesson in every serrated point and\nshining vein which escape or deceive our sight among the forest leaves,\nhow little we may hope to discern clearly, or judge justly, the rents\nand veins of the human heart; how much of all that is round us, in men's\nactions or spirits, which we at first think we understand, a closer and\nmore loving watchfulness would show to be full of mystery, never to be\neither fathomed or withdrawn.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 26.]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 27.]\n\nThe expression of this final character in landscape has never been\ncompletely reached by any except Turner; nor can you hope to reach it at\nall until you have given much time to the practice of art. Only try\nalways when you are sketching any object with a view to completion in\nlight and shade, to draw only those parts of it which you really see\ndefinitely; _preparing_ for the after development of the forms by\nchiaroscuro. It is this preparation by isolated touches for a future\narrangement of superimposed light and shade which renders the etchings\nof the Liber Studiorum so inestimable as examples and so peculiar. The\ncharacter exists more or less in them exactly in proportion to the pains\nthat Turner has taken. Thus the AEsacus and Hesperie was wrought out with\nthe greatest possible care; and the principal branch on the near tree is\netched as in Fig. 26. The work looks at first like a scholar's instead\nof a master's; but when the light and shade are added, every touch falls\ninto its place, and a perfect expression of grace and complexity\nresults. Nay even before the light and shade are added, you ought to be\nable to see that these irregular and broken lines, especially where the\nexpression is given of the way the stem loses itself in the leaves, are\nmore true than the monotonous though graceful leaf-drawing which, before\nTurner's time, had been employed, even by the best masters, in their\ndistant masses. Fig. 27. is sufficiently characteristic of the manner of\nthe old woodcuts after Titian; in which, you see, the leaves are too\nmuch of one shape, like bunches of fruit; and the boughs too completely\nseen, besides being somewhat soft and leathery in aspect, owing to the\nwant of angles in their outline. By great men like Titian, this somewhat\nconventional structure was only given in haste to distant masses; and\ntheir exquisite delineation of the foreground, kept their\nconventionalism from degeneracy: but in the drawing of the Caracci and\nother derivative masters, the conventionalism prevails everywhere, and\nsinks gradually into scrawled work, like Fig. 28., about the worst which\nit is possible to get into the habit of using, though an ignorant person\nmight perhaps suppose it more \"free,\" and therefore better than Fig. 26.\nNote, also, that in noble outline drawing, it does not follow that a\nbough is wrongly drawn, because it looks contracted unnaturally\nsomewhere, as in Fig. 26., just above the foliage. Very often the\nmuscular action which is to be expressed by the line, runs into the\n_middle_ of the branch, and the actual outline of the branch at that\nplace may be dimly seen, or not at all; and it is then only by the\nfuture shade that its actual shape, or the cause of its disappearance,\nwill be indicated.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 28.]\n\nOne point more remains to be noted about trees, and I have done. In the\nminds of our ordinary water-colour artists, a distant tree seems only to\nbe conceived as a flat green blot, grouping pleasantly with other\nmasses, and giving cool colour to the landscape, but differing nowise,\nin _texture_, from the blots of other shapes, which these painters use\nto express stones, or water, or figures. But as soon as you have drawn\ntrees carefully a little while, you will be impressed, and impressed\nmore strongly the better you draw them, with the idea of their\n_softness_ of surface. A distant tree is not a flat and even piece of\ncolour, but a more or less globular mass of a downy or bloomy texture,\npartly passing into a misty vagueness. I find, practically, this lovely\nsoftness of far-away trees the most difficult of all characters to\nreach, because it cannot be got by mere scratching or roughening the\nsurface, but is always associated with such delicate expressions of form\nand growth as are only imitable by very careful drawing. The penknife\npassed lightly _over_ this careful drawing, will do a good deal; but you\nmust accustom yourself, from the beginning, to aim much at this softness\nin the lines of the drawing itself, by crossing them delicately, and\nmore or less effacing and confusing the edges. You must invent,\naccording to the character of tree, various modes of execution adapted\nto express its texture; but always keep this character of softness in\nyour mind and in your scope of aim; for in most landscapes it is the\nintention of nature that the tenderness and transparent infinitude of\nher foliage should be felt, even at the far distance, in the most\ndistinct opposition to the solid masses and flat surfaces of rocks or\nbuildings.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nII. We were, in the second place, to consider a little the modes of\nrepresenting water, of which important feature of landscape I have\nhardly said anything yet.\n\nWater is expressed, in common drawings, by conventional lines, whose\nhorizontality is supposed to convey the idea of its surface. In\npaintings, white dashes or bars of light are used for the same purpose.\n\nBut these and all other such expedients are vain and absurd. A piece of\ncalm water always contains a picture in itself, an exquisite reflection\nof the objects above it. If you give the time necessary to draw these\nreflections, disturbing them here and there as you see the breeze or\ncurrent disturb them, you will get the effect of the water; but if you\nhave not patience to draw the reflections, no expedient will give you a\ntrue effect. The picture in the pool needs nearly as much delicate\ndrawing as the picture above the pool; except only that if there be the\nleast motion on the water, the horizontal lines of the images will be\ndiffused and broken, while the vertical ones will remain decisive, and\nthe oblique ones decisive in proportion to their steepness.\n\nA few close studies will soon teach you this: the only thing you need to\nbe told is to watch carefully the lines of _disturbance_ on the surface,\nas when a bird swims across it, or a fish rises, or the current plays\nround a stone, reed, or other obstacle. Take the greatest pains to get\nthe _curves_ of these lines true; the whole value of your careful\ndrawing of the reflections may be lost by your admitting a single false\ncurve of ripple from a wild duck's breast. And (as in other subjects) if\nyou are dissatisfied with your result, always try for more unity and\ndelicacy: if your reflections are only soft and gradated enough, they\nare nearly sure to give you a pleasant effect. When you are taking\npains, work the softer reflections, where they are drawn out by motion\nin the water, with touches as nearly horizontal as may be; but when you\nare in a hurry, indicate the place and play of the images with vertical\nlines. The actual _construction_ of a calm elongated reflection is with\nhorizontal lines: but it is often impossible to draw the descending\nshades delicately enough with a horizontal touch; and it is best always\nwhen you are in a hurry, and sometimes when you are not, to use the\nvertical touch. When the ripples are large, the reflections become\nshaken, and must be drawn with bold undulatory descending lines.\n\nI need not, I should think, tell you that it is of the greatest possible\nimportance to draw the curves of the shore rightly. Their perspective\nis, if not more subtle, at least more stringent than that of any other\nlines in Nature. It will not be detected by the general observer, if you\nmiss the curve of a branch, or the sweep of a cloud, or the perspective\nof a building;[231] but every intelligent spectator will feel the\ndifference between a rightly drawn bend of shore or shingle, and a false\none. _Absolutely_ right, in difficult river perspectives seen from\nheights, I believe no one but Turner ever has been yet; and observe,\nthere is NO rule for them. To develope the curve mathematically would\nrequire a knowledge of the exact quantity of water in the river, the\nshape of its bed, and the hardness of the rock or shore; and even with\nthese data, the problem would be one which no mathematician could solve\nbut approximatively. The instinct of the eye can do it; nothing else.\n\nIf, after a little study from Nature, you get puzzled by the great\ndifferences between the aspect of the reflected image and that of the\nobject casting it; and if you wish to know the law of reflection, it is\nsimply this: Suppose all the objects above the water _actually_ reversed\n(not in appearance, but in fact) beneath the water, and precisely the\nsame in form and in relative position, only all topsy-turvy. Then,\nwhatever you can see, from the place in which you stand, of the solid\nobjects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection,\nalways in the true perspective of the solid objects so reversed.\n\nIf you cannot quite understand this in looking at water, take a mirror,\nlay it horizontally on the table, put some books and papers upon it, and\ndraw them and their reflections; moving them about, and watching how\ntheir reflections alter, and chiefly how their reflected colours and\nshades differ from their own colours and shades, by being brought into\nother oppositions. This difference in chiaroscuro is a more important\ncharacter in water painting than mere difference in form.\n\nWhen you are drawing shallow or muddy water, you will see shadows on the\nbottom, or on the surface, continually modifying the reflections; and in\na clear mountain stream, the most wonderful complications of effect\nresulting from the shadows and reflections of the stones in it, mingling\nwith the aspect of the stones themselves seen through the water. Do not\nbe frightened at the complexity; but, on the other hand, do not hope to\nrender it hastily. Look at it well, making out everything that you see,\nand distinguishing each component part of the effect. There will be,\nfirst, the stones seen through the water, distorted always by\nrefraction, so that if the general structure of the stone shows straight\nparallel lines above the water, you may be sure they will be bent where\nthey enter it; then the reflection of the part of the stone above the\nwater crosses and interferes with the part that is seen through it, so\nthat you can hardly tell which is which; and wherever the reflection is\ndarkest, you will see through the water best, and _vice versa_. Then the\nreal shadow of the stone crosses both these images, and where that\nshadow falls, it makes the water more reflective, and where the sunshine\nfalls, you will see more of the surface of the water, and of any dust\nor motes that may be floating on it: but whether you are to see, at the\nsame spot, most of the bottom of the water, or of the reflection of the\nobjects above, depends on the position of the eye. The more you look\ndown into the water, the better you see objects through it; the more you\nlook along it, the eye being low, the more you see the reflection of\nobjects above it. Hence the colour of a given space of surface in a\nstream will entirely change while you stand still in the same spot,\nmerely as you stoop or raise your head; and thus the colours with which\nwater is painted are an indication of the position of the spectator, and\nconnected inseparably with the perspective of the shores. The most\nbeautiful of all results that I know in mountain streams is when the\nwater is shallow, and the stones at the bottom are rich reddish-orange\nand black, and the water is seen at an angle which exactly divides the\nvisible colours between those of the stones and that of the sky, and the\nsky is of clear, full blue. The resulting purple obtained by the\nblending of the blue and the orange-red, broken by the play of\ninnumerable gradations in the stones, is indescribably lovely.\n\nAll this seems complicated enough already; but if there be a strong\ncolour in the clear water itself, as of green or blue in the Swiss\nlakes, all these phenomena are doubly involved; for the darker\nreflections now become of the colour of the water. The reflection of a\nblack gondola, for instance, at Venice, is never black, but pure dark\ngreen. And, farther, the colour of the water itself is of three kinds:\none, seen on the surface, is a kind of milky bloom; the next is seen\nwhere the waves let light through them, at their edges; and the third,\nshown as a change of colour on the objects seen through the water. Thus,\nthe same wave that makes a white object look of a clear blue, when seen\nthrough it, will take a red or violet-coloured bloom on its surface, and\nwill be made pure emerald green by transmitted sunshine through its\nedges. With all this, however, you are not much concerned at present,\nbut I tell it you partly as a preparation for what we have afterwards to\nsay about colour, and partly that you may approach lakes and streams\nwith reverence, and study them as carefully as other things, not hoping\nto express them by a few horizontal dashes of white, or a few tremulous\nblots.[232] Not but that much may be done by tremulous blots, when you\nknow precisely what you mean by them, as you will see by many of the\nTurner sketches, which are now framed at the National Gallery; but you\nmust have painted water many and many a day--yes, and all day\nlong--before you can hope to do anything like those.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIII. Lastly. You may perhaps wonder why, before passing to the clouds, I\nsay nothing special about _ground_.[233] But there is too much to be\nsaid about that to admit of my saying it here. You will find the\nprincipal laws of its structure examined at length in the fourth volume\nof \"Modern Painters;\" and if you can get that volume, and copy carefully\nPlate 21., which I have etched after Turner with great pains, it will\ngive you as much help as you need in the linear expression of\nground-surface. Strive to get the retirement and succession of masses in\nirregular ground: much may be done in this way by careful watching of\nthe perspective diminutions of its herbage, as well as by contour; and\nmuch also by shadows. If you draw the shadows of leaves and tree trunks\non any undulating ground with entire carefulness, you will be surprised\nto find how much they explain of the form and distance of the earth on\nwhich they fall.\n\nPassing then to skies, note that there is this great peculiarity about\nsky subject, as distinguished from earth subject;--that the clouds, not\nbeing much liable to man's interference, are always beautifully\narranged. You cannot be sure of this in any other features of landscape.\nThe rock on which the effect of a mountain scene especially depends is\nalways precisely that which the roadmaker blasts or the landlord\nquarries; and the spot of green which Nature left with a special purpose\nby her dark forest sides, and finished with her most delicate grasses,\nis always that which the farmer ploughs or builds upon. But the clouds,\nthough we can hide them with smoke, and mix them with poison, cannot be\nquarried nor built over, and they are always therefore gloriously\narranged; so gloriously, that unless you have notable powers of memory\nyou need not hope to approach the effect of any sky that interests you.\nFor both its grace and its glow depend upon the united influence of\nevery cloud within its compass: they all move and burn together in a\nmarvellous harmony; not a cloud of them is out of its appointed place,\nor fails of its part in the choir: and if you are not able to recollect\n(which in the case of a complicated sky it is impossible you should)\nprecisely the form and position of all the clouds at a given moment, you\ncannot draw the sky at all; for the clouds will not fit if you draw one\npart of them three or four minutes before another. You must try\ntherefore to help what memory you have, by sketching at the utmost\npossible speed the whole range of the clouds; marking, by any shorthand\nor symbolic work you can hit upon, the peculiar character of each, as\ntransparent, or fleecy, or linear, or undulatory; giving afterwards such\ncompletion to the parts as your recollection will enable you to do.\nThis, however, only when the sky is interesting from its general aspect;\nat other times, do not try to draw all the sky, but a single cloud:\nsometimes a round cumulus will stay five or six minutes quite steady\nenough to let you mark out his principal masses: and one or two white or\ncrimson lines which cross the sunrise will often stay without serious\nchange for as long. And in order to be the readier in drawing them,\npractise occasionally drawing lumps of cotton, which will teach you\nbetter than any other stable thing the kind of softness there is in\nclouds. For you will find when you have made a few genuine studies of\nsky, and then look at any ancient or modern painting, that ordinary\nartists have always fallen into one of two faults: either, in rounding\nthe clouds, they make them as solid and hard-edged as a heap of stones\ntied up in a sack, or they represent them not as rounded at all, but as\nvague wreaths of mist or flat lights in the sky; and think they have\ndone enough in leaving a little white paper between dashes of blue, or\nin taking an irregular space out with the sponge. Now clouds are not as\nsolid as flour-sacks; but, on the other hand, they are neither spongy\nnor flat. They are definite and very beautiful forms of sculptured mist;\nsculptured is a perfectly accurate word; they are not more _drifted_\ninto form than they are _carved_ into form, the warm air around them\ncutting them into shape by absorbing the visible vapour beyond certain\nlimits; hence their angular and fantastic outlines, as different from a\nswollen, spherical, or globular formation, on the one hand, as from that\nof flat films or shapeless mists on the other. And the worst of all is,\nthat while these forms are difficult enough to draw on any terms,\nespecially considering that they never stay quiet, they must be drawn\nalso at greater disadvantage of light and shade than any others, the\nforce of light in clouds being wholly unattainable by art; so that if we\nput shade enough to express their form as positively as it is expressed\nin reality, we must make them painfully too dark on the dark sides.\nNevertheless, they are so beautiful, if you in the least succeed with\nthem, that you will hardly, I think, lose courage. Outline them often\nwith the pen, as you can catch them here and there; one of the chief\nuses of doing this will be, not so much the memorandum so obtained as\nthe lesson you will get respecting the softness of the cloud-outlines.\nYou will always find yourself at a loss to see where the outline really\nis; and when drawn it will always look hard and false, and will\nassuredly be either too round or too square, however often you alter it,\nmerely passing from the one fault to the other and back again, the real\ncloud striking an inexpressible mean between roundness and squareness in\nall its coils or battlements. I speak at present, of course, only of the\ncumulus cloud: the lighter wreaths and flakes of the upper sky cannot\nbe outlined--they can only be sketched, like locks of hair, by many\nlines of the pen. Firmly developed bars of cloud on the horizon are in\ngeneral easy enough, and may be drawn with decision. When you have thus\naccustomed yourself a little to the placing and action of clouds, try to\nwork out their light and shade, just as carefully as you do that of\nother things, looking _exclusively_ for examples of treatment to the\nvignettes in Rogers's Italy and Poems, and to the Liber Studiorum,\nunless you have access to some examples of Turner's own work. No other\nartist ever yet drew the sky: even Titian's clouds, and Tintoret's, are\nconventional. The clouds in the \"Ben Arthur,\" \"Source of Arveron,\" and\n\"Calais Pier,\" are among the best of Turner's storm studies; and of the\nupper clouds, the vignettes to Rogers's Poems furnish as many examples\nas you need.\n\nAnd now, as our first lesson was taken from the sky, so, for the\npresent, let our last be. I do not advise you to be in any haste to\nmaster the contents of my next letter. If you have any real talent for\ndrawing, you will take delight in the discoveries of natural loveliness,\nwhich the studies I have already proposed will lead you into, among the\nfields and hills; and be assured that the more quietly and\nsingle-heartedly you take each step in the art, the quicker, on the\nwhole, will your progress be. I would rather, indeed, have discussed the\nsubjects of the following letter at greater length, and in a separate\nwork addressed to more advanced students; but as there are one or two\nthings to be said on composition which may set the young artist's mind\nsomewhat more at rest, or furnish him with defence from the urgency of\nill-advisers, I will glance over the main heads of the matter here;\ntrusting that my doing so may not beguile you, my dear reader, from your\nserious work, or lead you to think me, in occupying part of this book\nwith talk not altogether relevant to it, less entirely or\n\n    Faithfully yours,\n\n    J. RUSKIN.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[220] It is meant, I believe, for \"Salt Hill.\"\n\n[221] I do not mean that you can approach Turner or Durer in their\nstrength, that is to say, in their imagination or power of design. But\nyou may approach them, by perseverance, in truth of manner.\n\n[222] The following are the most desirable plates:\n\n    Grande Chartreuse.\n    AEsacus and Hesperie.\n    Cephalus and Procris.\n    Source of Arveron.\n    Ben Arthur.\n    Watermill.\n    Hindhead Hill.\n    Hedging and Ditching.\n    Dumblane Abbey.\n    Morpeth.\n    Calais Pier.\n    Pembury Mill.\n    Little Devil's Bridge.\n    River Wye (_not_ Wye and Severn).\n    Holy Island.\n    Clyde.\n    Lauffenbourg.\n    Blair Athol.\n    Alps from Grenoble.\n    Raglan. (Subject with quiet brook, trees, and castle on the right.)\n\nIf you cannot get one of these, any of the others will be serviceable,\nexcept only the twelve following, which are quite useless:--\n\n1. Scene in Italy, with goats on a walled road, and trees above.\n\n2. Interior of church.\n\n3. Scene with bridge, and trees above; figures on left, one playing a\npipe.\n\n4. Scene with figure playing on tambourine.\n\n5. Scene on Thames with high trees, and a square tower of a church seen\nthrough them.\n\n6. Fifth Plague of Egypt.\n\n7. Tenth Plague of Egypt.\n\n8. Rivaulx Abbey.\n\n9. Wye and Severn.\n\n10. Scene with castle in centre, cows under trees on the left.\n\n11. Martello Towers.\n\n12. Calm.\n\nIt is very unlikely that you should meet with one of the original\netchings; if you should, it will be a drawing-master in itself alone,\nfor it is not only equivalent to a pen-and-ink drawing by Turner, but to\na very careful one: only observe, the Source of Arveron, Raglan, and\nDumblane were not etched by Turner; and the etchings of those three are\nnot good for separate study, though it is deeply interesting to see how\nTurner, apparently provoked at the failure of the beginnings in the\nArveron and Raglan, took the plates up himself, and either conquered or\nbrought into use the bad etching by his marvellous engraving. The\nDumblane was, however, well etched by Mr. Lupton, and beautifully\nengraved by him. The finest Turner etching is of an aqueduct with a\nstork standing in a mountain stream, not in the published series; and\nnext to it, are the unpublished etchings of the Via Mala and Crowhurst.\nTurner seems to have been so fond of these plates that he kept\nretouching and finishing them, and never made up his mind to let them\ngo. The Via Mala is certainly, in the state in which Turner left it, the\nfinest of the whole series: its etching is, as I said, the best after\nthat of the aqueduct. Figure 20., above, is part of another fine\nunpublished etching, \"Windsor, from Salt Hill.\" Of the published\netchings, the finest are the Ben Arthur, AEsacus, Cephalus, and Stone\nPines, with the Girl washing at a Cistern; the three latter are the more\ngenerally instructive. Hindhead Hill, Isis, Jason, and Morpeth, are also\nvery desirable.\n\n[223] You will find more notice of this point in the account of\nHarding's tree-drawing, a little farther on.\n\n[224] The impressions vary so much in colour that no brown can be\nspecified.\n\n[225] You had better get such a photograph, even if you have a Liber\nprint as well.\n\n[226] See the closing letter in this volume.\n\n[227] Bogue, Fleet Street. If you are not acquainted with Harding's\nworks (an unlikely supposition, considering their popularity), and\ncannot meet with the one in question, the diagrams given here will\nenable you to understand all that is needful for our purposes.\n\n[228] I draw this figure (a young shoot of oak) in outline only, it\nbeing impossible to express the refinements of shade in distant foliage\nin a woodcut.