{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_31045/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_31045","id":"gutenberg_31045","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31045","summary":null,"tags":["Art","Category: Art","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Painting"],"text":"Produced by Paul Murray, Chandra Friend and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n  FRONDES AGRESTES.\n\n  READINGS IN 'MODERN PAINTERS.'\n\n  CHOSEN AT HER PLEASURE,\n  BY THE AUTHOR'S FRIEND,\n  THE YOUNGER LADY OF THE THWAITE,\n  CONISTON.\n\n  'Spargit agrestes tibi silva frondes.'\n\n  Thirty-Eighth Thousand.\n\n  London: George Allen, 156, Charing Cross Road. 1902.\n\n  Printed By Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.\n  At the Ballantyne Press\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nI have been often asked to republish the first book of mine which the\npublic noticed, and which, hitherto, remains their favourite, in a\nmore easily attainable form than that of its existing editions. I am,\nhowever, resolved never to republish the book as a whole; some parts\nof it being, by the established fame of Turner, rendered unnecessary;\nand others having been always useless, in their praise of excellence\nwhich the public will never give the labour necessary to discern. But,\nfinding lately that one of my dearest friends, who, in advanced age,\nretains the cheerfulness and easily delighted temper of bright youth,\nhad written out, for her own pleasure, a large number of passages from\n'Modern Painters,' it seemed to me certain that what such a person\nfelt to be useful to herself, could not but be useful also to a class\nof readers whom I much desired to please, and who would sometimes\nenjoy, in my early writings, what I never should myself have offered\nthem. I asked my friend, therefore, to add to her own already chosen\nseries, any other passages she thought likely to be of permanent\ninterest to general readers; and I have printed her selections in\nabsolute submission to her judgment, merely arranging the pieces she\nsent me in the order which seemed most convenient for the reciprocal\nbearing of their fragmentary meanings, and adding here and there an\nexplanatory note; or, it may be, a deprecatory one, in cases where my\nmind had changed. That she did me the grace to write every word with\nher own hands, adds, in my eyes, and will, I trust, in the readers'\nalso, to the possible claims of the little book on their sympathy; and\nalthough I hope to publish some of the scientific and technical\nportions of the original volumes in my own large editions, the\nselections here made by my friend under her quiet woods at\nConiston--the Unter-Walden of England--will, I doubt not, bring within\nbetter reach of many readers, for whom I am not now able myself to\njudge or choose, such service as the book was ever capable of\nrendering, in the illustration of the powers of nature, and\nintercession for her now too often despised and broken peace.\n\nHerne Hill,\n\n  5th December, 1874.\n\n\n\n\n  CONTENTS.\n\n                                                    PAGE\n  PREFACE                                              V\n\n  SECTION I.    PRINCIPLES OF ART                      1\n\n          II.   POWER AND OFFICE OF IMAGINATION       10\n\n          III.  ILLUSTRATIVE: THE SKY                 35\n\n          IV.       \"        STREAMS AND SEA          64\n\n          V.        \"        MOUNTAINS                74\n\n          VI.       \"        STONES                  107\n\n          VII.      \"        PLANTS AND FLOWERS      115\n\n          VIII. EDUCATION                            140\n\n          IX.   MORALITIES                           151\n\n\n\n\nFRONDES AGRESTES.\n\n\n\n\nSECTION I.\n\nPRINCIPLES OF ART.\n\n\n1. Perfect taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest possible\npleasure from those material sources which are attractive to our moral\nnature in its purity and perfection; but why we receive pleasure from\nsome forms and colours, and not from others, is no more to be asked or\nanswered than why we like sugar and dislike wormwood.\n\n\n2. The temper by which right taste is formed is characteristically\npatient. It dwells upon what is submitted to it. It does not trample\nupon it,--lest it should be pearls, even though it look like husks. It\nis good ground, penetrable, retentive; it does not send up thorns of\nunkind thoughts, to choke the weak seed; it is hungry and thirsty too,\nand drinks all the dew that falls on it. It is an honest and good\nheart, that shows no too ready springing before the sun be up, but\nfails not afterwards; it is distrustful of itself, so as to be ready\nto believe and to try all things; and yet so trustful of itself, that\nit will neither quit what it has tried, nor take anything without\ntrying. And the pleasure which it has in things that it finds true and\ngood, is so great, that it cannot possibly be led aside by any tricks\nof fashion, or diseases of vanity; it cannot be cramped in its\nconclusions by partialities and hypocrisies; its visions and its\ndelights are too penetrating,--too living,--for any whitewashed object\nor shallow fountain long to endure or supply. It clasps all that it\nloves so hard that it crushes it if it be hollow.\n\n\n3. It is the common consent of men that whatever branch of any pursuit\nministers to the bodily comforts, and regards material uses, is\nignoble, and whatever part is addressed to the mind only, is noble;\nand that geology does better in reclothing dry bones and revealing\nlost creations, than in tracing veins of lead and beds of iron;\nastronomy better in opening to us the houses of heaven, than in\nteaching navigation; botany better in displaying structure than in\nexpressing juices; surgery better in investigating organization than\nin setting limbs.--Only it is ordained that, for our encouragement,\nevery step we make in the more exalted range of science adds something\nalso to its practical applicabilities; that all the great phenomena of\nnature, the knowledge of which is desired by the angels only, by us\npartly, as it reveals to farther vision the being and the glory of Him\nin whom they rejoice and we live, dispense yet such kind influences\nand so much of material blessing as to be joyfully felt by all\ninferior creatures, and to be desired by them with such single desire\nas the imperfection of their nature may admit; that the strong\ntorrents, which, in their own gladness, fill the hills with hollow\nthunder, and the vales with winding light, have yet their bounden\ncharge of field to feed, and barge to bear; that the fierce flames to\nwhich the Alp owes its upheaval and the volcano its terror, temper for\nus the metal vein, and warm the quickening spring; and that for our\nincitement, I say, not our reward,--for knowledge is its own\nreward,--herbs have their healing, stones their preciousness, and\nstars their times.\n\n\n4. Had it been ordained by the Almighty[1] that the highest pleasures\nof sight should be those of most difficult attainment, and that to\narrive at them it should be necessary to accumulate gilded palaces,\ntower over tower, and pile artificial mountains around insinuated\nlakes, there would never have been a direct contradiction between the\nunselfish duties and the inherent desires of every individual. But no\nsuch contradiction exists in the system of Divine Providence; which,\nleaving it open to us, if we will, as creatures in probation, to abuse\nthis sense like every other, and pamper it with selfish and\nthoughtless vanities, as we pamper the palate with deadly meats, until\nthe appetite of tasteful cruelty is lost in its sickened satiety,\nincapable of pleasure unless, Caligula like, it concentrates the\nlabour of a million of lives into the sensation of an hour,--leaves it\nalso open to us, by humble and loving ways, to make ourselves\nsusceptible of deep delight, which shall not separate us from our\nfellows, nor require the sacrifice of any duty or occupation, but\nwhich shall bind us closer to men and to God, and be with us always,\nharmonized with every action, consistent with every claim, unchanging\nand eternal.\n\n[1] The reader must observe, that having been thoroughly disciplined in\nthe Evangelical schools, I supposed myself, at four-and-twenty, to know\nall about the ordinances of the Almighty. Nevertheless, the practical\ncontents of the sentence are good; if only they are intelligible, which\nI doubt.\n\n\n5. A great Idealist never can be egotistic. The whole of his power\ndepends upon his losing sight and feeling of his own existence, and\nbecoming a mere witness and mirror of truth, and a scribe of\nvisions,--always passive in sight, passive in utterance, lamenting\ncontinually that he cannot completely reflect nor clearly utter all he\nhas seen,--not by any means a proud state for a man to be in. But the\nman who has no invention is always setting things in order,[2] and\nputting the world to rights, and mending, and beautifying, and pluming\nhimself on his doings, as supreme in all ways.\n\n[2] I am now a comic illustration of this sentence, myself. I have not a\nray of invention in all my brains; but am intensely rational and\norderly, and have resolutely begun to set the world to rights.\n\n\n6. So far as education does indeed tend to make the senses delicate,\nand the perceptions accurate, and thus enables people to be pleased\nwith quiet instead of gaudy colour, and with graceful instead of\ncoarse form; and by long acquaintance with the best things, to discern\nquickly what is fine from what is common--so far acquired taste is an\nhonourable faculty, and it is true praise of anything to say it is \"in\ngood taste.\" But,[3] so far as this higher education has a tendency to\nnarrow the sympathies and harden the heart, diminishing the interest\nof all beautiful things by familiarity, until even what is best can\nhardly please, and what is brightest hardly entertain,--so far as it\nfosters pride, and leads men to found the pleasure they take in\nanything, not on the worthiness of the thing, but on the degree in\nwhich it indicates some greatness of their own, (as people build\nmarble porticoes, and inlay marble floors, not so much because they\nlike the colours of marble, or find it pleasant to the foot, as\nbecause such porches and floors are costly, and separated in all human\neyes from plain entrances of stone and timber);--so far as it leads\npeople to prefer gracefulness of dress, manner, and aspect, to value\nof substance and heart, liking a well-_said_ thing better than a true\nthing, and a well-trained manner better than a sincere one, and a\ndelicately-formed face better than a good-natured one,--and in all\nother ways and things setting custom and semblance above everlasting\ntruth;--so far, finally, as it induces a sense of inherent distinction\nbetween class and class, and causes everything to be more or less\ndespised which has no social rank, so that the affection, pleasure,\nand grief of a clown are looked upon as of no interest compared with\nthe affection and grief of a well-bred man;--just so far, in all these\nseveral ways, the feeling induced by what is called \"a liberal\neducation\" is utterly adverse to the understanding of noble art.\n\n[3] Nobody need begin this second volume sentence unless they are\nbreathed like the Graeme:--\n\n\"Right up Ben Ledi could he press, And not a sob his toil confess.\"\n\n\n7. He who habituates himself in his daily life to seek for the stern\nfacts in whatever he hears or sees, will have these facts again\nbrought before him by the involuntary imaginative power, in their\nnoblest associations; and he who seeks for frivolities and fallacies,\nwill have frivolities and fallacies again presented to him in his\ndreams.[4]\n\n[4] Very good. Few people have any idea how much more important the\ngovernment of the mind is, than the force of its exertion. Nearly all\nthe world flog their horses, without ever looking where they are going.\n\n\n8. All the histories of the Bible are yet waiting to be painted. Moses\nhas never been painted; Elijah never; David never (except as a mere\nruddy stripling); Deborah never; Gideon never; Isaiah never.[5] What\nsingle example does the reader remember of painting which suggested so\nmuch as the faintest shadow of their deeds? Strong men in armour, or\naged men with flowing beards, he _may_ remember, who, when he looked\nat his Louvre or Uffizi catalogue, he found were intended to stand for\nDavid, or Moses. But does he suppose that, if these pictures had\nsuggested to him the feeblest image of the presence of such men, he\nwould have passed on, as he assuredly did, to the next picture,\nrepresenting, doubtless, Diana and Actaeon, or Cupid and the Graces, or\na gambling quarrel in a pothouse--with no sense of pain or surprise?\nLet him meditate over the matter, and he will find ultimately that\nwhat I say is true, and that religious art at once complete and\nsincere never yet has existed.\n\n[5] I knew nothing, when I wrote this passage, of Luini, Filippo Lippi,\nor Sandro Botticelli; and had not capacity to enter into the deeper\nfeelings, even of the men whom I was chiefly studying,--Tintoret and Fra\nAngelico. But the British public is at present as little acquainted with\nthe greater Florentines as I was then, and the passage, for _them_,\nremains true.\n\n\n\n\nSECTION II.\n\nPOWER AND OFFICE OF IMAGINATION.\n\n\n9. What are the legitimate uses of the imagination,--that is to say,\nof the power of perceiving, or conceiving with the mind, things which\ncannot be perceived by the senses? Its first and noblest use is,[6] to\nenable us to bring sensibly to our sight the things which are recorded\nas belonging to our future state, or invisibly surrounding us in this.\nIt is given us, that we may imagine the cloud of witnesses, in heaven,\nand earth, and sea, as if they were now present,--the souls of the\nrighteous waiting for us; that we may conceive the great army of the\ninhabitants of heaven, and discover among them those whom we most\ndesire to be with for ever; that we may be able to vision forth the\nministry of angels beside us, and see the chariots of fire on the\nmountains that gird us round; but, above all, to call up the scenes\nand facts in which we are commanded to believe, and be present, as if\nin the body, at every recorded event of the history of the Redeemer.\nIts second and ordinary use is, to empower us to traverse the scenes\nof all other history, and to force the facts to become again visible,\nso as to make upon us the same impression which they would have made\nif we had witnessed them; and, in the minor necessities of life, to\nenable us, out of any present good, to gather the utmost measure of\nenjoyment, by investing it with happy associations, and, in any\npresent evil, to lighten it, by summoning back the images of other\nhours; and also to give to all mental truths some visible type, in\nallegory, simile, or personification, which shall most deeply enforce\nthem; and finally, when the mind is utterly outwearied, to refresh it\nwith such innocent play as shall be most in harmony with the\nsuggestive voices of natural things, permitting it to possess living\ncompanionship, instead of silent beauty, and create for itself fairies\nin the grass, and naiads in the wave.\n\n[6] I should be glad if the reader who is interested in the question\nhere raised, would read, as illustrative of the subsequent statement,\nthe account of Tintoret's 'Paradise,' in the close of my Oxford lecture\non Michael Angelo and Tintoret, which I have printed separately to make\nit generally accessible.\n\n\n10. Yet, because we thus reverence the power and art of imagination,\nlet none of us despise the power and art of memory.\n\nLet the reader consider seriously what he would give at any moment to\nhave the power of arresting the fairest scenes, those which so often\nrise before him only to vanish; to stay the cloud in its fading, the\nleaf in its trembling, and the shadows in their changing; to bid the\nfitful foam be fixed upon the river, and the ripples be everlasting\nupon the lake; and then to bear away with him no darkness or feeble\nsun-stain, (though even that is beautiful,) but a counterfeit which\nshould seem no counterfeit--the true and perfect image of life indeed.\nOr rather, (for the full majesty of such a power is not thus\nsufficiently expressed,) let him consider that it would be in effect\nnothing less than a capacity of transporting himself at any moment\ninto any scene--a gift as great as can be possessed by a disembodied\nspirit; and suppose, also, this necromancy embracing not only the\npresent but the past, and enabling us seemingly to enter into the very\nbodily presence of men long since gathered to the dust; to behold them\nin act as they lived; but, with greater privilege than ever was\ngranted to the companions of those transient acts of life, to see them\nfastened at our will in the gesture and expression of an instant, and\nstayed on the eve of some great deed, in immortality of burning\npurpose.--Conceive, so far as is possible, such power as this, and\nthen say whether the art which conferred it is to be spoken lightly\nof, or whether we should not rather reverence, as half-divine, a gift\nwhich would go so far as to raise us into the rank, and invest us with\nthe felicities, of angels.[7]\n\n[7] Passage written in opposition to the vulgar notion that the 'mere\nimitation' of Nature is easy, and useless.\n\n\n11. I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I\ndo not mean by humility, doubt of his own power, or hesitation of\nspeaking his opinions; but a right understanding of the relation\nbetween what _he_ can do and say, and the rest of the world's sayings\nand doings. All great men not only know their business, but usually\nknow that they know it; and are not only right in their main opinions,\nbut they usually know that they are right in them; only they do not\nthink much of themselves on that account. Arnolfo knows he can build a\ngood dome at Florence; Albert Durer writes calmly to one who has found\nfault with his work,--\"It cannot be better done;\" Sir Isaac Newton\nknows that he has worked out a problem or two that would have puzzled\nanybody else; only they do not expect their fellow-men, therefore, to\nfall down and worship them. They have a curious under-sense of\npowerlessness, feeling that the greatness is not _in_ them, but\n_through_ them--that they could not do or be anything else than God\nmade them; and they see something divine and God-made in every other\nman they meet, and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful.\n\n\n12. As far as I can observe, it is a constant law, that the greatest\nmen, whether poets or historians, live entirely in their own age, and\nthe greatest fruits of their work are gathered out of their own age.\nDante paints Italy in the thirteenth century; Chaucer, England in the\nfourteenth; Masaccio, Florence in the fifteenth; Tintoret, Venice in\nthe sixteenth; all of them utterly regardless of anachronism and minor\nerror of every kind, but getting always vital truth out of the vital\npresent. If it be said that Shakespeare wrote perfect historical plays\non subjects belonging to the preceding centuries, I answer that they\n_are_ perfect plays, just because there is no care about centuries in\nthem, but a life which all men recognise for the human life of all\ntime--and this it is, not because Shakespeare sought to give universal\ntruth, but because painting, honestly and completely, from the men\nabout him, he painted that human nature which is indeed constant\nenough,--a rogue in the fifteenth century being _at heart_ what a\nrogue is in the nineteenth, and was in the twelfth; and an honest or\nknightly man being in like manner very similar to other such at any\nother time. And the work of these great idealists is, therefore,\nalways universal; not because it is not _portrait_, but because it is\n_complete_ portrait, down to the heart, which is the same in all ages;\nand the work of the mean idealists is _not_ universal, not because it\nis portrait, but because it is _half_ portrait--of the outside, the\nmanners and the dress, not of the heart. Thus Tintoret and Shakespeare\npaint, both of them, simply Venetian and English nature, as they saw\nit in their time, down to the root; and it does for _all_ time; but as\nfor any care to cast themselves into the particular ways and tones of\nthought, or custom, of past time in their historical work, you will\nfind it in neither of them,[8] nor in any other perfectly great man\nthat I know of.\n\n[8] What vestige of Egyptian character is there, for instance, in\nCleopatra?--of Athenian in Theseus or Timon?--of old English in Imogen\nor Cordelia?--of old Scottish in Macbeth?--or even of mediaeval Italian\nin Petruchio, the Merchant of Venice, or Desdemona? And the Roman plays\nappear definitely Roman only because the strength of Rome was the\neternal strength of the world,--pure family life, sustained by\nagriculture, and defended by simple and fearless manhood.\n\n\n13. I think it probable that many readers may be surprised at my\ncalling Scott the great representative of the mind of the age of\nliterature. Those who can perceive the intense penetrative depth of\nWordsworth, and the exquisite finish and melodious power of Tennyson,\nmay be offended at my placing in higher rank that poetry of careless\nglance and reckless rhyme in which Scott poured out the fancies of his\nyouth; and those who are familiar with the subtle analysis of the\nFrench novelists, or who have in any wise submitted themselves to the\ninfluence of German philosophy, may be equally indignant at my\nascribing a principality to Scott among the literary men of Europe, in\nan age which has produced De Balzac, and Goethe.[9]\n\n[9] I knew nothing of Goethe when I put him with Balzac; but the\nintolerable dulness which encumbers the depth of Wilhelm Meister, and\nthe cruel reserve which conceals from all but the intensest readers the\nmeaning of Faust, have made him, in a great degree, an evil influence in\nEuropean literature; and Evil is always second-rate.\n\nBut the mass of sentimental literature concerned with the analysis and\ndescription of emotion, headed by the poetry of Byron, is altogether\nof lower rank than the literature which merely describes what it saw.\nThe true seer feels as intensely as any one else; but he does not much\ndescribe his feelings. He tells you whom he met, and what they said;\nleaves you to make out, from that, what they feel, and what he feels,\nbut goes into little detail. And, generally speaking, pathetic writing\nand careful explanation of passion are quite easy, compared with this\nplain recording of what people said, and did; or with the right\ninvention of what they are likely to say and do; for this reason, that\nto invent a story, or admirably and thoroughly tell any part of a\nstory, it is necessary to grasp the entire mind of every personage\nconcerned in it, and know precisely how they would be affected by what\nhappens; which to do, requires a colossal intellect; but to describe a\nseparate emotion delicately, it is only needed that one should feel it\noneself; and thousands of people are capable of feeling this or that\nnoble emotion, for one who is able to enter into all the feelings of\nsomebody sitting on the other side of the table. Even, therefore,\nwhere this sentimental literature is first rate, as in passages of\nByron, Tennyson, and Keats, it ought not to be ranked so high as the\ncreative; and though perfection even in narrow fields is perhaps as\nrare as in the wider, and it may be as long before we have another \"In\nMemoriam\" as another \"Guy Mannering,\" I unhesitatingly receive as a\ngreater manifestation of power, the right invention of a few sentences\nspoken by Pleydell and Mannering across their supper-table, than the\nmost tender and passionate melodies of the self-examining verse.\n\n\n14. Fancy plays like a squirrel in its circular prison, and is happy;\nbut Imagination is a pilgrim on the earth--and her home is in heaven.\nShut her from the fields of the celestial mountains, bear her from\nbreathing their lofty, sun-warmed air; and we may as well turn upon\nher the last bolt of the Tower of Famine, and give the keys to the\nkeeping of the wildest surge that washes Capraja and Gorgona.[10]\n\n[10] I leave this passage, as my friend has chosen it; but it is\nunintelligible without the contexts, which show how all the emotions\ndescribed in the preceding passages of this section, are founded on\ntrust in the beneficence and rule of an Omnipotent Spirit.\n\n\n15. In the highest poetry, there is no word so familiar, but a great\nman will \"bring good out of it, or rather, it will bring good to him,\nand answer some end for which no other word would have done equally\nwell. A common person, for instance, would be mightily puzzled to\napply the word 'whelp' to anyone, with a view of flattering him. There\nis a certain freshness and energy in the term, which gives it\nagreeableness, but it seems difficult, at first hearing it, to use it\ncomplimentarily. If the person spoken of be a prince, the difficulty\nseems increased; and when farther he is at one and the same moment to\nbe called a 'whelp' and contemplated as a hero, it seems that a common\nidealist might well be brought to a pause! But hear Shakespeare do\nit:--\n\n                    \"Awake his warlike spirit,\n  And your great uncle's, Edward the Black Prince,\n  Who on the French ground played a tragedy,\n  Making defeat on the full power of France,\n  While his most mighty father on a hill\n  Stood smiling, to behold his lion's whelp\n  Forage in blood of French nobility.