{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_4059/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_4059","id":"gutenberg_4059","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4059","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Art","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Essays"],"text":"Produced by Alfred J. Drake.  HTML version by Al Haines.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMISCELLANEOUS STUDIES: A SERIES OF ESSAYS\n\n\nWALTER HORATIO PATER\n\n\nLondon: 1910. (The Library Edition.)\n\n\n\n\nNOTES BY THE E-TEXT EDITOR:\n\nNotes: The 1910 Library Edition employs footnotes, a style inconvenient\nin an electronic edition.  I have therefore placed an asterisk\nimmediately after each of Pater's footnotes and a + sign after my own\nnotes, and have listed each chapter's notes at that chapter's end.\n\nPagination and Paragraphing: To avoid an unwieldy electronic copy, I\nhave transferred original pagination to brackets.  A bracketed numeral\nsuch as [22] indicates that the material immediately following the\nnumber marks the beginning of the relevant page.  I have preserved\nparagraph structure except for first-line indentation.\n\nHyphenation: I have not preserved original hyphenation since an e-text\ndoes not require line-end or page-end hyphenation.\n\nGreek typeface: For this full-text edition, I have transliterated\nPater's Greek quotations.  If there is a need for the original Greek,\nit can be viewed at my site, http://www.ajdrake.com/etexts, a\nVictorianist archive that contains the complete works of Walter Pater\nand many other nineteenth-century texts, mostly in first editions.\n\n\n\n\nMISCELLANEOUS STUDIES: A SERIES OF ESSAYS\n\nWALTER HORATIO PATER\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\nC. Shadwell's Preface--Publication Chronology: 1-7\n\nProsper Merimee: 11-37\n\nRaphael: 38-61\n\nPascal: 62-89\n\nArt Notes in North Italy: 90-108\n\nNotre Dame D'Amiens: 109-125\n\nVezelay: 126-141\n\nApollo in Picardy: 142-171\n\nThe Child in the House: 172-196\n\nEmerald Uthwart: 197-246\n\nDiaphaneite: 247-254\n\n\n\n\nCHARLES L. SHADWELL'S PREFACE\n\n[1] The volume of Greek Studies, issued early in the present year,\ndealt with Mr. Pater's contributions to the study of Greek art,\nmythology, and poetry.  The present volume has no such unifying\nprinciple.  Some of the papers would naturally find their place\nalongside of those collected in Imaginary Portraits, or in\nAppreciations, or in the Studies in the Renaissance.  And there is no\ndoubt, in the case of several of them, that Mr. Pater, if he had lived,\nwould have subjected them to careful revision before allowing them to\nreappear in a permanent form.  The task, which he left unexecuted,\ncannot now be taken up by any other hand.  But it is hoped that\nstudents of his writings will be glad to possess, in a collected shape,\nwhat has hitherto only been accessible in the scattered volumes of\nmagazines.  It is with some hesitation that the paper on Diaphaneite,\nthe last in this volume, has been added, as the only specimen known to\n[2] be preserved of those early essays of Mr. Pater's, by which his\nliterary gifts were first made known to the small circle of his Oxford\nfriends.\n\nSubjoined is a brief chronological list of his published writings. It\nwill be observed how considerable a period, 1880 to 1885, was given up\nto the composition of Marius the Epicurean, the most highly finished of\nall his works, and the expression of his deepest thought.\n\nAugust, 1895.\n\n\n\nA CHRONOLOGY OF PATER'S WORKS, 1866-1895\n\n(Adapted from a compilation by Charles L. Shadwell in the 1895\nMacmillan edition of Miscellaneous Studies.)\n\n1866.\n\nCOLERIDGE.  Appeared in Westminster Review, January, 1866.  Reprinted\n1889 in Appreciations.\n\n1867.\n\nWINCKELMANN.  Appeared in Westminster Review, January, 1867.  Reprinted\n1873 in Studies in the Renaissance.\n\n1868.\n\n*AESTHETIC POETRY.  Written in 1868.  First published 1889 in\nAppreciations.  (Not included in the 1910 Macmillan Library Edition,\nbut published separately at Project Gutenberg and\nwww.ajdrake.com/etexts.)\n\n1869.\n\nNOTES ON LEONARDO DA VINCI.  