\n\n[229] His lithographic sketches, those, for instance, in the Park and\nthe Forest, and his various lessons on foliage, possess greater merit\nthan the more ambitious engravings in his \"Principles and Practice of\nArt.\" There are many useful remarks, however, dispersed through this\nlatter work.\n\n[230] On this law you will do well, if you can get access to it, to look\nat the fourth chapter of the fourth volume of \"Modern Painters.\"\n\n[231] The student may hardly at first believe that the perspective of\nbuildings is of little consequence: but he will find it so ultimately.\nSee the remarks on this point in the Preface.\n\n[232] It is a useful piece of study to dissolve some Prussian blue in\nwater, so as to make the liquid definitely blue: fill a large white\nbasin with the solution, and put anything you like to float on it, or\nlie in it; walnut shells, bits of wood, leaves of flowers, &c. Then\nstudy the effects of the reflections, and of the stems of the flowers or\nsubmerged portions of the floating objects, as they appear through the\nblue liquid; noting especially how, as you lower your head and look\nalong the surface, you see the reflections clearly; and how, as you\nraise your head, you lose the reflections, and see the submerged stems\nclearly.\n\n[233] Respecting Architectural Drawing, see the notice of the works of\nProut in the Appendix.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER III.\n\nON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION.\n\n\nMY DEAR READER:--\n\nIf you have been obedient, and have hitherto done all that I have told\nyou, I trust it has not been without much subdued remonstrance, and some\nserious vexation. For I should be sorry if, when you were led by the\ncourse of your study to observe closely such things as are beautiful in\ncolour, you had not longed to paint them, and felt considerable\ndifficulty in complying with your restriction to the use of black, or\nblue, or grey. You _ought_ to love colour, and to think nothing quite\nbeautiful or perfect without it; and if you really do love it, for its\nown sake, and are not merely desirous to colour because you think\npainting a finer thing than drawing, there is some chance you may colour\nwell. Nevertheless, you need not hope ever to produce anything more than\npleasant helps to memory, or useful and suggestive sketches in colour,\nunless you mean to be wholly an artist. You may, in the time which other\nvocations leave at your disposal, produce finished, beautiful, and\nmasterly drawings in light and shade. But to colour well, requires your\nlife. It cannot be done cheaper. The difficulty of doing right is\nincreased--not twofold nor threefold, but a thousandfold, and more--by\nthe addition of colour to your work. For the chances are more than a\nthousand to one against your being right both in form and colour with a\ngiven touch: it is difficult enough to be right in form, if you attend\nto that only; but when you have to attend, at the same moment, to a much\nmore subtle thing than the form, the difficulty is strangely\nincreased--and multiplied almost to infinity by this great fact, that,\nwhile form is absolute, so that you can say at the moment you draw any\nline that it is either right or wrong, colour is wholly _relative_.\nEvery hue throughout your work is altered by every touch that you add in\nother places; so that what was warm a minute ago, becomes cold when you\nhave put a hotter colour in another place, and what was in harmony when\nyou left it, becomes discordant as you set other colours beside it; so\nthat every touch must be laid, not with a view to its effect at the\ntime, but with a view to its effect in futurity, the result upon it of\nall that is afterwards to be done being previously considered. You may\neasily understand that, this being so, nothing but the devotion of life,\nand great genius besides, can make a colourist.\n\nBut though you cannot produce finished coloured drawings of any value,\nyou may give yourself much pleasure, and be of great use to other\npeople, by occasionally sketching with a view to colour only; and\npreserving distinct statements of certain colour facts--as that the\nharvest-moon at rising was of such and such a red, and surrounded by\nclouds of such and such a rosy grey; that the mountains at evening were\nin truth so deep in purple; and the waves by the boat's side were indeed\nof that incredible green. This only, observe, if you have an eye for\ncolour; but you may presume that you have this, if you enjoy colour.\n\nAnd, though of course you should always give as much form to your\nsubject as your attention to its colour will admit of, remember that the\nwhole value of what you are about depends, in a coloured sketch, on the\ncolour _merely_. If the colour is wrong, everything is wrong: just as,\nif you are singing, and sing false notes, it does not matter how true\nthe words are. If you sing at all, you must sing sweetly; and if you\ncolour at all, you must colour rightly. Give up _all_ the form, rather\nthan the slightest part of the colour: just as, if you felt yourself in\ndanger of a false note, you would give up the word, and sing a\nmeaningless sound, if you felt that so you could save the note. Never\nmind though your houses are all tumbling down--though your clouds are\nmere blots, and your trees mere knobs, and your sun and moon like\ncrooked sixpences--so only that trees, clouds, houses, and sun or moon,\nare of the right colours. Of course, the discipline you have gone\nthrough will enable you to hint something of form, even in the fastest\nsweep of the brush; but do not let the thought of form hamper you in the\nleast, when you begin to make coloured memoranda. If you want the form\nof the subject, draw it in black and white. If you want its colour, take\nits colour, and be sure you _have_ it, and not a spurious, treacherous,\nhalf-measured piece of mutual concession, with the colours all wrong,\nand the forms still anything but right. It is best to get into the habit\nof considering the coloured work merely as supplementary to your other\nstudies; making your careful drawings of the subject first, and then a\ncoloured memorandum separately, as shapeless as you like, but faithful\nin hue, and entirely minding its own business. This principle, however,\nbears chiefly on large and distant subjects; in foregrounds and near\nstudies, the colour cannot be had without a good deal of definition of\nform. For if you do not map the mosses on the stones accurately, you\nwill not have the right quantity of colour in each bit of moss pattern,\nand then none of the colours will look right; but it always simplifies\nthe work much if you are clear as to your point of aim, and satisfied,\nwhen necessary, to fail of all but that.\n\nNow, of course, if I were to enter into detail respecting colouring,\nwhich is the beginning and end of a painter's craft, I should need to\nmake this a work in three volumes instead of three letters, and to\nillustrate it in the costliest way. I only hope at present to set you\npleasantly and profitably to work, leaving you, within the tethering of\ncertain leading-strings, to gather what advantages you can from the\nworks of art of which every year brings a greater number within your\nreach;--and from the instruction which, every year, our rising artists\nwill be more ready to give kindly, and better able to give wisely.\n\nAnd, first, of materials. Use hard cake colours, not moist colours:\ngrind a sufficient quantity of each on your palette every morning,\nkeeping a separate plate, large and deep, for colours to be used in\nbroad washes, and wash both plate and palette every evening, so as to be\nable always to get good and pure colour when you need it; and force\nyourself into cleanly and orderly habits about your colours. The two\nbest colourists of modern times, Turner and Rossetti,[234] afford us, I\nam sorry to say, no confirmation of this precept by their practice.\nTurner was, and Rossetti is, as slovenly in all their procedures as men\ncan well be; but the result of this was, with Turner, that the colours\nhave altered in all his pictures, and in many of his drawings; and the\nresult of it with Rossetti is, that, though his colours are safe, he has\nsometimes to throw aside work that was half done, and begin over again.\nWilliam Hunt, of the Old Water-colour, is very neat in his practice; so,\nI believe, is Mulready; so is John Lewis; and so are the leading\nPre-Raphaelites, Rossetti only excepted. And there can be no doubt about\nthe goodness of the advice, if it were only for this reason, that the\nmore particular you are about your colours the more you will get into a\ndeliberate and methodical habit in using them, and all true _speed_ in\ncolouring comes of this deliberation.\n\nUse Chinese white, well ground, to mix with your colours in order to\npale them, instead of a quantity of water. You will thus be able to\nshape your masses more quietly, and play the colours about with more\nease; they will not damp your paper so much, and you will be able to go\non continually, and lay forms of passing cloud and other fugitive or\ndelicately shaped lights, otherwise unattainable except by time.\n\nThis mixing of white with the pigments, so as to render them opaque,\nconstitutes _body_-colour drawing as opposed to _transparent_-colour\ndrawing and you will, perhaps, have it often said to you that this\nbody-colour is \"illegitimate.\" It is just as legitimate as oil-painting,\nbeing, so far as handling is concerned, the same process, only without\nits uncleanliness, its unwholesomeness, or its inconvenience; for oil\nwill not dry quickly, nor carry safely, nor give the same effects of\natmosphere without tenfold labour. And if you hear it said that the\nbody-colour looks chalky or opaque, and, as is very likely, think so\nyourself, be yet assured of this, that though certain effects of glow\nand transparencies of gloom are not to be reached without transparent\ncolour, those glows and glooms are _not_ the noblest aim of art. After\nmany years' study of the various results of fresco and oil painting in\nItaly, and of body-colour and transparent colour in England, I am now\nentirely convinced that the greatest things that are to be done in art\nmust be done in dead colour. The habit of depending on varnish or on\nlucid tints transparency, makes the painter comparatively lose sight of\nthe nobler translucence which is obtained by breaking various colours\namidst each other: and even when, as by Correggio, exquisite play of hue\nis joined with exquisite transparency, the delight in the depth almost\nalways leads the painter into mean and false chiaroscuro; it leads him\nto like dark backgrounds instead of luminous ones,[235] and to enjoy, in\ngeneral, quality of colour more than grandeur of composition, and\nconfined light rather than open sunshine: so that the really greatest\nthoughts of the greatest men have always, so far as I remember, been\nreached in dead colour, and the noblest oil pictures of Tintoret and\nVeronese are those which are likest frescos.\n\nBesides all this, the fact is, that though sometimes a little chalky and\ncoarse-looking, body-colour is, in a sketch, infinitely liker nature\nthan transparent colour: the bloom and mist of distance are accurately\nand instantly represented by the film of opaque blue (_quite_\naccurately, I think, by _nothing_ else); and for ground, rocks, and\nbuildings, the earthy and solid surface is, of course, always truer than\nthe most finished and carefully wrought work in transparent tints can\never be.\n\nAgainst one thing, however, I must steadily caution you. All kinds of\ncolour are equally illegitimate, if you think they will allow you to\nalter at your pleasure, or blunder at your ease. There is _no_ vehicle\nor method of colour which admits of alteration or repentance; you must\nbe right at once, or never; and you might as well hope to catch a rifle\nbullet in your hand, and put it straight, when it was going wrong, as to\nrecover a tint once spoiled. The secret of all good colour in oil,\nwater, or anything else, lies primarily in that sentence spoken to me by\nMulready: \"Know what you have to do.\" The process may be a long one,\nperhaps: you may have to ground with one colour; to touch it with\nfragments of a second; to crumble a third into the interstices; a fourth\ninto the interstices of the third; to glaze the whole with a fifth; and\nto reinforce in points with a sixth: but whether you have one, or ten,\nor twenty processes to go through, you must go _straight_ through them,\nknowingly and foreseeingly all the way; and if you get the thing once\nwrong, there is no hope for you but in washing or scraping boldly down\nto the white ground, and beginning again.\n\nThe drawing in body-colour will tend to teach you all this, more than\nany other method, and above all it will prevent you from falling into\nthe pestilent habit of sponging to get texture; a trick which has nearly\nruined our modern water-colour school of art. There are sometimes places\nin which a skilful artist will roughen his paper a little to get certain\nconditions of dusty colour with more ease than he could otherwise; and\nsometimes a skilfully rased piece of paper will, in the midst of\ntransparent tints, answer nearly the purpose of chalky body-colour in\nrepresenting the surfaces of rocks or buildings. But artifices of this\nkind are always treacherous in a tyro's hands, tempting him to trust in\nthem; and you had better always work on white or grey paper as smooth as\nsilk;[236] and never disturb the surface of your colour or paper, except\nfinally to scratch out the very highest lights if you are using\ntransparent colours.\n\nI have said above that body-colour drawing will teach you the use of\ncolour better than working with merely transparent tints; but this is\nnot because the process is an easier one, but because it is a more\n_complete_ one, and also because it involves _some_ working with\ntransparent tints in the best way. You are not to think that because you\nuse body-colour you may make any kind of mess that you like, and yet get\nout of it. But you are to avail yourself of the characters of your\nmaterial, which enable you most nearly to imitate the processes of\nNature. Thus, suppose you have a red rocky cliff to sketch, with blue\nclouds floating over it. You paint your cliff first firmly, then take\nyour blue, mixing it to such a tint (and here is a great part of the\nskill needed), that when it is laid over the red, in the thickness\nrequired for the effect of the mist, the warm rock-colour showing\nthrough the blue cloud-colour, may bring it to exactly the hue you want;\n(your upper tint, therefore, must be mixed colder than you want it;)\nthen you lay it on, varying it as you strike it, getting the forms of\nthe mist at once, and, if it be rightly done, with exquisite quality of\ncolour, from the warm tint's showing through and between the particles\nof the other. When it is dry, you may add a little colour to retouch the\nedges where they want shape, or heighten the lights where they want\nroundness, or put another tone over the whole; but you can take none\naway. If you touch or disturb the surface, or by any untoward accident\nmix the under and upper colours together, all is lost irrecoverably.\nBegin your drawing from the ground again if you like, or throw it into\nthe fire if you like. But do not waste time in trying to mend it.[237]\n\nThis discussion of the relative merits of transparent and opaque colour\nhas, however, led us a little beyond the point where we should have\nbegun; we must go back to our palette, if you please. Get a cake of each\nof the hard colours named in the note below[238] and try experiments on\ntheir simple combinations, by mixing each colour with every other. If\nyou like to do it in an orderly way, you may prepare a squared piece of\npasteboard, and put the pure colours in columns at the top and side;\nthe mixed tints being given at the intersections, thus (the letters\nstanding for colours):\n\n        b      c      d      e      f      &c.\n\n    a  ab     ac     ad     ae     af\n    b  --     bc     bd     be     bf\n    c  --     --     cd     ce     cf\n    d  --     --     --     de     df\n    e  --     --     --     --     ef\n    &c.\n\nThis will give you some general notion of the characters of mixed tints\nof two colours only, and it is better in practice to confine yourself as\nmuch as possible to these, and to get more complicated colours, either\nby putting a third _over_ the first blended tint, or by putting the\nthird into its interstices. Nothing but watchful practice will teach you\nthe effects that colours have on each other when thus put over, or\nbeside, each other.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 29.]\n\nWhen you have got a little used to the principal combinations, place\nyourself at a window which the sun does not shine in at, commanding some\nsimple piece of landscape; outline this landscape roughly; then take a\npiece of white cardboard, cut out a hole in it about the size of a large\npea; and supposing _R_ is the room, _a d_ the window, and you are\nsitting at _a_, Fig. 29., hold this cardboard a little outside of the\nwindow, upright, and in the direction _b d_, parallel a little turned to\nthe side of the window, or so as to catch more light, as at _a d_, never\nturned as at _c d_, or the paper will be dark. Then you will see the\nlandscape, bit by bit, through the circular hole. Match the colours of\neach important bit as nearly as you can, mixing your tints with white,\nbeside the aperture. When matched, put a touch of the same tint at the\ntop of your paper, writing under it: \"dark tree colour,\" \"hill colour,\"\n\"field colour,\" as the case may be. Then wash the tint away from beside\nthe opening, and the cardboard will be ready to match another piece of\nthe landscape.[239] When you have got the colours of the principal\nmasses thus indicated, lay on a piece of each in your sketch in its\nright place, and then proceed to complete the sketch in harmony with\nthem, by your eye.\n\nIn the course of your early experiments, you will be much struck by two\nthings: the first, the inimitable brilliancy of light in sky and in\nsunlighted things: and the second, that among the tints which you can\nimitate, those which you thought the darkest will continually turn out\nto be in reality the lightest. Darkness of objects is estimated by us,\nunder ordinary circumstances, much more by _knowledge_ than by sight;\nthus, a cedar or Scotch fir, at 200 yards off, will be thought of darker\ngreen than an elm or oak near us; because we know by experience that the\npeculiar colour they exhibit, at that distance, is the _sign_ of\ndarkness of foliage. But when we try them through the cardboard, the\nnear oak will be found, indeed, rather dark green, and the distant\ncedar, perhaps, pale gray-purple. The quantity of purple and grey in\nNature is, by the way, another somewhat surprising subject of discovery.\n\nWell, having ascertained thus your principal tints, you may proceed to\nfill up your sketch; in doing which observe these following particulars:\n\n1. Many portions of your subject appeared through the aperture in the\npaper brighter than the paper, as sky, sunlighted grass, &c. Leave these\nportions, for the present, white; and proceed with the parts of which\nyou can match the tints.\n\n2. As you tried your subject with the cardboard, you must have observed\nhow many changes of hue took place over small spaces. In filling up your\nwork, try to educate your eye to perceive these differences of hue\nwithout the help of the cardboard, and lay them deliberately, like a\nmosaic-worker, as separate colours, preparing each carefully on your\npalatte, and laying it as if it were a patch of coloured cloth, cut out,\nto be fitted neatly by its edge to the next patch; so that the _fault_\nof your work may be, not a slurred or misty look, but a patched\nbed-cover look, as if it had all been cut out with scissors. For\ninstance, in drawing the trunk of a birch tree, there will be probably\nwhite high lights, then a pale rosy grey round them on the light side,\nthen a (probably greenish) deeper grey on the dark side, varied by\nreflected colours, and over all, rich black strips of bark and brown\nspots of moss. Lay first the rosy grey, leaving white for the high\nlights _and for the spots of moss_, and not touching the dark side. Then\nlay the grey for the dark side, fitting it well up to the rosy grey of\nthe light, leaving also in this darker grey the white paper in the\nplaces for the black and brown moss; then prepare the moss colours\nseparately for each spot, and lay each in the white place left for it.\nNot one grain of white, except that purposely left for the high lights,\nmust be visible when the work is done, even through a magnifying-glass,\nso cunningly must you fit the edges to each other. Finally, take your\nbackground colours, and put them on each side of the tree-trunk, fitting\nthem carefully to its edge.\n\nFine work you would make of this, wouldn't you, if you had not learned\nto draw first, and could not now draw a good outline for the stem, much\nless terminate a colour mass in the outline you wanted?\n\nYour work will look very odd for some time, when you first begin to\npaint in this way, and before you can modify it, as I shall tell you\npresently how; but never mind; it is of the greatest possible importance\nthat you should practice this separate laying on of the hues, for all\ngood colouring finally depends on it. It is, indeed, often necessary,\nand sometimes desirable, to lay one colour and form boldly over another:\nthus, in laying leaves on blue sky, it is impossible always in large\npictures, or when pressed for time, to fill in the blue through the\ninterstices of the leaves; and the great Venetians constantly lay their\nblue ground first, and then, having let it dry, strike the golden brown\nover it in the form of the leaf, leaving the under blue to shine through\nthe gold, and subdue it to the olive green they want. But in the most\nprecious and perfect work each leaf is inlaid, and the blue worked round\nit: and, whether you use one or other mode of getting your result, it is\nequally necessary to be absolute and decisive in your laying the colour.\nEither your ground must be laid firmly first, and then your upper colour\nstruck upon it in perfect form, for ever, thenceforward, unalterable; or\nelse the two colours must be individually put in their places, and led\nup to each other till they meet at their appointed border, equally,\nthenceforward, unchangeable. Either process, you see, involves\n_absolute_ decision. If you once begin to slur, or change, or sketch, or\ntry this way and that with your colour, it is all over with it and with\nyou. You will continually see bad copyists trying to imitate the\nVenetians, by daubing their colours about, and retouching, and\nfinishing, and softening: when every touch and every added hue only lead\nthem farther into chaos. There is a dog between two children in a\nVeronese in the Louvre, which gives the copyist much employment. He has\na dark ground behind him, which Veronese has painted first, and then\nwhen it was dry, or nearly so, struck the locks of the dog's white hair\nover it with some half-dozen curling sweeps of his brush, right at once,\nand forever. Had one line or hair of them gone wrong, it would have been\nwrong forever; no retouching could have mended it. The poor copyists\ndaub in first some background, and then some dog's hair; then retouch\nthe background, then the hair, work for hours at it, expecting it always\nto come right to-morrow--\"when it is finished.\" They _may_ work for\ncenturies at it, and they will never do it. If they can do it with\nVeronese's allowance of work, half a dozen sweeps of the hand over the\ndark background, well; if not, they may ask the dog himself whether it\nwill ever come right, and get true answer from him--on Launce's\nconditions: \"If he say 'ay,' it will; if he say 'no,' it will; if he\nshake his tail and say nothing, it will.\"\n\nWhenever you lay on a mass of colour, be sure that however large it may\nbe, or however small, it shall be gradated. No colour exists in Nature\nunder ordinary circumstances without gradation. If you do not see this,\nit is the fault of your inexperience; you _will_ see it in due time, if\nyou practise enough. But in general you may see it at once. In the birch\ntrunk, for instance, the rosy grey _must_ be gradated by the roundness\nof the stem till it meets the shaded side; similarly the shaded side is\ngradated by reflected, light. Accordingly, whether by adding water, or\nwhite paint, or by unequal force of touch (this you will do at pleasure,\naccording to the texture you wish to produce), you must, in every tint\nyou lay on, make it a little paler at one part than another, and get an\neven gradation between the two depths. This is very like laying down a\nformal law or recipe for you; but you will find it is merely the\nassertion of a natural fact. It is not indeed physically impossible to\nmeet with an ungradated piece of colour, but it is so supremely\nimprobable, that you had better get into the habit of asking yourself\ninvariably, when you are going to copy a tint,--not \"_Is_ that\ngradated?\" but \"_Which way_ is it gradated?