\"\n\n\n16. Although in all lovely nature there is, first, an excellent degree\nof simple beauty, addressed to the eye alone, yet often what impresses\nus most will form but a very small portion of that visible beauty.\nThat beauty may, for instance, be composed of lovely flowers, and\nglittering streams, and blue sky and white clouds; and yet the thing\nthat impresses us most, and which we should be sorriest to lose, may\nbe a thin grey film on the extreme horizon, not so large, in the space\nof the scene it occupies, as a piece of gossamer on a near-at-hand\nbush, nor in any wise prettier to the eye than the gossamer; but\nbecause the gossamer is known by us for a little bit of spider's work,\nand the other grey film is known to mean a mountain ten thousand feet\nhigh, inhabited by a race of noble mountaineers, we are solemnly\nimpressed by the aspect of it, and yet all the while the thoughts and\nknowledge which cause us to receive this impression are so obscure\nthat we are not conscious of them.\n\n\n17. Examine the nature of your own emotion, (if you feel it,) at the\nsight of the Alps; and you find all the brightness of that emotion\nhanging, like dew on a gossamer, on a curious web of subtle fancy and\nimperfect knowledge. First you have a vague idea of its size, coupled\nwith wonder at the work of the great Builder of its walls and\nfoundations; then an apprehension of its eternity, a pathetic sense of\nits perpetualness, and your own transientness, as of the grass upon\nits side;--then, and in very sadness, a sense of strange companionship\nwith past generations, in seeing what they saw. They did not see the\nclouds that are floating over your head, nor the cottage wall on the\nother side of the field, nor the road by which you are travelling. But\nthey saw _that_. The wall of granite in the heavens was the same to\nthem as to you. They have ceased to look upon it; you will soon cease\nto look also, and the granite wall will be for others. Then, mingled\nwith these more solemn imaginations, come the understandings of the\ngifts and glories of the Alp;--the fancying forth of all the fountains\nthat well from its rocky walls, and strong rivers that are born out of\nits ice, and of all the pleasant valleys that wind between its cliffs,\nand all the chalets that gleam among its clouds, and happy farmsteads\ncouched upon its pastures; while, together with the thoughts of these,\nrise strange sympathies with all the unknown of human life, and\nhappiness, and death, signified by that narrow white flame of the\neverlasting snow, seen so far in the morning sky. These images, and\nfar more than these, lie at the root of the emotion which you feel at\nthe sight of the Alps. You may not trace them in your heart, for there\nis a great deal more in your heart, both of evil and good, than you\ncan ever trace; but they stir you and quicken you for all that.\nAssuredly, so far as you feel more at beholding the snowy mountain\nthan any other object of the same sweet silvery grey, these are the\nkind of images which cause you to do so; and observe, these are\nnothing more than a greater apprehension of the _facts_ of the thing.\nWe call the power 'Imagination,' because it imagines or conceives; but\nit is only noble imagination, if it imagines or conceives the _truth_.\nAnd according to the degree of knowledge possessed, and of sensibility\nto the pathetic or impressive character of the things known, will be\nthe degree of this imaginative delight.\n\n\n18. So natural is it to the human heart to fix itself in hope rather\nthan in present possession, and so subtle is the charm which the\nimagination casts over what is distant or denied, that there is often\na more touching power in the scenes which contain far-away promises of\nsomething greater than themselves, than in those which exhaust the\ntreasures and powers of nature in an unconquerable and excellent\nglory, leaving nothing more to be by fancy pictured or pursued. I do\nnot know that there is a district in the world more calculated to\nillustrate this power of the expectant imagination than that which\nsurrounds the city of Fribourg in Switzerland, extending from it\ntowards Berne. It is of grey sandstone, considerably elevated, but\npresenting no object of striking interest to the passing traveller; so\nthat as it is generally seen in the course of a hasty journey from the\nBernese Alps to those of Savoy, it is rarely regarded with any other\nsensation than that of weariness, all the more painful because\naccompanied with reaction from the high excitement caused by the\nsplendour of the Bernese Oberland. The traveller--foot-sore, feverish,\nand satiated with glacier and precipice,--lies back in the corner of\nthe diligence, perceiving little more than that the road is winding\nand hilly, and the country through which it passes, cultivated and\ntame. Let him, however, only do this tame country the justice of\nstaying in it a few days, until his mind has recovered its tone, and\ntake one or two long walks through its fields, and he will have other\nthoughts of it. It is, as I said, an undulating district of grey\nsandstone, never attaining any considerable height, but having enough\nof the mountain spirit to throw itself into continual succession of\nbold slope and dale; elevated, also, just far enough above the sea to\nrender the pine a frequent forest tree along its irregular ridges.\nThrough this elevated tract the river cuts its way in a ravine some\nfive or six hundred feet in depth, which winds for leagues between the\ngentle hills, unthought of until its edge is approached; and then,\nsuddenly, through the boughs of the firs, the eye perceives, beneath,\nthe green and gliding stream, and the broad walls of sandstone cliff\nthat form its banks; hollowed out where the river leans against them,\nat its turns, into perilous over-hanging; and, on the other shore, at\nthe same spots, leaving little breadths of meadow between them and the\nwater, half overgrown with thicket, deserted in their sweetness,\ninaccessible from above, and rarely visited by any curious wanderers\nalong the hardly traceable footpath which struggles for existence\nbeneath the rocks. And there the river ripples and eddies and murmurs\nin an outer solitude. It is passing through a thickly peopled country;\nbut never was a stream so lonely. The feeblest and most far-away\ntorrent among the high hills has its companions; the goats browse\nbeside it; and the traveller drinks from it, and passes over it with\nhis staff; and the peasant traces a new channel for it down to his\nmill-wheel. But this stream has no companions; it flows on in an\ninfinite seclusion, not secret, nor threatening, but a quietness of\nsweet daylight and open air--a broad space of tender and deep\ndesolateness, drooped into repose out of the midst of human labour and\nlife; the waves plashing lowly, with none to hear them; and the wild\nbirds building in the boughs, with none to fray them away; and the\nsoft, fragrant herbs rising and breathing and fading, with no hand to\ngather them;--and yet all bright and bare to the clouds above, and to\nthe fresh fall of the passing sunshine and pure rain. But above the\nbrows of these scarped cliffs, all is in an instant changed. A few\nsteps only beyond the firs that stretch their branches, angular, and\nwild, and white, like forks of lightning, into the air of the\nravine,--and we are in an arable country of the most perfect richness;\nthe swathes of its corn glowing and burning from field to field: its\npretty hamlets all vivid with fruitful orchards, and flowery garden,\nand goodly with steep-roofed storehouse and barn; its well-kept, hard,\npark-like roads rising and falling from hillside to hillside, or\ndisappearing among brown banks of moss, and thickets of the wild\nraspberry and rose, or gleaming through lines of tall trees, half\nglade, half avenue, where the gate opens, or the gateless path turns\ntrustedly aside, unhindered, into the garden of some statelier house,\nsurrounded in rural pride with its golden hives, and carved granaries,\nand irregular domain of latticed and espaliered cottages, gladdening\nto look upon in their delicate homeliness--delicate, yet in some sort,\nrude; not like our English homes--trim, laborious, formal,\nirreproachable in comfort--but with a peculiar carelessness and\nlargeness in all their detail, harmonizing with the outlawed\nloveliness of their country. For there is an untamed strength even in\nall that soft and habitable land. It is indeed gilded with corn, and\nfragrant with deep grass, but it is not subdued to the plough or to\nthe scythe. It gives at its own free will; it seems to have nothing\nwrested from it, nor conquered in it. It is not redeemed from\ndesertness, but unrestrained in fruitfulness,--a generous land, bright\nwith capricious plenty, and laughing from vale to vale in fitful\nfulness, kind and wild. Nor this without some sterner element mingled\nin the heart of it. For, along all its ridges stand the dark masses of\ninnumerable pines,[11] taking no part in its gladness; asserting\nthemselves for ever as fixed shadows, not to be pierced or banished\neven in the intensest sunlight; fallen flakes and fragments of the\nnight, stayed in their solemn squares in the midst of all the rosy\nbendings of the orchard boughs and yellow effulgence of the harvest,\nand tracing themselves in black network and motionless fringes against\nthe blanched blue of the horizon in its saintly clearness. And yet\nthey do not sadden the landscape, but seem to have been set there\nchiefly to show how bright everything else is round them; and all the\nclouds look of pure silver, and all the air seems filled with a whiter\nand more living sunshine, where they are pierced by the sable points\nof the pines; and all the pastures look of more glowing green where\nthey run up between the purple trunks; and the sweet field footpaths\nskirt the edges of the forest for the sake of its shade, sloping up\nand down about the slippery roots, and losing themselves every now and\nthen hopelessly among the violets and ground-ivy and brown sheddings\nof the fibrous leaves, and at last plunging into some open aisle,\nwhere the light through the distant stems shows that there is a chance\nof coming out again on the other side; and coming out indeed in a\nlittle while from the scented darkness into the dazzling air and\nmarvellous landscape, which stretches still farther and farther in new\nwilfulness of grove and garden, until at last the craggy mountains of\nthe Simmenthal rise out of it, sharp into the rolling of the southern\nclouds.\n\n[11] Almost the only pleasure I have, myself, in rereading my old books,\nis my sense of having at least done justice to the pine. Compare the\npassage in this book, No. 47.\n\n\n19.[12] Although there are few districts of Northern Europe, however\napparently dull or tame, in which I cannot find pleasure; though the\nwhole of Northern France (except Champagne), dull as it seems to most\ntravellers, is to me a perpetual paradise; and, putting Lincolnshire,\nLeicestershire, and one or two such other perfectly flat districts\naside, there is not an English county which I should not find\nentertainment in exploring the cross-roads of, foot by foot,--yet all\nmy best enjoyment would be owing to the imagination of the hills,\ncolouring with their far-away memories every lowland stone and herb.\nThe pleasant French coteau, green in the sunshine, delights me either\nby what real mountain character it has in itself, (for in extent and\nsuccession of promontory, the flanks of the French valleys have quite\nthe sublimity of true mountain distances,) or by its broken ground and\nrugged steps among the vines, and rise of the leafage above against\nthe blue sky, as it might rise at Vevay or Como. There is not a wave\nof the Seine, but is associated in my mind with the first rise of the\nsandstones and forest pines of Fontainebleau; and with the hope of the\nAlps, as one leaves Paris, with the horses' heads to the southwest,\nthe morning sun flashing on the bright waves at Charenton. If there be\nno hope or association of this kind, and if I cannot deceive myself\ninto fancying that perhaps at the next rise of the road there may be\nthe film of a blue hill in the gleam of sky at the horizon, the\nlandscape, however beautiful, produces in me even a kind of sickness\nand pain; and the whole view from Richmond Hill or Windsor\nTerrace,--nay, the gardens of Alcinous, with their perpetual\nsummer--or of the Hesperides, (if they were flat, and not close to\nAtlas,) golden apples and all, I would give away in an instant, for\none mossy granite stone a foot broad, and two leaves of lady fern.\n\n[12] This, and the following passage, have nothing to do with the\ngeneral statements in the book. They occur with reference only to my own\nidiosyncrasy. I was much surprised when I found first how individual it\nwas, by a Pre-Raphaelite painter's declaring a piece of unwholesome\nreedy fen to be more beautiful than Benvenue.\n\n\n20. I cannot find words to express the intense pleasure I have always\nin first finding myself, after some prolonged stay in England, at the\nfoot of the old tower of Calais Church. The large neglect, the noble\nunsightliness of it; the record of its years written so visibly, yet\nwithout sign of weakness or decay; its stern wasteness and gloom,\neaten away by the Channel winds, and overgrown with the bitter sea\ngrasses; its slates and tiles all shaken and rent, and yet not\nfalling; its desert of brickwork, full of bolts, and holes, and ugly\nfissures, and yet strong, like a bare brown rock; its carelessness of\nwhat any one thinks or feels about it, putting forth no claim, having\nno beauty, nor desirableness, pride, nor grace; yet neither asking for\npity; not, as ruins are, useless and piteous, feebly or fondly\ngarrulous of better days; but, useful still, going through its own\ndaily work,--as some old fisherman, beaten grey by storm, yet drawing\nhis daily nets: so it stands, with no complaint about its past youth,\nin blanched and meagre massiveness and serviceableness, gathering\nhuman souls together underneath it; the sound of its bells for prayer\nstill rolling through its rents; and the grey peak of it seen far\nacross the sea, principal of the three that rise above the waste of\nsurfy sand and hillocked shore,--the lighthouse for life, and the\nbelfry for labour, and this--for patience and praise.\n\nI cannot tell the half of the strange pleasures and thoughts that come\nabout me at the sight of that old tower; for, in some sort, it is the\nepitome of all that makes the continent of Europe interesting, as\nopposed to new countries; and, above all, it completely expresses that\nagedness in the midst of active life which binds the old and the new\ninto harmony. We in England have our new streets, our new inn, our\ngreen shaven lawn, and our piece of ruin emergent from it--a mere\n_specimen_ of the Middle Ages put on a bit of velvet carpet, to be\nshown; and which, but for its size, might as well be on a museum shelf\nat once, under cover;--but, on the Continent, the links are unbroken\nbetween the past and present; and, in such use as they can serve for,\nthe grey-headed wrecks are suffered to stay with men; while, in\nunbroken line, the generations of spared buildings are seen\nsucceeding, each in its place. And thus, in its largeness, in its\npermitted evidence of slow decline, in its poverty, in its absence of\nall pretence, of all show and care for outside aspect, that Calais\ntower has an infinite of symbolism in it, all the more striking\nbecause usually seen in contrast with English scenes expressive of\nfeelings the exact reverse of these.[13]\n\n[13] My friend won't write out the reverse! Our book is to be all jelly,\nand no powder, it seems. Well, I'm very thankful she likes the\njelly,--at any rate, it makes me sure that _it_ is well made.\n\n\n\n\nSECTION III.\n\nILLUSTRATIVE: THE SKY.\n\n\n21. It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the\nsky. It is the part of creation in which Nature has done more for the\nsake of pleasing man--more for the sole and evident purpose of talking\nto him, and teaching him--than in any other of her works; and it is\njust the part in which we least attend to her. There are not many of\nher other works in which some more material or essential purpose than\nthe mere pleasing of man is not answered by every part of their\norganization; but every essential purpose of the sky might, so far as\nwe know, be answered if once in three days, or thereabouts, a great,\nugly, black rain-cloud were brought up over the blue, and everything\nwell watered, and so all left blue again till next time, with perhaps\na film of morning and evening mist for dew;--and instead of this,\nthere is not a moment of any day of our lives, when Nature is not\nproducing scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory,\nand working still upon such exquisite and constant principles of the\nmost perfect beauty, that it is quite certain[14] it is all done for\nus, and intended for our perpetual pleasure. And every man, wherever\nplaced, however far from other sources of interest or of beauty, has\nthis doing for him constantly. The noblest scenes of the earth can be\nseen and known but by few; it is not intended that man should live\nalways in the midst of them; he injures them by his presence, he\nceases to feel them if he is always with them; but the sky is for all:\nbright as it is, it is not\n\n    \"too bright nor good\n  For human nature's daily food;\"\n\nit is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and\nexalting of the heart,--for soothing it, and purifying it from its\ndross and dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes\nawful--never the same for two moments together; almost human in its\npassions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its\ninfinity, its appeal to what is immortal in us is as distinct as its\nministry of chastisement or of blessing to what is mortal is\nessential. And yet we never attend to it, we never make it a subject\nof thought, but as it has to do with our animal sensations; we look\nupon all by which it speaks to us more clearly than to brutes, upon\nall which bears witness to the intentions of the Supreme that we are\nto receive more from the covering vault than the light and the dew\nwhich we share with the weed and the worm, as only a succession of\nmeaningless and monotonous accident, too common and too vain to be\nworthy of a moment of watchfulness, or a glance of admiration. If in\nour moments of utter idleness and insipidity, we turn to the sky as a\nlast resource, which of its phenomena do we speak of? One says, it has\nbeen wet; and another, it has been windy; and another, it has been\nwarm. Who among the whole chattering crowd can tell one of the forms\nand the precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that girded\nthe horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow sunbeam that came\nout of the south, and smote upon their summits until they melted and\nmouldered away in a dust of blue rain? Who saw the dance of the dead\nclouds when the sunlight left them last night, and the west wind blew\nthem before it like withered leaves? All has passed unregretted as\nunseen; or, if the apathy be ever shaken off even for an instant, it\nis only by what is gross, or what is extraordinary. And yet it is not\nin the broad and fierce manifestations of the elemental energies, not\nin the clash of the hail, nor the drift of the whirlwind, that the\nhighest characters of the sublime are developed. God is not in the\nearthquake, nor in the fire, but in the still, small voice. They are\nbut the blunt and the low faculties of our nature, which can only be\naddressed through lamp-black and lightning. It is in quiet and subdued\npassages of unobtrusive majesty, the deep and the calm, and the\nperpetual; that which must be sought ere it is seen, and loved ere it\nis understood; things which the angels work out for us daily, and yet\nvary eternally; which are never wanting, and never repeated; which are\nto be found always, yet each found but once;--it is through these that\nthe lesson of devotion is chiefly taught, and the blessing of beauty\ngiven.\n\n[14] At least, I thought so, when I was four-and-twenty. At\nfive-and-fifty, I fancy that it is just possible there may be other\ncreatures in the universe to be pleased, or,--it may be,--displeased, by\nthe weather.\n\n\n22. We habitually think of the rain-cloud only as dark and grey; not\nknowing that we owe to it perhaps the fairest, though not the most\ndazzling, of the hues of heaven. Often in our English mornings, the\nrain-clouds in the dawn form soft, level fields, which melt\nimperceptibly into the blue; or, when of less extent, gather into\napparent bars, crossing the sheets of broader cloud above; and all\nthese bathed throughout in an unspeakable light of pure rose-colour,\nand purple, and amber, and blue; not shining, but misty-soft; the\nbarred masses, when seen nearer, composed of clusters or tresses of\ncloud, like floss silk; looking as if each knot were a little swathe\nor sheaf of lighted rain.\n\n\n23. Aqueous vapour or mist, suspended in the atmosphere, becomes\nvisible exactly as dust does in the air of a room. In the shadows, you\nnot only cannot see the dust itself, because unillumined, but you can\nsee other objects through the dust, without obscurity; the air being\nthus actually rendered more transparent by a deprivation of light.\nWhere a sunbeam enters, every particle of dust becomes visible, and a\npalpable interruption to the sight; so that a transverse sunbeam is a\nreal obstacle to the vision--you cannot see things clearly through it.\nIn the same way, wherever vapour is illuminated by transverse rays,\nthere it becomes visible as a whiteness more or less affecting the\npurity of the blue, and destroying it exactly in proportion to the\ndegree of illumination. But where vapour is in shade, it has very\nlittle effect on the sky, perhaps making it a little deeper and greyer\nthan it otherwise would be, but not, itself, unless very dense,\ndistinguishable or felt as mist.\n\n\n24. Has the reader any distinct idea of what clouds are?\n\n[15]That mist which lies in the morning so softly in the valley, level\nand white, through which the tops of the trees rise as if through an\ninundation--why is _it_ so heavy, and why does it lie so low, being\nyet so thin and frail that it will melt away utterly into splendour of\nmorning when the sun has shone on it but a few moments more? Those\ncolossal pyramids, huge and firm, with outlines as of rocks, and\nstrength to bear the beating of the high sun full on their fiery\nflanks,--why are _they_ so light, their bases high over our heads,\nhigh over the heads of Alps? Why will these melt away, not as the sun\n_rises_, but as he _descends_, and leave the stars of twilight clear;\nwhile the valley vapour gains again upon the earth, like a shroud? Or\nthat ghost of a cloud, which steals by yonder clump of pines; nay,\nwhich does _not_ steal by them, but haunts them, wreathing yet round\nthem, and yet,--and yet,--slowly; now falling in a fair waved line\nlike a woman's veil; now fading, now gone; we look away for an\ninstant, and look back, and it is again there. What has it to do with\nthat clump of pines, that it broods by them, and weaves itself among\ntheir branches, to and fro? Has it hidden a cloudy treasure among the\nmoss at their roots, which it watches thus? Or has some strong\nenchanter charmed it into fond returning, or bound it fast within\nthose bars of bough? And yonder filmy crescent, bent like an archer's\nbow above the snowy summit, the highest of all the hills--that white\narch which never forms but over the supreme crest,--how is it stayed\nthere, repelled apparently from the snow,--nowhere touching it, the\nclear sky seen between it and the mountain edge, yet never leaving\nit--poised as a white bird hovers over its nest? Or those war clouds\nthat gather on the horizon, dragon-crested, tongued with fire,--how is\ntheir barbed strength bridled? What bits are those they are champing\nwith their vapourous lips, flinging off flakes of black foam? Leagued\nleviathans of the Sea of Heaven,--out of their nostrils goeth smoke,\nand their eyes are like the eyelids of the morning; the sword of him\nthat layeth at them cannot hold the spear, the dart, nor the\nhabergeon. Where ride the captains of their armies? Where are set the\nmeasures of their march? Fierce murmurers, answering each other from\nmorning until evening--what rebuke is this which has awed them into\npeace;--what hand has reined them back by the way in which they came?\n\n[15] This is a fifth volume bit, and worth more attention.\n\nI know not if the reader will think at first that questions like these\nare easily answered. So far from it, I rather believe that some of the\nmysteries of the clouds never will be understood by us at all.\n\"Knowest thou the balancings of the clouds?\" Is the answer ever to be\none of pride? The wondrous works of Him, who is perfect in knowledge?\nIs _our_ knowledge ever to be so?...\n\nFor my own part, I enjoy the mystery, and perhaps the reader may. I\nthink he ought. He should not be less grateful for summer rain, or see\nless beauty in the clouds of morning, because they come to prove him\nwith hard questions; to which perhaps, if we look close at the\nheavenly scroll, we may find also a syllable or two of answer,\nilluminated here and there.