Appeared in Fortnightly Review in\nNovember, 1869.  Reprinted 1873 in Studies in the Renaissance.\n\n1870.\n\nSANDRO BOTTICELLI.  Appeared in Fortnightly Review in August, 1870,\nentitled \"A Fragment on Sandro Botticelli.\"  Reprinted 1873 in Studies\nin the Renaissance.\n\n1871.\n\nPICO DELLA MIRANDOLA.  Appeared in Fortnightly Review in October, 1871.\nReprinted 1873 in Studies in the Renaissance.\n\nPOETRY OF MICHELANGELO.  Appeared in Fortnightly Review in November,\n1871.  Reprinted 1873 in Studies in the Renaissance.\n\n1873.\n\nSTUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF THE RENAISSANCE.  Published 1873 by\nMacmillan. Contents:\n\nAucassin and Nicolette.  Entitled in second and later editions, \"Two\nEarly French Stories.\"\n\nPico della Mirandola.  See 1871.\n\nSandro Botticelli.  See 1870.\n\nLuca della Robbia.\n\nPoetry of Michelangelo.  See 1871.\n\nLeonardo da Vinci.  See 1869.\n\nJoachim du Bellay.\n\nWinckelmann.  See 1867.\n\nConclusion.\n\n1874.\n\nWORDSWORTH.  Appeared in Fortnightly Review in April, 1874.  Reprinted\n1889 in Appreciations.\n\nMEASURE FOR MEASURE.  Appeared in Fortnightly Review in November, 1874.\nReprinted 1889 in Appreciations.\n\n1875.\n\nDEMETER AND PERSEPHONE.  Written as two lectures, and delivered in 1875\nat the Birmingham and Midland Institute.  Appeared in Fortnightly\nReview in January and February, 1876.  Reprinted 1895 in Greek Studies.\n\n1876.\n\nROMANTICISM.  Appeared in Macmillan's Magazine in November, 1876.\nReprinted 1889 in Appreciations under the title \"Postscript.\"\n\nA STUDY OF DIONYSUS.  Appeared in Fortnightly Review in December, 1876.\nReprinted 1895 in Greek Studies.\n\n1877.\n\nTHE SCHOOL OF GIORGIONE.  Appeared in Fortnightly Review in October,\n1877.  Reprinted 1888 in third edition of The Renaissance.\n\nTHE RENAISSANCE: STUDIES IN ART AND POETRY.  Second edition.\nMacmillan. Contents:\n\nTwo Early French Stories.\n\nPico della Mirandola.\n\nSandro Botticelli.\n\nLuca della Robbia.\n\nThe Poetry of Michelangelo.\n\nLeonardo da Vinci.\n\nJoachim du Bellay.\n\nWinckelmann.\n\n1878.\n\nTHE CHILD IN THE HOUSE.  Appeared in Macmillan's Magazine in August,\n1878, under the heading, \"Imaginary Portrait.  The Child in the House.\"\nReprinted 1895 in Miscellaneous Studies.\n\nCHARLES LAMB.  Appeared in Fortnightly Review in October, 1878.\nReprinted 1889 in Appreciations.\n\nLOVE'S LABOURS LOST.  Written in 1878.  Appeared in Macmillan's\nMagazine in December, 1885.  Reprinted 1889 in Appreciations.\n\nTHE BACCHANALS OF EURIPIDES.  Written in 1878.  Appeared in Macmillan's\nMagazine in May, 1889.  Reprinted in Tyrrell's edition of the Bacchae\nin 1892.  Reprinted in 1895 in Greek Studies.\n\n1880.\n\nTHE BEGINNINGS OF GREEK SCULPTURE.  Appeared in Fortnightly Review in\nFebruary and March, 1880.  Reprinted 1895 in Greek Studies.\n\nTHE MARBLES OF AEGINA.  Appeared in Fortnightly Review in April, 1880.\nReprinted 1895 in Greek Studies.\n\n1883.\n\nDANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.  Written in 1883.  Published 1889 in\nAppreciations.\n\n1885.\n\nMARIUS THE EPICUREAN.  Published in 1885 by Macmillan.  Two volumes.\n\nA PRINCE OF COURT PAINTERS.  Appeared in Macmillan's Magazine in\nOctober, 1885.  Reprinted 1887 in Imaginary Portraits.\n\n1886.\n\nFEUILLET'S \"LA MORTE.\"  Written in 1886.  Published 1890 in second\nedition of Appreciations.\n\nSIR THOMAS BROWNE.  Written in 1886.  Published 1889 in Appreciations.\n\nSEBASTIAN VAN STORCK.  Appeared in Macmillan's Magazine in March, 1886.\nReprinted 1887 in Imaginary Portraits.\n\nDENYS L'AUXERROIS.  Appeared in Macmillan's Magazine in October, 1886.\nReprinted 1887 in Imaginary Portraits.\n\n1887.\n\nDUKE CARL OF ROSENMOLD.  Appeared in Macmillan's Magazine in May, 1887.\nReprinted the same year in Imaginary Portraits.\n\nIMAGINARY PORTRAITS.  Published 1887 by Macmillan.  Contents:\n\nA Prince of Court Painters.  See 1885.\n\nDenys l'Auxerrois.  See 1886.\n\nSebastian van Storck.  See 1886.\n\nDuke Carl of Rosenmold.  See above.\n\n1888.\n\nGASTON DE LATOUR.  Appeared in Macmillan's Magazine as under: viz.\n\nChapter I in June.\n\nChapter II in July.\n\nChapter III in August.