\" and at least in ninety-nine\nout of a hundred instances, you will be able to answer decisively after\na careful glance, though the gradation may have been so subtle that you\ndid not see it at first. And it does not matter how small the touch of\ncolour may be, though not larger than the smallest pin's head, if one\npart of it is not darker than the rest, it is a bad touch; for it is not\nmerely because the natural fact is so, that your colour should be\ngradated; the preciousness and pleasantness of the colour itself depends\nmore on this than on any other of its qualities, for gradation is to\ncolours just what curvature is to lines, both being felt to be beautiful\nby the pure instinct of every human mind, and both, considered as types,\nexpressing the law of gradual change and progress in the human soul\nitself. What the difference is in mere beauty between a gradated and\nungradated colour, may be seen easily by laying an even tint of\nrose-colour on paper, and putting a rose leaf beside it. The victorious\nbeauty of the rose as compared with other flowers, depends wholly on the\ndelicacy and quantity of its colour gradations, all other flowers being\neither less rich in gradation, not having so many folds of leaf; or less\ntender, being patched and veined instead of flushed.\n\n4. But observe, it is not enough in general that colour should be\ngradated by being made merely paler or darker at one place than another.\nGenerally colour _changes_ as it _diminishes_, and is not merely\n_darker_ at one spot, but also _purer_ at one spot than anywhere else.\nIt does not in the least follow that the darkest spot should be the\npurest; still less so that the lightest should be the purest. Very often\nthe two gradations more or less cross each other, one passing in one\ndirection from paleness to darkness, another in another direction from\npurity to dullness, but there will almost always be both of them,\nhowever reconciled; and you must never be satisfied with a piece of\ncolour until you have got both: that is to say, every piece of blue that\nyou lay on must be _quite_ blue only at some given spot, nor that a\nlarge spot; and must be gradated from that into less pure blue--greyish\nblue, or greenish blue, or purplish blue, over all the rest of the space\nit occupies. And this you must do in one of three ways: either, while\nthe colour is wet, mix it with the colour which is to subdue it, adding\ngradually a little more and a little more; or else, when the colour is\nquite dry, strike a gradated touch of another colour over it, leaving\nonly a point of the first tint visible: or else, lay the subduing tints\non in small touches, as in the exercise of tinting the chess-board. Of\neach of these methods I have something to tell you separately: but that\nis distinct from the subject of gradation, which I must not quit without\nonce more pressing upon you the preeminent necessity of introducing it\neverywhere. I have profound dislike of anything like _habit_ of hand,\nand yet, in this one instance, I feel almost tempted to encourage you to\nget into a habit of never touching paper with colour, without securing a\ngradation. You will not in Turner's largest oil pictures, perhaps six or\nseven feet long by four or five high, find one spot of colour as large\nas a grain of wheat ungradated: and you will find in practice, that\nbrilliancy of hue, and vigour of light, and even the aspect of\ntransparency in shade, are essentially dependent on this character\nalone; hardness, coldness, and opacity resulting far more from\n_equality_ of colour than from nature of colour. Give me some mud off a\ncity crossing, some ochre out of a gravel pit, a little whitening, and\nsome coal-dust, and I will paint you a luminous picture, if you give me\ntime to gradate my mud, and subdue my dust: but though you had the red\nof the ruby, the blue of the gentian, snow for the light, and amber for\nthe gold, you cannot paint a luminous picture, if you keep the masses of\nthose colours unbroken in purity, and unvarying in depth.\n\n5. Next note the three processes by which gradation and other characters\nare to be obtained:\n\nA. Mixing while the colour is wet.\n\nYou may be confused by my first telling you to lay on the hues in\nseparate patches, and then telling you to mix hues together as you lay\nthem on: but the separate masses are to be laid, when colours distinctly\noppose each other at a given limit; the hues to be mixed, when they\npalpitate one through the other, or fade one into the other. It is\nbetter to err a little on the distinct side. Thus I told you to paint\nthe dark and light sides of the birch trunk separately, though in\nreality, the two tints change, as the trunk turns away from the light,\ngradually one into the other: and, after being laid separately on, will\nneed some farther touching to harmonize them: but they do so in a very\nnarrow space, marked distinctly all the way up the trunk; and it is\neasier and safer, therefore, to keep them separate at first. Whereas it\noften happens that the whole beauty of two colours will depend on the\none being continued well through the other, and playing in the midst of\nit: blue and green often do so in water: blue and grey, or purple and\nscarlet, in sky; in hundreds of such instances the most beautiful and\ntruthful results may be obtained by laying one colour into the other\nwhile wet; judging wisely how far it will spread, or blending it with\nthe brush in somewhat thicker consistence of wet body-colour; only\nobserve, never mix in this way two _mixtures_; let the colour you lay\ninto the other be always a simple, not a compound tint.\n\nB. Laying one colour over another.\n\nIf you lay on a solid touch of vermilion, and, after it is quite dry,\nstrike a little very wet carmine quickly over it, you will obtain a much\nmore brilliant red than by mixing the carmine and vermilion. Similarly,\nif you lay a dark colour first, and strike a little blue or white\nbody-colour lightly over it, you will get a more beautiful grey than by\nmixing the colour and the blue or white. In very perfect painting,\nartifices of this kind are continually used; but I would not have you\ntrust much to them; they are apt to make you think too much of quality\nof colour. I should like you to depend on little more than the dead\ncolours, simply laid on, only observe always this, that the _less_\ncolour you do the work with, the better it will always be:[240] so that\nif you have laid a red colour, and you want a purple one above, do not\nmix the purple on your palette and lay it on so thick as to overpower\nthe red, but take a little thin blue from your palette, and lay it\nlightly over the red, so as to let the red be seen through, and thus\nproduce the required purple; and if you want a green hue over a blue\none, do not lay a quantity of green on the blue, but a _little_ yellow,\nand so on, always bringing the under colour into service as far as you\npossibly can. If, however, the colour beneath is wholly opposed to the\none you have to lay on, as, suppose, if green is to be laid over\nscarlet, you must either remove the required parts of the under colour\ndaintily first with your knife, or with water; or else, lay solid white\nover it massively, and leave that to dry, and then glaze the white with\nthe upper colour. This is better, in general, than laying the upper\ncolour itself so thick as to conquer the ground, which, in fact, if it\nbe a transparent colour, you cannot do. Thus, if you have to strike\nwarm boughs and leaves of trees over blue sky, and they are too\nintricate to have their places left for them in laying the blue, it is\nbetter to lay them first in solid white, and then glaze with sienna and\nochre, than to mix the sienna and white; though, of course, the process\nis longer and more troublesome. Nevertheless, if the forms of touches\nrequired are very delicate, the after glazing is impossible. You must\nthen mix the warm colour thick at once, and so use it: and this is often\nnecessary for delicate grasses, and such other fine threads of light in\nforeground work.\n\nC. Breaking one colour in small points through or over another.\n\nThis is the most important of all processes in good modern[241] oil and\nwater-colour painting, but you need not hope to attain very great skill\nin it. To do it well is very laborious, and requires such skill and\ndelicacy of hand as can only be acquired by unceasing practice. But you\nwill find advantage in noting the following points:\n\n(_a._) In distant effects of rich subjects, wood, or rippled water, or\nbroken clouds, much may be done by touches or crumbling dashes of rather\ndry colour, with other colours afterwards put cunningly into the\ninterstices. The more you practise this, when the subject evidently\ncalls for it, the more your eye will enjoy the higher qualities of\ncolour. The process is, in fact, the carrying out of the principle of\nseparate colours to the utmost possible refinement; using atoms of\ncolour in juxtaposition, instead of large spaces. And note, in filling\nup minute interstices of this kind, that if you want the colour you fill\nthem with to show brightly, it is better to put a rather positive point\nof it, with a little white left beside or round it in the interstice,\nthan to put a pale tint of the colour over the whole interstice. Yellow\nor orange will hardly show, if pale, in small spaces; but they show\nbrightly in firm touches, however small, with white beside them.\n\n(_b._) If a colour is to be darkened by superimposed portions of\nanother, it is, in many cases, better to lay the uppermost colour in\nrather vigorous small touches, like finely chopped straw, over the under\none, than to lay it on as a tint, for two reasons: the first, that the\nplay of the two colours together is pleasant to the eye; the second,\nthat much expression of form may be got by wise administration of the\nupper dark touches. In distant mountains they may be made pines of, or\nbroken crags, or villages, or stones, or whatever you choose; in clouds\nthey may indicate the direction of the rain, the roll and outline of the\ncloud masses; and in water, the minor waves. All noble effects of dark\natmosphere are got in good water-colour drawing by these two expedients,\ninterlacing the colours, or retouching the lower one with fine darker\ndrawing in an upper. Sponging and washing for dark atmospheric effect is\nbarbarous, and mere tyro's work, though it is often useful for passages\nof delicate atmospheric light.\n\n(_c._) When you have time, practice the production of mixed tints by\ninterlaced touches of the pure colours out of which they are formed, and\nuse the process at the parts of your sketches where you wish to get rich\nand luscious effects. Study the works of William Hunt, of the Old\nWater-colour Society, in this respect, continually, and make frequent\nmemoranda of the variegations in flowers; not painting the flower\ncompletely, but laying the ground colour of one petal, and painting the\nspots on it with studious precision: a series of single petals of\nlilies, geraniums, tulips, &c., numbered with proper reference to their\nposition in the flower, will be interesting to you on many grounds\nbesides those of art. Be careful to get the _gradated_ distribution of\nthe spots well followed in the calceolarias, foxgloves, and the like;\nand work out the odd, indefinite hues of the spots themselves with\nminute grains of pure interlaced colour, otherwise you will never get\ntheir richness of bloom. You will be surprised to find, as you do this,\nfirst the universality of the law of gradation we have so much insisted\nupon; secondly, that Nature is just as economical of _her_ fine colours\nas I have told you to be of yours. You would think, by the way she\npaints, that her colours cost her something enormous: she will only give\nyou a single pure touch just where the petal turns into light; but down\nin the bell all is subdued, and under the petal all is subdued, even in\nthe showiest flower. What you thought was bright blue is, when you look\nclose, only dusty grey, or green, or purple, or every colour in the\nworld at once, only a single gleam or streak of pure blue in the centre\nof it. And so with all her colours. Sometimes I have really thought her\nmiserliness intolerable: in a gentian, for instance, the way she\neconomises her ultramarine down in the bell is a little too bad.\n\nNext, respecting general tone. I said, just now, that, for the sake of\nstudents, my tax should not be laid on black or on white pigments; but\nif you mean to be a colourist, you must lay a tax on them yourselves\nwhen you begin to use true colour; that is to say, you must use them\nlittle and make of them much. There is no better test of your colour\ntones being good, than your having made the white in your picture\nprecious, and the black conspicuous.\n\nI say, first, the white precious. I do not mean merely glittering or\nbrilliant; it is easy to scratch white seagulls out of black clouds and\ndot clumsy foliage with chalky dew; but, when white is well managed, it\nought to be strangely delicious--tender as well as bright--like inlaid\nmother of pearl, or white roses washed in milk. The eye ought to seek it\nfor rest, brilliant though it may be; and to feel it as a space of\nstrange, heavenly paleness in the midst of the flushing of the colours.\nThis effect you can only reach by general depth of middle tint, by\nabsolutely refusing to allow any white to exist except where you need\nit, and by keeping the white itself subdued by grey, except at a few\npoints of chief lustre.\n\nSecondly, you must make the black conspicuous. However small a point of\nblack may be, it ought to catch the eye, otherwise your work is too\nheavy in the shadow. All the ordinary shadows should be of some\n_colour_--never black, nor approaching black, they should be evidently\nand always of a luminous nature, and the black should look strange among\nthem; never occurring except in a black object, or in small points\nindicative of intense shade in the very centre of masses of shadow.\nShadows of absolutely negative grey, however, may be beautifully used\nwith white, or with gold; but still though the black thus, in subdued\nstrength, becomes _spacious_, it should always be _conspicuous_; the\nspectator should notice this grey neutrality with some wonder, and\nenjoy, all the more intensely on account of it, the gold colour and the\nwhite which it relieves. Of all the great colourists Velasquez is the\ngreatest master of the black chords. His black is more precious than\nmost other people's crimson.\n\nIt is not, however, only white and black which you must make valuable;\nyou must give rare worth to every colour you use; but the white and\nblack ought to separate themselves quaintly from the rest, while the\nother colours should be continually passing one into the other, being\nall evidently companions in the same gay world; while the white, black,\nand neutral grey should stand monkishly aloof in the midst of them. You\nmay melt your crimson into purple, your purple into blue and your blue\ninto green, but you must not melt any of them into black. You should,\nhowever, try, as I said, to give _preciousness_ to all your colours; and\nthis especially by never using a grain more than will just do the work,\nand giving each hue the highest value by opposition. All fine colouring,\nlike fine drawing, is _delicate_; and so delicate that if, at last, you\n_see_ the colour you are putting on, you are putting on too much. You\nought to feel a change wrought in the general tone, by touches of colour\nwhich individually are too pale to be seen; and if there is one atom of\nany colour in the whole picture which is unnecessary to it, that atom\nhurts it.\n\nNotice also, that nearly all good compound colours are _odd_ colours.\nYou shall look at a hue in a good painter's work ten minutes before you\nknow what to call it. You thought it was brown, presently, you feel that\nit is red; next that there is, somehow, yellow in it; presently\nafterwards that there is blue in it. If you try to copy it you will\nalways find your colour too warm or too cold--no colour in the box will\nseem to have any affinity with it; and yet it will be as pure as if it\nwere laid at a single touch with a single colour.\n\nAs to the choice and harmony of colours in general, if you cannot\nchoose and harmonize them by instinct, you will never do it at all. If\nyou need examples of utterly harsh and horrible colour, you may find\nplenty given in treatises upon colouring, to illustrate the laws of\nharmony; and if you want to colour beautifully, colour as best pleases\nyourself at _quiet times_, not so as to catch the eye, nor to look as if\nit were clever or difficult to colour in that way, but so that the\ncolour may be pleasant to you when you are happy, or thoughtful. Look\nmuch at the morning and evening sky, and much at simple\nflowers--dog-roses, wood hyacinths, violets, poppies, thistles, heather,\nand such like--as Nature arranges them in the woods and fields. If ever\nany scientific person tells you that two colours are \"discordant,\" make\na note of the two colours, and put them together whenever you can. I\nhave actually heard people say that blue and green were discordant; the\ntwo colours which Nature seems to intend never to be separated and never\nto be felt, either of them, in its full beauty without the other!--a\npeacock's neck, or a blue sky through green leaves, or a blue wave with\ngreen lights though it, being precisely the loveliest things, next to\nclouds at sunrise, in this coloured world of ours. If you have a good\neye for colours, you will soon find out how constantly Nature puts\npurple and green together, purple and scarlet, green and blue, yellow\nand neutral grey, and the like; and how she strikes these\ncolour-concords for general tones, and then works into them with\ninnumerable subordinate ones; and you will gradually come to like what\nshe does, and find out new and beautiful chords of colour in her work\nevery day. If you _enjoy_ them, depend upon it you will paint them to a\ncertain point right: or, at least, if you do not enjoy them, you are\ncertain to paint them wrong. If colour does not give you _intense_\npleasure, let it alone; depend upon it, you are only tormenting the eyes\nand senses of people who feel colour, whenever you touch it; and that is\nunkind and improper. You will find, also, your power of colouring depend\nmuch on your state of health and right balance of mind; when you are\nfatigued or ill you will not see colours well, and when you are\nill-tempered you will not choose them well: thus, though not infallibly\na test of character in individuals, colour power is a great sign of\nmental health in nations; when they are in a state of intellectual\ndecline, their colouring always gets dull.[242] You must also take great\ncare not to be misled by affected talk about colour from people who have\nnot the gift of it: numbers are eager and voluble about it who probably\nnever in all their lives received one genuine colour-sensation. The\nmodern religionists of the school of Overbeck are just like people who\neat slate-pencil and chalk, and assure everybody that they are nicer and\npurer than strawberries and plums.\n\nTake care also never to be misled into any idea that colour can help or\ndisplay _form_; colour[243] always disguises form, and is meant to do\nso.\n\nIt is a favourite dogma among modern writers on colour that \"warm\ncolours\" (reds and yellows) \"approach\" or express nearness, and \"cold\ncolours\" (blue and grey) \"retire\" or express distance. So far is this\nfrom being the case, that no expression of distance in the world is so\ngreat as that of the gold and orange in twilight sky. Colours, as such,\nare ABSOLUTELY inexpressive respecting distance. It is their _quality_\n(as depth, delicacy, &c.) which expresses distance, not their tint. A\nblue bandbox set on the same shelf with a yellow one will not look an\ninch farther off, but a red or orange cloud, in the upper sky, will\nalways appear to be beyond a blue cloud close to us, as it is in\nreality. It is quite true that in certain objects, blue is a _sign_ of\ndistance; but that is not because blue is a retiring colour, but because\nthe mist in the air is blue, and therefore any warm colour which has not\nstrength of light enough to pierce the mist is lost or subdued in its\nblue: but blue is no more, on this account, a \"retiring colour,\" than\nbrown is a retiring colour, because, when stones are seen through brown\nwater, the deeper they lie the browner they look; or than yellow is a\nretiring colour, because when objects are seen through a London fog, the\nfarther off they are the yellower they look. Neither blue, nor yellow,\nnor red, can have, as such, the _smallest_ power of expressing either\nnearness or distance: they express them only under the peculiar\ncircumstances which render them at the moment, or in that place, _signs_\nof nearness or distance. Thus, vivid orange in an orange is a sign of\nnearness, for if you put the orange a great way off, its colour will not\nlook so bright; but vivid orange in sky is a sign of distance, because\nyou cannot get the colour of orange in a cloud near you. So purple in a\nviolet or a hyacinth is a sign of nearness, because the closer you look\nat them the more purple you see. But purple in a mountain is a sign of\ndistance, because a mountain close to you is not purple, but green or\ngrey. It may, indeed, be generally assumed that a tender or pale colour\nwill more or less express distance, and a powerful or dark colour\nnearness; but even this is not always so. Heathery hills will usually\ngive a pale and tender purple near, and an intense and dark purple far\naway; the rose colour of sunset on snow is pale on the snow at your\nfeet, deep and full on the snow in the distance; and the green of a\nSwiss lake is pale in the clear waves on the beach, but intense as an\nemerald in the sunstreak, six miles from shore. And in any case, when\nthe foreground is in strong light, with much water about it, or white\nsurface, casting intense reflections, all its colours may be perfectly\ndelicate, pale, and faint; while the distance, when it is in shadow, may\nrelieve the whole foreground with intense darks of purple, blue green,\nor ultramarine blue. So that, on the whole, it is quite hopeless and\nabsurd to expect any help from laws of \"aerial perspective.\" Look for\nthe natural effects, and set them down as fully as you can, and as\nfaithfully, and _never_ alter a colour because it won't look in its\nright place. Put the colour strong, if it be strong, though far off;\nfaint, if it be faint, though close to you. Why should you suppose that\nNature always means you to know exactly how far one thing is from\nanother? She certainly intends you always to enjoy her colouring, but\nshe does not wish you always to measure her space. You would be hard put\nto it, every time you painted the sun setting, if you had to express his\n95,000,000 miles of distance in \"aerial perspective.\"\n\nThere is, however, I think, one law about distance, which has some\nclaims to be considered a constant one: namely, that dullness and\nheaviness of colour are more or less indicative of nearness. All distant\ncolour is _pure_ colour: it may not be bright, but it is clear and\nlovely, not opaque nor soiled; for the air and light coming between us\nand any earthy or imperfect colour, purify or harmonise it; hence a bad\ncolourist is peculiarly incapable of expressing distance. I do not of\ncourse mean that you are to use bad colours in your foreground by way of\nmaking it come forward; but only that a failure in colour, there, will\nnot put it out of its place; while a failure in colour in the distance\nwill at once do away with its remoteness: your dull-coloured foreground\nwill still be a foreground, though ill-painted; but your ill-painted\ndistance will not be merely a dull distance,--it will be no distance at\nall.\n\nI have only one thing more to advise you, namely, never to colour\npetulantly or hurriedly. You will not, indeed, be able, if you attend\nproperly to your colouring, to get anything like the quantity of form\nyou could in a chiaroscuro sketch; nevertheless, if you do not dash or\nrush at your work, nor do it lazily, you may always get enough form to\nbe satisfactory. An extra quarter of an hour, distributed in quietness\nover the course of the whole study, may just make the difference\nbetween a quite intelligible drawing, and a slovenly and obscure one. If\nyou determine well beforehand what outline each piece of colour is to\nhave; and, when it is on the paper, guide it without nervousness, as far\nas you can, into the form required; and then, after it is dry, consider\nthoroughly what touches are needed to complete it, before laying one of\nthem on; you will be surprised to find how masterly the work will soon\nlook, as compared with a hurried or ill-considered sketch. In no process\nthat I know of--least of all in sketching--can time be really gained by\nprecipitation. It is gained only by caution; and gained in all sorts of\nways: for not only truth of form, but force of light, is always added by\nan intelligent and shapely laying of the shadow colours. You may often\nmake a simple flat tint, rightly gradated and edged, express a\ncomplicated piece of subject without a single retouch. The two Swiss\ncottages, for instance, with their balconies, and glittering windows,\nand general character of shingly eaves, are expressed in Fig. 30., with\none tint of grey, and a few dispersed spots and lines of it; all of\nwhich you ought to be able to lay on without more than thrice dipping\nyour brush, and without a single touch after the tint is dry.