[16]\n\n[16] Compare, in 'Sartor Resartus,' the boy's watching from the garden\nwall.\n\nAnd though the climates of the south and east may be _comparatively_\nclear, they are no more absolutely clear than our own northern air.\nIntense clearness, whether, in the north, after or before rain, or in\nsome moments of twilight in the south, is always, as far as I am\nacquainted with natural phenomena, a _notable_ thing. Mist of some\nsort, or mirage, or confusion of light or of cloud, are the general\nfacts; the distance may vary in different climates at which the\neffects of mist begin, but they are always present; and therefore, in\nall probability, it is meant that we should enjoy them.... We surely\nneed not wonder that mist and all its phenomena have been made\ndelightful to us, since our happiness as thinking beings must depend\non our being content to accept only partial knowledge even in those\nmatters which chiefly concern us. If we insist upon perfect\nintelligibility and complete declaration in every moral subject, we\nshall instantly fall into misery of unbelief. Our whole happiness and\npower of energetic action depend upon our being able to breathe and\nlive in the cloud; content to see it opening here, and closing there;\nrejoicing to catch through the thinnest films of it, glimpses of\nstable and substantial things; but yet perceiving a nobleness even in\nthe concealment, and rejoicing that the kindly veil is spread where\nthe untempered light might have scorched us, or the infinite clearness\nwearied. And I believe that the resentment of this interference of the\nmist is one of the forms of proud error which are too easily mistaken\nfor virtues. To be content in utter darkness and ignorance is indeed\nunmanly, and therefore we think that to love light and find knowledge\nmust always be right. Yet (as in all matters before observed,)\nwherever _pride_ has any share in the work, even knowledge and light\nmay be ill pursued. Knowledge is good, and light is good: yet man\nperished in seeking knowledge, and moths perish in seeking light; and\nif we, who are crushed before the moth, will not accept such mystery\nas is needful to us, we shall perish in like manner. But, accepted in\nhumbleness, it instantly becomes an element of pleasure; and I think\nthat every rightly constituted mind ought to rejoice, not so much in\nknowing anything clearly, as in feeling that there is infinitely more\nwhich it cannot know. None but proud or weak men would mourn over\nthis, for we may always know more, if we choose, by working on; but\nthe pleasure is, I think, to humble people, in knowing that the\njourney is endless, the treasure inexhaustible,--watching the cloud\nstill march before them with its summitless pillar, and being sure\nthat, to the end of time, and to the length of eternity, the mysteries\nof its infinity will still open farther and farther, their dimness\nbeing the sign and necessary adjunct of their inexhaustibleness. I\nknow there are an evil mystery, and a deathful dimness,--the mystery\nof the great Babylon--the dimness of the sealed eye and soul; but do\nnot let us confuse these with the glorious mystery of the things which\nthe \"angels desire to look into,\" or with the dimness which, even\nbefore the clear eye and open soul, still rests on sealed pages of the\neternal volume.\n\n\n25. On some isolated mountain at day-break,[17] when the night mists\nfirst rise from off the plain, watch their white and lakelike fields,\nas they float in level bays, and winding gulfs, about the islanded\nsummits of the lower hills, untouched yet by more than dawn, colder\nand more quiet than a windless sea under the moon of midnight; watch\nwhen the first sunbeam is sent upon the silver channels, how the foam\nof their undulating surface parts, and passes away, and down under\ntheir depths the glittering city and green pastures lie like Atlantis,\nbetween the white paths of winding rivers; the flakes of light falling\nevery moment faster and broader among the starry spires, as the\nwreathed surges break and vanish above them, and the confused crests\nand ridges of the dark hills shorten their grey shadows upon the\nplain. Wait a little longer, and you shall see those scattered mists\nrallying in the ravines, and floating up towards you, along the\nwinding valleys, till they crouch in quiet masses, iridescent with the\nmorning light, upon the broad breasts of the higher hills, whose\nleagues of massy undulation will melt back, back into that robe of\nmaterial light, until they fade away, lost in its lustre, to appear\nagain above in the serene heaven like a wild, bright, impossible\ndream, foundationless, and inaccessible, their very bases vanishing in\nthe unsubstantial and mocking blue of the deep lake below. Wait yet a\nlittle longer, and you shall see those mists gather themselves into\nwhite towers, and stand like fortresses along the promontories, massy\nand motionless, only piled, with every instant, higher and higher into\nthe sky, and casting longer shadows athwart the rocks; and out of the\npale blue of the horizon you will see forming and advancing a troop of\nnarrow, dark, pointed vapours, which will cover the sky, inch by inch,\nwith their grey network, and take the light off the landscape with an\neclipse which will stop the singing of the birds, and the motion of\nthe leaves, together;--and then you will see horizontal bars of black\nshadow forming under them, and lurid wreaths create themselves, you\nknow not how, among the shoulders of the hills; you never see them\nform, but when you look back to a place which was clear an instant\nago, there is a cloud on it, hanging by the precipice, as a hawk\npauses over his prey;--and then you will hear the sudden rush of the\nawakened wind, and you will see those watch-towers of vapour swept\naway from their foundations, and waving curtains of opaque rain, let\ndown to the valley, swinging from the burdened clouds in black bending\nfringes, or, pacing in pale columns along the lake level, grazing its\nsurface into foam as they go. And then, as the sun sinks, you shall\nsee the storm drift for an instant from off the hills, leaving their\nbroad sides smoking and loaded yet with snow-white, torn, steam-like\nrags of capricious vapour, now gone, now gathered again,--while the\nsmouldering sun, seeming not far away, but burning like a red-hot ball\nbeside you, and as if you could reach it, plunges through the rushing\nwind and rolling cloud with headlong fall, as if it meant to rise no\nmore, dyeing all the air about it with blood;--and then you shall hear\nthe fainting tempest die in the hollow of the night, and you shall see\na green halo kindling on the summit of the eastern hills, brighter,\nbrighter yet, till the large white circle of the slow moon is lifted\nup among the barred clouds, step by step, line by line; star after\nstar she quenches with her kindling light, setting in their stead an\narmy of pale, penetrable, fleecy wreaths in the heaven, to give light\nupon the earth, which move together hand in hand, company by company,\ntroop by troop, so measured in their unity of motion that the whole\nheaven seems to roll with them, and the earth to reel under them. And\nthen wait yet for one hour, until the east again becomes purple, and\nthe heaving mountains, rolling against it in darkness, like waves of a\nwild sea, are drowned one by one in the glory of its burning; watch\nthe white glaciers blaze in their winding paths about the mountains,\nlike mighty serpents with scales of fire; watch the columnar peaks of\nsolitary snow, kindling downwards chasm by chasm, each in itself a new\nmorning--their long avalanches cast down in keen streams brighter than\nthe lightning, sending each his tribute of driven snow, like\naltar-smoke, up to heaven; the rose-light of their silent domes\nflushing that heaven about them, and above them, piercing with purer\nlight through its purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new glory on\nevery wreath, as it passes by, until the whole heaven, one scarlet\ncanopy, is interwoven with a roof of waving flame, and tossing vault\nbeyond vault, as with the drifted wings of many companies of angels;\nand then, when you can look no more for gladness, and when you are\nbowed down with fear and love of the Maker and Doer of this, tell me\nwho has best delivered this His message unto men!\n\n[17] I forget now what all this is about. It seems to be a recollection\nof the Rigi, with assumption that the enthusiastic spectator is to stand\nfor a day and night in observation; to suffer the effects of a severe\nthunder-storm, and to get neither breakfast nor dinner. I have seen such\na storm on the Rigi, however, and more than one such sunrise; and I much\ndoubt if its present visitors by rail will see more.\n\n\n26.[18] The account given of the stages of creation in the first\nchapter of Genesis is in every respect clear and intelligible to the\nsimplest reader, except in the statement of the work of the second\nday. I suppose that this statement is passed over by careless readers\nwithout any endeavour to understand it, and contemplated by simple and\nfaithful readers as a sublime mystery which was not intended to be\nunderstood. But there is no mystery in any other part of the chapter,\nand it seems to me unjust to conclude that any was intended here. And\nthe passage ought to be peculiarly interesting to us, as being the\nfirst in the Bible in which the heavens are named, and the only one in\nwhich the word \"Heaven,\" all-important as that word is to our\nunderstanding of the most precious promises of Scripture, receives a\ndefinite explanation. Let us therefore see whether, by a little\ncareful comparison of the verse with other passages in which the word\noccurs, we may not be able to arrive at as clear an understanding of\nthis portion of the chapter as of the rest. In the first place the\nEnglish word, \"Firmament,\" itself is obscure and useless; because we\nnever employ it but as a synonym of heaven, it conveys no other\ndistinct idea to us; and the verse, though from our familiarity with\nit we imagine that it possesses meaning, has in reality no more point\nnor value than if it were written, \"God said, Let there be a something\nin the midst of the waters, and God called the something, Heaven.\" But\nthe marginal reading, \"Expansion,\" has definite value; and the\nstatement that \"God said, Let there be an expansion in the midst of\nthe waters, and God called the expansion, Heaven,\" has an\napprehensible meaning. Accepting this expression as the one intended,\nwe have next to ask what expansion there is, between two waters,\ndescribable by the term \"heaven.\" Milton adopts the term \"expanse,\"\nbut he understands it of the whole volume of the air which surrounds\nthe earth. Whereas, so far as we can tell, there is no water beyond\nthe air, in the fields of space; and the whole expression of division\nof waters from waters is thus rendered valueless. Now with respect to\nthis whole chapter, we must remember always that it is intended for\nthe instruction of all mankind, not for the learned reader only; and\nthat therefore the most simple and natural interpretation is the\nlikeliest in general to be the true one. An unscientific reader knows\nlittle about the manner in which the volume of the atmosphere\nsurrounds the earth; but I imagine that he could hardly glance at the\nsky when rain was falling in the distance, and see the level line of\nthe bases of the clouds from which the shower descended, without being\nable to attach an instant and easy meaning to the words, \"expansion in\nthe midst of the waters;\" and if, having once seized this idea, he\nproceeded to examine it more accurately, he would perceive at once, if\nhe had ever noticed _anything_ of the nature of clouds, that the level\nline of their bases did indeed most severely and stringently divide\n\"waters from waters\"--that is to say, divide water in its collective\nand tangible state, from water in its aerial state; or the waters\nwhich _fall_, and _flow_, from those which _rise_, and _float_. Next,\nif we try this interpretation in the theological sense of the word\n_heaven_, and examine whether the clouds are spoken of as God's\ndwelling-place, we find God going before the Israelites in a pillar of\ncloud; revealing Himself in a cloud on Sinai; appearing in a cloud on\nthe mercy-seat; filling the Temple of Solomon with the cloud when its\ndedication is accepted; appearing in a great cloud to Ezekiel;\nascending into a cloud before the eyes of the disciples on Mount\nOlivet; and in like manner returning to judgment: \"Behold He cometh\nwith clouds, and every eye shall see Him.\" \"Then shall they see the\nSon of Man coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and great\nglory.\" While, further, the \"clouds\" and \"heavens\" are used as\ninterchangeable words in those psalms which most distinctly set forth\nthe power of God: \"He bowed the heavens also, and came down; He made\ndarkness pavilions round about Him, dark waters, and thick clouds of\nthe skies.\" And again, \"Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens, and Thy\nfaithfulness reacheth unto the clouds.\" And again, \"His excellency is\nover Israel, and His strength is in the clouds.\" And again, \"The\nclouds poured out water, the skies sent out a sound, the voice of Thy\nthunder was in the heaven.\" Again, \"Clouds and darkness are round\nabout Him, righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His\nthrone; the heavens declare His righteousness, and all the people see\nHis glory.\" In all these passages the meaning is unmistakable if they\npossess definite meaning at all. We are too apt to take them merely\nfor sublime and vague imagery, and therefore gradually to lose the\napprehension of their life and power. The expression, \"He bowed the\nheavens,\" for instance, is, I suppose, received by most readers as a\nmagnificent hyperbole, having reference to some peculiar and fearful\nmanifestation of God's power to the writer of the psalm in which the\nwords occur. But the expression either has _plain_ meaning, or it has\n_no_ meaning. Understand by the term \"heavens\" the compass of infinite\nspace around the earth, and the expression \"bowed the heavens,\"\nhowever sublime, is wholly without meaning: infinite space cannot be\nbent or bowed. But understand by the \"heavens\" the veil of clouds\nabove the earth, and the expression is neither hyperbolical nor\nobscure; it is pure, plain, accurate truth, and it describes God, not\nas revealing Himself in any peculiar way to David, but doing what He\nis still doing before our own eyes, day by day. By accepting the words\nin their simple sense, we are thus led to apprehend the immediate\npresence of the Deity, and His purpose of manifesting Himself as near\nus whenever the storm-cloud stoops upon its course; while by our vague\nand inaccurate acceptance of the words, we remove the idea of His\npresence far from us, into a region which we can neither see nor know:\nand gradually, from the close realization of a living God, who \"maketh\nthe clouds His chariot,\" we define and explain ourselves into dim and\ndistant suspicion of an inactive God inhabiting inconceivable places,\nand fading into the multitudinous formalisms of the laws of Nature.\nAll errors of this kind--and in the present day we are in constant and\ngrievous danger of falling into them--arise from the originally\nmistaken idea that man can, \"by searching, find out God--find out the\nAlmighty to perfection\"--that is to say, by help of courses of\nreasoning and accumulations of science, apprehend the nature of the\nDeity, in a more exalted and more accurate manner than in a state of\ncomparative ignorance; whereas it is clearly necessary, from the\nbeginning to the end of time, that God's way of revealing Himself to\nHis creatures should be a _simple_ way, which _all_ those creatures\nmay understand. Whether taught or untaught, whether of mean capacity\nor enlarged, it is necessary that communion with their Creator should\nbe possible to all; and the admission to such communion must be\nrested, not on their having a knowledge of astronomy, but on their\nhaving a human soul. In order to render this communion possible, the\nDeity has stooped from His throne, and has, not only in the person of\nthe Son, taken upon Him the veil of our human _flesh_, but, in the\nperson of the Father, taken upon Him the veil of our human _thoughts_,\nand permitted us, by His own spoken authority, to conceive Him simply\nand clearly as a loving father and friend; a being to be walked with\nand reasoned with, to be moved by our entreaties, angered by our\nrebellion, alienated by our coldness, pleased by our love, and\nglorified by our labour; and, finally, to be beheld in immediate and\nactive presence in all the powers and changes of creation. This\nconception of God, which is the child's, is evidently the only one\nwhich can be universal, and, therefore, the only one which _for us_\ncan be true. The moment that, in our pride of heart, we refuse to\naccept the condescension of the Almighty, and desire Him, instead of\nstooping to hold our hands, to rise up before us into His glory, we\nhoping that, by standing on a grain of dust or two of human knowledge\nhigher than our fellows, we may behold the Creator as He rises,--God\ntakes us at our word. He rises into His own invisible and\ninconceivable majesty; He goes forth upon the ways which are not our\nways, and retires into the thoughts which are not our thoughts; and we\nare left alone. And presently we say in our vain hearts, \"There is no\nGod.\"\n\n[18] This passage, to the end of the section, is one of the last, and\nbest, which I wrote in the temper of my youth; and I can still ratify\nit, thus far, that the texts referred to in it must either be received\nas it explains them, or neglected altogether.\n\nI would desire, therefore, to receive God's account of His own\ncreation as under the ordinary limits of human knowledge and\nimagination it would be received by a simple-minded man; and finding\nthat \"the heavens and the earth\" are spoken of always as having\nsomething like equal relation to each other, (\"Thus the heavens and\nthe earth were finished, and all the host of them,\") I reject at once\nall idea of the term \"heavens\" being intended to signify the infinity\nof space inhabited by countless worlds; for between those infinite\nheavens and the particle of sand, which not the earth only, but the\nsun itself, with all the solar system, is, in relation to them, no\nrelation of equality or comparison could be inferred. But I suppose\nthe heavens to mean that part of creation which holds equal\ncompanionship with our globe; I understand the \"rolling of these\nheavens together as a scroll,\" to be an equal and relative destruction\nwith the melting of the elements in fervent heat; and I understand the\nmaking of the firmament to signify that, so far as man is concerned,\nmost magnificent ordinance of the clouds;--the ordinance that, as the\ngreat plain of waters was formed on the face of the earth, so also a\nplain of waters should be stretched along the height of air, and the\nface of the cloud answer the face of the ocean; and that this upper\nand heavenly plain should be of waters, as it were, glorified in their\nnature, no longer quenching the fire, but now bearing fire in their\nown bosoms; no longer murmuring only when the winds raise them or\nrocks divide, but answering each other with their own voices, from\npole to pole; no longer restrained by established shores, and guided\nthrough unchanging channels, but going forth at their pleasure like\nthe armies of the angels, and choosing their encampments upon the\nheights of the hills; no longer hurried downwards for ever, moving but\nto fall, nor lost in the lightless accumulation of the abyss, but\ncovering the east and west with the waving of their wings, and robing\nthe gloom of the farther infinite with a vesture of diverse colours,\nof which the threads are purple and scarlet, and the embroideries\nflame.\n\nThis I believe is the ordinance of the firmament; and it seems to me\nthat in the midst of the material nearness of these heavens, God means\nus to acknowledge His own immediate presence as visiting, judging, and\nblessing us: \"The earth shook, the heavens also dropped at the\npresence of God.\" \"He doth set His bow in the clouds,\" and thus\nrenews, in the sound of every drooping swathe of rain, His promises of\neverlasting love. \"In them hath He set a _tabernacle_ for the sun;\"\nwhose burning ball, which, without the firmament, would be seen but as\nan intolerable and scorching circle in the blackness of vacuity, is by\nthat firmament surrounded with gorgeous service, and tempered by\nmediatorial ministries: by the firmament of clouds the temple is\nbuilt, for his presence to fill with light at noon; by the firmament\nof clouds the purple veil is closed at evening, round the sanctuary of\nhis rest; by the mists of the firmament his implacable light is\ndivided, and its separated fierceness appeased into the soft blue that\nfills the depth of distance with its bloom, and the flush with which\nthe mountains burn, as they drink the overflowing of the dayspring.\nAnd in this tabernacling of the unendurable sun with men, through the\nshadows of the firmament, God would seem to set forth the stooping of\nHis own Majesty to men, upon the throne of the firmament. As the\nCreator of all the worlds, and the Inhabiter of eternity, we cannot\nbehold Him; but as the Judge of the earth and the Preserver of men,\nthose heavens are indeed His dwelling-place: \"Swear not, neither by\nheaven, for it is God's throne; nor by the earth, for it is His\nfootstool!\" And all those passings to and fro of fruitful showers and\ngrateful shade, and all those visions of silver palaces built about\nthe horizon, and voices of moaning winds and threatening thunders, and\nglories of coloured robe and cloven ray, are but to deepen in our\nhearts the acceptance, and distinctness, and dearness of the simple\nwords, \"Our Father, which art in heaven.\"\n\n\n\n\nSECTION IV.\n\nILLUSTRATIVE: STREAMS AND SEA.\n\n\n27. Of all inorganic substances, acting in their own proper nature,\nand without assistance and combination, water is the most wonderful.\nIf we think of it as the source of all the changefulness and beauty\nwhich we have seen in clouds,--then, as the instrument by which the\nearth we have contemplated was modelled into symmetry, and its crags\nchiselled into grace;--then, as in the form of snow, it robes the\nmountains it has made with that transcendent light which we could not\nhave conceived if we had not seen;--then, as it exists in the foam of\nthe torrent, in the iris which spans it, in the morning mist which\nrises from it, in the deep crystalline pools which mirror its hanging\nshore, in the broad lake and glancing river;--finally, in that which\nis to all human minds the best emblem of unwearied, unconquerable\npower the wild, various, fantastic, tameless unity of the sea;--what\nshall we compare to this mighty, this universal element, for glory and\nbeauty? or how shall we follow its eternal changefulness of feeling?\nIt is like trying to paint a soul!\n\n\n28. The great angel of the sea--rain; the angel, observe,--the\nmessenger sent to a special place on a special errand. Not the\ndiffused, perpetual presence of the burden of mist, but the going and\nreturning of the intermittent cloud. All turns upon that\nintermittence. Soft moss on stone and rock; cave fern of tangled glen;\nwayside well--perennial, patient, silent, clear, stealing through its\nsquare font of rough-hewn stone; ever thus deep, no more;--which the\nwinter wreck sullies not, the summer thirst wastes not, incapable of\nstain as of decline;--where the fallen leaf floats undecayed, and the\ninsect darts undefiling: cressed brook and ever-eddying river, lifted\neven in flood scarcely over its stepping stones,--but through all\nsweet summer keeping tremulous music with harp-strings of dark water\namong the silver fingering of the pebbles. Far away in the south the\nstrong river gods have all hasted, and gone down to the sea. Wasted\nand burning, white furnaces of blasting sand, their broad beds lie\nghastly and bare; but here in the moss lands, the soft wings of the\nsea angel droop still with dew, and the shadows of their plumes falter\non the hills; strange laughings and glitterings of silver streamlets,\nborn suddenly, and twined about the mossy heights in trickling tinsel,\nanswering to them as they wave.\n\n\n29. Stand for half an hour beside the fall of Schaffhausen, on the\nnorth side, where the rapids are long, and watch how the vault of\nwater first bends unbroken, in pure polished velocity, over the\narching rocks at the brow of the cataract, covering them with a dome\nof crystal twenty feet thick, so swift that its motion is unseen\nexcept when a foam globe from above darts over it like a falling star;\nand how the trees are lighted above it under all their leaves,[19] at\nthe instant that it breaks into foam; and how all the hollows of that\nfoam burn with green fire like so much shattering chrysoprase; and\nhow, ever and anon startling you with its white flash, a jet of spray\nleaps hissing out of the fall, like a rocket, bursting in the wind and\ndriven away in dust, filling the air with light; and how through the\ncurdling wreaths of the restless crashing abyss below, the blue of the\nwater, paled by the foam in its body, shows purer than the sky through\nwhite rain-cloud, while the shuddering iris stoops in tremulous\nstillness over all, fading and flushing alternately through the\nchoking spray and shattered sunshine, hiding itself at last among the\nthick golden leaves which toss to and fro in sympathy with the wild\nwater,--their dripping masses lifted at intervals, like sheaves of\nloaded corn, by some stronger gush from the cataract, and bowed again\nupon the mossy rocks as its roar dies away,--the dew gushing from\ntheir thick branches through drooping clusters of emerald herbage, and\nsparkling in white threads along the dark rocks of the shore, feeding\nthe lichens, which chase and chequer them with purple and silver.