\n\nChapter IV in September.\n\nChapter V in October.\n\nSTYLE.  Appeared in Fortnightly Review in December, 1888.  Reprinted\n1889 in Appreciations.\n\nTHE RENAISSANCE.  Third Edition.  Macmillan.  Contents:\n\nTwo Early French Stories.\n\nPico della Mirandola.\n\nSandro Botticelli.\n\nLuca della Robbia.\n\nThe Poetry of Michelangelo.\n\nLeonardo da Vinci.\n\nThe School of Giorgione.  See 1877.\n\nJoachim du Bellay.\n\nWinckelmann.\n\nConclusion.\n\n1889.\n\nHIPPOLYTUS VEILED.  Appeared in Macmillan's Magazine in August, 1889.\nReprinted 1895 in Greek Studies.\n\n*GIORDANO BRUNO.  Appeared in Fortnightly Review in August, 1889.  (Not\nincluded in the 1910 Macmillan Library Edition, but published\nseparately online at Project Gutenberg and www.ajdrake.com/etexts.)\n\nAPPRECIATIONS, WITH AN ESSAY ON STYLE.  Published 1889 by Macmillan.\nContents:\n\nStyle.  See 1888.\n\nWordsworth.  See 1874.\n\nColeridge.  See 1866.\n\nCharles Lamb.  See 1878.\n\nSir Thomas Browne.  See 1886.\n\nLove's Labours Lost.  See 1878.\n\nMeasure for Measure.  See 1874.\n\nShakespeare's English Kings.\n\n*Aesthetic Poetry.  See 1868.\n\nDante Gabriel Rossetti.  See 1883.\n\nPostscript.  See under \"Romanticism,\" 1876.\n\n1890.\n\nART NOTES IN NORTHERN ITALY.  Appeared in New Review in November, 1890.\nReprinted 1895 in Miscellaneous Studies.\n\nPROSPER MERIMEE.  Delivered as a lecture at Oxford in November, 1890.\nAppeared in Fortnightly Review in December, 1890.  Reprinted 1895 in\nMiscellaneous Studies.\n\nAPPRECIATIONS.  Second edition.  Macmillan.  Contents as in first\nedition of 1889, but omitting Aesthetic Poetry and including a paper on\nFeuillet's \"La Morte\" (See 1886).\n\n1892.\n\nTHE GENIUS OF PLATO.  Appeared in Contemporary Review in February,\n1892.  Reprinted 1893 as Chapter VI of Plato and Platonism.\n\nA CHAPTER ON PLATO.  Appeared in Macmillan's Magazine in May, 1892.\nReprinted 1893 as Chapter I of Plato and Platonism.\n\nLACEDAEMON.  Appeared in Contemporary Review in June, 1892.  Reprinted\n1893 as Chapter VIII of Plato and Platonism.\n\nEMERALD UTHWART.  Appeared in New Review in June and July, 1892.\nReprinted 1895 in Miscellaneous Studies.\n\nRAPHAEL.  Delivered as a lecture at Oxford in August, 1892.  Appeared\nin Fortnightly Review in October, 1892.  Reprinted 1895 in\nMiscellaneous Studies.\n\n1893.\n\nAPOLLO IN PICARDY.  Appeared in Harper's Magazine in November, 1893.\nReprinted 1895 in Miscellaneous Studies.\n\nPLATO AND PLATONISM.  Published 1893 by Macmillan.  Included, as\nChapters 1, 6, and 8, papers which had already appeared in Magazines in\n1892.  Contents:\n\n1. Plato and the Doctrine of Motion.\n\n2. Plato and the Doctrine of Rest.\n\n3. Plato and the Doctrine of Number.\n\n4. Plato and Socrates.\n\n5. Plato and the Sophists.\n\n6. The Genius of Plato.\n\n7. The Doctrine of Plato--\n\n         I. The Theory of Ideas.\n\n        II. Dialectic.\n\n8. Lacedaemon.\n\n9. The Republic.\n\n10. Plato's Aesthetics.\n\n1894.\n\nTHE AGE OF ATHLETIC PRIZEMEN.  Appeared in Contemporary Review in\nFebruary, 1894.  Reprinted 1895 in Greek Studies.\n\nSOME GREAT CHURCHES IN FRANCE.  1) NOTRE-DAME D'AMIENS; 2) VEZELAY.\nAppeared in Nineteenth Century in March and June, 1894.  Reprinted 1895\nin Miscellaneous Studies as two separate essays.\n\nPASCAL.  Written for delivery as a lecture at Oxford in July, 1894.\nAppeared in Contemporary Review in December, 1894.  Reprinted 1895 in\nMiscellaneous Studies.\n\n1895.\n\nGREEK STUDIES.  Published 1895 by Macmillan. Contents:\n\nA Study of Dionysus.  See 1876.\n\nThe Bacchanals of Euripides.  See 1878.\n\nThe Myth of Demeter and Persephone.  See 1875.\n\nHippolytus Veiled.  See 1889.\n\nThe Beginnings of Greek Sculpture.  See 1880:\n\n        1) The Heroic Age of Greek Art.\n\n        2) The Age of Graven Images.\n\nThe Marbles of Aegina.  See 1880.\n\nThe Age of Athletic Prizemen.  See 1894.\n\n\n\nPROSPER MERIMEE*\n\nFOR one born in eighteen hundred and three much was recently become\nincredible that had at least warmed the imagination even of the\nsceptical eighteenth century.  Napoleon, sealing the tomb of the\nRevolution, had foreclosed many a problem, extinguished many a hope, in\nthe sphere of practice.  