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 30.]\n\nHere, then, for I cannot without coloured illustrations tell you more, I\nmust leave you to follow out the subject for yourself, with such help as\nyou may receive from the water-colour drawings accessible to you; or\nfrom any of the little treatises on their art which have been published\nlately by our water-colour painters.[244] But do not trust much to works\nof this kind. You may get valuable hints from them as to mixture of\ncolours; and here and there you will find a useful artifice or process\nexplained; but nearly all such books are written only to help idle\namateurs to a meretricious skill, and they are full of precepts and\nprinciples which may, for the most part, be interpreted by their\n_precise_ negatives, and then acted upon, with advantage. Most of them\npraise boldness, when the only safe attendant spirit of a beginner is\ncaution;--advise velocity, when the first condition of success is\ndeliberation;--and plead for generalisation, when all the foundations of\npower must be laid in knowledge of specialty.\n\nAnd now, in the last place, I have a few things to tell you respecting\nthat dangerous nobleness of consummate art,--COMPOSITION. For though it\nis quite unnecessary for you yet awhile to attempt it, and it _may_ be\ninexpedient for you to attempt it at all, you ought to know what it\nmeans, and to look for and enjoy it in the art of others.\n\nComposition means, literally and simply, putting several things\ntogether, so as to make _one_ thing out of them; the nature and goodness\nof which they all have a share in producing. Thus a musician composes an\nair, by putting notes together in certain relations; a poet composes a\npoem; by putting thoughts and words in pleasant order; and a painter a\npicture, by putting thoughts, forms, and colours in pleasant order.\n\nIn all these cases, observe, an intended unity must be the result of\ncomposition. A paviour cannot be said to compose the heap of stones\nwhich he empties from his cart, nor the sower the handful of seed which\nhe scatters from his hand. It is the essence of composition that\neverything should be in a determined place, perform an intended part,\nand act, in that part, advantageously for everything that is connected\nwith it.\n\nComposition, understood in this pure sense, is the type, in the arts of\nmankind, of the Providential government of the world.[245] It is an\nexhibition, in the order given to notes, or colours, or forms, of the\nadvantage of perfect fellowship, discipline, and contentment. In a\nwell-composed air, no note, however short or low, can be spared, but the\nleast is as necessary as the greatest: no note, however prolonged, is\ntedious; but the others prepare for, and are benefited by, its duration;\nno note, however high, is tyrannous; the others prepare for and are\nbenefited by, its exaltation: no note, however low, is overpowered, the\nothers prepare for, and sympathise with, its humility: and the result\nis, that each and every note has a value in the position assigned to it,\nwhich by itself, it never possessed, and of which by separation from the\nothers, it would instantly be deprived.\n\nSimilarly, in a good poem, each word and thought enhances the value of\nthose which precede and follow it; and every syllable has a loveliness\nwhich depends not so much on its abstract sound as on its position. Look\nat the same word in a dictionary, and you will hardly recognise it.\n\nMuch more in a great picture; every line and colour is so arranged as to\nadvantage the rest. None are inessential, however slight; and none are\nindependent, however forcible. It is not enough that they truly\nrepresent natural objects; but they must fit into certain places, and\ngather into certain harmonious groups: so that, for instance, the red\nchimney of a cottage is not merely set in its place as a chimney, but\nthat it may affect, in a certain way pleasurable to the eye, the pieces\nof green or blue in other parts of the picture; and we ought to see that\nthe work is masterly, merely by the positions and quantities of these\npatches of green, red, and blue, even at a distance which renders it\nperfectly impossible to determine what the colours represent: or to see\nwhether the red is a chimney, or an old woman's cloak; and whether the\nblue is smoke, sky, or water.\n\nIt seems to be appointed, in order to remind us, in all we do, of the\ngreat laws of Divine government and human polity, that composition in\nthe arts should strongly affect every order of mind, however unlearned\nor thoughtless. Hence the popular delight in rhythm and metre, and in\nsimple musical melodies. But it is also appointed that _power_ of\ncomposition in the fine arts should be an exclusive attribute of great\nintellect All men can more or less copy what they see, and, more or\nless, remember it: powers of reflection and investigation are also\ncommon to us all, so that the decision of inferiority in these rests\nonly on questions of _degree_. A. has a better memory than B., and C.\nreflects more profoundly than D. But the gift of composition is not\ngiven _at all_ to more than one man in a thousand; in its highest range,\nit does not occur above three or four times in a century.\n\nIt follows, from these general truths, that it is impossible to give\nrules which will enable you to compose. You might much more easily\nreceive rules to enable you to be witty. If it were possible to be witty\nby rule, wit would cease to be either admirable or amusing: if it were\npossible to compose melody by rule, Mozart and Cimarosa need not have\nbeen born: if it were possible to compose pictures by rule, Titian and\nVeronese would be ordinary men. The essence of composition lies\nprecisely in the fact of its being unteachable, in its being the\noperation of an individual mind of range and power exalted above others.\n\nBut though no one can _invent_ by rule, there are some simple laws of\narrangement which it is well for you to know, because, though they will\nnot enable you to produce a good picture, they will often assist you to\nset forth what goodness may be in your work in a more telling way than\nyou could have done otherwise; and by tracing them in the work of good\ncomposers, you may better understand the grasp of their imagination, and\nthe power it possesses over their materials I shall briefly state the\nchief of these laws.\n\n\n1. THE LAW OF PRINCIPALITY.\n\nThe great object of composition being always to secure unity; that is,\nto make out of many things one whole; the first mode in which this can\nbe effected is, by determining that _one_ feature shall be more\nimportant than all the rest, and that the others shall group with it in\nsubordinate positions.\n\nThis is the simplest law of ordinary ornamentation. Thus the group of\ntwo leaves, _a_, Fig. 31., is unsatisfactory, because it has no leading\nleaf; but that at _b_ _is_ prettier, because it has a head or master\nleaf; and _c_ more satisfactory still, because the subordination of the\nother members to this head leaf is made more manifest by their gradual\nloss of size as they fall back from it. Hence part of the pleasure we\nhave in the Greek honeysuckle ornament, and such others.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 31.]\n\nThus, also, good pictures have always one light larger or brighter than\nthe other lights, or one figure more prominent than the other figures,\nor one mass of colour dominant over all the other masses; and in general\nyou will find it much benefit your sketch if you manage that there shall\nbe one light on the cottage wall, or one blue cloud in the sky, which\nmay attract the eye as leading light, or leading gloom, above all\nothers. But the observance of the rule is often so cunningly concealed\nby the great composers, that its force is hardly at first traceable; and\nyou will generally find that they are vulgar pictures in which the law\nis _strikingly_ manifest. This may be simply illustrated by musical\nmelody; for instance, in such phrases as this:\n\n[Illustration]\n\none note (here the upper G) rules the whole passage, and has the full\nenergy of it concentrated in itself. Such passages, corresponding to\ncompletely subordinated compositions in painting, are apt to be\nwearisome if often repeated. But in such a phrase as this:\n\n[Illustration]\n\nit is very difficult to say, which is the principal note. The A in the\nlast bar is lightly dominant, but there is a very equal current of\npower running through the whole; and such passages rarely weary. And\nthis principle holds through vast scales of arrangement; so that in the\ngrandest compositions, such as Paul Veronese's Marriage in Cana, or\nRaphael's Disputa, it is not easy to fix at once on the principal\nfigure; and very commonly the figure which is really chief does not\ncatch the eye at first, but is gradually felt to be more and more\nconspicuous as we gaze. Thus in Titian's grand composition of the\nCornaro Family, the figure meant to be principal is a youth of fifteen\nor sixteen, whose portrait it was evidently the painter's object to make\nas interesting as possible. But a grand Madonna, and a St. George with a\ndrifting banner, and many figures more, occupy the centre of the\npicture, and first catch the eye; little by little we are led away from\nthem to a gleam of pearly light in the lower corner, and find that, from\nthe head which it shines upon, we can turn our eyes no more.\n\nAs, in every good picture, nearly all laws of design are more or less\nexemplified, it will, on the whole, be an easier way of explaining them\nto analyse one composition thoroughly, than to give instances from\nvarious works. I shall therefore take one of Turner's simplest; which\nwill allow us, so to speak, easily to decompose it, and illustrate each\nlaw by it as we proceed.\n\nFigure 32. is a rude sketch of the arrangement of the whole subject; the\nold bridge over the Moselle at Coblentz, the town of Coblentz on the\nright, Ehrenbreitstein on the left. The leading or master feature is, of\ncourse the tower on the bridge. It is kept from being _too_ principal by\nan important group on each side of it; the boats, on the right, and\nEhrenbreitstein beyond. The boats are large in mass, and more forcible\nin colour, but they are broken into small divisions, while the tower is\nsimple, and therefore it still leads. Ehrenbreitstein is noble in its\nmass, but so reduced by aerial perspective of colour that it cannot\ncontend with the tower, which therefore holds the eye, and becomes the\nkey of the picture. We shall see presently how the very objects which\nseem at first to contend with it for the mastery are made, occultly to\nincrease its preeminence.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 32.]\n\n\n2. THE LAW OF REPETITION.\n\nAnother important means of expressing unity is to mark some kind of\nsympathy among the different objects, and perhaps the pleasantest,\nbecause most surprising, kind of sympathy, is when one group imitates or\nrepeats another; not in the way of balance or symmetry, but\nsubordinately, like a far-away and broken echo of it. Prout has insisted\nmuch on this law in all his writings on composition; and I think it is\neven more authoritatively present in the minds of most great composers\nthan the law of principality. It is quite curious to see the pains that\nTurner sometimes takes to echo an important passage of colour; in the\nPembroke Castle for instance, there are two fishing-boats, one with a\nred, and another with a white sail. In a line with them, on the beach,\nare two fish in precisely the same relative positions; one red and one\nwhite. It is observable that he uses the artifice chiefly in pictures\nwhere he wishes to obtain an expression of repose: in my notice of the\nplate of Scarborough, in the series of the \"Harbours of England,\" I have\nalready had occasion to dwell on this point, and I extract in the\nnote[246] one or two sentences which explain the principle. In the\ncomposition I have chosen for our illustration, this reduplication is\nemployed to a singular extent. The tower, or leading feature, is first\nrepeated by the low echo of it to the left; put your finger over this\nlower tower, and see how the picture is spoiled. Then the spires of\nCoblentz are all arranged in couples (how they are arranged in reality\ndoes not matter; when we are composing a great picture, we must play the\ntowers about till they come right, as fearlessly as if they were\nchessmen instead of cathedrals). The dual arrangement of these towers\nwould have been too easily seen, were it not for a little one which\npretends to make a triad of the last group on the right, but is so faint\nas hardly to be discernible: it just takes off the attention from the\nartifice, helped in doing so by the mast at the head of the boat, which,\nhowever, has instantly its own duplicate put at the stern.[247] Then\nthere is the large boat near, and its echo beyond it. That echo is\ndivided into two again, and each of those two smaller boats has two\nfigures in it; while two figures are also sitting together on the great\nrudder that lies half in the water, and half aground. Then, finally, the\ngreat mass of Ehrenbreitstein, which appears at first to have no\nanswering form, has almost its _facsimile_ in the bank on which the girl\nis sitting; this bank is as absolutely essential to the completion of\nthe picture as any object in the whole series. All this is done to\ndeepen the effect of repose.\n\nSymmetry or the balance of parts or masses in nearly equal opposition,\nis one of the conditions of treatment under the law of Repetition. For\nthe opposition, in a symmetrical object, is of like things reflecting\neach other; it is not the balance of contrary natures (like that of day\nand night) but of like natures or like forms; one side of a leaf being\nset like the reflection of the other in water.\n\nSymmetry in Nature is, however, never formal nor accurate. She takes the\ngreatest care to secure some difference between the corresponding things\nor parts of things; and an approximation to accurate symmetry is only\npermitted in animals because their motions secure perpetual difference\nbetween the balancing parts. Stand before a mirror; hold your arms in\nprecisely the same position at each side, your head upright your body\nstraight; divide your hair exactly in the middle, and get it as nearly\nas you can into exactly the same shape over each ear, and you will see\nthe effect of accurate symmetry; you will see, no less, how all grace\nand power in the human form result from the interference of motion and\nlife with symmetry, and from the reconciliation of its balance with its\nchangefulness. Your position, as seen in the mirror, is the highest type\nof symmetry as understood by modern architects.\n\nIn many sacred compositions, living symmetry, the balance of harmonious\nopposites, is one of the profoundest sources of their power: almost any\nworks of the early painters, Angelico, Perugino, Giotto, &c., will\nfurnish you with notable instances of it. The Madonna of Perugino in the\nNational Gallery, with the angel Michael on one side and Raphael on the\nother, is as beautiful an example as you can have.\n\nIn landscape, the principle of balance is more or less carried out in\nproportion to the wish of the painter to express disciplined calmness.\nIn bad compositions as in bad architecture, it is formal, a tree on one\nside answering a tree on the other; but in good compositions, as in\ngraceful statues, it is always easy, and sometimes hardly traceable. In\nthe Coblentz, however, you cannot have much difficulty in seeing how the\nboats on one side of the tower and the figures on the other are set in\nnearly equal balance; the tower, as a central mass uniting both.\n\n\n3. THE LAW OF CONTINUITY.\n\nAnother important and pleasurable way of expressing unity is by giving\nsome orderly succession to a number of objects more or less similar. And\nthis succession is most interesting when it is connected with some\ngradual change in the aspect or character of the objects. Thus the\nsuccession of the pillars of a cathedral aisle is most interesting when\nthey retire in perspective, becoming more and more obscure in distance;\nso the succession of mountain promontories one behind another, on the\nflanks of a valley; so the succession of clouds, fading farther and\nfarther towards the horizon; each promontory and each cloud being of\ndifferent shape, yet all evidently following in a calm and appointed\norder. If there be no change at all in the shape or size of the objects,\nthere is no continuity; there is only repetition--monotony. It is the\nchange in shape which suggests the idea of their being individually\nfree, and able to escape, if they liked, from the law that rules them,\nand yet submitting to it. I will leave our chosen illustrative\ncomposition for a moment to take up another, still more expressive of\nthis law. It is one of Turner's most tender studies, a sketch on Calais\nSands at sunset; so delicate in the expression of wave and cloud, that\nit is of no use for me to try to reach it with any kind of outline in a\nwoodcut; but the rough sketch, Fig. 33., is enough to give an idea of\nits arrangement. The aim of the painter has been to give the intensest\nexpression of repose, together with the enchanted lulling, monotonous\nmotion of cloud and wave. All the clouds are moving in innumerable ranks\nafter the sun, meeting towards the point in the horizon where he has\nset; and the tidal waves gain in winding currents upon the sand, with\nthat stealthy haste in which they cross each other so quietly, at their\nedges: just folding one over another as they meet, like a little piece\nof ruffled silk, and leaping up a little as two children kiss and clap\ntheir hands, and then going on again, each in its silent hurry, drawing\npointed arches on the sand as their thin edges intersect in parting; but\nall this would not have been enough expressed without the line of the\nold pier-timbers, black with weeds, strained and bent by the storm\nwaves, and now seeming to stoop in following one another, like dark\nghosts escaping slowly from the cruelty of the pursuing sea.\n\nI need not, I hope, point out to the reader the illustration of this law\nof continuance in the subject chosen for our general illustration. It\nwas simply that gradual succession of the retiring arches of the bridge\nwhich induced Turner to paint the subject at all; and it was this same\nprinciple which led him always to seize on subjects including long\nbridges where-ever he could find them; but especially, observe, unequal\nbridges, having the highest arch at one side rather than at the centre.\nThere is a reason for this, irrespective of general laws of composition,\nand connected with the nature of rivers, which I may as well stop a\nminute to tell you about, and let you rest from the study of\ncomposition.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 33.]\n\nAll rivers, small or large, agree in one character, they like to lean a\nlittle on one side: they cannot bear to have their channels deepest in\nthe middle, but will always, if they can, have one bank to sun\nthemselves upon, and another to get cool under; one shingly shore to\nplay over, where they may be shallow, and foolish, and childlike, and\nanother steep shore, under which they can pause, and purify themselves,\nand get their strength of waves fully together for due occasion. Rivers\nin this way are just like wise men, who keep one side of their life for\nplay, and another for work; and can be brilliant, and chattering, and\ntransparent, when they are at ease, and yet take deep counsel on the\nother side when they set themselves to their main purpose. And rivers\nare just in this divided, also, like wicked and good men: the good\nrivers have serviceable deep places all along their banks, that ships\ncan sail in; but the wicked rivers go scoopingly irregularly under their\nbanks until they get full of strangling eddies, which no boat can row\nover without being twisted against the rocks; and pools like wells,\nwhich no one can get out of but the water-kelpie that lives at the\nbottom;--but, wicked or good, the rivers all agree in having two kinds\nof sides. Now the natural way in which a village stonemason therefore\nthrows a bridge over a strong stream is, of course, to build a great\ndoor to let the cat through, and little doors to let the kittens\nthrough; a great arch for the great current, to give it room in flood\ntime, and little arches for the little currents along the shallow shore.\nThis, even without any prudential respect for the floods of the great\ncurrent, he would do in simple economy of work and stone; for the\nsmaller your arches are, the less material you want on their flanks. Two\narches over the same span of river, supposing the butments are at the\nsame depth, are cheaper than one, and that by a great deal; so that,\nwhere the current is shallow, the village mason makes his arches many\nand low; as the water gets deeper, and it becomes troublesome to build\nhis piers up from the bottom, he throws his arches wider; at last he\ncomes to the deep stream, and, as he cannot build at the bottom of that,\nhe throws his largest arch over it with a leap, and with another little\none or so gains the opposite shore. Of course as arches are wider they\nmust be higher, or they will not stand; so the roadway must rise as the\narches widen. And thus we have the general type of bridge, with its\nhighest and widest arch towards one side, and a train of minor arches\nrunning over the flat shore on the other; usually a steep bank at the\nriver-side next the large arch; always, of course, a flat shore on the\nside of the small ones; and the bend of the river assuredly concave\ntowards this flat, cutting round, with a sweep into the steep bank; or,\nif there is no steep bank, still assuredly cutting into the shore at the\nsteep end of the bridge.\n\nNow this kind of bridge, sympathising, as it does, with the spirit of\nthe river, and marking the nature of the thing it has to deal with and\nconquer, is the ideal of a bridge; and all endeavours to do the thing in\na grand engineer's manner, with a level roadway and equal arches, are\nbarbarous; not only because all monotonous forms are ugly in themselves,\nbut because the mind perceives at once that there has been cost\nuselessly thrown away for the sake of formality.[248]\n\nWell, to return to our continuity. We see that the Turnerian bridge in\nFig. 32. is of the absolutely perfect type, and is still farther\ninteresting by having its main arch crowned by a watch-tower. But as I\nwant you to note especially what perhaps was not the case in the real\nbridge, but is entirely Turner's doing, you will find that though the\narches diminish gradually, not one is _regularly_ diminished--they are\nall of different shapes and sizes: you cannot see this clearly in 32.,\nbut in the larger diagram, Fig. 34., opposite, you will with ease. This\nis indeed also part of the ideal of a bridge, because the lateral\ncurrents near the shore are of course irregular in size, and a simple\nbuilder would naturally vary his arches accordingly; and also, if the\nbottom was rocky, build his piers where the rocks came. But it is not as\na part of bridge ideal, but as a necessity of all noble composition,\nthat this irregularity is introduced by Turner. It at once raises the\nobject thus treated from the lower or vulgar unity of rigid law to the\ngreater unity of clouds, and waves, and trees, and human souls, each\ndifferent, each obedient, and each in harmonious service.\n\n\n4. THE LAW OF CURVATURE.\n\nThere is, however, another point to be noticed in this bridge of\nTurner's. Not only does it slope away unequally at its sides, but it\nslopes in a gradual though very subtle curve. And if you substitute a\nstraight line for this curve (drawing one with a rule from the base of\nthe tower on each side to the ends of the bridge, in Fig. 34., and\neffacing the curve), you will instantly see that the design has suffered\ngrievously. You may ascertain, by experiment, that all beautiful objects\nwhatsoever are thus terminated by delicately curved lines, except where\nthe straight line is indispensable to their use or stability: and that\nwhen a complete system of straight lines, throughout the form, is\nnecessary to that stability, as in crystals, the beauty, if any exists,\nis in colour and transparency, not in form. Cut out the shape of any\ncrystal you like, in white wax or wood, and put it beside a white lily,\nand you will feel the force of the curvature in its purity, irrespective\nof added colour, or other interfering elements of beauty.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 34.]