\n\n[19] Well noticed. The drawing of the fall of Schaffhausen, which I made\nat the time of writing this study, was one of the very few, either by\nother draughtsmen or myself, which I have seen Turner pause at with\nserious attention.\n\n\n30. Close beside the path by which travellers ascend the Montanvert\nfrom the valley of Chamouni, on the right hand, where it first begins\nto rise among the pines, there descends a small stream from the foot\nof the granite peak known to the guides as the Aiguille Charmoz. It is\nconcealed from the traveller by a thicket of alder, and its murmur is\nhardly heard, for it is one of the weakest streams of the valley. But\nit is a constant stream, fed by a permanent, though small, glacier;\nand continuing to flow even to the close of summer, when more copious\ntorrents, depending only on the melting of the lower snows, have left\ntheir beds,--\"stony channels in the sun.\" The long drought which took\nplace in the autumn of 1854, sealing every source of waters except\nthese perpetual ones, left the torrent of which I am speaking, and\nsuch others, in a state peculiarly favourable to observance of their\n_least_ action on the mountains from which they descend. They were\nentirely limited to their own ice fountains, and the quantity of\npowdered rock which they brought down was, of course, at its minimum,\nbeing nearly unmingled with any earth derived from the dissolution of\nsofter soil, or vegetable mould, by rains. At three in the afternoon,\non a warm day in September, when the torrent had reached its average\nmaximum strength for the day, I filled an ordinary Bordeaux wine flask\nwith the water where it was least turbid. From this quart of water I\nobtained twenty-four grains of sand and sediment more or less fine. I\ncannot estimate the quantity of water in the stream; but the runlet of\nit at which I filled the flask was giving about two hundred bottles a\nminute, or rather more, carrying down, therefore, about three quarters\nof a pound of powdered granite every minute. This would be forty-five\npounds an hour; but allowing for the inferior power of the stream in\nthe cooler periods of the day, and taking into consideration, on the\nother side, its increased power in rain, we may, I think, estimate its\naverage hour's work at twenty-eight or thirty pounds, or a\nhundredweight every four hours. By this insignificant runlet,\ntherefore, rather more than two tons of the substance of the Mont\nBlanc are displaced and carried down a certain distance every week;\nand as it is only for three or four months that the flow of the stream\nis checked by frost, we may certainly allow eighty tons for the mass\nwhich it annually moves. It is not worth while to enter into any\ncalculation of the relation borne by this runlet to the great torrents\nwhich descend from the chain of Mont Blanc into the valley of\nChamouni.[20] I but take this quantity, eighty tons, as the result of\nthe labour of a scarcely noticeable runlet at the side of one of them,\nutterly irrespective of all sudden falls of stones and of masses of\nmountain (a single thunderbolt will sometimes leave a scar on the\nflank of a soft rock looking like a trench for a railroad), and we\nshall then begin to apprehend something of the operation of the great\nlaws of change which are the conditions of all material existence,\nhowever apparently enduring. The hills, which, as compared with living\nbeings, seem \"everlasting,\" are in truth as perishing as they; its\nveins of flowing fountain weary the mountain heart, as the crimson\npulse does ours; the natural force of the iron crag is abated in its\nappointed time, like the strength of the sinews in a human old age;\nand it is but the lapse of the longer years of decay which, in the\nsight of its Creator, distinguishes the mountain range from the moth\nand the worm.\n\n[20] I have slightly modified and abridged what follows, being impatient\nof its prolixity, as well as ashamed of what is truly called the\nludicrous under-estimate of the mass of the larger streams.\n\n\n31. Few people, comparatively, have ever seen the effect on the sea of\na powerful gale continued without intermission for three or four days\nand nights; and to those who have not, I believe it must be\nunimaginable, not from the mere force or size of surge, but from the\ncomplete annihilation of the limit between sea and air. The water,\nfrom its prolonged agitation, is beaten, not into mere creamy foam,\nbut into masses of accumulated yeast, which hang in ropes and wreaths\nfrom wave to wave; and where one curls over to break, form a festoon\nlike a drapery from its edge; these are taken up by the wind, not in\ndissipating dust, but bodily, in writhing, hanging, coiling masses,\nwhich make the air white, and thick as with snow, only the flakes are\na foot or two long each; the surges themselves are full of foam in\ntheir very bodies, underneath, making them white all through, as the\nwater is under a great cataract,--and their masses, being thus half\nwater and half air, are torn to pieces by the wind whenever they rise,\nand carried away in roaring smoke, which chokes and strangles like\nactual water. Add to this, that when the air has been exhausted of its\nmoisture by long rain, the spray of the sea is caught by it as\ndescribed above, and covers its surface not merely with the smoke of\nfinely divided water, but with boiling mist: imagine also the low\nrain-clouds brought down to the very level of the sea, as I have often\nseen them, whirling and flying in rags and fragments from wave to\nwave; and finally conceive the surges themselves in their utmost pitch\nof power, velocity, vastness, and madness, lifting themselves in\nprecipices and peaks furrowed with their whirl of ascent, through all\nthis chaos; and you will understand that there is indeed no\ndistinction left between the sea and air; that no object, nor horizon,\nnor any landmark, or natural evidence of position is left; that the\nheaven is all spray, and the ocean all cloud, and that you can see no\nfarther in any direction than you could see through a cataract.[21]\n\n[21] The whole of this was written merely to show the meaning of\nTurner's picture of the steamer in distress, throwing up signals. It is\na good study of wild weather; but, separate from its aim, utterly feeble\nin comparison to the few words by which any of the great poets will\ndescribe sea, when they have got to do it. I am rather proud of the\nshort sentence in the 'Harbours of England,' describing a great breaker\nagainst rock:--\"One moment, a flint cave,--the next, a marble\npillar,--the next, a fading cloud.\" But there is nothing in\nsea-description, detailed, like Dickens' storm at the death of Ham, in\n'David Copperfield.'\n\n\n\n\nSECTION V.\n\nILLUSTRATIVE: MOUNTAINS.\n\n\n32. The words which marked for us the purpose of the clouds are\nfollowed immediately by those notable ones,--\"And God said, Let the\nwaters which are under the heavens be gathered together into one\nplace, and let the dry land appear.\" We do not, perhaps, often enough\nconsider the deep signification of this sentence. We are too apt to\nreceive it as the description of an event vaster only in its extent,\nnot in its nature, than the compelling of the Red Sea to draw back\nthat Israel might pass by. We imagine the Deity in like manner rolling\nthe waves of the greater ocean together on an heap, and setting bars\nand doors to them eternally. But there is a far deeper meaning than\nthis in the solemn words of Genesis, and in the correspondent verse of\nthe Psalm, \"His hands prepared the dry land.\" Up to that moment the\nearth had been _void_; for, it had been _without_ _form_. The command\nthat the waters should be gathered, was the command that the earth\nshould be _sculptured_. The sea was not driven to its place in\nsuddenly restrained rebellion, but withdrawn to its place in perfect\nand patient obedience. The dry land appeared, not in level sands\nforsaken by the surges, which those surges might again claim for their\nown; but in range beyond range of swelling hill and iron rock, for\never to claim kindred with the firmament, and be companioned by the\nclouds of heaven.\n\nWhat space of time was in reality occupied by the \"day\" of Genesis, is\nnot at present of any importance for us to consider. By what furnaces\nof fire the adamant was melted, and by what wheels of earthquake it\nwas torn, and by what teeth of glacier and weight of sea-waves it was\nengraven and finished into its perfect form, we may, perhaps,\nhereafter endeavour to conjecture; but here, as in few words the work\nis summed by the historian, so in few broad thoughts it should be\ncomprehended by us; and, as we read the mighty sentence, \"Let the dry\nland appear,\" we should try to follow the finger of God as it engraved\nupon the stone tables of the earth the letters and the law of its\neverlasting form, as gulf by gulf the channels of the deep were\nploughed; and cape by cape the lines were traced with Divine\nforeknowledge of the shores that were to limit the nations; and chain\nby chain the mountain walls were lengthened forth, and their\nfoundations fastened for ever; and the compass was set upon the face\nof the depth, and the fields and the highest part of the dust of the\nworld were made; and the right hand of Christ first strewed the snow\non Lebanon, and smoothed the slopes of Calvary.\n\nIt is not, I repeat, always needful, in many respects it is not\npossible, to conjecture the manner or the time in which this work was\ndone; but it is deeply necessary for all men to consider the\nmagnificence of the accomplished purpose, and the depth of the wisdom\nand love which are manifested in the ordinances of the hills. For\nobserve, in order to bring the world into the form which it now bears,\nit was not mere _sculpture_ that was needed; the mountains could not\nstand for a day unless they were formed of materials altogether\ndifferent from those which constitute the lower hills, and the\nsurfaces of the valleys. A harder substance had to be prepared for\nevery mountain chain, yet not so hard but that it might be capable of\ncrumbling down into earth fit to nourish the Alpine forest, and the\nAlpine flower; not so hard but that in the midst of the utmost majesty\nof its enthroned strength there should be seen on it the seal of\ndeath, and the writing of the same sentence that had gone forth\nagainst the human frame, \"Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou\nreturn.\" And with this perishable substance the most majestic forms\nwere to be framed that were consistent with the safety of man; and the\npeak was to be lifted and the cliff rent, as high and as steeply as\nwas possible, in order yet to permit the shepherd to feed his flocks\nupon the slopes, and the cottage to nestle beneath their shadow. And\nobserve, two distinct ends were to be accomplished in doing this. It\nwas, indeed, absolutely necessary that such eminences should be\ncreated, in order to fit the earth in any wise for human habitation;\nfor without mountains the air could not be purified, nor the flowing\nof the rivers sustained, and the earth must have become for the most\npart plain, or stagnant marsh. But the feeding of the rivers and the\npurifying of the winds, are the least of the services appointed to the\nhills. To fill the thirst of the human heart for the beauty of God's\nworking--to startle its lethargy with the deep and pure agitation of\nastonishment,--are their higher missions. They are as a great and\nnoble architecture, first giving shelter, comfort, and rest; and\ncovered also with mighty sculpture and painted legend. It is\nimpossible to examine, in their connected system, the features of even\nthe most ordinary mountain scenery, without concluding that it has\nbeen prepared in order to unite as far as possible, and in the closest\ncompass, every means of delighting and sanctifying the heart of man:\n\"as far as _possible_,\"--that is, as far as is consistent with the\nfulfilment of the sentence of condemnation on the whole earth. Death\nmust be upon the hills; and the cruelty of the tempests smite them,\nand the briar and thorn spring up upon them; but they so smite as to\nbring their rocks into the fairest forms, and so spring as to make the\nvery desert blossom as the rose. Even among our own hills of Scotland\nand Cumberland, though often too barren to be perfectly beautiful, and\nalways too low to be perfectly sublime, it is strange how many deep\nsources of delight are gathered into the compass of their glens and\nvales; and how, down to the most secret cluster of their far-away\nflowers, and the idlest leap of their straying streamlets, the whole\nheart of Nature seems thirsting to give, and still to give, shedding\nforth her everlasting beneficence with a profusion so patient, so\npassionate, that our utmost observance and thankfulness are but, at\nlast, neglects of her nobleness, and apathy to her love. But among the\ntrue mountains of the greater orders, the Divine purpose of appeal at\nonce to all the faculties of the human spirit becomes still more\nmanifest. Inferior hills ordinarily interrupt, in some degree, the\nrichness of the valleys at their feet; the grey downs of southern\nEngland and treeless coteaux of central France, and grey swells of\nScottish moor, whatever peculiar charm they may possess in themselves,\nare at least destitute of those which belong to the woods and fields\nof the lowlands. But the great mountains _lift_ the lowlands on _their\nsides_. Let the reader imagine first the appearance of the most varied\nplain of some richly cultivated country; let him imagine it dark with\ngraceful woods, and soft with deepest pastures; let him fill the space\nof it, to the utmost horizon, with innumerable and changeful incidents\nof scenery and life; leading pleasant streamlets through its meadows,\nstrewing clusters of cottages beside their banks, tracing sweet\nfootpaths through its avenues, and animating its fields with happy\nflocks, and slow wandering spots of cattle; and when he has wearied\nhimself with endless imagining, and left no space without some\nloveliness of its own, let him conceive all this great plain, with its\ninfinite treasures of natural beauty, and happy human life, gathered\nup in God's hands from one edge of the horizon to the other, like a\nwoven garment, and shaken into deep falling folds, as the robes droop\nfrom a king's shoulders; all its bright rivers leaping into cataracts\nalong the hollows of its fall, and all its forests rearing themselves\naslant against its slopes, as a rider rears himself back when his\nhorse plunges, and all its villages nestling themselves into the new\nwindings of its glens, and all its pastures thrown into steep waves of\ngreensward, dashed with dew along the edges of their folds, and\nsweeping down into endless slopes, with a cloud here and there lying\nquietly, half on the grass, half in the air,--and he will have as yet,\nin all this lifted world, only the foundation of one of the great\nAlps. And whatever is lovely in the lowland scenery, becomes lovelier\nin this change; the trees which grew heavily and stiffly from the\nlevel line of plain, assume strange curves of strength and grace as\nthey bend themselves against the mountain side; they breathe more\nfreely and toss their branches more carelessly as each climbs higher,\nlooking to the clear light above the topmost leaves of its brother\ntree; the flowers which on the arable plain fall before the plough,\nnow find out for themselves unapproachable places where year by year\nthey gather into happier fellowship, and fear no evil; and the streams\nwhich in the level land crept in dark eddies by unwholesome banks, now\nmove in showers of silver, and are clothed with rainbows, and bring\nhealth and life wherever the glance of their waves can reach....\n\nIt may not, therefore, be altogether profitless or unnecessary to\nreview briefly the nature of the three great offices which mountain\nranges are appointed to fulfil, in order to preserve the health and\nincrease the happiness of mankind. Their first use is, of course, to\ngive motion to water. Every fountain and river, from the inch-deep\nstreamlet that crosses the village lane in trembling clearness, to the\nmassy and silent march of the everlasting multitude of waters in\nAmazon or Ganges, owe their play, and purity, and power, to the\nordained elevations of the earth. Gentle or steep, extended or abrupt,\nsome determined slope of the earth's surface is of course necessary\nbefore any wave can so much as overtake one sedge in its pilgrimage;\nand how seldom do we enough consider, as we walk beside the margins of\nour pleasant brooks, how beautiful and wonderful is that ordinance, of\nwhich every blade of grass that waves in their clear water is a\nperpetual sign--that the dew and rain fallen on the face of the earth\nshall find no resting-place; shall find, on the contrary, fixed\nchannels traced for them from the ravines of the central crests down\nwhich they roar, in sudden ranks of foam, to the dark hollows beneath\nthe banks of lowland pasture, round which they must circle slowly\namong the stems and beneath the leaves of the lilies; paths prepared\nfor them by which, at some appointed rate of journey, they must\nevermore descend, sometimes slow, and sometimes swift, but never\npausing; the daily portion of the earth they have to glide over marked\nfor them at each successive sunrise, the place which has known them\nknowing them no more, and the gateways of guarding mountains opened\nfor them in cleft and chasm, none letting them in their pilgrimage;\nand, from afar off, the great heart of the sea calling them to itself!\n\"Deep calleth unto deep.\" I know not which of the two is the more\nwonderful,--that calm, gradated, invisible slope of the champaign\nland, which gives motion to the stream; or that passage cloven for it\nthrough the ranks of hill, which, necessary for the health of the land\nimmediately around them, would yet, unless so supernaturally divided,\nhave fatally intercepted the flow of the waters from far-off\ncountries. When did the great spirit of the river first knock at these\nadamantine gates? When did the porter open to it, and cast his keys\naway for ever, lapped in whirling sand? I am not satisfied--no one\nshould be satisfied--with that vague answer, The river cut its way.\nNot so. The river _found_ its way. [22]I do not see that rivers in\ntheir own strength can do much in cutting their way; they are nearly\nas apt to choke their channels up as to carve them out. Only give a\nriver some little sudden power in a valley, and see how it will use\nit. Cut itself a bed? Not so, by any means, but fill up its bed; and\nlook for another in a wild, dissatisfied, inconsistent manner,--any\nway rather than the old one will better please it; and even if it is\nbanked up and forced to keep to the old one, it will not deepen, but\ndo all it can to raise it, and leap out of it. And although wherever\nwater has a steep fall it will swiftly cut itself a bed deep into the\nrock or ground, it will not, when the rock is hard, cut a wider\nchannel than it actually needs; so that if the existing river beds,\nthrough ranges of mountains, had in reality been cut by the streams,\nthey would be found, wherever the rocks are hard, only in the form of\nnarrow and profound ravines, like the well-known channel of the\nNiagara, below the fall; not in that of extended valleys. And the\nactual work of true mountain rivers, though often much greater in\nproportion to their body of water than that of the Niagara, is quite\ninsignificant when compared with the area and depth of the valleys\nthrough which they flow; so that, although in many cases it appears\nthat those larger valleys have been excavated at earlier periods by\nmore powerful streams, or by the existing stream in a more powerful\ncondition, still the great fact remains always equally plain, and\nequally admirable, that, whatever the nature and duration of the\nagencies employed, the earth was so shaped at first as to direct the\ncurrents of its rivers in the manner most healthy and convenient for\nman. The valley of the Rhone may have been in great part excavated, in\nearly times, by torrents a thousand times larger than the Rhone; but\nit could not have been excavated at all, unless the mountains had been\nthrown at first into two chains, by which the torrents were set to\nwork in a given direction. And it is easy to conceive how, under any\nless beneficent dispositions of their masses of hill, the continents\nof the earth might either have been covered with enormous lakes, as\nparts of North America actually are covered; or have become\nwildernesses of pestiferous marsh; or lifeless plains, upon which the\nwater would have dried as it fell, leaving them for great part of the\nyear desert. Such districts do exist, and exist in vastness; the whole\nearth is not prepared for the habitation of man; only certain small\nportions are prepared for him,--the houses, as it were, of the human\nrace, from which they are to look abroad upon the rest of the world;\nnot to wonder or complain that it is not all house, but to be grateful\nfor the kindness of the admirable building, in the house itself, as\ncompared with the rest. It would be as absurd to think it an evil that\nall the world is not fit for us to inhabit, as to think it an evil\nthat the globe is no larger than it is. As much as we shall ever need\nis evidently assigned to us for our dwelling-place; the rest, covered\nwith rolling waves or drifting sands, fretted with ice or crested with\nfire, is set before us for contemplation in an uninhabitable\nmagnificence. And that part which we are enabled to inhabit owes its\nfitness for human life chiefly to its mountain ranges, which, throwing\nthe superfluous rain off as it falls, collect it in streams or lakes,\nand guide it into given places, and in given directions; so that men\ncan build their cities in the midst of fields which they know will be\nalways fertile, and establish the lines of their commerce upon streams\nwhich will not fail.\n\n[22] I attach great importance to the remaining contents of this\npassage, and have had occasion to insist on them at great length in\nrecent lectures at Oxford.\n\nNor is this giving of motion to water to be considered as confined\nonly to the surface of the earth. A no less important function of the\nhills is in directing the flow of the fountains and springs from\nsubterranean reservoirs. There is no miraculous springing up of water\nout of the ground at our feet; but every fountain and well is supplied\nfrom reservoirs among the hills, so placed as to involve some slight\nfall or pressure enough to secure the constant flowing of the stream;\nand the incalculable blessing of the power given to us, in most\nvalleys, of reaching by excavation some point whence the water will\nrise to the surface of the ground in perennial flow, is entirely owing\nto the concave dispositions of the beds of clay or rock raised from\nbeneath the bosom of the valley into ranks of enclosing hills.\n\nThe second great use of mountains is to maintain a constant change in\nthe currents and nature of the _air_. Such change would, of course,\nhave been partly caused by difference in soil and vegetation, even if\nthe earth had been level; but to a far less extent than it is now by\nthe chains of hills which--exposing on one side their masses of rock\nto the full heat of the sun, (increased by the angle at which the rays\nstrike on the slope,) and on the other casting a soft shadow for\nleagues over the plains at their feet--divide the earth not only into\ndistricts, but into climates; and cause perpetual currents of air to\ntraverse their passes in a thousand different states; moistening it\nwith the spray of their waterfalls, sucking it down and beating it\nhither and thither in the pools of their torrents, closing it within\nclefts and caves, where the sunbeams never reach, till it is as cold\nas November mists; then sending it forth again to breathe lightly\nacross the slopes of velvet fields, or to be scorched among sunburnt\nshales and grassless crags; then drawing it back in moaning swirls\nthrough clefts of ice, and up into dewy wreaths above the snow-fields;\nthen piercing it with strange electric darts and flashes of mountain\nfire, and tossing it high in fantastic storm-cloud, as the dried grass\nis tossed by the mower, only suffering it to depart at last, when\nchastened and pure, to refresh the faded air of the far-off plains.\n\nThe third great use of mountains is to cause perpetual change in the\n_soils_ of the earth. Without such provision the ground under\ncultivation would in a series of years become exhausted, and require\nto be upturned laboriously by the hand of man. But the elevations of\nthe earth's surface provide for it a perpetual renovation. The higher\nmountains suffer their summits to be broken into fragments, and to be\ncast down in sheets of massy rock, full, as we shall see presently, of\nevery substance necessary for the nourishment of plants; these fallen\nfragments are again broken by frost, and ground by torrents, into\nvarious conditions of sand and clay--materials which are distributed\nperpetually by the streams farther and farther from the mountain's\nbase. Every shower that swells the rivulet enables their waters to\ncarry certain portions of earth into new positions, and exposes new\nbanks of ground to be mined in their turn. That turbid foaming of the\nangry water,--that tearing down of bank and rock along the flanks of\nits fury,--are no disturbances of the kind course of nature; they are\nbeneficent operations of laws necessary to the existence of man, and\nto the beauty of the earth. The process is continued more gently, but\nnot less effectively, over all the surface of the lower undulating\ncountry; and each filtering thread of summer rain which trickles\nthrough the short turf of the uplands is bearing its own appointed\nburden of earth to be thrown down on some new natural garden in the\ndingles beneath.\n\nI have not spoken of the local and peculiar utilities of mountains. I\ndo not count the benefit of the supply of summer streams from the\nmoors of the higher ranges,--of the various medicinal plants which are\nnested among their rocks,--of the delicate pasturage which they\nfurnish for cattle,--of the forests in which they bear timber for\nshipping,--the stones they supply for building, or the ores of metal\nwhich they collect into spots open to discovery, and easy for working.\nAll these benefits are of a secondary or a limited nature. But the\nthree great functions which I have just described, those of giving\nmotion and change to water, air, and earth, are indispensable to human\nexistence; they are operations to be regarded with as full a depth of\ngratitude as the laws which bid the tree bear fruit, or the seed\nmultiply itself in the earth. And thus those desolate and threatening\nranges of dark mountain, which in nearly all ages of the world men\nhave looked upon with aversion, or with terror, and shrunk back from\nas if they were haunted by perpetual images of death, are in reality\nsources of life and happiness far fuller and more beneficent than all\nthe bright fruitfulness of the plain. The valleys only feed; the\nmountains feed, and guard, and strengthen us. We take our idea of\nfearlessness and sublimity alternately from the mountains and the sea;\nbut we associate them unjustly. The sea-wave, with all its\nbeneficence, is yet devouring and terrible; but the silent wave of the\nblue mountain is lifted towards heaven in a stillness of perpetual\nmercy; and the one surge, unfathomable in its darkness, the other\nunshaken in its faithfulness, for ever bear the seal of their\nappointed symbolism:--\n\n\"Thy _righteousness_ is like the great mountains;\n\n\"Thy _judgments_ are a great deep.\"\n\n\n33. Mountains are to the rest of the body of the earth, what violent\nmuscular action is to the body of man. The muscles and tendons of its\nanatomy are, in the mountain, brought out with force and convulsive\nenergy, full of expression, passion, and strength; the plains and the\nlower hills are the repose and the effortless motion of the frame,\nwhen its muscles lie dormant and concealed beneath the lines of its\nbeauty,--yet ruling those lines in their every undulation. This then\nis the first grand principle of the truth of the earth. The spirit of\nthe hills is action, that of the lowlands repose; and between these\nthere is to be found every variety of motion and rest, from the\ninactive plain, sleeping like the firmament, with cities for stars, to\nthe fiery peaks, which, with heaving bosoms and exulting limbs, with\nthe clouds drifting like hair from their bright foreheads, lift up\ntheir Titan heads to Heaven, saying, \"I live for ever.\"\n\n\n34. Where they are,[23] they seem to form the world; no mere bank of a\nriver here, or of a lane there, peeping out among the hedges or\nforests, but from the lowest valley to the highest clouds, all is\ntheirs,--one adamantine dominion and rigid authority of rock. We yield\nourselves to the impression of their eternal unconquerable\nstubbornness of strength; their mass seems the least yielding, least\nto be softened, or in anywise dealt with by external force, of all\nearthly substance. And behold, as we look further into it, it is all\ntouched and troubled, like waves by a summer breeze; rippled far more\ndelicately than seas or lakes are rippled; _they_ only undulate along\ntheir surfaces--this rock trembles through its every fibre, like the\nchords of an Eolian harp, like the stillest air of spring, with the\nechoes of a child's voice. Into the heart of all those great\nmountains, through every tossing of their boundless crests, and deep\nbeneath all their unfathomable defiles, flows that strange quivering\nof their substance. Other and weaker things seem to express their\nsubjection to an Infinite Power only by momentary terrors: as the\nweeds bow down before the feverish wind, and the sound of the going in\nthe tops of the taller trees passes on before the clouds, and the\nfitful opening of pale spaces on the dark water, as if some invisible\nhand were casting dust abroad upon it, gives warning of the anger that\nis to come, we may well imagine that there is a fear passing upon the\ngrass, and leaves, and waters, at the presence of some great spirit\ncommissioned to let the tempest loose; but the terror passes, and\ntheir sweet rest is perpetually restored to the pastures and the\nwaves. Not so to the mountains. They, which at first seem strengthened\nbeyond the dread of any violence or change, are yet also ordained to\nbear upon them the symbol of a perpetual fear. The tremor which fades\nfrom the soft lake and gliding river is sealed to all eternity upon\nthe rock; and while things that pass visibly from birth to death may\nsometimes forget their feebleness, the mountains are made to possess a\nperpetual memorial of their infancy--that infancy which the prophet\nsaw in his vision,[24]--\"I beheld the earth, and lo, it was without\nform, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the\nmountains, and lo, they _trembled_, and all the hills moved\n_lightly_.\"\n\n[23] Passage written after I had got by some years cooler and wiser than\nwhen I wrote No. 33, describing however the undulation of the gneiss\nrocks, which, 'where they are, seem, to form the world,' in terms more\nfanciful than I now like.\n\n[24] Utter misinterpretation of the passage. It is the old age, not the\nchildhood of earth, which Jeremiah describes in this passage. See its\ntrue interpretation in 'Fors Clavigera,' Letter XLVI.\n\n\n35. The longer I stayed among the Alps, and the more closely I\nexamined them, the more I was struck by the one broad fact of there\nbeing a vast Alpine plateau, or mass of elevated land, upon which\nnearly all the highest peaks stood like children set upon a table,\nremoved, in most cases, far back from the edge of the plateau,--as if\nfor fear of their falling; while the most majestic scenes in the Alps\nare produced, not so much by any violation of this law, as by one of\nthe great peaks having apparently walked to the edge of the table to\nlook over, and thus showing itself suddenly above the valley in its\nfull height. This is the case with the Wetterhorn and Eiger at\nGrindelwald, and with the Grande Jorasse above the Col de Ferret. But\nthe raised bank or table is always intelligibly in existence, even in\nthese apparently exceptional cases; and for the most part, the great\npeaks are not allowed to come to the edge of it, but remain like the\nkeeps of castles far withdrawn, surrounded, league beyond league, by\ncomparatively level fields of mountain, over which the lapping sheets\nof glacier writhe and flow, foaming about the feet of the dark central\ncrests like the surf of an enormous sea-breaker hurled over a rounded\nrock, and islanding some fragment of it in the midst. And the result\nof this arrangement is a kind of division of the whole of Switzerland\ninto an upper and lower mountain world,--the lower world consisting of\nrich valleys, bordered by steep, but easily accessible, wooded banks\nof mountain, more or less divided by ravines, through which glimpses\nare caught of the higher Alps; the upper world, reached after the\nfirst banks of 3,000 or 4,000 feet in height have been surmounted,\nconsisting of comparatively level but most desolate tracts of moor and\nrock, half covered by glacier, and stretching to the feet of the true\npinnacles of the chain. It can hardly be necessary to point out the\nperfect wisdom and kindness of this arrangement, as a provision for\nthe safety of the inhabitants of the high mountain regions. If the\ngreat peaks rose at once from the deepest valleys, every stone which\nwas struck from their pinnacles, and every snow-wreath which slipped\nfrom their ledges, would descend at once upon the inhabitable ground,\nover which no year would pass without recording some calamity of\nearth-slip or avalanche; while in the course of their fall both the\nstones and the snow would strip the woods from the hillsides, leaving\nonly naked channels of destruction where there are now the sloping\nmeadow and the chestnut glade. Besides this, the masses of snow, cast\ndown at once into the warmer air, would all melt rapidly in the\nspring, causing furious inundation of every great river for a month or\nsix weeks. The snow being then all thawed, except what lay upon the\nhighest peaks in regions of nearly perpetual frost, the rivers would\nbe supplied during the summer only by fountains, and the feeble\ntricklings on sunny days from the high snows. The Rhone, under such\ncircumstances, would hardly be larger, in summer, than the Severn, and\nmany Swiss valleys would be left almost without moisture. All these\ncalamities are prevented by the peculiar Alpine structure which has\nbeen described. The broken rocks and the sliding snow of the high\npeaks, instead of being dashed at once to the vales, are caught upon\nthe desolate shelves, or shoulders, which everywhere surround the\ncentral crests. The soft banks which terminate these shelves,\ntraversed by no falling fragments, clothe themselves with richest\nwood, while the masses of snow heaped upon the ledge above them, in a\nclimate neither so warm as to thaw them quickly in the spring, nor so\ncold as to protect them from all the power of the summer sun, either\nform themselves into glaciers, or remain in slowly wasting fields even\nto the close of the year,--in either case supplying constant,\nabundant, and regular streams to the villages and pastures beneath,\nand to the rest of Europe, noble and navigable rivers.\n\nNow, that such a structure is the best and wisest possible,[25] is\nindeed sufficient reason for its existence, and to many people it may\nseem useless to question farther respecting its origin. But I can\nhardly conceive any one standing face to face with one of these towers\nof central rock, and yet not also asking himself, Is this indeed the\nactual first work of the Divine Master, on which I gaze? Was the great\nprecipice shaped by His finger, as Adam was shaped out of the dust?\nWere its clefts and ledges carved upon it by its Creator, as the\nletters were on the tables of the law, and was it thus left to bear\nits eternal testimony to His beneficence among these clouds of Heaven?\nOr is it the descendant of a long race of mountains, existing under\nappointed laws of birth and endurance, death and decrepitude? There\ncan be no doubt as to the answer. The rock itself answers audibly by\nthe murmur of some falling stone or rending pinnacle. It is _not_ as\nit was once. Those waste leagues around its feet are loaded with the\nwrecks of what it was. On these perhaps, of all mountains, the\ncharacters of decay are written most clearly; around these are spread\nmost gloomily the memorials of their pride, and the signs of their\nhumiliation.\n\n[25] Of course I had seen every other tried before giving this\nfavourable judgment.\n\nWhat then were they once? The only answer is yet again--\"Behold the\ncloud!\"\n\n\n36. There are many spots among the inferior ridges of the Alps, such\nas the Col de Ferret, the Col d'Anterne, and the associated ranges of\nthe Buet, which, though commanding prospects of great nobleness, are\nthemselves very nearly types of all that is most painful to the human\nmind. Vast wastes of mountain ground,[26] covered here and there with\ndull grey grass or moss, but breaking continually into black banks of\nshattered slate, all glistening and sodden with slow tricklings of\nclogged, incapable streams; the snow-water oozing through them in a\ncold sweat, and spreading itself in creeping stains among their dust;\never and anon a shaking here and there, and a handful or two of their\nparticles or flakes trembling down, one sees not why, into more total\ndissolution, leaving a few jagged teeth, like the edges of knives\neaten away by vinegar, projecting, through the half-dislodged mass,\nfrom the inner rock; keen enough to cut the hand or foot that rests on\nthem, yet crumbling as they wound, and soon sinking again into the\nsmooth, slippery, glutinous heap; looking like a beach of black scales\nof dead fish cast ashore from a poisonous sea, and sloping away into\nfoul ravines, branched down immeasurable slopes of barrenness, where\nthe winds howl and wander continually, and the snow lies in wasted and\nsorrowful fields covered with sooty dust, that collects in streaks and\nstains at the bottom of all its thawing ripples.\n\n[26] This is a fourth volume passage,--and I will venture to say of it,\nas Albert Duerer, when he was pleased with his work--that for what it has\nto do, it cannot be much better done. It is a study on the Col de Bon\nHomme.\n\nI know of no other scenes so appalling as these in storm, or so woful\nin sunshine. Where, however, these same rocks exist in more favourable\npositions--that is to say, in gentler banks and at lower\nelevations--they form a ground for the most luxuriant vegetation; and\nthe valleys of Savoy owe to them some of their loveliest\nsolitudes--exquisitely rich pastures, interspersed with arable and\norchard land, and shaded by groves of walnut and cherry. Scenes of\nthis kind, and of that just described, so singularly opposed, and\napparently brought together as foils to each other, are however\npeculiar to certain beds of the slaty coherents, which are both vast\nin elevation, and easy of destruction. In Wales and Scotland the same\ngroups of rocks possess far greater hardness, while they attain less\nelevation; and the result is a totally different aspect of scenery.\nThe severity of the climate, and the comparative durableness of the\nrock, forbid the rich vegetation; but the exposed summits, though\nbarren, are not subject to laws of destruction so rapid and fearful as\nin Switzerland, and the natural colour of the rock is oftener\ndeveloped in the purples and greys which, mingled with the heather,\nform the principal elements of the deep and beautiful distant blue of\nthe British hills. Their gentler mountain streams also permit the beds\nof rock to remain in firm, though fantastic, forms along their banks,\nand the gradual action of the cascades and eddies upon the slaty\ncleavage produces many pieces of foreground scenery to which higher\nhills can present no parallel.\n\n\n37. Unlike Chamouni Aiguilles, there is no aspect of destruction about\nthe Matterhorn cliffs. They are not torn remnants of separating\nspires, yielding, flake by flake, and band by band, to the continual\nprocess of decay. They are, on the contrary, an unaltered monument,\nseemingly sculptured long ago, the huge walls retaining yet the forms\ninto which they were first engraven, and standing like an Egyptian\ntemple;--delicately fronted, softly coloured, the suns of uncounted\nages rising and falling upon it continually, but still casting the\nsame line of shadows from east to west; still, century after century,\ntouching the same purple stains on the lotus pillars; while the desert\nsand ebbs and flows about their feet, as those autumn leaves of rock\nlie heaped and weak about the base of the Cervin.\n\nIs not this a strange type in the very heart and height of these\nmysterious Alps--these wrinkled hills in their snowy, cold,\ngrey-haired old age, at first so silent, then, as we keep quiet at\ntheir feet, muttering and whispering to us garrulously in broken and\ndreaming fits, as it were, about their childhood,--is it not a strange\ntype of the things which \"out of weakness are made strong\"? If one of\nthese little flakes of mica sand, hurried in tremulous spangling along\nthe bottom of the ancient river, too light to sink, too faint to\nfloat, almost too small for sight, could have had a mind given to it\nas it was at last borne down with its kindred dust into the abysses of\nthe stream, and laid, (might it not have been thought?) for a hopeless\neternity, in the dark ooze, the most despised, forgotten, and feeble\nof all earth's atoms; incapable of any use or change; not fit, down\nthere in the diluvial darkness, so much as to help an earth wasp to\nbuild its nest, or feed the first fibre of a lichen; what would it\nhave thought, had it been told that one day, knitted into a strength\nas of imperishable iron, rustless by the air, infusible by the flame,\nout of the substance of it, with its fellows, the axe of God should\nhew that Alpine tower?--that against _it_--poor, helpless mica\nflake!--the wild north winds should rage in vain; beneath\n_it_--low-fallen mica flake!--the snowy hills should lie bowed like\nflocks of sheep, and the kingdoms of the earth fade away in unregarded\nblue; and around _it_--weak, wave-drifted mica flake!--the great war\nof the firmament should burst in thunder and yet stir it not; and the\nfiery arrows and angry meteors of the night fall blunted back from it\ninto the air; and all the stars in the clear heaven should light, one\nby one as they rose, new cressets upon the points of snow that fringed\nits abiding-place on the imperishable spire?\n\n\n\n\nSECTION VI.\n\nILLUSTRATIVE: STONES.\n\n\n38. There are no natural objects out of which more can be learned than\nout of stones. They seem to have been created especially to reward a\npatient observer. Nearly all other objects in nature can be seen to\nsome extent without patience, and are pleasant even in being half\nseen. Trees, clouds, and rivers are enjoyable even by the careless;\nbut the stone under his foot has, for carelessness, nothing in it but\nstumbling; no pleasure is languidly to be had out of it, nor food, nor\ngood of any kind; nothing but symbolism of the hard heart, and the\nunfatherly gift. And yet, do but give it some reverence and\nwatchfulness, and there is bread of thought in it, more than in any\nother lowly feature of all the landscape. For a stone, when it is\nexamined, will be found a mountain in miniature. The fineness of\nNature's work is so great, that into a single block, a foot or two in\ndiameter, she can compress as many changes of form and structure, on a\nsmall scale, as she needs for her mountains on a large one; and taking\nmoss for forests, and grains of crystal for crags, the surface of a\nstone in by far the plurality of instances is more interesting than\nthe surface of an ordinary hill; more fantastic in form, and\nincomparably richer in colour.\n\n\n39. On a Highland hillside are multitudinous clusters of fern and\nheather; on an Alpine one, multitudinous groves of chestnut and pine.\nThe number of the things may be the same, but the sense of infinity is\nin the latter case far greater, because the number is of nobler\nthings. Indeed, so far as mere magnitude of space occupied on the\nfield of the horizon is the measure of objects, a bank of earth ten\nfeet high may, if we stoop to the foot of it, be made to occupy just\nas much of the sky as that bank of mountain at Villeneuve; nay, in\nmany respects, its little ravines and escarpments, watched with some\nhelp of imagination, may become very sufficiently representative to us\nof those of the great mountain; and in classing all water-worn\nmountain ground under the general and humble term of Banks, I mean to\nimply this relationship of structure between the smallest eminences\nand the highest. But in this matter of superimposed _quantity_, the\ndistinctions of rank are at once fixed. The heap of earth bears its\nfew tufts of moss, or knots of grass; the Highland or Cumberland\nmountain, its honeyed heathers or scented ferns; but the mass of the\nbank at Martigny or Villeneuve has a vineyard in every cranny of its\nrocks, and a chestnut grove on every crest of them.... The minute\nmounds and furrows scattered up the side of that great promontory,\nwhen they are actually approached after three or four hours' climbing,\nturn into independent hills, with true _parks_ of lovely pasture-land\nenclosed among them, and avenue after avenue of chestnuts, walnuts,\nand pines bending round their bases; while in the deeper dingles,\npopulous villages, literally bound down to the rock by enormous trunks\nof vine, which, first trained lightly over the loose stone roofs, have\nin process of years cast their fruitful net over the whole village,\nand fastened it to the ground under their purple weight and wayward\ncoils as securely as ever human heart was fastened to earth by the net\nof the Flatterer.\n\n\n40. When a rock of any kind has lain for some time exposed to the\nweather, Nature finishes it in her own way. First she takes wonderful\npains about its forms, sculpturing it into exquisite variety of dent\nand dimple, and rounding or hollowing it into contours which for\nfineness no human hand can follow; then she colours it; and every one\nof her touches of colour, instead of being a powder mixed with oil, is\na minute forest of living trees, glorious in strength and beauty, and\nconcealing wonders of structure.\n\n\n41. On the broken rocks in the foreground in the crystalline groups,\nthe mosses seem to set themselves consentfully and deliberately to the\ntask of producing the most exquisite harmonies of colour in their\npower. They will not conceal the form of the rock, but will gather\nover it in little brown bosses, like small cushions of velvet, made of\nmixed threads of dark ruby silk and gold, rounded over more subdued\nfilms of white and grey, with lightly crisped and curled edges like\nhoar frost on fallen leaves, and minute clusters of upright orange\nstalks with pointed caps, and fibres of deep green, and gold, and\nfaint purple passing into black, all woven together, and following\nwith unimaginable fineness of gentle growth the undulation of the\nstone they cherish, until it is charged with colour so that it can\nreceive no more; and instead of looking rugged, or cold, or stern, or\nanything that a rock is held to be at heart, it seems to be clothed\nwith a soft dark leopard's skin, embroidered with arabesque of purple\nand silver.\n\n\n42. The colour of the white varieties of marble is of exquisite\ndelicacy, owing to the partial translucency of the pure rock; and it\nhas always appeared to me a most wonderful ordinance--one of the most\n_marked_ pieces of purpose in the creation--that all the variegated\nkinds should be comparatively opaque, so as to set off the colour on\nthe surface, while the white, which, if it had been opaque, would have\nlooked somewhat coarse, (as for instance common chalk does,) is\nrendered just translucent enough to give an impression of extreme\npurity, but not so translucent as to interfere in the least with the\ndistinctness of any forms into which it is wrought. The colours of\nvariegated marbles are also for the most part very beautiful,\nespecially those composed of purple, amber, and green, with white; and\nthere seems something notably attractive to the human mind in the\n_vague_ and veined labyrinths of their arrangements.\n\n\n43. I have often had occasion to allude to the apparent connection of\nbrilliancy of colour with vigour of life or purity of substance. This\nis pre-eminently the case in the mineral kingdom. The perfection with\nwhich the particles of any substance unite in crystallization,\ncorresponds in that kingdom to the vital power in organic nature; and\nit is a universal law, that according to the purity of any substance,\nand according to the energy of its crystallization, is its beauty or\nbrightness. Pure earths are white when in powder; and the same earths,\nwhich are the constituents of clay and sand, form, when crystallized,\nthe emerald, ruby, sapphire, amethyst, and opal.\n\n\n44. As we pass between the hills which have been shaken by earthquake\nand torn by convulsion, we find that periods of perfect repose succeed\nthose of destruction. The pools of calm water lie clear beneath their\nfallen rocks, the water-lilies gleam, and the reeds whisper among\ntheir shadows; the village rises again over the forgotten graves, and\nits church tower, white through the storm-light, proclaims a renewed\nappeal to His protection in whose hand \"are all the corners of the\nearth, and the strength of the hills is His also.