\n\nWell, as curves are more beautiful than straight lines, it is necessary\nto a good composition that its continuities of object, mass, or colour\nshould be, if possible, in curves, rather than straight lines or angular\nones. Perhaps one of the simplest and prettiest examples of a graceful\ncontinuity of this kind is in the line traced at any moment by the corks\nof a net as it is being drawn: nearly every person is more or less\nattracted by the beauty of the dotted line. Now it is almost always\npossible, not only to secure such a continuity in the arrangement or\nboundaries of objects which, like these bridge arches or the corks of\nthe net, are actually connected with each other, but--and this is a\nstill more noble and interesting kind of continuity--among features\nwhich appear at first entirely separate. Thus the towers of\nEhrenbreitstein, on the left, in Fig. 32., appear at first independent\nof each other; but when I give their profile, on a larger scale, Fig.\n35., the reader may easily perceive that there is a subtle cadence and\nharmony among them. The reason of this is, that they are all bounded by\none grand curve, traced by the dotted line; out of the seven towers,\nfour precisely touch this curve, the others only falling back from it\nhere and there to keep the eye from discovering it too easily.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 35.]\n\nAnd it is not only always _possible_ to obtain continuities of this\nkind: it is, in drawing large forest or mountain forms essential to\ntruth. The towers of Ehrenbreitstein might or might not in reality fall\ninto such a curve, but assuredly the basalt rock on which they stand\ndid; for all mountain forms not cloven into absolute precipice, nor\ncovered by straight slopes of shales, are more or less governed by these\ngreat curves, it being one of the aims of Nature in all her work to\nproduce them. The reader must already know this, if he has been able to\nsketch at all among the mountains; if not, let him merely draw for\nhimself, carefully, the outlines of any low hills accessible to him,\nwhere they are tolerably steep, or of the woods which grow on them. The\nsteeper shore of the Thames at Maidenhead, or any of the downs at\nBrighton or Dover, or, even nearer, about Croydon (as Addington Hills),\nare easily accessible to a Londoner; and he will soon find not only how\nconstant, but how graceful the curvature is. Graceful curvature is\ndistinguished from ungraceful by two characters: first, its moderation,\nthat is to say, its close approach to straightness in some parts of its\ncourse;[249] and, secondly, by its variation, that is to say, its never\nremaining equal in degree at different parts of its course.\n\nThis variation is itself twofold in all good curves.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 36.]\n\nA. There is, first, a steady change through the whole line from less to\nmore curvature, or more to less, so that _no_ part of the line is a\nsegment of a circle, or can be drawn by compasses in any way whatever.\nThus, in Fig. 36., _a_ is a bad curve, because it is part of a circle,\nand is therefore monotonous throughout; but _b_ is a good curve, because\nit continually changes its direction as it proceeds.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 37.]\n\nThe _first_ difference between good and bad drawing of tree boughs\nconsists in observance of this fact. Thus, when I put leaves on the line\n_b_, as in Fig. 37., you can immediately feel the springiness of\ncharacter dependent on the changefulness of the curve. You may put\nleaves on the other line for yourself, but you will find you cannot make\na right tree spray of it. For _all_ tree boughs, large or small, as well\nas all noble natural lines whatsoever, agree in this character; and it\nis a point of primal necessity that your eye should always seize and\nyour hand trace it. Here are two more portions of good curves, with\nleaves put on them at the extremities instead of the flanks, Fig. 38.;\nand two showing the arrangement of masses of foliage seen a little\nfarther off, Fig. 39., which you may in like manner amuse yourself by\nturning into segments of circles--you will see with what result. I hope,\nhowever, you have beside you by this time, many good studies of tree\nboughs carefully made, in which you may study variations of curvature in\ntheir most complicated and lovely forms.[250]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 38.]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 39.]\n\nB. Not only does every good curve vary in general tendency, but it is\nmodulated, as it proceeds, by myriads of subordinate curves. Thus the\noutlines of a tree trunk are never as at _a_, Fig. 40, but as at _b_. So\nalso in waves, clouds, and all other nobly formed masses. Thus another\nessential difference between good and bad drawing, or good and bad\nsculpture, depends on the quantity and refinement of minor curvatures\ncarried, by good work, into the great lines. Strictly speaking, however,\nthis is not variation in large curves, but composition of large curves\nout of small ones; it is an increase in the quantity of the beautiful\nelement, _but not a change in its nature_.\n\n\n5. THE LAW OF RADIATION.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 40.]\n\nWe have hitherto been concerned only with the binding of our various\nobjects into beautiful lines or processions. The next point we have to\nconsider is, how we may unite these lines or processions themselves, so\nas to make groups of _them_.\n\nNow, there are two kinds of harmonies of lines. One in which, moving\nmore or less side by side, they variously, but evidently with consent,\nretire from or approach each other, intersect or oppose each other:\ncurrents of melody in music, for different voices, thus approach and\ncross, fall and rise, in harmony; so the waves of the sea, as they\napproach the shore, flow into one another or cross, but with a great\nunity through all; and so various lines of composition often flow\nharmoniously through and across each other in a picture. But the most\nsimple and perfect connexion of lines is by radiation; that is, by their\nall springing from one point, or closing towards it: and this harmony is\noften, in Nature almost always, united with the other; as the boughs of\ntrees, though they intersect and play amongst each other irregularly,\nindicate by their general tendency their origin from one root. An\nessential part of the beauty of all vegetable form is in this radiation:\nit is seen most simply in a single flower or leaf, as in a convolvulus\nbell, or chestnut leaf; but more beautifully in the complicated\narrangements of the large boughs and sprays. For a leaf is only a flat\npiece of radiation; but the tree throws its branches on all sides, and\neven in every profile view of it, which presents a radiation more or\nless correspondent to that of its leaves, it is more beautiful, because\nvaried by the freedom of the separate branches. I believe it has been\nascertained that, in all trees, the angle at which, in their leaves, the\nlateral ribs are set on their central rib is approximately the same at\nwhich the branches leave the great stem; and thus each section of the\ntree would present a kind of magnified view of its own leaf, were it not\nfor the interfering force of gravity on the masses of foliage. This\nforce in proportion to their age, and the lateral leverage upon them,\nbears them downwards at the extremities, so that, as before noticed, the\nlower the bough grows on the stem, the more it droops (Fig. 17, p.\n295.); besides this, nearly all beautiful trees have a tendency to\ndivide into two or more principal masses, which give a prettier and more\ncomplicated symmetry than if one stem ran all the way up the centre.\nFig. 41. may thus be considered the simplest type of tree radiation, as\nopposed to leaf radiation. In this figure, however, all secondary\nramification is unrepresented, for the sake of simplicity; but if we\ntake one half of such a tree, and merely give two secondary branches to\neach main branch (as represented in the general branch structure shown\nat _b_, Fig. 18., p. 296), we shall have the form, Fig. 42. This I\nconsider the perfect general type of tree structure; and it is curiously\nconnected with certain forms of Greek, Byzantine, and Gothic\nornamentation, into the discussion of which, however, we must not enter\nhere. It will be observed, that both in Figs. 41. and 42. all the\nbranches so spring from the main stem as very nearly to suggest their\nunited radiation from the root R. This is by no means universally the\ncase; but if the branches do not bend towards a point in the root, they\nat least converge to some point or other. In the examples in Fig. 43.,\nthe mathematical centre of curvature, _a_, is thus, in one case, on the\nground at some distance from the root, and in the other, near the top of\nthe tree. Half, only, of each tree is given, for the sake of clearness:\nFig. 44. gives both sides of another example, in which the origins of\ncurvature are below the root. As the positions of such points may be\nvaried without end, and as the arrangement of the lines is also farther\ncomplicated by the fact of the boughs springing for the most part in a\nspiral order round the tree, and at proportionate distances, the systems\nof curvature which regulate the form of vegetation are quite infinite.\nInfinite is a word easily said, and easily written, and people do not\nalways mean it when they say it; in this case I _do_ mean it; the number\nof systems is incalculable, and even to furnish any thing like a\nrepresentative number of types, I should have to give several hundreds\nof figures such as Fig. 44.[251]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 41.]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 42.]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 43.]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 44.]\n\nThus far, however, we have only been speaking of the great relations of\nstem and branches. The forms of the branches themselves are regulated by\nstill more subtle laws, for they occupy an intermediate position between\nthe form of the tree and of the leaf. The leaf has a flat ramification;\nthe tree a completely rounded one; the bough is neither rounded nor\nflat, but has a structure exactly balanced between the two, in a\nhalf-flattened, half-rounded flake, closely resembling in shape one of\nthe thick leaves of an artichoke or the flake of a fir cone; by\ncombination forming the solid mass of the tree, as the leaves compose\nthe artichoke head. I have before pointed out to you the general\nresemblance of these branch flakes to an extended hand; but they may be\nmore accurately represented by the ribs of a boat. If you can imagine a\nvery broad-headed and flattened boat applied by its keel to the end of a\nmain branch,[252] as in Fig. 45., the lines which its ribs will take,\nand the general contour of it, as seen in different directions, from\nabove and below; and from one side and another, will give you the\nclosest approximation to the perspectives and foreshortenings of a\nwell-grown branch-flake. Fig. 25. above, page 316., is an unharmed and\nunrestrained shoot of healthy young oak; and if you compare it with Fig.\n45., you will understand at once the action of the lines of leafage; the\nboat only failing as a type in that its ribs are too nearly parallel to\neach other at the sides, while the bough sends all its ramification well\nforwards, rounding to the head, that it may accomplish its part in the\nouter form of the whole tree, yet always securing the compliance with\nthe great universal law that the branches nearest the root bend most\nback; and, of course, throwing _some_ always back as well as forwards;\nthe appearance of reversed action being much increased, and rendered\nmore striking and beautiful, by perspective. Figure 25. shows the\nperspective of such a bough as it is seen from below; Fig. 46. gives\nrudely the look it would have from above.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 45.]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 46.]\n\nYou may suppose, if you have not already discovered, what subtleties of\nperspective and light and shade are involved in the drawing of these\nbranch-flakes, as you see them in different directions and actions; now\nraised, now depressed; touched on the edges by the wind, or lifted up\nand bent back so as to show all the white under surfaces of the leaves\nshivering in light, as the bottom of a boat rises white with spray at\nthe surge-crest; or drooping in quietness towards the dew of the grass\nbeneath them in windless mornings, or bowed down under oppressive grace\nof deep-charged snow. Snow time, by the way, is one of the best for\npractice in the placing of tree masses; but you will only be able to\nunderstand them thoroughly by beginning with a single bough and a few\nleaves placed tolerably even, as in Fig. 38. page 372. First one with\nthree leaves, a central and two lateral ones, as at _a_; then with five,\nas at _b_, and so on; directing your whole attention to the expression,\nboth by contour and light and shade, of the boat-like arrangements,\nwhich in your earlier studies, will have been a good deal confused,\npartly owing to your inexperience, and partly to the depth of shade, or\nabsolute blackness of mass required in those studies.\n\nOne thing more remains to be noted, and I will let you out of the wood.\nYou see that in every generally representative figure I have surrounded\nthe radiating branches with a dotted line: such lines do indeed\nterminate every vegetable form; and you see that they are themselves\nbeautiful curves, which, according to their flow, and the width or\nnarrowness of the spaces they enclose, characterize the species of tree\nor leaf, and express its free or formal action, its grace of youth or\nweight of age. So that, throughout all the freedom of her wildest\nfoliage, Nature is resolved on expressing an encompassing limit; and\nmarking a unity in the whole tree, caused not only by the rising of its\nbranches from a common root, but by their joining in one work, and being\nbound by a common law. And having ascertained this, let us turn back for\na moment to a point in leaf structure which, I doubt not, you must\nalready have observed in your earlier studies, but which it is well to\nstate here, as connected with the unity of the branches in the great\ntrees. You must have noticed, I should think, that whenever a leaf is\ncompound,--that is to say, divided into other leaflets which in any way\nrepeat or imitate the form of the whole leaf,--those leaflets are not\nsymmetrical as the whole leaf is, but always smaller on the side towards\nthe point of the great leaf, so as to express their subordination to it,\nand show, even when they are pulled off, that they are not small\nindependent leaves, but members of one large leaf.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 47.]\n\nFig. 47., which is a block-plan of a leaf of columbine, without its\nminor divisions on the edges, will illustrate the principle clearly. It\nis composed of a central large mass, A, and two lateral ones, of which\nthe one on the right only is lettered, B. Each of these masses is again\ncomposed of three others, a central and two lateral ones; but observe,\nthe minor one, _a_ of A, is balanced equally by its opposite; but the\nminor _b_1 of B is larger than its opposite _b_2. Again, each of these\nminor masses is divided into three; but while the central mass, A of A,\nis symmetrically divided, the B of B is unsymmetrical, its largest\nside-lobe being lowest. Again _b_2, the lobe _c_1 (its lowest lobe in\nrelation to B) is larger than _c_2; and so also in _b_1. So that\nuniversally one lobe of a lateral leaf is always larger than the other,\nand the smaller lobe is that which is nearer the central mass; the lower\nleaf, as it were by courtesy, subduing some of its own dignity or\npower, in the immediate presence of the greater or captain leaf; and\nalways expressing, therefore, its own subordination and secondary\ncharacter. This law is carried out even in single leaves. As far as I\nknow, the upper half, towards the point of the spray, is always the\nsmaller; and a slightly different curve, more convex at the springing,\nis used for the lower side, giving an exquisite variety to the form of\nthe whole leaf; so that one of the chief elements in the beauty of every\nsubordinate leaf throughout the tree, is made to depend on its\nconfession of its own lowliness and subjection.\n\nAnd now, if we bring together in one view the principles we have\nascertained in trees, we shall find they may be summed under four great\nlaws; and that all perfect[253] vegetable form is appointed to express\nthese four laws in noble balance of authority.\n\n1. Support from one living root.\n\n2. Radiation, or tendency of force from some one given point, either in\nthe root, or in some stated connexion with it.\n\n3. Liberty of each bough to seek its own livelihood and happiness\naccording to its needs, by irregularities of action both in its play and\nits work, either stretching out to get its required nourishment from\nlight and rain, by finding some sufficient breathing-place among the\nother branches, or knotting and gathering itself up to get strength for\nany load which its fruitful blossoms may lay upon it, and for any stress\nof its storm-tossed luxuriance of leaves; or playing hither and thither\nas the fitful sunshine may tempt its young shoots, in their undecided\nstates of mind about their future life.\n\n4. Imperative requirement of each bough to stop within certain limits,\nexpressive of its kindly fellowship and fraternity with the boughs in\nits neighborhood; and to work with them according to its power,\nmagnitude, and state of health, to bring out the general perfectness of\nthe great curve, and circumferent stateliness of the whole tree.\n\nI think I may leave you, unhelped, to work out the moral analogies of\nthese laws; you may, perhaps, however, be a little puzzled to see the\nmeeting of the second one. It typically expresses that healthy human\nactions should spring radiantly (like rays) from some single heart\nmotive; the most beautiful systems of action taking place when this\nmotive lies at the root of the whole life, and the action is clearly\nseen to proceed from it; while also many beautiful secondary systems of\naction taking place from motives not so deep or central, but in some\nbeautiful subordinate connexion with the central or life motive.\n\nThe other laws, if you think over them, you will find equally\nsignificative; and as you draw trees more and more in their various\nstates of health and hardship, you will be every day more struck by the\nbeauty of the types they present of the truths most essential for\nmankind to know;[254] and you will see what this vegetation of the\nearth, which is necessary to our life, first, as purifying the air for\nus and then as food, and just as necessary to our joy in all places of\nthe earth,--what these trees and leaves, I say, are meant to teach us as\nwe contemplate them, and read or hear their lovely language, written or\nspoken for us, not in frightful black letters, nor in dull sentences,\nbut in fair green and shadowy shapes of waving words, and blossomed\nbrightness of odoriferous wit, and sweet whispers of unintrusive wisdom,\nand playful morality.\n\nWell, I am sorry myself to leave the wood, whatever my reader may be;\nbut leave it we must, or we shall compose no more pictures to-day.\n\nThis law of radiation, then, enforcing unison of action in arising from,\nor proceeding to, some given point, is perhaps, of all principles of\ncomposition, the most influential in producing the beauty of groups of\nform. Other laws make them forcible or interesting, but this generally\nis chief in rendering them beautiful. In the arrangement of masses in\npictures, it is constantly obeyed by the great composers; but, like the\nlaw of principality, with careful concealment of its imperativeness, the\npoint to which the lines of main curvature are directed being very often\nfar away out of the picture. Sometimes, however, a system of curves will\nbe employed definitely to exalt, by their concurrence, the value of some\nleading object, and then the law becomes traceable enough.\n\nIn the instance before us, the principal object being, as we have seen,\nthe tower on the bridge, Turner has determined that his system of\ncurvature should have its origin in the top of this tower. The diagram\nFig. 34. page 369, compared with Fig. 32. page 361, will show how this\nis done. One curve joins the two towers, and is continued by the back of\nthe figure sitting on the bank into the piece of bent timber. This is a\nlimiting curve of great importance, and Turner has drawn a considerable\npart of it with the edge of the timber very carefully, and then led the\neye up to the sitting girl by some white spots and indications of a\nledge in the bank; then the passage to the tops of the towers cannot be\nmissed.\n\nThe next curve is begun and drawn carefully for half an inch of its\ncourse by the rudder; it is then taken up by the basket and the heads of\nthe figures, and leads accurately to the tower angle. The gunwales of\nboth the boats begin the next two curves, which meet in the same point;\nand all are centralised by the long reflection which continues the\nvertical lines.\n\nSubordinated to this first system of curves there is another, begun by\nthe small crossing bar of wood inserted in the angle behind the rudder;\ncontinued by the bottom of the bank on which the figure sits,\ninterrupted forcibly beyond it,[255] but taken up again by the\nwater-line leading to the bridge foot, and passing on in delicate\nshadows under the arches, not easily shown in so rude a diagram, towards\nthe other extremity of the bridge. This is a most important curve,\nindicating that the force and sweep of the river have indeed been in old\ntimes under the large arches; while the antiquity of the bridge is told\nus by the long tongue of land, either of carted rubbish, or washed down\nby some minor stream, which has interrupted this curve, and is now used\nas a landing-place for the boats, and for embarkation of merchandise, of\nwhich some bales and bundles are laid in a heap, immediately beneath the\ngreat tower. A common composer would have put these bales to one side or\nthe other, but Turner knows better; he uses them as a foundation for his\ntower, adding to its importance precisely as the sculptured base adorns\na pillar; and he farther increases the aspect of its height by throwing\nthe reflection of it far down in the nearer water. All the great\ncomposers have this same feeling about sustaining their vertical masses:\nyou will constantly find Prout using the artifice most dexterously (see,\nfor instance, the figure with the wheelbarrow under the great tower, in\nthe sketch of St. Nicolas, at Prague, and the white group of figures\nunder the tower in the sketch of Augsburg[256]); and Veronese, Titian,\nand Tintoret continually put their principal figures at bases of\npillars. Turner found out their secret very early, the most prominent\ninstance of his composition on this principle being the drawing of Turin\nfrom the Superga, in Hakewell's Italy.\n\nI chose Fig. 20., already given to illustrate foliage drawing, chiefly\nbecause, being another instance of precisely the same arrangement, it\nwill serve to convince you of its being intentional. There, the\nvertical, formed by the larger tree, is continued by the figure of the\nfarmer, and that of one of the smaller trees by his stick. The lines of\nthe interior mass of the bushes radiate, under the law of radiation,\nfrom a point behind the farmer's head; but their outline curves are\ncarried on and repeated, under the law of continuity, by the curves of\nthe dog and boy--by the way, note the remarkable instance in these of\nthe use of darkest lines towards the light;--all more or less guiding\nthe eye up to the right, in order to bring it finally to the Keep of\nWindsor, which is the central object of the picture, as the bridge tower\nis in the Coblentz. The wall on which the boy climbs answers the purpose\nof contrasting, both in direction and character, with these greater\ncurves; thus corresponding as nearly as possible to the minor tongue of\nland in the Coblentz. This, however, introduces us to another law, which\nwe must consider separately.\n\n\n6. THE LAW OF CONTRAST.\n\nOf course the character of everything is best manifested by Contrast.\nRest can only be enjoyed after labour; sound, to be heard clearly, must\nrise out of silence; light is exhibited by darkness, darkness by light;\nand so on in all things. Now in art every colour has an opponent colour,\nwhich, if brought near it, will relieve it more completely than any\nother; so, also, every form and line may be made more striking to the\neye by an opponent form or line near them; a curved line is set off by a\nstraight one, a massy form by a slight one, and so on; and in all good\nwork nearly double the value, which any given colour or form would have\nuncombined, is given to each by contrast.[257]\n\nIn this case again, however, a too manifest use of the artifice\nvulgarises a picture. Great painters do not commonly, or very visibly,\nadmit violent contrast. They introduce it by stealth and with\nintermediate links of tender change; allowing, indeed, the opposition to\ntell upon the mind as a surprise, but not as a shock.