\" There is no\nloveliness of Alpine valley that does not teach the same lesson. It is\njust where \"the mountain falling cometh to nought, and the rock is\nremoved out of his place,\" that in process of years the fairest\nmeadows bloom between the fragments, the clearest rivulets murmur from\nbetween their crevices among the flowers, and the clustered cottages,\neach sheltered beneath some strength of mossy stone, now to be removed\nno more, and with their pastured flocks around them, safe from the\neagle's stoop and the wolf's ravin, have written upon their fronts, in\nsimple words, the mountaineer's faith in the ancient\npromise,--\"Neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction, when it\ncometh; for thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field, and\nthe beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee.\"\n\n\n\n\nSECTION VII.\n\nILLUSTRATIVE: PLANTS AND FLOWERS.\n\n\n45. Wonderful, in universal adaptation to man's need, desire, and\ndiscipline, God's daily preparation of the earth for him, with\nbeautiful means of life. First, a carpet, to make it soft for him;\nthen a coloured fantasy of embroidery thereon; then, tall spreading of\nfoliage to shade him from sun-heat, and shade also the fallen rain,\nthat it may not dry quickly back into the clouds, but stay to nourish\nthe springs among the moss. Stout wood to bear this leafage; easily to\nbe cut, yet tough and light, to make houses for him, or instruments\n(lance-shaft, or plough-handle, according to his temper); useless it\nhad been if harder; useless if less fibrous; useless if less elastic.\nWinter comes, and the shade of leafage falls away, to let the sun warm\nthe earth; the strong boughs remain, breaking the strength of winter\nwinds. The seeds which are to prolong the race, innumerable according\nto the need, are made beautiful and palatable, varied into infinitude\nof appeal to the fancy of man, or provision for his service; cold\njuice, or flowing spice, or balm, or incense, softening oil,\npreserving resin, medicine of styptic, febrifuge, or lulling charm;\nand all these presented in forms of endless change. Fragility or\nforce, softness and strength, in all degrees and aspects; unerring\nuprightness, as of temple pillars, or unguided wandering of feeble\ntendrils on the ground; mighty resistances of rigid arm and limb to\nthe storms of ages, or wavings to and fro with faintest pulse of\nsummer streamlet; roots cleaving the strength of rock, or binding the\ntransience of the sand; crests basking in sunshine of the desert, or\nhiding by dripping spring and lightless cave; foliage far tossing in\nentangled fields beneath every wave of ocean--clothing with\nvariegated, everlasting films the peaks of the trackless mountains, or\nministering, at cottage doors, to every gentlest passion and simplest\njoy of humanity.\n\n\n46. If ever in autumn a pensiveness falls upon us, as the leaves drift\nby in their fading, may we not wisely look up in hope to their mighty\nmonuments? Behold how fair, how far prolonged in arch and aisle, the\navenues of the valleys, the fringes of the hills! so stately,--so\neternal; the joy of man, the comfort of all living creatures, the\nglory of the earth,--they are but the monuments of those poor leaves\nthat flit faintly past us to die. Let them not pass, without our\nunderstanding their last counsel and example: that we also, careless\nof monument by the grave, may build it in the world--monument by which\nmen may be taught to remember, not where we died, but where we lived.\n\n\n47. The Pine. Magnificent! nay, sometimes almost terrible. Other\ntrees, tufting crag or hill, yield to the form and sway of the ground,\nclothe it with soft compliance, are partly its subjects, partly its\nflatterers, partly its comforters. But the pine rises in serene\nresistance, self-contained; nor can I ever without awe stay long under\na great Alpine cliff, far from all house or work of men, looking up to\nits companies of pines, as they stand on the inaccessible juts and\nperilous ledges of the enormous wall, in quiet multitudes, each like\nthe shadow of the one beside it--upright, fixed, spectral, as troops\nof ghosts standing on the walls of Hades, not knowing each other, dumb\nfor ever. You cannot reach them, cannot cry to them: those trees never\nheard human voice; they are far above all sound but of the winds. No\nfoot ever stirred fallen leaf of theirs: all comfortless they stand,\nbetween the two eternities of the Vacancy and the Rock; yet with such\niron will, that the rock itself looks bent and shattered beside\nthem,--fragile, weak, inconsistent, compared to their dark energy of\ndelicate life, and monotony of enchanted pride--unnumbered,\nunconquerable.\n\nThen note farther their perfectness. The impression on most people's\nminds must have been received more from pictures than reality, so far\nas I can judge, so ragged they think the pine; whereas its chief\ncharacter in health is green and full _roundness_. It stands compact,\nlike one of its own cones, slightly curved on its sides, finished and\nquaint as a carved tree in some Elizabethan garden; and instead of\nbeing wild in expression, forms the softest of all forest scenery, for\nother trees show their trunks and twisting boughs; but the pine,\ngrowing either in luxuriant mass, or in happy isolation, allows no\nbranch to be seen. Summit behind summit rise its pyramidal ranges, or\ndown to the very grass sweep the circlets of its boughs; so that there\nis nothing but green cone, and green carpet. Nor is it only softer,\nbut in one sense more cheerful than other foliage, for it casts only a\npyramidal shadow. Lowland forest arches overhead, and chequers the\nground with darkness; but the pine, growing in scattered groups,\nleaves the glades between emerald-bright. Its gloom is all its own;\nnarrowing into the sky, it lets the sunshine strike down to the dew.\nAnd if ever a superstitious feeling comes over me among the pine\nglades, it is never tainted with the old German forest fear, but it is\nonly a more solemn tone of the fairy enchantment that haunts our\nEnglish meadows; so that I have always called the prettiest pine-glade\nin Chamouni, \"Fairies' Hollow.\" It is in the glen beneath the steep\nascent above Pont Pelissier, and may be reached by a little winding\npath which goes down from the top of the hill[27]--being indeed not\ntruly a glen, but a broad ledge of moss and turf, leaning in a\nformidable precipice (which, however, the gentle branches hide) over\nthe Arve. An almost isolated rock promontory, many coloured, rises at\nthe end of it. On the other sides it is bordered by cliffs, from which\na little cascade falls, literally, down among the pines, for it is so\nlight, shaking itself into mere showers of seed pearl in the sun, that\nthe pines don't know it from mist, and grow through it without\nminding. Underneath, there is only the mossy silence; and above, for\never, the snow of the nameless Aiguille.\n\n[27] The new road to Chamouni has been carried right through it. A\ncascade on the right, as you ascend, marks the place spoken of in the\ntext,--once as lonely as Corrie-nan-shian.\n\nOther trees rise against the sky in dots and knots, but this, in\nfringes. You never see the edges of it, so subtle are they; and for\nthis reason,--it alone of trees, so far as I know, is capable of the\nfiery change which has been noticed by Shakespeare. When the sun rises\nbehind a ridge crested with pine, provided the ridge be at a distance\nof about two miles, and seen clear, all the trees, for about three or\nfour degrees on each side of the sun, become trees of light, seen in\nclear flame against the darker sky, and dazzling as the sun itself. I\nthought at first this was owing to the actual lustre of the leaves;\nbut I believe now it is caused by the cloud-dew upon them--every\nminutest leaf carrying its diamond. It seems as if these trees, living\nalways among the clouds, had caught part of their glory from them; and\nthemselves, the darkest of vegetation, could yet add splendour to the\nsun itself.\n\n\n48. The Swiss have certainly no feelings respecting their mountains in\nanywise correspondent with ours. It was rather as fortresses of\ndefence, than as spectacles of splendour, that the cliffs of the\nRothslock bare rule over the destinies of those who dwelt at their\nfeet; and the training for which the mountain children had to thank\nthe slopes of the Muotta-Thal, was in soundness of breath, and\nsteadiness of limb, far more than in elevation of idea. But the point\nwhich I desire the reader to note is, that the character of the scene\nwhich, if any, appears to have been impressive to the inhabitant, is\nnot that which we ourselves feel when we enter the district. It was\nnot from their lakes, nor their cliffs, nor their glaciers--though\nthese were all peculiarly their possessions--that the three venerable\ncantons received their name. They were not called the States of the\nRock, nor the States of the Lake, but the States of the _Forest_. And\nthe one of the three which contains the most touching record of the\nspiritual power of Swiss religion, in the name of the convent of the\n'Hill of Angels,' has, for its own, none but the sweet childish name\nof 'Under the Woods.'\n\nAnd indeed you may pass under them if, leaving the most sacred spot in\nSwiss history, the Meadow of the Three Fountains, you bid the boatman\nrow southward a little way by the shore of the Bay of Uri. Steepest\nthere on its western side, the walls of its rocks ascend to heaven.\nFar in the blue of evening, like a great cathedral pavement, lies the\nlake in its darkness; and you may hear the whisper of innumerable\nfalling waters return from the hollows of the cliff, like the voices\nof a multitude praying under their breath. From time to time the beat\nof a wave, slow lifted where the rocks lean over the black depth, dies\nheavily as the last note of a requiem. Opposite, green with steep\ngrass, and set with chalet villages, the Fron-Alp rises in one solemn\nglow of pastoral light and peace; and above, against the clouds of\ntwilight, ghostly on the gray precipice, stand, myriad by myriad, the\nshadowy armies of the Unterwalden pine.\n\n\n49. It had been wild weather when I left Rome, and all across the\nCampagna the clouds were sweeping in sulphurous blue, with a clap of\nthunder or two, and breaking gleams of sun along the Claudian\naqueduct, lighting up the infinity of its arches, like the bridge of\nChaos. But as I climbed the long slope of the Alban Mount, the storm\nswept finally to the north, and the noble outline of the domes of\nAlbano, and graceful darkness of its ilex grove, rose against pure\nstreaks of alternate blue and amber, the upper sky gradually flushing\nthrough the last fragments of rain-cloud in deep palpitating azure,\nhalf aether and half dew. The noonday sun came slanting down the rocky\nslopes of La Riccia, and their masses of entangled and tall foliage,\nwhose autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure of a thousand\nevergreens, were penetrated with it, as with rain. I cannot call it\ncolour,--it was conflagration. Purple, and crimson, and scarlet, like\nthe curtains of God's Tabernacle, the rejoicing trees sank into the\nvalley in showers of light, every separate leaf quivering with buoyant\nand burning life; each, as it turned to reflect, or to transmit the\nsunbeam, first a torch and then an emerald. Far up into the recesses\nof the valley the green vistas arched like the hollows of mighty waves\nof some crystalline sea, with the arbutus flowers dashed along their\nbanks for foam, and silver flakes of orange spray tossed into the air\naround them, breaking over the grey walls of rock into a thousand\nseparate stars, fading and kindling alternately as the weak wind\nlifted and let them fall. Every glade of grass burned like the golden\nfloor of heaven, opening in sudden gleams as the foliage broke, and\nclosed above it, as sheet-lightning opens in a cloud at sunset; the\nmotionless masses of dark rock, dark though flushed with scarlet\nlichen, casting their quiet shadows across its restless radiance, the\nfountain underneath them filling its marble hollow with blue mist and\nfitful sound; and, over all, the multitudinous bars of amber and\nrose--the sacred clouds that have no darkness, and only exist to\nillumine--were seen in fathomless intervals between the solemn and\norbed repose of the stone pines, passing to lose themselves in the\nlast, white, blinding lustre of the measureless line where the\nCampagna melted into the blaze of the sea.\n\n\n50. Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity:\nchildren love them; quiet, contented, ordinary people love them as\nthey grow; luxurious and disorderly people rejoice in them gathered;\nthey are the cottager's treasure; and in the crowded town, mark, as\nwith a little broken fragment of rainbow, the windows of the workers\nin whose hearts rests the covenant of peace.\n\n\n51. Yet few people really care about flowers. Many, indeed, are fond\nof finding a new shape of blossom, caring for it as a child cares\nabout a kaleidoscope. Many, also, like a fair service of flowers in\nthe greenhouse, as a fair service of plate on the table. Many are\nscientifically interested in them, though even these in the\nnomenclature, rather than the flowers; and a few enjoy their\ngardens.... But, the blossoming time of the year being principally\nspring, I perceive it to be the mind of most people, during that\nperiod, to stay in towns. A year or two ago a keen-sighted and\neccentrically-minded friend of mine, having taken it into his head to\nviolate this national custom, and go to the Tyrol in spring, was\npassing through a valley near Landech with several similarly\nheadstrong companions. A strange mountain appeared in the distance,\nbelted about its breast with a zone of blue, like our English Queen.\nWas it a blue cloud, a blue horizontal bar of the air that Titian\nbreathed in youth, seen now far away, which mortal might never breathe\nagain? Was it a mirage--a meteor? Would it stay to be\napproached?--(ten miles of winding road yet between them and the foot\nof the mountain)--such questioning had they concerning it. My\nkeen-sighted friend, alone, maintained it to be substantial;--whatever\nit might be, it was not air, and would not vanish. The ten miles of\nroad were overpast, the carriage left, the mountain climbed. It stayed\npatiently, expanding still into richer breath and heavenlier glow--a\nbelt of gentians. Such things may verily be seen among the Alps in\nspring, and in spring only; which being so, I observe most people\nprefer going in autumn.\n\n\n52. Perhaps few people have ever asked themselves why they admire a\nrose so much more than all other flowers. If they consider, they will\nfind, first, that red is, in a delicately gradated state, the\nloveliest of all pure colours; and, secondly, that in the rose there\nis _no shadow_, except what is composed of colour. All its shadows are\nfuller in colour than its lights, owing to the translucency and\nreflective power of the leaves.\n\n\n53. Has the reader ever considered the relations of commonest forms of\nvolatile substance? The invisible particles which cause the scent of a\nrose-leaf, how minute, how multitudinous, passing richly away into the\nair continually!\n\n\n54. In the range of inorganic nature I doubt if any object can be\nfound more perfectly beautiful, than a fresh, deep snow-drift, seen\nunder warm light. Its curves are of inconceivable perfection and\nchangefulness; its surface and transparency alike exquisite; its light\nand shade of inexhaustible variety and inimitable finish,--the shadows\nsharp, pale, and of heavenly colour, the reflected lights intense and\nmultitudinous, and mingled with the sweet occurrences of transmitted\nlight.... If, passing to the edge of a sheet of it upon the lower\nAlps, early in May, we find, as we are nearly sure to find, two or\nthree little round openings pierced in it; and through these,\nemergent, a slender, pensive, fragile flower,[28] whose small, dark,\npurple-fringed bell hangs down and shudders over the icy cleft that it\nhas cloven, as if partly wondering at its own recent grave, and partly\ndying of very fatigue after its hard-won victory; we shall be, or we\nought to be, moved by a totally different impression of loveliness\nfrom that which we receive among the dead ice and the idle clouds:\nthere is now uttered to us a call for sympathy, now offered to us an\nimage of moral purpose and achievement, which, however unconscious or\nsenseless the creature may indeed be that so seems to call, cannot be\nheard without affection, nor contemplated without worship, by any of\nus whose heart is rightly turned, or whose mind is clearly and surely\nsighted.\n\n[28] Soldanella Alpina. I think it is the only Alpine flower which\nactually pierces snow, though I have seen gentians filling thawed\nhoof-prints. Crocuses are languid till they have had sun for a day or\ntwo. But the soldanella enjoys its snow, at first, and afterwards its\nfields. I have seen it make a pasture look like a large lilac silk gown.\n\n\n55. It has been well shown by Dr. Herbert, that many plants are found\nalone on a certain soil or sub-soil in a wild state, not because such\nsoil is favourable to them, but because they alone are capable of\nexisting on it, and because all dangerous rivals are by its\ninhospitality removed. Now if we withdraw the plant from this\nposition, which it hardly endures, and supply it with the earth and\nmaintain about it the temperature that it delights in; withdrawing\nfrom it, at the same time, all rivals, which in such conditions Nature\nwould have thrust upon it, we shall indeed obtain a magnificently\ndeveloped example of the plant, colossal in size, and splendid in\norganization; but we shall utterly lose in it that moral ideal which\nis dependent on its right fulfilment of its appointed functions. It\nwas intended and created by the Deity for the covering of those lonely\nspots where no other plant could live. It has been thereto endowed\nwith courage and strength, and capacities of endurance; its character\nand glory are not therefore in the gluttonous and idle feeding of its\nown over luxuriance, at the expense of other creatures utterly\ndestroyed and rooted out for its good alone; but in its right doing of\nits hard duty, and forward climbing into those spots of forlorn hope\nwhere it alone can bear witness to the kindness and presence of the\nSpirit that cutteth out rivers among the rocks, as He covers the\nvalleys with corn; and there, in its vanward place, and only there,\nwhere nothing is withdrawn for it, nor hurt by it, and where nothing\ncan take part of its honour, nor usurp its throne, are its strength\nand fairness, and price, and goodness in the sight of God to be truly\nesteemed. The first time I saw the Soldanella Alpina, before spoken\nof, it was growing of magnificent size on a sunny Alpine pasture,\namong bleating of sheep, and lowing of cattle, associated with a\nprofusion of Geum Montanum, and Ranunculus Pyrenaeus. I noticed it only\nbecause new to me--nor perceived any peculiar beauty in its cloven\nflower. Some days after, I found it alone, among the rack of the\nhigher clouds, and howling of glacier winds; and, as I described it,\npiercing through an edge of avalanche which in its retiring had left\nthe new ground brown and lifeless, and as if burnt by recent fire. The\nplant was poor and feeble, and seemingly exhausted with its\nefforts,--but it was then that I comprehended its ideal character, and\nsaw its noble function and order of glory among the constellations of\nthe earth.\n\n\n56. GRASSES.--Minute, granular, feathery, or downy seed-vessels,\nmingling quaint brown punctuation, and dusty tremors of dancing grain,\nwith the bloom of the nearer fields; and casting a gossamered grayness\nand softness of plumy mist along their surfaces far away; mysterious\nevermore, not only with dew in the morning, or mirage at noon, but\nwith the shaking threads of fine arborescence, each a little belfry of\ngrainbells, all a-chime.\n\n\n57. Gather a single blade of grass, and examine for a minute quietly\nits narrow sword-shaped strip of fluted green. Nothing, as it seems,\nthere of notable goodness or beauty. A very little strength and a very\nlittle tallness, and a few delicate long lines meeting in a\npoint,--not a perfect point neither, but blunt and unfinished, by no\nmeans a creditable or apparently much-cared-for example of Nature's\nworkmanship, made, only to be trodden on to-day, and to-morrow to be\ncast into the oven,--and a little pale and hollow stalk, feeble and\nflaccid, leading down to the dull brown fibres of roots. And yet,\nthink of it well, and judge whether, of all the gorgeous flowers that\nbeam in summer air, and of all strong and goodly trees, pleasant to\nthe eyes, or good for food,--stately palm and pine, strong ash and\noak, scented citron, burdened vine--there be any by man so deeply\nloved, by God so highly graced, as that narrow point of feeble green.\nAnd well does it fulfil its mission. Consider what we owe merely to\nthe meadow grass, to the covering of the dark ground by that glorious\nenamel, by the companies of those soft, and countless, and peaceful\nspears. The fields! Follow forth but for a little time the thoughts of\nall that we ought to recognise in these words. All spring and summer\nis in them--the walks by silent, scented paths--the rests in noonday\nheat,--the joy of herds and flocks,--the power of all shepherd life\nand meditation,--the life of sunlight upon the world falling in\nemerald streaks, and falling in soft blue shadows where else it would\nhave struck upon the dark mould, or scorching dust. Pastures beside\nthe pacing brooks, soft banks and knolls of lowly hills, thymy slopes\nof down, overlooked by the blue line of lifted sea, crisp lawns, all\ndim with early dew, or smooth in evening warmth of barred sunshine,\ndinted by happy feet, and softening in their fall the sound of loving\nvoices,--all these are summed in those simple words; and these are not\nall. We may not measure to the full the depth of this heavenly gift in\nour own land, though still as we think of it longer, the infinite of\nthat meadow sweetness, Shakespeare's peculiar joy, would open on us\nmore and more; yet we have it but in part. Go out in the springtime\namong the meadows that slope from the shores of the Swiss lakes to the\nroots of their lower mountains. There, mingled with the taller\ngentians, and the white narcissus, the grass grows deep and free; and\nas you follow the winding mountain path, beneath arching boughs, all\nveiled with blossom--paths that for ever droop and rise over the green\nbanks and mounds sweeping down in scented undulation steep to the blue\nwater, studded here and there with new-mown heaps filling all the air\nwith fainter sweetness,--look up towards the higher hills, where the\nwaves of everlasting green roll silently into their long inlets among\nthe shadows of the pines; and we may perhaps at last know the meaning\nof those quiet words of the 147th Psalm, \"He maketh grass to grow upon\nthe mountains.\"\n\nAssembling the images we have traced, and adding the simplest of all,\nfrom Isaiah xl. 6, we find the grass and flowers are types, in their\npassing, of the passing of human life, and in their excellence, of the\nexcellence of human life; and this in twofold way: first by their\nbeneficence, and then by their endurance--the grass of the earth, in\ngiving the seed of corn, and in its beauty under tread of foot and\nstroke of scythe; and the grass of the waters, in giving its freshness\nfor our rest, and in its bending before the wave. But, understood in\nthe broad human and Divine sense, the \"_herb_ yielding seed\"--(as\nopposed to the fruit tree yielding fruit)--includes a third family of\nplants, and fulfils a third office to the human race. It includes the\ngreat family of the lints and flaxes, and fulfils thus the _three_\noffices of giving food, raiment, and rest. Follow out this fulfilment;\nconsider the association of the linen garment and the linen embroidery\nwith the priestly office and the furniture of the tabernacle, and\nconsider how the rush has been to all time the first natural carpet\nthrown under the human foot. Then next observe the three virtues\ndefinitely set forth by the three families of plants--not arbitrarily\nor fancifully associated with them, but in all the three cases marked\nfor us by Scriptural words: 1st. Cheerfulness, or joyful serenity; in\nthe grass for food and beauty--\"Consider the lilies of the field, how\nthey grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.\" 2nd. Humility; in the\ngrass for rest--\"A bruised reed shall he not break.\" 3rd. Love; in the\ngrass for clothing, (because of its swift kindling,)--\"The smoking\nflax shall he not quench.\" And then finally observe the confirmation\nof these last two images in, I suppose, the most important prophecy,\nrelating to the future state of the Christian Church, which occurs in\nthe Old Testament, namely that contained in the closing chapters of\nEzekiel. The measures of the Temple of God are to be taken; and\nbecause it is only by charity and humility that those measures ever\ncan be taken, the angel has \"a line of _flax_ in his hand, and a\nmeasuring reed.\" The use of the line was to measure the land, and of\nthe reed to take the dimensions of the buildings; so the buildings of\nthe church, or its labours, are to be measured by humility; and its\nterritory, or land, by love.\n\n\n58. LEAVES motionless. The strong pines wave above them, and the weak\ngrasses tremble beside them; but the blue stars rest upon the earth\nwith a peace as of heaven; and far along the ridges of iron rock,\nmoveless as they, the rubied crests of Alpine rose flush in the low\nrays of morning.