[258]\n\nThus in the rock of Ehrenbreitstein, Fig. 35., the main current of the\nlines being downwards, in a convex swell, they are suddenly stopped at\nthe lowest tower by a counter series of beds, directed nearly straight\nacross them. This adverse force sets off and relieves the great\ncurvature, but it is reconciled to it by a series of radiating lines\nbelow, which at first sympathize with the oblique bar, then gradually\nget steeper, till they meet and join in the fall of the great curve. No\npassage, however intentionally monotonous, is ever introduced by a good\nartist without _some_ slight counter current of this kind; so much,\nindeed, do the great composers feel the necessity of it, that they will\neven do things purposely ill or unsatisfactorily, in order to give\ngreater value to their well-doing in other places. In a skilful poet's\nversification the so-called bad or inferior lines are not inferior\nbecause he could not do them better, but because he feels that if all\nwere equally weighty, there would be no real sense of weight anywhere;\nif all were equally melodious, the melody itself would be fatiguing; and\nhe purposely introduces the labouring or discordant verse, that the full\nring may be felt in his main sentence, and the finished sweetness in his\nchosen rhythm.[259] And continually in painting, inferior artists\ndestroy their work by giving too much of all that they think is good,\nwhile the great painter gives just enough to be enjoyed, and passes to\nan opposite kind of enjoyment, or to an inferior state of enjoyment: he\ngives a passage of rich, involved, exquisitely wrought colour, then\npasses away into slight, and pale and simple colour; he paints for a\nminute or two with intense decision, then suddenly becomes, as the\nspectator thinks, slovenly; but he is not slovenly: you could not have\n_taken_ any more decision from him just then; you have had as much as is\ngood for you; he paints over a great space of his picture forms of the\nmost rounded and melting tenderness, and suddenly, as you think by a\nfreak, gives you a bit as jagged and sharp as a leafless blackthorn.\nPerhaps the most exquisite piece of subtle contrast in the world of\npainting is the arrow point, laid sharp against the white side and among\nthe flowing hair of Correggio's Antiope. It is quite singular how very\nlittle contrast will sometimes serve to make an entire group of forms\ninteresting which would otherwise have been valueless. There is a good\ndeal of picturesque material, for instance, in this top of an old tower,\nFig. 48., tiles and stones and sloping roof not disagreeably mingled;\nbut all would have been unsatisfactory if there had not happened to be\nthat iron ring on the inner wall, which by its vigorous black\n_circular_ line precisely opposes all the square and angular characters\nof the battlements and roof. Draw the tower without the ring, and see\nwhat a difference it will make.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 48.]\n\nOne of the most important applications of the law of contrast is in\nassociation with the law of continuity, causing an unexpected but gentle\nbreak in a continuous series. This artifice is perpetual in music, and\nperpetual also in good illumination; the way in which little surprises\nof change are prepared in any current borders, or chains of ornamental\ndesign, being one of the most subtle characteristics of the work of the\ngood periods. We take, for instance, a bar of ornament between two\nwritten columns of an early 14th Century MS., and at the first glance we\nsuppose it to be quite monotonous all the way up, composed of a winding\ntendril, with alternately a blue leaf and a scarlet bud. Presently,\nhowever, we see that, in order to observe the law of principality there\nis one large scarlet leaf instead of a bud, nearly half-way up, which\nforms a centre to the whole rod; and when we begin to examine the order\nof the leaves, we find it varied carefully. Let A stand for scarlet bud,\n_b_ for blue leaf, _c_ for two blue leaves on one stalk, _s_ for a stalk\nwithout a leaf, and R for the large red leaf. Then counting from the\nground, the order begins as follows:\n\n_b_, _b_, A; _b_, _s_, _b_, A; _b_, _b_, A; _b_, _b_, A; and we think we\nshall have two _b_'s and an A all the way, when suddenly it becomes _b_,\nA; _b_, R; _b_, A; _b_, A; _b_, A; and we think we are going to have\n_b_, A continued; but no: here it becomes _b_, _s_; _b_, _s_; _b_, A;\n_b_, _s_; _b_, _s_; _c_, _s_; _b_, _s_; _b_, _s_; and we think we are\nsurely going to have _b_, _s_ continued, but behold it runs away to the\nend with a quick _b_, _b_, A; _b_, _b_, _b_, _b_![260] Very often,\nhowever, the designer is satisfied with _one_ surprise, but I never saw\na good illuminated border without one at least; and no series of any\nkind is ever introduced by a great composer in a painting without a snap\nsomewhere. There is a pretty one in Turner's drawing of Rome, with the\nlarge balustrade for a foreground in the Hakewell's Italy series: the\nsingle baluster struck out of the line, and showing the street below\nthrough the gap, simply makes the whole composition right, when\notherwise, it would have been stiff and absurd.\n\nIf you look back to Fig. 48. you will see, in the arrangement of the\nbattlements, a simple instance of the use of such variation. The whole\ntop of the tower, though actually three sides of a square, strikes the\neye as a continuous series of five masses. The first two, on the left,\nsomewhat square and blank; then the next two higher and richer, the\ntiles being seen on their slopes. Both these groups being couples, there\nis enough monotony in the series to make a change pleasant; and the last\nbattlement, therefore, is a little higher than the first two,--a little\nlower than the second two,--and different in shape from either. Hide it\nwith your finger, and see how ugly and formal the other four battlements\nlook.\n\nThere are in this figure several other simple illustrations of the laws\nwe have been tracing. Thus the whole shape of the wall's mass being\nsquare, it is well, still for the sake of contrast, to oppose it not\nonly by the element of curvature, in the ring, and lines of the roof\nbelow, but by that of sharpness; hence the pleasure which the eye takes\nin the projecting point of the roof. Also because the walls are thick\nand sturdy, it is well to contrast their strength with weakness;\ntherefore we enjoy the evident decrepitude of this roof as it sinks\nbetween them. The whole mass being nearly white, we want a contrasting\nshadow somewhere; and get it, under our piece of decrepitude. This\nshade, with the tiles of the wall below, forms another pointed mass,\nnecessary to the first by the law of repetition. Hide this inferior\nangle with your finger, and see how ugly the other looks. A sense of the\nlaw of symmetry, though you might hardly suppose it, has some share in\nthe feeling with which you look at the battlements; there is a certain\npleasure in the opposed slopes of their top, on one side down to the\nleft, on the other to the right. Still less would you think the law of\nradiation had anything to do with the matter: but if you take the\nextreme point of the black shadow on the left for a centre and follow\nfirst the low curve of the eaves of the wall, it will lead you, if you\ncontinue it, to the point of the tower cornice; follow the second curve,\nthe top of the tiles of the wall, and it will strike the top of the\nright-hand battlement; then draw a curve from the highest point of the\nangle battlement on the left, through the points of the roof and its\ndark echo; and you will see how the whole top of the tower radiates from\nthis lowest dark point. There are other curvatures crossing these main\nones, to keep them from being too conspicuous. Follow the curve of the\nupper roof, it will take you to the top of the highest battlement; and\nthe stones indicated at the right-hand side of the tower are more\nextended at the bottom, in order to get some less direct expression of\nsympathy, such as irregular stones may be capable of, with the general\nflow of the curves from left to right.\n\nYou may not readily believe, at first, that all these laws are indeed\ninvolved in so trifling a piece of composition. But as you study longer,\nyou will discover that these laws, and many more, are obeyed by the\npowerful composers in every _touch_: that literally, there is never a\ndash of their pencil which is not carrying out appointed purposes of\nthis kind in twenty various ways at once; and that there is as much\ndifference, in way of intention and authority, between one of the great\ncomposers ruling his colours, and a common painter confused by them, as\nthere is between a general directing the march of an army, and an old\nlady carried off her feet by a mob.\n\n\n7. THE LAW OF INTERCHANGE.\n\nClosely connected with the law of contrast is a law which enforces the\nunity of opposite things, by giving to each a portion of the character\nof the other. If, for instance, you divide a shield into two masses of\ncolour, all the way down--suppose blue and white, and put a bar, or\nfigure of an animal, partly on one division, partly on the other, you\nwill find it pleasant to the eye if you make the part of the animal blue\nwhich comes upon the white half, and white which comes upon the blue\nhalf. This is done in heraldry, partly for the sake of perfect\nintelligibility, but yet more for the sake of delight in interchange of\ncolour, since, in all ornamentation whatever, the practice is\ncontinual, in the ages of good design.\n\nSometimes this alternation is merely a reversal of contrasts; as that,\nafter red has been for some time on one side, and blue on the other, red\nshall pass to blue's side and blue to red's. This kind of alternation\ntakes place simply in four-quartered shields; in more subtle pieces of\ntreatment, a little bit only of each colour is carried into the other,\nand they are as it were dovetailed together. One of the most curious\nfacts which will impress itself upon you, when you have drawn some time\ncarefully from Nature in light and shade, is the appearance of\nintentional artifice with which contrasts of this alternate kind are\nproduced by her; the artistry with which she will darken a tree trunk as\nlong as it comes against light sky, and throw sunlight on it precisely\nat the spot where it comes against a dark hill, and similarly treat all\nher masses of shade and colour, is so great, that if you only follow her\nclosely, every one who looks at your drawing with attention will think\nthat you have been inventing the most artifically and unnaturally\ndelightful interchanges of shadow that could possibly be devised by\nhuman wit.\n\nYou will find this law of interchange insisted upon at length by Prout\nin his \"Lessons on Light and Shade:\" it seems, of all his principles of\ncomposition, to be the one he is most conscious of; many others he obeys\nby instinct, but this he formally accepts and forcibly declares.\n\nThe typical purpose of the law of interchange is, of course, to teach us\nhow opposite natures may be helped and strengthened by receiving each,\nas far as they can, some impress or imparted power, from the other.\n\n\n8. THE LAW OF CONSISTENCY.\n\nIt is to be remembered, in the next place, that while contrast exhibits\nthe _characters_ of things, it very often neutralises or paralyses their\n_power_. A number of white things may be shown to be clearly white by\nopposition of a black thing, but if you want the full power of their\ngathered light, the black thing may be seriously in our way. Thus, while\ncontrast displays things, it is unity and sympathy which employ them,\nconcentrating the power of several into a mass. And, not in art merely,\nbut in all the affairs of life, the wisdom of man is continually called\nupon to reconcile these opposite methods of exhibiting, or using, the\nmaterials in his power. By change he gives them pleasantness, and by\nconsistency value; by change he is refreshed, and by perseverence\nstrengthened.\n\nHence many compositions address themselves to the spectator by aggregate\nforce of colour or line, more than by contrasts of either; many noble\npictures are painted almost exclusively in various tones of red, or\ngrey, or gold, so as to be instantly striking by their breadth of flush,\nor glow, or tender coldness, these qualities being exhibited only by\nslight and subtle use of contrast. Similarly as to form; some\ncompositions associate massive and rugged forms, others slight and\ngraceful ones, each with few interruptions by lines of contrary\ncharacter. And, in general, such compositions possess higher sublimity\nthan those which are more mingled in their elements. They tell a special\ntale, and summon a definite state of feeling, while the grand\ncompositions merely please the eye.\n\nThis unity or breadth of character generally attaches most to the works\nof the greatest men; their separate pictures have all separate aims. We\nhave not, in each, grey colour set against sombre, and sharp forms\nagainst soft, and loud passages against low; but we have the bright\npicture, with its delicate sadness; the sombre picture, with its single\nray of relief; the stern picture, with only one tender group of lines;\nthe soft and calm picture, with only one rock angle at its flank; and so\non. Hence the variety of their work, as well as its impressiveness. The\nprincipal bearing of this law, however, is on the separate masses or\ndivisions of a picture: the character of the whole composition may be\nbroken or various, if we please, but there must certainly be a tendency\nto consistent assemblage in its divisions. As an army may act on several\npoints at once, but can only act effectually by having somewhere formed\nand regular masses, and not wholly by skirmishers; so a picture may be\nvarious in its tendencies, but must be somewhere united and coherent in\nits masses. Good composers are always associating their colours in great\ngroups; binding their forms together by encompassing lines, and\nsecuring, by various dexterities of expedient, what they themselves call\n\"breadth:\" that is to say, a large gathering of each kind of thing into\none place; light being gathered to light, darkness to darkness, and\ncolour to colour. If, however, this be done by introducing false lights\nor false colours, it is absurd and monstrous; the skill of a painter\nconsists in obtaining breadth by rational arrangement of his objects,\nnot by forced or wanton treatment of them. It is an easy matter to paint\none thing all white, and another all black or brown; but not an easy\nmatter to assemble all the circumstances which will naturally produce\nwhite in one place, and brown in another. Generally speaking, however,\nbreadth will result in sufficient degree from fidelity of study: Nature\nis always broad; and if you paint her colours in true relations, you\nwill paint them in majestic masses. If you find your work look broken\nand scattered, it is, in all probability, not only ill composed, but\nuntrue.\n\nThe opposite quality to breadth, that of division or scattering of light\nand colour, has a certain contrasting charm, and is occasionally\nintroduced with exquisite effect by good composers.[261] Still, it is\nnever the mere scattering, but the order discernible through this\nscattering, which is the real source of pleasure; not the mere\nmultitude, but the constellation of multitude. The broken lights in the\nwork of a good painter wander like flocks upon the hills, not\nunshepherded; speaking of life and peace: the broken lights of a bad\npainter fall like hailstones, and are capable only of mischief, leaving\nit to be wished they were also of dissolution.\n\n\n9. THE LAW OF HARMONY.\n\nThis last law is not, strictly speaking, so much one of composition as\nof truth, but it must guide composition, and is properly, therefore, to\nbe stated in this place.\n\nGood drawing is, as we have seen, an _abstract_ of natural facts; you\ncannot represent all that you would, but must continually be falling\nshort, whether you will or no, of the force, or quantity, of Nature.\nNow, suppose that your means and time do not admit of your giving the\ndepth of colour in the scene, and that you are obliged to paint it\npaler. If you paint all the colours proportionately paler, as if an\nequal quantity of tint had been washed away from each of them, you still\nobtain a harmonious, though not an equally forcible statement of natural\nfact. But if you take away the colours unequally, and leave some tints\nnearly as deep as they are in Nature, while others are much subdued, you\nhave no longer a true statement. You cannot say to the observer, \"Fancy\nall those colours a little deeper, and you will have the actual fact.\"\nHowever he adds in imagination, or takes away, something is sure to be\nstill wrong. The picture is out of harmony.\n\nIt will happen, however, much more frequently, that you have to darken\nthe whole system of colours, than to make them paler. You remember, in\nyour first studies of colour from Nature, you were to leave the passages\nof light which were too bright to be imitated, as white paper. But, in\ncompleting the picture, it becomes necessary to put colour into them;\nand then the other colours must be made darker, in some fixed relation\nto them. If you deepen all proportionately, though the whole scene is\ndarker than reality, it is only as if you were looking at the reality in\na lower light: but if, while you darken some of the tints, you leave\nothers undarkened, the picture is out of harmony, and will not give the\nimpression of truth.\n\nIt is not, indeed, possible to deepen _all_ the colours so much as to\nrelieve the lights in their natural degree; you would merely sink most\nof your colours, if you tried to do so, into a broad mass of blackness:\nbut it is quite possible to lower them harmoniously, and yet more in\nsome parts of the picture than in others, so as to allow you to show the\nlight you want in a visible relief. In well-harmonised pictures this is\ndone by gradually deepening the tone of the picture towards the lighter\nparts of it, without materially lowering it in the very dark parts; the\ntendency in such pictures being, of course, to include large masses of\nmiddle tints. But the principal point to be observed in doing this, is\nto deepen the individual tints without dirtying or obscuring them. It is\neasy to lower the tone of the picture by washing it over with grey or\nbrown; and easy to see the effect of the landscape, when its colours are\nthus universally polluted with black, by using the black convex mirror,\none of the most pestilent inventions for falsifying nature and degrading\nart which ever was put into an artist's hand.[262] For the thing\nrequired is not to darken pale yellow by mixing grey with it, but to\ndeepen the pure yellow; not to darken crimson by mixing black with it,\nbut by making it deeper and richer crimson: and thus the required effect\ncould only be seen in Nature, if you had pieces of glass of the colour\nof every object in your landscape, and of every minor hue that made up\nthose colours, and then could see the real landscape through this deep\ngorgeousness of the varied glass. You cannot do this with glass, but you\ncan do it for yourself as you work; that is to say, you can put deep\nblue for pale blue, deep gold for pale gold, and so on, in the\nproportion you need; and then you may paint as forcibly as you choose,\nbut your work will still be in the manner of Titian, not of Caravaggio\nor Spagnoletto, or any other of the black slaves of painting.[263]\n\nSupposing those scales of colour, which I told you to prepare in order\nto show you the relations of colour to grey, were quite accurately made,\nand numerous enough, you would have nothing more to do, in order to\nobtain a deeper tone in any given mass of colour, than to substitute for\neach of its hues the hue as many degrees deeper in the scale as you\nwanted, that is to say, if you want to deepen the whole two degrees,\nsubstituting for the yellow No. 5. the yellow No. 7., and for the red\nNo. 9. the red No. 11., and so on; but the hues of any object in Nature\nare far too numerous, and their degrees too subtle, to admit of so\nmechanical a process. Still, you may see the principle of the whole\nmatter clearly by taking a group of colours out of your scale, arranging\nthem prettily, and then washing them all over with grey: that represents\nthe treatment of Nature by the black mirror. Then arrange the same group\nof colours, with the tints five or six degrees deeper in the scale; and\nthat will represent the treatment of Nature by Titian.\n\nYou can only, however, feel your way fully to the right of the thing by\nworking from Nature.\n\nThe best subject on which to begin a piece of study of this kind is a\ngood thick tree trunk, seen against blue sky with some white clouds in\nit. Paint the clouds in true and tenderly gradated white; then give the\nsky a bold full blue, bringing them well out; then paint the trunk and\nleaves grandly dark against all, but in such glowing dark green and\nbrown as you see they will bear. Afterwards proceed to more complicated\nstudies, matching the colours carefully first by your old method; then\ndeepening each colour with its own tint, and being careful, above all\nthings, to keep truth of equal change when the colours are connected\nwith each other, as in dark and light sides of the same object. Much\nmore aspect and sense of harmony are gained by the precision with which\nyou observe the relation of colours in dark sides and light sides, and\nthe influence of modifying reflections, than by mere accuracy of added\ndepth in independent colours.\n\nThis harmony of tone, as it is generally called, is the most important\nof those which the artist has to regard. But there are all kinds of\nharmonies in a picture, according to its mode of production. There is\neven a harmony of _touch_. If you paint one part of it very rapidly and\nforcibly, and another part slowly and delicately, each division of the\npicture may be right separately, but they will not agree together: the\nwhole will be effectless and valueless, out of harmony. Similarly, if\nyou paint one part of it by a yellow light in a warm day, and another by\na grey light in a cold day, though both may have been sunlight, and both\nmay be well toned, and have their relative shadows truly cast, neither\nwill look like light: they will destroy each other's power, by being out\nof harmony. These are only broad and definable instances of discordance;\nbut there is an extent of harmony in all good work much too subtle for\ndefinition; depending on the draughtsman's carrying everything he draws\nup to just the balancing and harmonious point, in finish, and colour,\nand depth of tone, and intensity of moral feeling, and style of touch,\nall considered at once; and never allowing himself to lean too\nemphatically on detached parts, or exalt one thing at the expense of\nanother, or feel acutely in one place and coldly in another. If you have\ngot some of Cruikshank's etchings, you will be able, I think, to feel\nthe nature of harmonious treatment in a simple kind, by comparing them\nwith any of Richter's illustrations to the numerous German story-books\nlately published at Christmas, with all the German stories spoiled.\nCruikshank's work is often incomplete in character and poor in incident,\nbut, as drawing, it is _perfect_ in harmony. The pure and simple effects\nof daylight which he gets by his thorough mastery of treatment in this\nrespect, are quite unrivalled, as far as I know, by any other work\nexecuted with so few touches. His vignettes to Grimm's German stories,\nalready recommended, are the most remarkable in this quality. Richter's\nillustrations, on the contrary, are of a very high stamp as respects\nunderstanding of human character, with infinite playfulness and\ntenderness of fancy; but, as drawings, they are almost unendurably out\nof harmony, violent blacks in one place being continually opposed to\ntrenchant white in another; and, as is almost sure to be the case with\nbad harmonists, the local colour hardly felt anywhere. All German work\nis apt to be out of harmony, in consequence of its too frequent\nconditions of affectation, and its wilful refusals of fact; as well as\nby reason of a feverish kind of excitement, which dwells violently on\nparticular points, and makes all the lines of thought in the picture to\nstand on end, as it were, like a cat's fur electrified; while good work\nis always as quiet as a couchant leopard, and as strong.\n\nI have now stated to you all the laws of composition which occur to me\nas capable of being illustrated or defined; but there are multitudes of\nothers which, in the present state of my knowledge, I cannot define, and\nothers which I never hope to define; and these the most important, and\nconnected with the deepest powers of the art. Among those which I hope\nto be able to explain when I have thought of them more, are the laws\nwhich relate to nobleness and ignobleness; that ignobleness especially\nwhich we commonly call \"vulgarity,\" and which, in its essence, is one of\nthe most curious subjects of inquiry connected with human feeling. Among\nthose which I never hope to explain, are chiefly laws of expression, and\nothers bearing simply on simple matters; but, for that very reason, more\ninfluential than any others. These are, from the first, as inexplicable\nas our bodily sensations are; it being just as impossible, I think, to\nexplain why one succession of musical notes[264] shall be noble and\npathetic, and such as might have been sung by Casella to Dante, and why\nanother succession is base and ridiculous, and would be fit only for the\nreasonably good ear of Bottom, as to explain why we like sweetness, and\ndislike bitterness. The best part of every great work is always\ninexplicable: it is good because it is good; and innocently gracious,\nopening as the green of the earth, or falling as the dew of heaven.\n\nBut though you cannot explain them, you may always render yourself more\nand more sensitive to these higher qualities by the discipline which you\ngenerally give to your character, and this especially with regard to the\nchoice of incidents; a kind of composition in some sort easier than the\nartistical arrangements of lines and colours, but in every sort nobler,\nbecause addressed to deeper feelings.\n\nFor instance, in the \"Datur Hora Quieti,\" the last vignette to Roger's\nPoems, the plough in the foreground has three purposes. The first\npurpose is to meet the stream of sunlight on the river, and make it\nbrighter by opposition; but any dark object whatever would have done\nthis. Its second purpose is by its two arms, to repeat the cadence of\nthe group of the two ships, and thus give a greater expression of\nrepose; but two sitting figures would have done this. Its third and\nchief, or pathetic, purpose is, as it lies abandoned in the furrow (the\nvessels also being moored, and having their sails down), to be a type of\nhuman labour closed with the close of day. The parts of it on which the\nhand leans are brought most clearly into sight; and they are the chief\ndark of the picture, because the tillage of the ground is required of\nman as a punishment; but they make the soft light of the setting sun\nbrighter, because rest is sweetest after toil. These thoughts may never\noccur to us as we glance carelessly at the design; and yet their under\ncurrent assuredly affects the feelings, and increases, as the painter\nmeant it should, the impression of melancholy, and of peace.\n\nAgain, in the \"Lancaster Sands,\" which is one of the plates I have\nmarked as most desirable for your possession; the stream of light which\nfalls from the setting sun on the advancing tide stands similarly in\nneed of some force of near object to relieve its brightness. But the\nincident which Turner has here adopted is the swoop of an angry seagull\nat a dog, who yelps at it, drawing back as the wave rises over his feet,\nand the bird shrieks within a foot of his face. Its unexpected boldness\nis a type of the anger of its ocean element, and warns us of the sea's\nadvance just as surely as the abandoned plough told us of the ceased\nlabour of the day.\n\nIt is not, however, so much in the selection of single incidents of\nthis kind as in the feeling which regulates the arrangement of the whole\nsubject that the mind of a great composer is known. A single incident\nmay be suggested by a felicitous chance, as a pretty motto might be for\nthe heading of a chapter. But the great composers so arrange _all_ their\ndesigns that one incident illustrates another, just as one colour\nrelieves another. Perhaps the \"Heysham,\" of the Yorkshire series which,\nas to its locality, may be considered a companion to the last drawing we\nhave spoken of, the \"Lancaster Sands,\" presents as interesting an\nexample as we could find of Turner's feeling in this respect. The\nsubject is a simple north-country village, on the shore of Morecambe\nBay; not in the common sense, a picturesque village: there are no pretty\nbow-windows, or red roofs, or rocky steps of entrance to the rustic\ndoors, or quaint gables; nothing but a single street of thatched and\nchiefly clay-built cottages, ranged in a somewhat monotonous line, the\nroofs so green with moss that at first we hardly discern the houses from\nthe fields and trees. The village street is closed at the end by a\nwooden gate, indicating the little traffic there is on the road through\nit, and giving it something the look of a large farmstead, in which a\nright of way lies through the yard. The road which leads to this gate is\nfull of ruts, and winds down a bad bit of hill between two broken banks\nof moor ground, succeeding immediately to the few enclosures which\nsurround the village; they can hardly be called gardens; but a decayed\nfragment or two of fencing fill the gaps in the bank; and a\nclothes-line, with some clothes on it, striped blue and red, and a\nsmock-frock, is stretched between the trunks of some stunted willows; a\n_very_ small haystack and pigstye being seen at the back of the cottage\nbeyond. An empty, two-wheeled, lumbering cart, drawn by a pair of horses\nwith huge wooden collars, the driver sitting lazily in the sun, sideways\non the leader, is going slowly home along the rough road, it being about\ncountry dinner-time. At the end of the village there is a better house,\nwith three chimneys and a dormer window in its roof, and the roof is of\nstone shingle instead of thatch, but very rough. This house is no doubt\nthe clergyman's; there is some smoke from one of its chimneys, none\nfrom any other in the village; this smoke is from the lowest chimney at\nthe back, evidently that of the kitchen, and it is rather thick, the\nfire not having been long lighted. A few hundred yards from the\nclergyman's house, nearer the shore, is the church, discernible from the\ncottage only by its low-arched belfry, a little neater than one would\nexpect in such a village; perhaps lately built by the Puseyite\nincumbent;[265] and beyond the church, close to the sea, are two\nfragments of a border war-tower, standing on their circular mound, worn\non its brow deep into edges and furrows by the feet of the village\nchildren. On the bank of moor, which forms the foreground, are a few\ncows, the carter's dog barking at a vixenish one: the milkmaid is\nfeeding another, a gentle white one, which turns its head to her,\nexpectant of a handful of fresh hay, which she has brought for it in her\nblue apron, fastened up round her waist; she stands with her pail on her\nhead, evidently the village coquette, for she has a neat bodice, and\npretty striped petticoat under the blue apron, and red stockings. Nearer\nus, the cowherd, barefooted, stands on a piece of the limestone rock\n(for the ground is thistly and not pleasurable to bare feet);--whether\nboy or girl we are not sure; it may be a boy, with a girl's worn-out\nbonnet on, or a girl with a pair of ragged trowsers on; probably the\nfirst, as the old bonnet is evidently useful to keep the sun out of our\neyes when we are looking for strayed cows among the moorland hollows,\nand helps us at present to watch (holding the bonnet's edge down) the\nquarrel of the vixenish cow with the dog, which, leaning on our long\nstick, we allow to proceed without any interference. A little to the\nright the hay is being got in, of which the milkmaid has just taken her\napronful to the white cow; but the hay is very thin, and cannot well be\nraked up because of the rocks; we must glean it like corn, hence the\nsmallness of our stack behind the willows, and a woman is pressing a\nbundle of it hard together, kneeling against the rock's edge, to carry\nit safely to the hay-cart without dropping any. Beyond the village is a\nrocky hill, deep set with brushwood, a square crag or two of limestone\nemerging here and there, with pleasant turf on their brows, heaved in\nrusset and mossy mounds against the sky, which, clear and calm, and as\ngolden as the moss, stretches down behind it towards the sea. A single\ncottage just shows its roof over the edge of the hill, looking seaward;\nperhaps one of the village shepherds is a sea captain now, and may have\nbuilt it there, that his mother may first see the sails of his ship\nwhenever it runs into the bay. Then under the hill, and beyond the\nborder tower, is the blue sea itself, the waves flowing in over the sand\nin long curved lines, slowly; shadows of cloud and gleams of shallow\nwater on white sand alternating--miles away; but no sail is visible, not\none fisherboat on the beach, not one dark speck on the quiet horizon.\nBeyond all are the Cumberland mountains, clear in the sun, with rosy\nlight on all their crags.\n\nI should think the reader cannot but feel the kind of harmony there is\nin this composition; the entire purpose of the painter to give us the\nimpression of wild, yet gentle, country life, monotonous as the\nsuccession of the noiseless waves, patient and enduring as the rocks;\nbut peaceful, and full of health and quiet hope, and sanctified by the\npure mountain air and baptismal dew of heaven, falling softly between\ndays of toil and nights of innocence.\n\nAll noble composition of this kind can be reached only by instinct: you\ncannot set yourself to arrange such a subject; you may see it, and seize\nit, at all times, but never laboriously invent it. And your power of\ndiscerning what is best in expression, among natural subjects, depends\nwholly on the temper in which you keep your own mind; above all, on your\nliving so much alone as to allow it to become acutely sensitive in its\nown stillness. The noisy life of modern days is wholly incompatible with\nany true perception of natural beauty. If you go down into Cumberland by\nthe railroad, live in some frequented hotel, and explore the hills with\nmerry companions, however much you may enjoy your tour or their\nconversation, depend upon it you will never choose so much as one\npictorial subject rightly; you will not see into the depth of any. But\ntake knapsack and stick, walk towards the hills by short day's\njourneys--ten or twelve miles a day--taking a week from some\nstarting-place sixty or seventy miles away: sleep at the pretty little\nwayside inns, or the rough village ones; then take the hills as they\ntempt you, following glen or shore as your eye glances or your heart\nguides, wholly scornful of local fame or fashion, and of everything\nwhich it is the ordinary traveller's duty to see or pride to do. Never\nforce yourself to admire anything when you are not in the humour; but\nnever force yourself away from what you feel to be lovely, in search of\nanything better: and gradually the deeper scenes of the natural world\nwill unfold themselves to you in still increasing fulness of passionate\npower; and your difficulty will be no more to seek or to compose\nsubjects, but only to choose one from among the multitude of melodious\nthoughts with which you will be haunted, thoughts which will of course\nbe noble or original in proportion to your own depth of character and\ngeneral power of mind: for it is not so much by the consideration you\ngive to any single drawing, as by the previous discipline of your powers\nof thought, that the character of your composition will be determined.\nSimplicity of life will make you sensitive to the refinement and modesty\nof scenery, just as inordinate excitement and pomp of daily life will\nmake you enjoy coarse colours and affected forms. Habits of patient\ncomparison and accurate judgment will make your art precious, as they\nwill make your actions wise; and every increase of noble enthusiasm in\nyour living spirit will be measured by the reflection of its light upon\nthe works of your hands.\n\n    Faithfully yours,\n\n    J. RUSKIN.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[234] I give Rossetti this preeminence, because, though the leading\nPre-Raphaelites have all about equal power over colour in the abstract,\nRossetti and Holman Hunt are distinguished above the rest for rendering\ncolour under effects of light; and of these two, Rossetti composes with\nricher fancy and with a deeper sense of beauty, Hunt's stern realism\nleading him continually into harshness. Rossetti's carelessness, to do\nhim justice, is only in water-colour, never in oil.\n\n[235] All the degradation of art which was brought about, after the rise\nof the Dutch school, by asphaltum, yellow varnish, and brown trees,\nwould have been prevented, if only painters had been forced to work in\ndead colour. Any colour will do for some people, if it is browned and\nshining; but fallacy in dead colour is detected on the instant. I even\nbelieve that whenever a painter begins to _wish_ that he could touch any\nportion of his work with gum, he is going wrong.\n\nIt is necessary, however, in this matter, carefully to distinguish\nbetween translucency and lustre. Translucency, though, as I have said\nabove, a dangerous temptation, is, in its place, beautiful; but lustre,\nor _shininess_, is always, in painting, a defect. Nay, one of my best\npainter-friends (the \"best\" being understood to attach to both divisions\nof that awkward compound word), tried the other day to persuade me\nthatlustre was an ignobleness in _anything_; and it was only the fear of\ntreason to ladies' eyes, and to mountain streams, and to morning dew,\nwhich kept me from yielding the point to him. One is apt always to\ngeneralise too quickly in such matters; but there can be no question\nthat lustre is destructive of loveliness in colour, as it is of\nintelligibility in form. Whatever may be the pride of a young beauty in\nthe knowledge that her eyes shine (though perhaps even eyes are most\nbeautiful in dimness), she would be sorry if her cheeks did; and which\nof us would wish to polish a rose?\n\n[236] But not shiny or greasy. Bristol board, or hot-pressed imperial,\nor grey paper that feels slightly adhesive to the hand, is best. Coarse,\ngritty, and sandy papers are fit only for blotters and blunderers; no\ngood draughtsman would lay a line on them. Turner worked much on a thin\ntough paper, dead in surface; rolling up his sketches in tight bundles\nthat would go deep into his pockets.\n\n[237] I insist upon this unalterability of colour the more because I\naddress you as a beginner, or an amateur; a great artist can sometimes\nget out of a difficulty with credit, or repent without confession. Yet\neven Titian's alterations usually show as stains on his work.\n\n[238] It is, I think, a piece of affectation to try to work with few\ncolours; it saves time to have enough tints prepared without mixing, and\nyou may at once allow yourself these twenty-four. If you arrange them in\nyour colour-box in the order I have set them down, you will always\neasily put your finger on the one you want.\n\n  Cobalt.         Smalt.                Antwerp blue.   Prussian blue.\n  Black.          Gamboge.              Emerald green.  Hooker's green.\n  Lemon yellow.   Cadmium yellow.       Yellow ochre.   Roman ochre.\n  Raw sienna.     Burnt sienna.         Light red.      Indian red.\n  Mars orange.    Ext't of vermilion.   Carmine.        Violet carmine.\n  Brown madder.   Burnt umber.          Vandyke brown.  Sepia.\n\nAntwerp blue and Prussian blue are not very permanent colours, but you\nneed not care much about permanence in your own work as yet, and they\nare both beautiful; while Indigo is marked by Field as more fugitive\nstill, and is very ugly. Hooker's green is a mixed colour, put in the\nbox merely to save you loss of time in mixing gamboge and Prussian blue.\nNo. 1. is the best tint of it. Violet carmine is a noble colour for\nlaying broken shadows with, to be worked into afterwards with other\ncolours.\n\nIf you wish to take up colouring seriously, you had better get Field's\n\"Chromatography\" at once; only do not attend to anything it says about\nprinciples or harmonies of colour; but only to its statements of\npractical serviceableness in pigments, and of their operations on each\nother when mixed, &c.\n\n[239] A more methodical, though, under general circumstances, uselessly\nprolix way, is to cut a square hole, some half an inch wide, in the\nsheet of cardboard, and a series of small circular holes in a slip of\ncardboard an inch wide. Pass the slip over the square opening, and match\neach colour beside one of the circular openings. You will thus have no\noccasion to wash any of the colours away. But the first rough method is\ngenerally all you want, as after a little practice, you only need to\n_look_ at the hue through the opening in order to be able to transfer it\nto your drawing at once.\n\n[240] If colours were twenty times as costly as they are, we should have\nmany more good painters. If I were Chancellor of the Exchequer I would\nlay a tax of twenty shillings a cake on all colours except black,\nPrussian blue, Vandyke brown, and Chinese white, which I would leave for\nstudents. I don't say this jestingly; I believe such a tax would do more\nto advance real art than a great many schools of design.\n\n[241] I say _modern_, because Titian's quiet way of blending colours,\nwhich is the perfectly right one, is not understood now by any artist.\nThe best colour we reach is got by stippling; but this not quite right.\n\n[242] The worst general character that colour can possibly have is a\nprevalent tendency to a dirty yellowish green, like that of a decaying\nheap of vegetables; this colour is _accurately_ indicative of decline or\nparalysis in missal-painting.\n\n[243] That is to say, local colour inherent in the object. The\ngradations of colour in the various shadows belonging to various lights\nexhibit form, and therefore no one but a colourist can ever draw _forms_\nperfectly (see \"Modern Painters,\" vol. iv. chap. iii. at the end); but\nall notions of explaining form by superimposed colour, as in\narchitectural mouldings, are absurd. Colour adorns form, but does not\ninterpret it. An apple is prettier, because it is striped, but it does\nnot look a bit rounder; and a cheek is prettier because it is flushed,\nbut you would see the form of the cheek bone better if it were not.\nColour may, indeed, detach one shape from another, as in grounding a\nbas-relief, but it always diminishes the appearance of projection, and\nwhether you put blue, purple, red, yellow, or green, for your ground,\nthe bas-relief will be just as clearly or just as imperfectly relieved,\nas long as the colours are of equal depth. The blue ground will not\nretire the hundredth part of an inch more than the red one.\n\n[244] See, however, at the close of this letter, the notice of one more\npoint connected with the management of colour, under the head \"Law of\nHarmony.\"\n\n[245] See farther, on this subject, \"Modern Painters,\" vol. iv. chap.\nviii Sec. 6.\n\n[246] \"In general, throughout Nature, reflection and repetition are\npeaceful things, associated with the idea of quiet succession in events,\nthat one day should be like another day, or one history the repetition\nof another history, being more or less results of quietness, while\ndissimilarity and non-succession are results of interference and\ndisquietude. Thus, though an echo actually increases the quantity of\nsound heard, its repetition of the note or syllable gives an idea of\ncalmness attainable in no other way; hence also the feeling of calm\ngiven to a landscape by the voice of a cuckoo.\"\n\n[247] This is obscure in the rude woodcut, the masts being so delicate\nthat they are confused among the lines of reflection. In the original\nthey have orange light upon them, relieved against purple behind.\n\n[248] The cost of art in getting a bridge level is _always_ lost, for\nyou must get up to the height of the central arch at any rate, and you\nonly can make the whole bridge level by putting the hill farther back,\nand pretending to have got rid of it when you have not, but have only\nwasted money in building an unnecessary embankment. Of course, the\nbridge should not be difficultly or dangerously steep, but the necessary\nslope, whatever it may be, should be in the bridge itself, as far as the\nbridge can take it, and not pushed aside into the approach, as in our\nWaterloo road; the only rational excuse for doing which is that when the\nslope must be long it is inconvenient to put on a drag at the top of the\nbridge, and that any restiveness of the horse is more dangerous on the\nbridge than on the embankment. To this I answer: first, it is not more\ndangerous in reality, though it looks so, for the bridge is always\nguarded by an effective parapet, but the embankment is sure to have no\nparapet, or only a useless rail; and secondly, that it is better to have\nthe slope on the bridge, and make the roadway wide in proportion, so as\nto be quite safe, because a little waste of space on the river is no\nloss, but your wide embankment at the side loses good ground; and so my\npicturesque bridges are right as well as beautiful, and I hope to see\nthem built again some day, instead of the frightful straight-backed\nthings which we fancy are fine, and accept from the pontifical\nrigidities of the engineering mind.\n\n[249] I cannot waste space here by reprinting what I have said in other\nbooks: but the reader ought, if possible, to refer to the notices of\nthis part of our subject in \"Modern Painters,\" vol. iv. chap. xviii.,\nand \"Stones of Venice,\" vol. iii. chap. i. Sec. 8.\n\n[250] If you happen to be reading at this part of the book, without\nhaving gone through any previous practice, turn back to the sketch of\nthe ramification of stone pine, Fig. 4. page 30., and examine the curves\nof its boughs one by one, trying them by the conditions here stated\nunder the heads A. and B.\n\n[251] The reader, I hope, observes always that every line in these\nfigures is itself one of varying curvature, and cannot be drawn by\ncompasses.\n\n[252] I hope the reader understands that these woodcuts are merely\nfacsimiles of the sketches I make at the side of my paper to illustrate\nmy meaning as I write--often sadly scrawled if I want to get on to\nsomething else. This one is really a little too careless; but it would\ntake more time and trouble to make a proper drawing of so odd a boat\nthan the matter is worth. It will answer the purpose well enough as it\nis.\n\n[253] Imperfect vegetable form I consider that which is in its nature\ndependent, as in runners and climbers; or which is susceptible of\ncontinual injury without materially losing the power of giving pleasure\nby its aspect, as in the case of the smaller grasses. I have not, of\ncourse, space here to explain these minor distinctions, but the laws\nabove stated apply to all the more important trees and shrubs likely to\nbe familiar to the student.\n\n[254] There is a very tender lesson of this kind in the shadows of\nleaves upon the ground; shadows which are the most likely of all to\nattract attention, by their pretty play and change. If you examine them,\nyou will find that the shadows do not take the forms of the leaves, but\nthat, through each interstice, the light falls, at a little distance, in\nthe form of a round or oval spot; that is to say, it produces the image\nof the sun itself, cast either vertically or obliquely, in circle or\nellipse according to the slope of the ground. Of course the sun's rays\nproduce the same effect, when they fall through any small aperture: but\nthe openings between leaves are the only ones likely to show it to an\nordinary observer, or to attract his attention to it by its frequency,\nand lead him to think what this type may signify respecting the greater\nSun; and how it may show us that, even when the opening through which\nthe earth receives light is too small to let us see the Sun himself, the\nray of light that enters, if it comes straight from Him, will still bear\nwith it His image.\n\n[255] In the smaller figure (32.), it will be seen that this\ninterruption is caused by a cart coming down to the water's edge; and\nthis object is serviceable as beginning another system of curves leading\nout of the picture on the right, but so obscurely drawn as not to be\neasily represented in outline. As it is unnecessary to the explanation\nof our point here, it has been omitted in the larger diagram, the\ndirection of the curve it begins being indicated by the dashes only.\n\n[256] Both in the Sketches in Flanders and Germany.\n\n[257] If you happen to meet with the plate of Durer's representing a\ncoat of arms with a skull in the shield, note the value given to the\nconcave curves and sharp point of the helmet by the convex leafage\ncarried round it in front; and the use of the blank white part of the\nshield in opposing the rich folds of the dress.\n\n[258] Turner hardly ever, as far as I remember, allows a strong light to\noppose a full dark, without some intervening tint. His suns never set\nbehind dark mountains without a film of cloud above the mountain's edge.\n\n[259]\n\n    \"A prudent chief not always must display\n    His powers in equal ranks and fair array,\n    But with the occasion and the place comply,\n    Conceal his force; nay, seem sometimes to fly.\n    Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,\n    Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.\"\n\n_Essay on Criticism._\n\n[260] I am describing from a MS., _circa_ 1300, of Gregory's\n\"Decretalia\" in my own possession.\n\n[261] One of the most wonderful compositions of Tintoret in Venice, is\nlittle more than a field of subdued crimson, spotted with flakes of\nscattered gold. The upper clouds in the most beautiful skies owe great\npart of their power to infinitude of division; order being marked\nthrough this division.