\n\n\n59. MOSSES.--Meek creatures! the first mercy of the earth, veiling\nwith hushed softness its dintless rocks; creatures full of pity,\ncovering with strange and tender honour the scarred disgrace of ruin,\nlaying quiet finger on the trembling stones to teach them rest. No\nwords, that I know of, will say what these mosses are. None are\ndelicate enough, none perfect enough, none rich enough. How is one to\ntell of the rounded bosses of furred and beaming green,--the starred\ndivisions of rubied bloom, fine-filmed, as if the rock spirits could\nspin porphyry as we do glass,--the traceries of intricate silver, and\nfringes of amber, lustrous, arborescent, burnished through every fibre\ninto fitful brightness and glossy traverses of silken change, yet all\nsubdued and pensive, and framed for simplest, sweetest offices of\ngrace? They will not be gathered, like the flowers, for chaplet, or\nlove-token; but of these the wild bird will make its nest, and the\nwearied child his pillow.\n\nAnd as the earth's first mercy, so they are its last gift to us: when\nall other service is vain, from plant and tree, the soft mosses and\ngray lichen take up their watch by the headstone. The woods, the\nblossoms, the gift-bearing grasses, have done their parts for a time;\nbut these do service for ever. Trees for the builder's yard, flowers\nfor the bride's chamber, corn for the granary, moss for the grave.\n\n\n60. LICHENS.--As in one sense the humblest, in another they are the\nmost honoured of the earth-children. Unfading as motionless, the worm\nfrets them not, and the autumn wastes not. Strong in loveliness, they\nneither blanch in heat, nor pine in frost. To them, slow-fingered,\nconstant-hearted, is entrusted the weaving of the dark, eternal\ntapestries of the hills; to them, slow-pencilled, iris-dyed, the\ntender framing of their endless imagery. Sharing the stillness of the\nunimpassioned rock, they share also its endurance; and while the winds\nof departing spring scatter the white hawthorn blossom like drifted\nsnow, and summer dims on the parched meadow the drooping of its\ncowslip gold,--far above, among the mountains, the silver lichen spots\nrest, star-like, on the stone: and the gathering orange stain, upon\nthe edge of yonder western peak, reflects the sunsets of a thousand\nyears.\n\n\n\n\nSECTION VIII.\n\nEDUCATION.\n\n\n61. The most helpful and sacred work which can at present be done for\nhumanity, is to teach people (chiefly by example, as all best teaching\nmust be done) not how \"to better themselves,\" but how to \"satisfy\nthemselves.\" It is the curse of every evil nature and evil creature to\neat and _not_ be satisfied. The words of blessing are, that they shall\neat and be satisfied; and as there is only one kind of water which\nquenches all thirst, so there is only one kind of bread which\nsatisfies all hunger--the bread of justice or righteousness; which\nhungering after, men shall always be filled, that being the bread of\nHeaven; but hungering after the bread or wages of unrighteousness,\nshall not be filled, that being the bread of Sodom. And in order to\nteach men how to be satisfied, it is necessary fully to understand the\nart of joy and humble life--this, at present, of all arts or sciences,\nbeing the one most needing study. Humble life; that is to say,\nproposing to itself no future exaltation, but only a sweet\ncontinuance: not excluding the idea of foresight, but wholly of\nfore-sorrow, and taking no troublous thought for coming days; so also\nnot excluding the idea of providence or provision, but wholly of\naccumulation;--the life of domestic affection and domestic peace, full\nof sensitiveness to all elements of costless and kind\npleasure;--therefore chiefly to the loveliness of the natural world.\n\n\n62. We shall find that the love of nature, wherever it has existed,\nhas been a faithful and sacred element of feeling; that is to say,\nsupposing all the circumstances otherwise the same with respect to two\nindividuals, the one who loves nature most will be always found to\nhave more capacity for _faith_ in God than the other. Nature-worship\nwill be found to bring with it such a sense of the presence and power\nof a Great Spirit as no mere reasoning can either induce or\ncontrovert; and where that nature-worship is innocently\npursued--_i.e._, with due respect to other claims on time, feeling,\nand exertion, and associated with the higher principles of\nreligion,--it becomes the channel of certain sacred truths, which by\nno other means can be conveyed.\n\n\n63. Instead of supposing the love of nature necessarily connected with\nthe faithlessness of the age, I believe it is connected properly with\nthe benevolence and liberty[29] of the age; that it is precisely the\nmost healthy element which distinctively belongs to us; and that out\nof it, cultivated no longer in levity or ignorance, but in earnestness\nand as a duty, results will spring of an importance at present\ninconceivable; and lights arise, which, for the first time in man's\nhistory, will reveal to him the true nature of his life, the true\nfield for his energies, and the true relations between him and his\nMaker.\n\n[29] I forget, now, what I meant by 'liberty' in this passage; but I\noften used the word in my first writings, in a good sense, thinking of\nScott's moorland rambles and the like. It is very wonderful to me, now,\nto see what hopes I had once: but Turner was alive, then; and the sun\nused to shine, and rivers to sparkle.\n\n\n64. To any person who has all his senses about him, a quiet walk, over\nnot more than ten or twelve miles of road a day, is the most amusing\nof all travelling; and all travelling becomes dull in exact proportion\nto its rapidity.\n\nGoing by railroad I do not consider as travelling at all; it is merely\n\"being sent\" to a place, and very little different from becoming a\nparcel.\n\n\n65. I believe an immense gain in the bodily health and happiness of\nthe upper classes would follow on their steadily endeavouring, however\nclumsily, to make the physical exertion they now necessarily exert in\namusements, definitely serviceable. It would be far better, for\ninstance, that a gentleman should mow his own fields, than ride over\nother people's.\n\n\n66. In order to define what is fairest, you must delight in what is\nfair; and I know not how few or how many there may be who take such\ndelight. Once I could speak joyfully about beautiful things, thinking\nto be understood; now I cannot, any more, for it seems to me that no\none regards them. Wherever I look or travel, in England or abroad, I\nsee that men, wherever they can reach, destroy all beauty. They seem\nto have no other desire or hope but to have large houses, and be able\nto move fast. Every perfect and lovely spot which they can touch, they\ndefile. Thus the railroad bridge over the fall of Schaffhausen, and\nthat round the Clarens shore of the lake of Geneva, have destroyed the\npower of two pieces of scenery of which nothing can ever supply the\nplace, in appeal to the higher ranks of European mind.\n\n\n67. The first thing which I remember as an event in life, was being\ntaken by my nurse to the brow of Friar's Crag on Derwentwater. The\nintense joy, mingled with awe, that I had in looking through the\nhollows in the mossy roots, over the crag into the dark lake, has\nassociated itself more or less with all twining roots of trees ever\nsince. Two other things I remember as, in a sort, beginnings of\nlife;--crossing Shap-fells, being let out of the chaise to run up the\nhills; and going through Glenfarg, near Kinross, on a winter's\nmorning, when the rocks were hung with icicles; these being\nculminating points in an early life of more travelling than is usually\nindulged to a child. In such journeyings, whenever they brought me\nnear hills, and in all mountain ground and scenery, I had a pleasure,\nas early as I can remember, and continuing till I was eighteen or\ntwenty, infinitely greater than any which has been since possible to\nme in anything.\n\n\n68. A fool always wants to shorten space and time; a wise man wants to\nlengthen both. A fool wants to kill space and time; a wise man, first\nto gain them, then to animate them.\n\n\n69. I suspect that system-makers in general are not of much more use,\neach in his own domain, than, in that of Pomona, the old women who tie\ncherries upon sticks, for the more portableness of the same. To\ncultivate well, and choose well, your cherries, is of some importance;\nbut if they can be had in their own wild way of clustering about their\ncrabbed stalks, it is a better connection for them than any others;\nand if they cannot, then so that they be not bruised, it makes to a\nboy of practical disposition not much difference whether he gets them\nby handfuls, or in beaded symmetry on the exalting stick.\n\n\n70. Every great man is always being helped by everybody, for his gift\nis to get good out of all things and all persons.\n\n\n71. God appoints to every one of His creatures a separate mission, and\nif they discharge it honourably, if they quit themselves like men, and\nfaithfully follow the light which is in them, withdrawing from it all\ncold and quenching influence, there will assuredly come of it such\nburning as, in its appointed mode and measure, shall shine before men,\nand be of service constant and holy. Degrees infinite of lustre there\nmust always be, but the weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly\ntrivial, which is peculiar to him, and which, worthily used, will be a\ngift also to his race for ever.\n\n\n72. There is not any matter, nor any spirit, nor any creature, but it\nis capable of a unity of some kind with other creatures; and in that\nunity is its perfection and theirs, and a pleasure also for the\nbeholding of all other creatures that can behold. So the unity of\nspirits is partly in their sympathy, and partly in their giving and\ntaking, and always in their love; and these are their delight and\ntheir strength; for their strength is in their co-working and army\nfellowship, and their delight is in their giving and receiving of\nalternate and perpetual good; their inseparable dependency on each\nother's being, and their essential and perfect depending on their\nCreator's. And so the unity of earthly creatures is their power, and\ntheir peace; not like the dead and cold peace of undisturbed stones\nand solitary mountains, but the living peace of trust, and the living\npower of support; of hands that hold each other and are still.[30]\n\n[30] A long, affected, and obscure second volume sentence, written in\nimitation of Hooker. One short sentence from Ecclesiastes is the sum of\nit: \"How can one be warm alone?\"\n\n\n73. It is good to read of that kindness and humbleness of St. Francis\nof Assisi, who spoke never to bird, nor to cicada, nor even to wolf\nand beasts of prey, but as his brother;--and so we find are moved the\nminds of all good and mighty men, as in the lesson that we have from\nthe 'Mariner' of Coleridge, and yet more truly and rightly taught in\nthe 'Hartleap Well'--\n\n  \"Never to blend our pleasure or our pride\n  With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels,\"--\n\nand again in the 'White Doe' of Rylstone, with the added teaching,\nthat anguish of our own\n\n  \"Is tempered and allayed by sympathies\n  Aloft ascending, and descending deep,\n  Even to the inferior kinds;\"--\n\nso that I know not of anything more destructive of the whole theoretic\nfaculty, not to say of the Christian character and human intellect,[31]\nthan those accursed sports in which man makes of himself cat, tiger,\nleopard, and alligator in one; and gathers into one continuance of\ncruelty, for his amusement, all the devices that brutes sparingly and\nat intervals use against each other for their necessities.\n\n[31] I am more and more grieved, as I re-read this and other portions of\nthe most affected and weak of all my books, (written in a moulting time\nof my life,)--the second volume of 'Modern Painters,'--at its morbid\nviolence of passion and narrowness of thought. Yet, at heart, the book\nwas, like my others, honest; and in substance it is mostly good; but all\nboiled to rags.\n\n\n74. He who loves not God, nor his brother, cannot love the grass\nbeneath his feet, nor the creatures which live not for his uses,\nfilling those spaces in the universe which he needs not: while, on the\nother hand, none can love God, nor his human brother, without loving\nall things which his Father loves; nor without looking upon them every\none as in that respect his brethren also, and perhaps worthier than\nhe, if, in the under concords they have to fill, their part is touched\nmore truly.[32]\n\n[32] Morbidly Franciscan, again! and I am really compelled to leave out\none little bit my friend liked,--as all kindly and hopeful women\nwould,--about everything turning out right, and being to some good end.\nFor we have no business whatever with the ends of things, but with their\nbeings; and their beings are often entirely bad.\n\n\n75. Things may always be seen truly by candid people, though never\n_completely_. No human capacity ever yet saw the whole of a thing; but\nwe may see more and more of it the longer we look. Every individual\ntemper will see something different in it; but supposing the tempers\nhonest, all the differences are there. Every advance in our acuteness\nof perception will show us something new; but the old and\nfirst-discerned thing will still be there, not falsified, only\nmodified and enriched by the new perceptions, becoming continually\nmore beautiful in its harmony with them, and more approved as a part\nof the infinite truth.\n\n\n\n\nSECTION IX.\n\nMORALITIES.\n\n\n76. When people read, \"The law came by Moses, but grace and truth by\nChrist,\" do they suppose it means that the law was ungracious and\nuntrue? The law was given for a foundation; the grace (or mercy) and\ntruth for fulfilment;--the whole forming one glorious Trinity of\njudgment, mercy, and truth.[33] And if people would but read the text\nof their Bibles with heartier purpose of understanding it, instead of\nsuperstitiously, they would see that throughout the parts which they\nare intended to make most personally their own, (the Psalms,) it is\nalways the Law which is spoken of with chief joy. The Psalms\nrespecting mercy are often sorrowful, as in thought of what it cost;\nbut those respecting the Law are always full of delight. David cannot\ncontain himself for joy in thinking of it,--he is never weary of its\npraise: \"How love I Thy law! it is my meditation all the day. Thy\ntestimonies are my delight and my counsellors; sweeter also than honey\nand the honeycomb.\"\n\n[33] A great deal of the presumption and narrowness caused by my having\nbeen bred in the Evangelical schools, and which now fill me with shame\nand distress in re-reading 'Modern Painters,' is, to my present mind,\natoned for by the accurate thinking by which I broke my way through to\nthe great truth expressed in this passage, which all my later writings,\nwithout exception, have been directed to maintain and illustrate.\n\n\n77. I suppose there is no event in the whole life of Christ to which,\nin hours of doubt or fear, men turn with more anxious thirst to know\nthe close facts of it, or with more earnest and passionate dwelling\nupon every syllable of its recorded narrative, than Christ's showing\nHimself to His disciples at the Lake of Galilee. There is something\npre-eminently open, natural, full fronting our disbelief, in this\nmanifestation. The others, recorded after the resurrection, were\nsudden, phantom-like, occurring to men in profound sorrow and wearied\nagitation of heart; not, it might seem, safe judges of what they saw.\nBut the agitation was now over. They had gone back to their daily\nwork, thinking still their business lay net-wards, unmeshed from the\nliteral rope and drag. \"Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a-fishing.\nThey say unto him, We also go with thee.\" True words enough, and\nhaving far echo beyond those Galilean hills. That night they caught\nnothing; but when the morning came, in the clear light of it, behold!\na figure stood on the shore. They were not thinking of anything but\ntheir fruitless hauls. They had no guess who it was. It asked them\nsimply if they had caught anything. They say, No, and it tells them to\ncast again. And John shades his eyes from the morning sun with his\nhand to look who it is; and though the glistening of the sea, too,\ndazzles him, he makes out who it is at last; and poor Simon, not to be\noutrun this time, tightens his fisher's coat about him, and dashes in\nover the nets. One would have liked to see him swim those hundred\nyards, and stagger to his knees upon the beach.\n\nWell, the others get to the beach, too, in time, in such slow way as\nmen in general do get in this world to its true shore, much impeded by\nthat wonderful \"dragging the net with fishes\"; but they get\nthere--seven of them in all; first the Denier, and then the slowest\nbeliever, and then the quickest believer, and then the two\nthrone-seekers, and two more, we know not who.\n\nThey sit down on the shore, face to face with Him, and eat their\nbroiled fish as He bids. And then to Peter, all dripping still,\nshivering, and amazed, staring at Christ in the sun, on the other side\nof the coal-fire,--thinking a little perhaps of what happened by\nanother coal-fire, when it was colder, and having had no word changed\nwith him by his Master, since that look of His,--to him so amazed,\ncomes the question, \"Simon, lovest thou Me?\" Try to feel that a\nlittle; and think of it till it is true to you: and then take up that\ninfinite monstrosity and hypocrisy,--Raphael's cartoon of the charge\nto Peter. Note first the bold fallacy--the putting _all_ the Apostles\nthere, a mere lie to serve the Papal heresy of the Petric supremacy,\nby putting them all in the background while Peter receives the charge,\nand making them all witnesses to it. Note the handsomely curled hair\nand neatly tied sandals of the men who had been out all night in the\nsea-mists, and on the slimy decks; note their convenient dresses for\ngoing a-fishing, with trains that lie a yard along the ground, and\ngoodly fringes--all made to match;--an apostolic fishing costume. Note\nhow Peter especially, (whose chief glory was in his wet coat _girt_\nabout him, and naked limbs,) is enveloped in folds and fringes, so as\nto kneel and hold his keys with grace. No fire of coals at all, nor\nlonely mountain shore, but a pleasant Italian landscape, full of\nvillas and churches, and a flock of sheep to be pointed at; and the\nwhole group of Apostles, not round Christ, as they would have been\nnaturally, but straggling away in a line, that they may be shown. The\nsimple truth is, that the moment we look at the picture we feel our\nbelief of the whole thing taken away. There is visibly no possibility\nof that group even having existed, in any place, or on any occasion.\nIt is all a mere mythic absurdity, and faded concoction of fringes,\nmuscular arms, and curly heads of Greek philosophers.\n\n\n78. Among the children of God, there is always that fearful and bowed\napprehension of His majesty, and that sacred dread of all offence to\nHim which is called the Fear of God; yet of real and essential fear\nthere is not any, but clinging of confidence to Him as their Rock,\nFortress, and Deliverer; and perfect love, and casting out of fear; so\nthat it is not possible that, while the mind is rightly bent on Him,\nthere should be dread of anything earthly or supernatural; and the\nmore dreadful seems the height of His majesty, the less fear they feel\nthat dwell in the shadow of it. \"Of whom shall I be afraid?\"\n\n\n79. If for every rebuke that we utter of men's vices, we put forth a\nclaim upon their hearts; if for every assertion of God's demands from\nthem, we could substitute a display of His kindness to them; if side\nby side with every warning of death, we could exhibit proofs and\npromises of immortality; if, in fine, instead of assuming the being of\nan awful Deity, which men, though they cannot, and dare not deny, are\nalways unwilling, sometimes unable to conceive, we were to show them a\nnear, visible, inevitable, but all beneficent Deity, whose presence\nmakes the earth itself a heaven, I think there would be fewer deaf\nchildren sitting in the market-place.\n\n\n80. If not by sympathy discovered, it is not in words explicable with\nwhat divine lines and light the exercise of godliness and charity will\nmould and gild the hardest and coldest countenance, neither to what\ndarkness their departure will consign the loveliest. For there is not\nany virtue the exercise of which, even momentarily, will not impress a\nnew fairness upon the features.\n\n\n81. The love of the human race is increased by their individual\ndifferences, and the unity of the creature, made perfect by each\nhaving something to bestow and to receive, bound to the rest by a\nthousand various necessities and various gratitudes; humility in each\nrejoicing to admire in his fellow that which he finds not in himself,\nand each being in some respect the complement of his race.\n\n\n82. They who are as the angels of God in heaven, yet cannot be\nconceived as so assimilated that their different experiences and\naffections upon earth shall then be forgotten and effectless: the\nchild, taken early to his place, cannot be imagined to wear there such\na body, nor to have such thoughts, as the glorified apostle who had\nfinished his course and kept the faith on earth. And so, whatever\nperfections and likeness of love we may attribute to either the tried\nor the crowned creatures, there is the difference of the stars in\nglory among them yet; differences of original gifts, though not of\noccupying till their Lord come; different dispensations of trial and\nof trust, of sorrows and support, both in their own inward, variable\nhearts, and in their positions of exposure or of peace; of the gourd\nshadow and the smiting sun, of calling at heat of day, or eleventh\nhour, of the house unroofed by faith, or the clouds opened by\nrevelation; differences in warning, in mercies, in sickness, in signs,\nin time of calling to account; alike only they all are by that which\nis not of them, but the gift of God's unchangeable mercy: \"I will give\nunto this last even as unto thee.\"\n\n\n83. The desire of rest planted in the heart is no sensual, no unworthy\none; but a longing for renovation, and for escape from a state whose\nevery phase is mere preparation for another equally transitory, to one\nin which permanence shall have become possible through perfection.\nHence the great call of Christ to men, that call on which St.\nAugustine fixed as the essential expression of Christian hope, is\naccompanied by the promise of rest; and the death bequest of Christ to\nmen, is peace.\n\n\n84. He who has once stood beside the grave, to look back upon the\ncompanionship which has been for ever closed, feeling how impotent,\nthere, are the wild love, and the keen sorrow, to give one instant's\npleasure to the pulseless heart, or atone in the lowest measure to the\ndeparted spirit, for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely for the\nfuture incur that debt to the heart, which can only be discharged to\nthe dust. But the lessons which men receive as individuals, they do\nnot learn as nations. Again and again they have seen their noblest\ndescend into the grave, and have thought it enough to garland the\ntombstone when they had not crowned the brow, and to pay the honour to\nthe ashes, which they had denied to the spirit. Let it not displease\nthem that they are bidden, amidst the tumult and the dazzle of their\nbusy life, to listen for the few voices, and watch for the few lamps,\nwhich God has toned and lighted to charm and to guide them, that they\nmay not learn their sweetness by their silence, nor their light by\ntheir decay.\n\n\n85. In the Cathedral of Lucca, near the entrance door of the north\ntransept, there is a monument by Jacopo della Quercia to Ilaria di\nCaretto, the wife of Paolo Guinigi. I name it not as more beautiful or\nperfect than other examples of the same period; but as furnishing an\ninstance of the exact and right mean between the rigidity and rudeness\nof the earlier monumental effigies, and the morbid imitation of life,\nsleep, or death, of which the fashion has taken place in modern times.\nShe is lying on a simple couch, with a hound at her feet; not on the\nside, but with the head laid straight and simply on the hard pillow,\nin which, let it be observed, there is no effort at deceptive\nimitation of pressure.--It is understood as a pillow, but not mistaken\nfor one. The hair is bound in a flat braid over the fair brow, the\nsweet and arched eyes are closed, the tenderness of the loving lips is\nset and quiet; there is that about them which forbids breath;\nsomething which is not death nor sleep, but the pure image of both.\nThe hands are not lifted in prayer, neither folded, but the arms are\nlaid at length upon the body, and the hands cross as they fall. The\nfeet are hidden by the drapery, and the form of the limbs concealed,\nbut not their tenderness.\n\n\n86. I do not know any district possessing a more pure or uninterrupted\nfulness of mountain character, (and that of the highest order,) or\nwhich appears to have been less disturbed by foreign agencies, than\nthat which borders the course of the Trient between Valorsine and\nMartigny. The paths which lead to it out of the valley of the Rhone,\nrising at first in steep circles among the walnut trees, like winding\nstairs among the pillars of a Gothic tower, retire over the shoulders\nof the hills into a valley almost unknown, but thickly inhabited by an\nindustrious and patient population. Along the ridges of the rocks,\nsmoothed by old glaciers into long, dark, billowy swellings, like the\nbacks of plunging dolphins, the peasant watches the slow colouring of\nthe tufts of moss and roots of herb, which little by little gather a\nfeeble soil over the iron substance; then, supporting the narrow slip\nof clinging ground with a few stones, he subdues it to the spade; and\nin a year or two a little crest of corn is seen waving upon the rocky\ncasque. The irregular meadows run in and out like inlets of lake among\nthese harvested rocks, sweet with perpetual streamlets that seem\nalways to have chosen the steepest places to come down for the sake of\nthe leaps, scattering their handfuls of crystal this way and that, as\nthe wind takes them with all the grace, but with none of the\nformalism, of fountains; dividing into fanciful change of dash and\nspring, yet with the seal of their granite channels upon them, as the\nlightest play of human speech may bear the seal of past toil, and\nclosing back out of their spray to lave the rigid angles, and brighten\nwith silver fringes and glassy films each lower and lower step of\nsable stone; until at last, gathered altogether again,--except perhaps\nsome chance drops caught on the apple blossom, where it has budded a\nlittle nearer the cascade than it did last spring,--they find their\nway down to the turf, and lose themselves in that, silently; with\nquiet depth of clear water furrowing among the grass-blades, and\nlooking only like their shadows but presently emerging again in little\nstartled gushes and laughing hurries, as if they had remembered\nsuddenly that the day was too short for them to get down the hill.\nGreen field, and glowing rock, and glancing streamlet, all slope\ntogether in the sunshine towards the brows of ravines, where the pines\ntake up their own dominion of saddened shade; and with everlasting\nroar, in the twilight, the stronger torrents thunder down, pale from\nthe glaciers, filling all the chasms with enchanted cold, beating\nthemselves to pieces against the great rocks that they have themselves\ncast down, and forcing fierce way beneath their ghastly poise. The\nmountain paths stoop to those glens in forky zigzags, leading to some\ngrey and narrow arch, all fringed under its shuddering curve with the\nferns that fear the light; a cross of rough-hewn pine, iron-bound to\nits parapet, standing dark against the lurid fury of the foam. Far up\nthe glen, as we pause beside the cross, the sky is seen through the\nopenings in the pines thin with excess of light; and, in its clear\nconsuming flame of white space, the summits of the rocky mountains are\ngathered into solemn crowns and circlets, all flushed in that strange\nfaint silence of possession by the sunshine, which has in it so deep a\nmelancholy, full of power, yet as frail as shadows; lifeless, like the\nwalls of a sepulchre, yet beautiful in tender fall of crimson folds,\nlike the veil of some sea spirit, that lives and dies as the foam\nflashes; fixed on a perpetual throne, stern against all strength,\nlifted above all sorrows, and yet effaced and melted utterly into the\nair by that last sunbeam that has crossed to them from between the two\ngolden clouds.\n\nHigh above all sorrow? Yes; but not unwitnessing to it. The traveller\non his happy journey, as his foot springs from the deep turf, and\nstrikes the pebbles gaily over the edge of the mountain road, sees\nwith a glance of delight the clusters of nut-brown cottages that\nnestle along those sloping orchards, and glow beneath the boughs of\nthe pines. Here, it may well seem to him, if there be sometimes\nhardship, there must be at least innocence and peace, and fellowship\nof the human soul with nature. It is not so. The wild goats that leap\nalong those rocks have as much passion of joy in all that fair work of\nGod as the men that toil among them,--perhaps more. Enter the street\nof one of those villages, and you will find it foul with that gloomy\nfoulness that is suffered only by torpor, or by anguish of soul. Here,\nit is torpor--not absolute suffering--not starvation or disease; but\ndarkness of calm enduring: the spring, known only as the time of the\nscythe, and the autumn as the time of the sickle, and the sun only as\na warmth, the wind as a chill, and the mountains as a danger. They do\nnot understand so much as the name of beauty, or of knowledge. They\nunderstand dimly that of virtue. Love, patience, hospitality,\nfaith--these things they know. To glean their meadows side by side, so\nhappier; to bear the burden up the breathless mountain flank\nunmurmuringly; to bid the stranger drink from their vessel of milk; to\nsee at the foot of their low death-beds a pale figure upon a cross,\ndying, also patiently;--in this they are different from the cattle and\nfrom the stones; but, in all this, unrewarded, as far as concerns the\npresent life. For them, there is neither hope nor passion of spirit;\nfor them, neither advance nor exultation. Black bread, rude roof, dark\nnight, laborious day, weary arm at sunset; and life ebbs away. No\nbooks, no thoughts, no attainments, no rest,--except only sometimes a\nlittle sitting in the sun under the church wall, as the bell tolls\nthin and far in the mountain air; a pattering of a few prayers, not\nunderstood, by the altar-rails of the dimly gilded chapel,--and so,\nback to the sombre home, with the cloud upon them still unbroken--that\ncloud of rocky gloom, born out of the wild torrents and ruinous\nstones, and unlightened even in their religion, except by the vague\npromise of some better thing unknown, mingled with threatening, and\nobscured by an unspeakable horror--a smoke, as it were, of martyrdom,\ncoiling up with the incense; and amidst the images of tortured bodies\nand lamenting spirits in hurtling flames, the very cross, for them,\ndashed more deeply than for others with gouts of blood.\n\n\n87. A Highland scene is beyond doubt pleasant enough in its own way;\nbut, looked close at, has its shadows.[34] Here, for instance, is the\nvery fact of one--as pretty as I can remember,--having seen many. It\nis a little valley of soft turf, enclosed in its narrow oval by\njutting rocks, and broad flakes of nodding fern. From one side of it\nto the other winds, serpentine, a clear brown stream, drooping into\nquicker ripple as it reaches the end of the oval field, and then,\nfirst islanding a purple and white rock with an amber pool, it dashes\naway into a narrow fall of foam under a thicket of mountain ash and\nalder. The autumn sun, low, but clear, shines on the scarlet\nash-berries and on the golden birch-leaves, which, fallen here and\nthere, when the breeze has not caught them, rest quiet in the crannies\nof the purple rock. Beside the rock, in the hollow under the thicket,\nthe carcase of a ewe, drowned in the last flood, lies nearly bare to\nthe bone, its white ribs protruding through the skin, raven-torn; and\nthe rags of its wool still flickering from the branches that first\nstayed it as the stream swept it down. A little lower, the current\nplunges, roaring, into a circular chasm like a well, surrounded on\nthree sides by a chimney-like hollowness of polished rock, down which\nthe foam slips in detached snow-flakes. Round the edges of the pool\nbeneath, the water circles slowly like black oil; a little butterfly\nlies on its back, the wings glued to one of the eddies, its limbs\nfeebly quivering; a fish arises, and it is gone. Lower down the\nstream, I can see over a knoll the green and damp turf roofs of four\nor five hovels, built at the edge of a morass, which is trodden by the\ncattle into a black Slough of Despond at their doors, and traversed by\na few ill-set stepping stones, with here and there a flat slab on the\ntops, where they have sunk out of sight;--and at the turn of the brook\nI see a man fishing, with a boy and a dog--a picturesque and pretty\ngroup enough certainly, if they had not been there all day starving. I\nknow them, and I know the dog's ribs also, which are nearly as bare as\nthe dead ewe's; and the child's wasted shoulders, cutting his old\ntartan jacket through, so sharp are they.\n\n[34] Passage written to be opposed to an exuberant description, by an\namiable Scottish pastor, of everything flattering to Scotchmen in the\nHighlands. I have put next to it, a little study of the sadness of\nItaly.\n\n\n88. Perhaps there is no more impressive scene on earth than the\nsolitary extent of the Campagna of Rome under evening light. Let the\nreader imagine himself for a moment withdrawn from the sounds and\nmotion of the living world, and sent forth alone into this wild and\nwasted plain. The earth yields and crumbles beneath his foot, tread he\nnever so lightly, for its substance is white, hollow, and carious,\nlike the dusty wreck of the bones of men. The long knotted grass waves\nand tosses feebly in the evening wind, and the shadows of its motion\nshake feverishly along the banks of ruin that lift themselves to the\nsunlight. Hillocks of mouldering earth heave around him, as if the\ndead beneath were struggling in their sleep. Scattered blocks of black\nstone, four-square remnants of mighty edifices, not one left upon\nanother, lie upon them to keep them down. A dull purple poisonous haze\nstretches level along the desert, veiling its spectral wrecks of massy\nruins, on whose rents the red light rests, like dying fire on defiled\naltars; the blue ridge of the Alban Mount lifts itself against a\nsolemn space of green, clear, quiet sky. Watch-towers of dark clouds\nstand steadfastly along the promontories of the Apennines. From the\nplain to the mountains, the shattered aqueducts, pier beyond pier,\nmelt into the darkness, like shadowy and countless troops of funeral\nmourners, passing from a nation's grave.\n\n\n89. I was coming down one evening from the Rochers de Naye, above\nMontreux, having been at work among the limestone rocks, where I could\nget no water, and both weary and thirsty. Coming to a spring at the\nturn of the path, conducted, as usual, by the herdsmen, into a\nhollowed pine trunk, I stooped to it, and drank deeply. As I raised my\nhead, drawing breath heavily, some one behind me said, \"Celui qui\nboira de cette eau-ci, aura encore soif.\" I turned, not understanding\nfor a moment what was meant, and saw one of the hill peasants,\nprobably returning to his chalet from the market place at Vevay or\nVilleneuve. As I looked at him with an uncomprehending expression, he\nwent on with the verse: \"Mais celui qui boira de l'eau que je lui\ndonnerai, n'aura jamais soif.\"\n\n\n90. It may perhaps be permitted me[35] to mark the significance of the\nearliest mention of mountains in the Mosaic books; at least of those\nin which some Divine appointment or command is stated respecting them.\nThey are first brought before us as refuges for God's people from the\ntwo judgments of water and fire. The Ark rests upon the mountains of\nArarat; and man, having passed through the great Baptism unto death,\nkneels upon the earth first where it is nearest heaven, and mingles\nwith the mountain clouds the smoke of his sacrifice of thanksgiving.\nAgain; from the midst of the first judgment by fire, the command of\nthe Deity to His servant is, \"Escape to the mountain;\" and the morbid\nfear of the hills, which fills any human mind after long stay in\nplaces of luxury and sin, is strangely marked in Lot's complaining\nreply, \"I cannot escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me.\" The\nthird mention, in way of ordinance, is a far more solemn one: \"Abraham\nlifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off.\" \"The Place,\" the\nmountain of myrrh, or of bitterness, chosen to fulfil to all the seed\nof Abraham, far off and near, the inner meaning of promise regarded in\nthat vow: \"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh\nmine help.\" And the fourth is the delivery of the law on Sinai. It\nseemed then to the monks that the mountains were appointed by their\nMaker to be to man refuges from judgment, signs of redemption, and\naltars of sanctification and obedience; and they saw them afterwards\nconnected, in the manner the most touching and gracious, with the\ndeath, after his task had been accomplished, of the first anointed\nPriest; the death, in like manner, of the first inspired Lawgiver; and\nlastly, with the assumption of His office, by the Eternal Priest,\nLawgiver, and Saviour.\n\n[35] With reference to the choice of mountain dwellings by the greater\nmonastic orders.\n\nObserve the connection of these three events. Although the _time_ of\nthe deaths of Aaron and Moses was hastened by God's displeasure, we\nhave not, it seems to me, the slightest warrant for concluding that\nthe _manner_ of their deaths was intended to be grievous or\ndishonourable to them. Far from this, it cannot, I think, be doubted\nthat in the denial of the permission to enter the Promised Land, the\nwhole punishment of their sin was included; and that, as far as\nregarded the manner of their deaths, it must have been appointed for\nthem by their Master, in all tenderness and love, and with the full\npurpose of ennobling the close of their service upon the earth. It\nmight have seemed to _us_ more honourable that both should have been\npermitted to die beneath the shadow of the Tabernacle, the\ncongregation of Israel watching by their side; and all whom they loved\ngathered together to receive the last message from the lips of the\nmeek lawgiver, and the last blessing from the prayer of the anointed\npriest. But it was not thus they were permitted to die. Try to realize\nthat going forth of Aaron from the midst of the congregation. He who\nhad so often done sacrifice for their sin, going forth now to offer up\nhis own spirit. He who had stood among them between the dead and the\nliving, and had seen the eyes of all that great multitude turned to\nhim, that by his intercession their breath might yet be drawn a moment\nmore, going forth now to meet the angel of death face to face, and\ndeliver himself into his hand. Try if you cannot walk in thought with\nthose two brothers, and the son, as they passed the outmost tents of\nIsrael, and turned, while yet the dew lay round about the camp,\ntowards the slopes of Mount Hor; talking together for the last time,\nas step by step they felt the steeper rising of the rocks, and hour\nafter hour, beneath the ascending sun, the horizon grew broader as\nthey climbed, and all the folded hills of Idumea, one by one subdued,\nshowed, amidst their hollows in the haze of noon, the windings of that\nlong desert journey, now at last to close. But who shall enter into\nthe thoughts of the High Priest as his eye followed those paths of\nancient pilgrimage; and through the silence of the arid and endless\nhills, stretching even to the dim peak of Sinai, the whole history of\nthose forty years was unfolded before him, and the mystery of his own\nministries revealed to him; and that other Holy of Holies, of which\nthe mountain peaks were the altars, and the mountain clouds the veil,\nthe firmament of his Father's dwelling, opened to him still more\nbrightly and infinitely as he drew nearer his death?--until at last,\non the shadeless summit, from him on whom sin was to be laid no more,\nfrom him on whose heart the names of sinful nations were to press\ntheir graven fire no longer, the brother and the son took breastplate\nand ephod, and left him to his rest. There is indeed a secretness in\nthis calm faith, and deep restraint of sorrow, into which it is\ndifficult for us to enter; but the death of Moses himself is more\neasily to be conceived, and had in it circumstances still more\ntouching as regards the influence of the external scene. For forty\nyears Moses had not been alone. The care and burden of all the people,\nthe weight of their woe, and guilt, and death, had been upon him\ncontinually. The multitude had been laid upon him as if he had\nconceived them; their tears had been his meat night and day, until he\nhad felt as if God had withdrawn His favour from him, and he had\nprayed that he might be slain, and not see his wretchedness. And now\nat last the command came, \"Get thee up into this mountain.\" The weary\nhands, that had been so long stayed up against the enemies of Israel,\nmight lean again upon the shepherd's staff, and fold themselves for\nthe shepherd's prayer--for the shepherd's slumber. Not strange to his\nfeet, though forty years unknown, the roughness of the bare mountain\npath, as he climbed from ledge to ledge of Abarim; not strange to his\naged eyes the scattered clusters of the mountain herbage, and the\nbroken shadows of the cliffs, indented far across the silence of\nuninhabited ravines; scenes such as those among which, as now, with\nnone beside him but God, he had led his flocks so often; and which he\nhad left, how painfully! taking upon him the appointed power to make\nof the fenced city a wilderness, and to fill the desert with songs of\ndeliverance. It was not to embitter the last hours of his life that\nGod restored to him for a day the beloved solitudes he had lost, and\nbreathed the peace of the perpetual hills around him, and cast the\nworld in which he had laboured, and sinned, far beneath his feet in\nthat mist of dying blue;--all sin, all wandering, soon to be forgotten\nfor ever. The Dead Sea--a type of God's anger understood by him, of\nall men, most clearly, who had seen the earth open her mouth, and the\nsea his depth, to overwhelm the companies of those who contended with\nhis Master--laid waveless beneath him; and beyond it the fair hills of\nJudah, and the soft plains and banks of Jordan, purple in the evening\nlight as with the blood of redemption, and fading in their distant\nfulness into mysteries of promise and of love. There, with his\nunabated strength, his undimmed glance, lying down upon the utmost\nrocks, with angels waiting near to contend for the spoils of his\nspirit, he put off his earthly armour. We do deep reverence to his\ncompanion prophet, for whom the chariot of fire came down from heaven;\nbut was his death less noble whom his Lord Himself buried in the vales\nof Moab, keeping, in the secrets of the eternal counsels, the\nknowledge of a sepulchre, from which he was to be called in the\nfulness of time, to talk with that Lord upon Hermon of the death that\nHe should accomplish at Jerusalem?\n\nAnd lastly, let us turn our thoughts for a few moments to the cause of\nthe resurrection of these two prophets. We are all of us too much in\nthe habit of passing it by, as a thing mystical and inconceivable,\ntaking place in the life of Christ for some purpose not by us to be\nunderstood, or, at the best, merely as a manifestation of His divinity\nby brightness of heavenly light, and the ministering of the spirits of\nthe dead, intended to strengthen the faith of His three chosen\napostles. And in this, as in many other events recorded by the\nEvangelists, we lose half the meaning, and evade the practical power\nupon ourselves, by never accepting in its fulness the idea that our\nLord was \"perfect man,\"--\"tempted in all things like as we are.\" Our\npreachers are continually trying, in all manner of subtle ways, to\nexplain the union of the Divinity with the Manhood--an explanation\nwhich certainly involves first their being able to describe the nature\nof Deity itself, or, in plain words, to comprehend God. They never can\nexplain, in any one particular, the union of the natures; they only\nsucceed in weakening the faith of their hearers as to the entireness\nof either. The thing they have to do is precisely the contrary of\nthis--to insist upon the _entireness_ of both. We never think of\nChrist enough as God, never enough as Man; the instinctive habit of\nour minds being always to miss of the Divinity, and the reasoning and\nenforced habit to miss of the humanity. We are afraid to harbour in\nour own hearts, or to utter in the hearing of others, any thought of\nour Lord as hungering, tired, sorrowful, having a human soul, a human\nwill, and affected by events of human life, as a finite creature is:\nand yet one half of the efficiency of His atonement, and the whole of\nthe efficiency of His example, depend on His having been this to the\nfull. Consider, therefore, the Transfiguration as it relates to the\nhuman feelings of our Lord. It was the first definite preparation for\nHis death. He had foretold it to His disciples six days before; then\ntakes with Him the three chosen ones into \"an high mountain apart.\"\nFrom an exceeding high mountain, at the first taking on Him the\nministry of life, He had beheld and rejected the kingdoms of the\nearth, and their glory: now, on a high mountain, He takes upon Him the\nministry of death. Peter and they that were with Him, as in\nGethsemane, were heavy with sleep. Christ's work had to be done alone.\n\nThe tradition is that the Mount of Transfiguration was the summit of\nTabor; but Tabor is neither a high mountain, nor was it in any sense a\nmountain \"_apart_,\" being in those years both, inhabited and\nfortified. All the immediately preceding ministries of Christ had been\nat Cesarea Philippi. There is no mention of travel southward in the\nsix days that intervened between the warning given to His disciples\nand the going up into the hill. What other hill could it be than the\nsouthward slope of that goodly mountain, Hermon, which is indeed the\ncentre of all the Promised Land, from the entering in of Hamath unto\nthe river of Egypt; the mount of fruitfulness, from which the springs\nof Jordan descended to the valleys of Israel? Along its mighty forest\navenues, until the grass grew fair with the mountain lilies, His feet\ndashed in the dew of Hermon, He must have gone to pray His first\nrecorded prayer about death; and from the steep of it, before He\nknelt, could see to the south all the dwellings of the people that had\nsat in darkness, and seen the great light, the land of Zabulon and of\nNaphtali, Galilee of the nations,--could see, even with His human\nsight, the gleam of that lake by Capernaum and Chorazin, and many a\nplace loved by Him, and vainly ministered to, whose house was now left\nunto them desolate; and chief of all, far in the utmost blue, the\nhills above Nazareth, sloping down to His old home; hills on which yet\nthe stones lay loose that had been taken up to cast at Him when He\nleft them for ever.\n\n\"And as He prayed, two men stood by Him.\" Among the many ways in which\nwe miss the help and hold of Scripture, none is more subtle than our\nhabit of supposing that, even as man, Christ was free from the fear of\ndeath. How could He then have been tempted as we are?--since among all\nthe trials of the earth, none spring from the dust more terrible than\nthat fear. It had to be borne by Him, indeed, in a unity which we can\nnever comprehend, with the foreknowledge of victory,--as His sorrow\nfor Lazarus with the consciousness of His power to restore him; but it\n_had_ to be borne, and that in its full earthly terror; and the\npresence of it is surely marked for us enough by the rising of those\ntwo at His side. When, in the desert, He was girding Himself for the\nwork of life, angels of life came and ministered to Him; now in the\nfair world, when He is girding Himself for the work of death, the\nministrants come to Him from the grave. But, from the grave,\nconquered. One from that tomb under Abarim, which His own hand had\nsealed long ago; the other, from the rest into which he had entered\nwithout seeing corruption. \"There stood by Him Moses and Elias, and\nspake of His decease.\" Then, when the prayer is ended, the task\naccepted, first, since the star paused over Him at Bethlehem, the full\nglory falls upon Him from heaven, and the testimony is borne to His\neverlasting Sonship and power. \"Hear ye Him.\"\n\nIf, in their remembrance of these things, and in their endeavour to\nfollow in the footsteps of their Master, religious men of bygone days,\nclosing themselves in the hill solitudes, forgot sometimes, and\nsometimes feared, the duties they owed to the active world, we may\nperhaps pardon them more easily than we ought to pardon ourselves, if\nwe neither seek any influence for good, nor submit to it unsought, in\nscenes to which thus all the men whose writings we receive as\ninspired, together with their Lord, retired whenever they had any task\nor trial laid upon them needing more than their usual strength of\nspirit. Nor perhaps should we have unprofitably entered into the mind\nof the earlier ages, if among our other thoughts, as we watch the\nchains of the snowy mountains rise on the horizon, we should sometimes\nadmit the memory of the hour in which their Creator, among their\nsolitudes, entered on His travail for the salvation of our race; and\nindulge the dream, that as the flaming and trembling mountains of the\nearth seem to be the monuments of the manifesting of His terror on\nSinai, these pure and white hills, near to the heaven, and sources of\nall good to the earth, are the appointed memorials of that light of\nHis mercy, that fell, snowlike, on the Mount of Transfiguration.\n\n\nFINIS.\n\nPrinted by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.\n\nEdinburgh & London","title":"Frondes Agrestes: Readings in 'Modern Painters'","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":35499}