\n\n[262] I fully believe that the strange grey gloom, accompanied by\nconsiderable power of effect, which prevails in modern French art must\nbe owing to the use of this mischievous instrument; the French landscape\nalways gives me the idea of Nature seen carelessly in the dark mirror,\nand painted coarsely, but scientifically, through the veil of its\nperversion.\n\n[263] Various other parts of this subject are entered into, especially\nin their bearing on the ideal of painting, in \"Modern Painters,\" vol.\niv. chap. iii.\n\n[264] In all the best arrangements of colour, the delight occasioned by\ntheir mode of succession is entirely inexplicable, nor can it be\nreasoned about; we like it just as we like an air in music, but cannot\nreason any refractory person into liking it, if they do not: and yet\nthere is distinctly a right and a wrong in it, and a good taste and bad\ntaste respecting it, as also in music.\n\n[265] \"Puseyism\" was unknown in the days when this drawing was made; but\nthe kindly and helpful influences of what may be called ecclesiastical\nsentiment, which, in a morbidly exaggerated condition, forms one of the\nprincipal elements of \"Puseyism,\"--I use this word regretfully, no other\nexisting which will serve for it,--had been known and felt in our wild\nnorthern districts long before.\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX.\n\n\nTHINGS TO BE STUDIED.\n\nThe worst danger by far, to which a solitary student is exposed, is that\nof liking things that he should not. It is not so much his difficulties,\nas his tastes, which he must set himself to conquer; and although, under\nthe guidance of a master, many works of art may be made instructive,\nwhich are only of partial excellence (the good and bad of them being\nduly distinguished), his safeguard, as long as he studies alone, will be\nin allowing himself to possess only things, in their way, so free from\nfaults, that nothing he copies in them can seriously mislead him, and to\ncontemplate only those works of art which he knows to be either perfect\nor noble in their errors. I will therefore set down in clear order, the\nnames of the masters whom you may safely admire, and a few of the books\nwhich you may safely possess. In these days of cheap illustration, the\ndanger is always rather of your possessing too much than too little. It\nmay admit of some question, how far the looking at bad art may set off\nand illustrate the characters of the good; but, on the whole, I believe\nit is best to live always on quite wholesome food, and that our taste of\nit will not be made more acute by feeding, however temporarily, on\nashes. Of course the works of the great masters can only be serviceable\nto the student after he has made considerable progress himself. It only\nwastes the time and dulls the feelings of young persons, to drag them\nthrough picture galleries; at least, unless they themselves wish to look\nat particular pictures. Generally, young people only care to enter a\npicture gallery when there is a chance of getting leave to run a race to\nthe other end of it; and they had better do that in the garden below.\nIf, however, they have any real enjoyment of pictures, and want to look\nat this one or that, the principal point is never to disturb them in\nlooking at what interests them, and never to make them look at what does\nnot. Nothing is of the least use to young people (nor, by the way, of\nmuch use to old ones), but what interests them; and therefore, though it\nis of great importance to put nothing but good art into their\npossession, yet when they are passing through great houses or galleries,\nthey should be allowed to look precisely at what pleases them: if it is\nnot useful to them as art, it will be in some other way: and the\nhealthiest way in which art can interest them is when they look at it,\nnot as art, but because it represents something they like in nature. If\na boy has had his heart filled by the life of some great man, and goes\nup thirstily to a Vandyck portrait of him, to see what he was like, that\nis the wholesomest way in which he can begin the study of portraiture;\nif he love mountains, and dwell on a Turner drawing because he sees in\nit a likeness to a Yorkshire scar, or an Alpine pass, that is the\nwholesomest way in which he can begin the study of landscape; and if a\ngirl's mind is filled with dreams of angels and saints, and she pauses\nbefore an Angelico because she thinks it must surely be indeed like\nheaven, that is the wholesomest way for her to begin the study of\nreligious art.\n\nWhen, however, the student has made some definite progress, and every\npicture becomes really a guide to him, false or true, in his own work,\nit is of great importance that he should never so much as look at bad\nart; and then, if the reader is willing to trust me in the matter, the\nfollowing advice will be useful to him. In which, with his permission, I\nwill quit the indirect and return to the epistolary address, as being\nthe more convenient.\n\nFirst, in Galleries of Pictures:\n\n1. You may look, with trust in their being always right, at Titian,\nVeronese, Tintoret, Giorgione, John Bellini, and Velasquez; the\nauthenticity of the picture being of course established for you by\nproper authority.\n\n2. You may look with admiration, admitting, however question of right\nand wrong,[266] at Van Eyck, Holbein, Perugino, Francia, Angelico,\nLeonardo da Vinci, Correggio, Vandyck, Rembrandt, Reynolds,\nGainsborough, Turner, and the modern Pre-Raphaelites.[267] You had\nbetter look at no other painters than these, for you run a chance,\notherwise, of being led far off the road, or into grievous faults, by\nsome of the other great ones, as Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Rubens;\nand of being, besides, corrupted in taste by the base ones, as Murillo,\nSalvator, Claude, Gasper Poussin, Teniers, and such others. You may\nlook, however, for examples of evil, with safe universality of\nreprobation, being sure that everything you see is bad, at Domenichino,\nthe Caracci, Bronzino, and the figure pieces of Salvator.\n\nAmong those named for study under question, you cannot look too much at,\nnor grow too enthusiastically fond of, Angelico, Correggio, Reynolds,\nTurner, and the Pre-Raphaelites; but, if you find yourself getting\nespecially fond of any of the others, leave off looking at them, for you\nmust be going wrong some way or other. If, for instance, you begin to\nlike Rembrandt or Leonardo especially, you are losing your feeling for\ncolour; if you like Van Eyck or Perugino especially, you must be getting\ntoo fond of rigid detail; and if you like Vandyck or Gainsborough\nespecially, you must be too much attracted by gentlemanly flimsiness.\n\nSecondly, of published, or otherwise multiplied, art, such as you may be\nable to get yourself, or to see at private houses or in shops, the works\nof the following masters are the most desirable, after the Turners,\nRembrandts, and Durers, which I have asked you to get first:\n\n\n1. Samuel Prout.\n\nAll his published lithographic sketches are of the greatest value,\nwholly unrivalled in power of composition, and in love and feeling of\narchitectural subject. His somewhat mannered linear execution, though\nnot to be imitated in your own sketches from Nature, may be occasionally\ncopied, for discipline's sake, with great advantage; it will give you a\npeculiar steadiness of hand, not quickly attainable in any other way;\nand there is no fear of your getting into any faultful mannerism as long\nas you carry out the different modes of more delicate study above\nrecommended.\n\nIf you are interested in architecture, and wish to make it your chief\nstudy, you should draw much from photographs of it; and then from the\narchitecture itself, with the same completion of detail and gradation,\nonly keeping the shadows of due paleness, in photographs they are always\nabout four times as dark as they ought to be; and treat buildings with\nas much care and love as artists do their rock foregrounds, drawing all\nthe moss and weeds, and stains upon them. But if, without caring to\nunderstand architecture, you merely want the picturesque character of\nit, and to be able to sketch it fast, you cannot do better than take\nProut for your _exclusive_ master; only do not think that you are\ncopying Prout by drawing straight lines with dots at the end of them.\nGet first his \"Rhine,\" and draw the subjects that have most hills, and\nleast architecture in them, with chalk on smooth paper, till you can lay\non his broad flat tints, and get his gradations of light, which are very\nwonderful; then take up the architectural subjects in the \"Rhine,\" and\ndraw again and again the groups of figures, &c., in his \"Microcosm,\" and\n\"Lessons on Light and Shadow.\" After that, proceed to copy the grand\nsubjects in the sketches in \"Flanders and Germany;\" or in \"Switzerland\nand Italy,\" if you cannot get the Flanders; but the Switzerland is very\nfar inferior. Then work from Nature, not trying to Proutise Nature, by\nbreaking smooth buildings into rough ones, but only drawing _what you\nsee_, with Prout's simple method and firm lines. Don't copy his coloured\nworks. They are good, but not at all equal to his chalk and pencil\ndrawings, and you will become a mere imitator, and a very feeble\nimitator, if you use colour at all in Prout's method. I have not space\nto explain why this is so, it would take a long piece of reasoning;\ntrust me for the statement.\n\n\n2. John Lewis.\n\nHis sketches in Spain, lithographed by himself, are very valuable. Get\nthem, if you can, and also some engravings (about eight or ten, I think,\naltogether) of wild beasts, executed by his own hand a long time ago;\nthey are very precious in every way. The series of the \"Alhambra\" is\nrather slight, and few of the subjects are lithographed by himself;\nstill it is well worth having.\n\nBut let _no_ lithographic work come into the house, if you can help it,\nnor even look at any, except Prout's, and those sketches of Lewis's.\n\n\n3. George Cruikshank.\n\nIf you ever happen to meet with the two volumes of \"Grimm's German\nStories,\" which were illustrated by him long ago, pounce upon them\ninstantly; the etchings in them are the finest things, next to\nRembrandt's, that, as far as I know, have been done since etching was\ninvented. You cannot look at them too much, nor copy them too often.\n\nAll his works are very valuable, though disagreeable when they touch on\nthe worst vulgarities of modern life; and often much spoiled by a\ncuriously mistaken type of face, divided so as to give too much to the\nmouth and eyes, and leave too little for forehead, the eyes being set\nabout two thirds up, instead of at half the height of the head. But his\nmanner of work is always right; and his tragic power, though rarely\ndeveloped, and warped by habits of caricature, is, in reality, as great\nas his grotesque power.\n\nThere is no fear of his hurting your taste, as long as your principal\nwork lies among art of so totally different a character as most of that\nwhich I have recommended to you; and you may, therefore, get great good\nby copying almost anything of his that may come in your way; except only\nhis illustrations lately published to \"Cinderella,\" and \"Jack and the\nBeanstalk,\" and \"Tom Thumb,\" which are much over-laboured, and confused\nin line. You should get them, but do not copy them.\n\n\n4. Alfred Rethel.\n\nI only know two publications by him; one, the \"Dance of Death,\" with\ntext by Reinick, published in Leipsic, but to be had now of any London\nbookseller for the sum, I believe, of eighteen pence, and containing six\nplates full of instructive character; the other, of two plates only,\n\"Death the Avenger,\" and \"Death the Friend.\" These two are far superior\nto the \"Todtentanz,\" and, if you can get them, will be enough in\nthemselves, to show all that Rethel can teach you. If you dislike\nghastly subjects, get \"Death the Friend\" only.\n\n\n5. Bewick.\n\nThe execution of the plumage in Bewick's birds is the most masterly\nthing ever yet done in wood-cutting; it is just worked as Paul Veronese\nwould have worked in wood, had he taken to it. His vignettes, though too\ncoarse in execution, and vulgar in types of form, to be good copies,\nshow, nevertheless, intellectual power of the highest order; and there\nare pieces of sentiment in them, either pathetic or satirical, which\nhave never since been equalled in illustrations of this simple kind; the\nbitter intensity of the feeling being just like that which characterises\nsome of the leading Pre-Raphaelites. Bewick is the Burns of painting.\n\n\n6. Blake.\n\nThe \"Book of Job,\" engraved by himself, is of the highest rank in\ncertain characters of imagination and expression; in the mode of\nobtaining certain effects of light it will also be a very useful example\nto you. In expressing conditions of glaring and flickering light, Blake\nis greater than Rembrandt.\n\n\n7. Richter.\n\nI have already told you what to guard against in looking at his works. I\nam a little doubtful whether I have done well in including them in this\ncatalogue at all; but the fancies in them are so pretty and numberless,\nthat I must risk, for their sake, the chance of hurting you a little in\njudgment of style. If you want to make presents of story-books to\nchildren, his are the best you can now get.\n\n\n8. Rossetti.\n\nAn edition of Tennyson, lately published, contains woodcuts from\ndrawings by Rossetti and other chief Pre-Raphaelite masters. They are\nterribly spoiled in the cutting, and generally the best part, the\nexpression of feature, _entirely_ lost;[268] still they are full of\ninstruction, and cannot be studied too closely. But observe, respecting\nthese woodcuts, that if you have been in the habit of looking at much\nspurious work, in which sentiment, action, and style are borrowed or\nartificial, you will assuredly be offended at first by all genuine work,\nwhich is intense in feeling. Genuine art, which is merely art, such as\nVeronese's or Titian's, may not offend you, though the chances are that\nyou will not care about it: but genuine works of feeling, such as Maude\nand Aurora Leigh in poetry, or the grand Pre-Raphaelite designs in\npainting, are sure to offend you; and if you cease to work hard, and\npersist in looking at vicious and false art, they will continue to\noffend you. It will be well, therefore, to have one type of entirely\nfalse art, in order to know what to guard against. Flaxman's outlines to\nDante contain, I think, examples of almost every kind of falsehood and\nfeebleness which it is possible for a trained artist, not base in\nthought, to commit or admit, both in design and execution. Base or\ndegraded choice of subject, such as you will constantly find in Teniers\nand others of the Dutch painters, I need not, I hope, warn you against;\nyou will simply turn away from it in disgust; while mere bad or feeble\ndrawing, which makes mistakes in every direction at once, cannot teach\nyou the particular sort of educated fallacy in question. But, in these\ndesigns of Flaxman's, you have gentlemanly feeling, and fair knowledge\nof anatomy, and firm setting down of lines, all applied in the\nfoolishest and worst possible way; you cannot have a more finished\nexample of learned error, amiable want of meaning, and bad drawing with\na steady hand.[269] Retsch's outlines have more real material in them\nthan Flaxman's, occasionally showing true fancy and power; in artistic\nprinciple they are nearly as bad, and in taste worse. All outlines from\nstatuary, as given in works on classical art, will be very hurtful to\nyou if you in the least like them; and _nearly_ all finished line\nengravings. Some particular prints I could name which possess\ninstructive qualities, but it would take too long to distinguish them,\nand the best way is to avoid line engravings of figures altogether. If\nyou happen to be a rich person, possessing quantities of them, and if\nyou are fond of the large finished prints from Raphael, Correggio, &c.,\nit is wholly impossible that you can make any progress in knowledge of\nreal art till you have sold them all--or burnt them, which would be a\ngreater benefit to the world. I hope that some day, true and noble\nengravings will be made from the few pictures of the great schools,\nwhich the restorations undertaken by the modern managers of foreign\ngalleries may leave us; but the existing engravings have nothing\nwhatever in common with the good in the works they profess to represent,\nand if you like them, you like in the originals of them hardly anything\nbut their errors.\n\nFinally, your judgment will be, of course, much affected by your taste\nin literature. Indeed, I know many persons who have the purest taste in\nliterature, and yet false taste in art, and it is a phenomenon which\npuzzles me not a little: but I have never known any one with false taste\nin books, and true taste in pictures. It is also of the greatest\nimportance to you, not only for art's sake, but for all kinds of sake,\nin these days of book deluge, to keep out of the salt swamps of\nliterature, and live on a rocky island of your own, with a spring and a\nlake in it, pure and good. I cannot, of course, suggest the choice of\nyour library to you, every several mind needs different books; but there\nare some books which we all need, and assuredly, if you read Homer,[270]\nPlato, AEschylus, Herodotus, Dante,[271] Shakspeare, and Spenser, as much\nas you ought, you will not require wide enlargement of shelves to right\nand left of them for purposes of perpetual study. Among modern books,\navoid generally magazine and review literature. Sometimes it may contain\na useful abridgement or a wholesome piece of criticism; but the chances\nare ten to one it will either waste your time or mislead you. If you\nwant to understand any subject whatever, read the best book upon it you\ncan hear of; not a review of the book. If you don't like the first book\nyou try, seek for another; but do not hope ever to understand the\nsubject without pains, by a reviewer's help. Avoid especially that class\nof literature which has a knowing tone; it is the most poisonous of all.\nEvery good book, or piece of book, is full of admiration and awe; it may\ncontain firm assertion or stern satire, but it never sneers coldly, nor\nasserts haughtily, and it always leads you to reverence or love\nsomething with your whole heart. It is not always easy to distinguish\nthe satire of the venomous race of books from the satire of the noble\nand pure ones; but in general you may notice that the cold-blooded\nCrustacean and Batrachian books will sneer at sentiment; and the\nwarm-blooded, human books, at sin. Then, in general, the more you can\nrestrain your serious reading to reflective or lyric poetry, history,\nand natural history, avoiding fiction and the drama, the healthier your\nmind will become. Of modern poetry keep to Scott, Wordsworth, Keats,\nCrabbe, Tennyson, the two Brownings, Lowell, Longfellow, and Coventry\nPatmore, whose \"Angel in the House\" is a most finished piece of writing,\nand the sweetest analysis we possess of quiet modern domestic feeling;\nwhile Mrs. Browning's \"Aurora Leigh\" is, as far as I know, the greatest\npoem which the century has produced in any language. Cast Coleridge at\nonce aside, as sickly and useless; and Shelley as shallow and verbose;\nByron, until your taste is fully formed, and you are able to discern the\nmagnificence in him from the wrong. Never read bad or common poetry, nor\nwrite any poetry yourself; there is, perhaps, rather too much than too\nlittle in the world already.\n\nOf reflective prose, read chiefly Bacon, Johnson, and Helps. Carlyle is\nhardly to be named as a writer for \"beginners,\" because his teaching,\nthough to some of us vitally necessary, may to others be hurtful. If you\nunderstand and like him, read him; if he offends you, you are not yet\nready for him, and perhaps may never be so; at all events, give him up,\nas you would sea-bathing if you found it hurt you, till you are\nstronger. Of fiction, read Sir Charles Grandison, Scott's novels, Miss\nEdgeworth's, and, if you are a young lady, Madame de Genlis', the French\nMiss Edgeworth; making these, I mean, your constant companions. Of\ncourse you must, or will read other books for amusement, once or twice;\nbut you will find that these have an element of perpetuity in them,\nexisting in nothing else of their kind: while their peculiar quietness\nand repose of manner will also be of the greatest value in teaching you\nto feel the same characters in art. Read little at a time, trying to\nfeel interest in little things, and reading not so much for the sake of\nthe story as to get acquainted with the pleasant people into whose\ncompany these writers bring you. A common book will often give you much\namusement, but it is only a noble book which will give you dear friends.\nRemember also that it is of less importance to you in your earlier\nyears, that the books you read should be clever, than that they should\nbe right. I do not mean oppressively or repulsively instructive; but\nthat the thoughts they express should be just, and the feelings they\nexcite generous. It is not necessary for you to read the wittiest or the\nmost suggestive books: it is better, in general, to hear what is already\nknown, and may be simply said. Much of the literature of the present\nday, though good to be read by persons of ripe age, has a tendency to\nagitate rather than confirm, and leaves its readers too frequently in a\nhelpless or hopeless indignation, the worst possible state into which\nthe mind of youth can be thrown. It may, indeed, become necessary for\nyou, as you advance in life, to set your hand to things that need to be\naltered in the world, or apply your heart chiefly to what must be pitied\nin it, or condemned; but, for a young person, the safest temper is one\nof reverence, and the safest place one of obscurity. Certainly at\npresent, and perhaps through all your life, your teachers are wisest\nwhen they make you content in quiet virtue, and that literature and art\nare best for you which point out, in common life and familiar things,\nthe objects for hopeful labour, and for humble love.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[266] I do not mean necessarily to imply inferiority of rank, in saying\nthat this second class of painters have questionable qualities. The\ngreatest men have often many faults, and sometimes their faults are a\npart of their greatness; but such men are not, of course, to be looked\nupon by the student with absolute implicitness of faith.\n\n[267] Including under this term, John Lewis, and William Hunt of the Old\nWater-colour, who, take him all in all, is the best painter of still\nlife, I believe, that ever existed.\n\n[268] This is especially the case in the St. Cecily, Rossetti's first\nillustration to the \"palace of art,\" which would have been the best in\nthe book had it been well engraved. The whole work should be taken up\nagain, and done by line engraving, perfectly; and wholly from\nPre-Raphaelite designs, with which no other modern work can bear the\nleast comparison.\n\n[269] The praise I have given incidentally to Flaxman's sculpture in the\n\"Seven Lamps,\" and elsewhere, refers wholly to his studies from Nature,\nand simple groups in marble, which were always good and interesting.\nStill, I have overrated him, even in this respect; and it is generally\nto be remembered that, in speaking of artists whose works I cannot be\nsupposed to have specially studied, the errors I fall into will always\nbe on the side of praise. For, of course, praise is most likely to be\ngiven when the thing praised is above one's knowledge; and, therefore,\nas our knowledge increases, such things may be found less praiseworthy\nthan we thought. But blame can only be justly given when the thing\nblamed is below one's level of sight; and, practically, I never do blame\nanything until I have got well past it, and am certain that there is\ndemonstrable falsehood in it. I believe, therefore, all my blame to be\nwholly trustworthy, having never yet had occasion to repent of one\ndepreciatory word that I have ever written, while I have often found\nthat, with respect to things I had not time to study closely, I was led\ntoo far by sudden admiration, helped, perhaps, by peculiar associations,\nor other deceptive accidents; and this the more, because I never care to\ncheck an expression of delight, thinking the chances are, that, even if\nmistaken, it will do more good than harm; but I weigh every word of\nblame with scrupulous caution. I have sometimes erased a strong passage\nof blame from second editions of my books; but this was only when I\nfound it offended the reader without convincing him, never because I\nrepented of it myself.\n\n[270] Chapman's, if not the original.\n\n[271] Carey's or Cayley's, if not the original. I do not know which are\nthe best translations of Plato. Herodotus and AEschylus can only be read\nin the original. It may seem strange that I name books like these for\n\"beginners:\" but all the greatest books contain food for all ages; and\nan intelligent and rightly bred youth or girl ought to enjoy much, even\nin Plato, by the time they are fifteen or sixteen.","title":"The Crown of Wild Olive: also Munera Pulveris; Pre-Raphaelitism; Aratra Pentelici; The Ethics of the Dust; Fiction, Fair and Foul; The Elements of Drawing","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":312359}