And the mental parallel was drawn by Heine.\nIn the mental world too a great outlook had lately been cut off.  After\nKant's criticism of the mind, its pretensions to pass beyond the limits\nof individual experience seemed as dead as those of old French royalty.\nAnd Kant did but furnish its innermost theoretic force to a more\ngeneral criticism, which had withdrawn from every department of action,\nunderlying principles once thought eternal.  A time of disillusion\nfollowed.  The typical personality of the day was Obermann, the very\ngenius of ennui, a Frenchman disabused even of patriotism, who has\nhardly strength enough to die.\n\n[12] More energetic souls, however, would recover themselves, and find\nsome way of making the best of a changed world.  Art: the passions,\nabove all, the ecstasy and sorrow of love: a purely empirical knowledge\nof nature and man: these still remained, at least for pastime, in a\nworld of which it was no longer proposed to calculate the remoter\nissues:--art, passion, science, however, in a somewhat novel attitude\ntowards the practical interests of life.  The desillusionne, who had\nfound in Kant's negations the last word concerning an unseen world, and\nis living, on the morrow of the Revolution, under a monarchy made out\nof hand, might seem cut off from certain ancient natural hopes, and\nwill demand, from what is to interest him at all, something in the way\nof artificial stimulus.  He has lost that sense of large proportion in\nthings, that all-embracing prospect of life as a whole (from end to end\nof time and space, it had seemed), the utmost expanse of which was\nafforded from a cathedral tower of the Middle Age: by the church of the\nthirteenth century, that is to say, with its consequent aptitude for\nthe co-ordination of human effort.  Deprived of that exhilarating yet\npacific outlook, imprisoned now in the narrow cell of its own\nsubjective experience, the action of a powerful nature will be intense,\nbut exclusive and peculiar.  It will come to art, or science, to the\nexperience of life itself, not as to portions of human nature's daily\nfood, but as to [13] something that must be, by the circumstances of\nthe case, exceptional; almost as men turn in despair to gambling or\nnarcotics, and in a little while the narcotic, the game of chance or\nskill, is valued for its own sake.  The vocation of the artist, of the\nstudent of life or books, will be realised with something--say! of\nfanaticism, as an end in itself, unrelated, unassociated.  The science\nhe turns to will be a science of crudest fact; the passion extravagant,\na passionate love of passion, varied through all the exotic phases of\nFrench fiction as inaugurated by Balzac; the art exaggerated, in matter\nor form, or both, as in Hugo or Baudelaire.  The development of these\nconditions is the mental story of the nineteenth century, especially as\nexemplified in France.\n\nIn no century would Prosper Merimee have been a theologian or\nmetaphysician.  But that sense of negation, of theoretic insecurity,\nwas in the air, and conspiring with what was of like tendency in\nhimself made of him a central type of disillusion.  In him the passive\nennui of Obermann became a satiric, aggressive, almost angry conviction\nof the littleness of the world around; it was as if man's fatal\nlimitations constituted a kind of stupidity in him, what the French\ncall betise.  Gossiping friends, indeed, linked what was constitutional\nin him and in the age with an incident of his earliest years.\nCorrected for some childish fault, in passionate distress, he overhears\na half-pitying laugh at his expense, and has determined, [14] in a\nmoment, never again to give credit--to be for ever on his guard,\nespecially against his own instinctive movements.  Quite unreserved,\ncertainly, he never was again.  Almost everywhere he could detect the\nhollow ring of fundamental nothingness under the apparent surface of\nthings.  Irony surely, habitual irony, would be the proper complement\nthereto, on his part.  In his infallible self-possession, you might\neven fancy him a mere man of the world, with a special aptitude for\nmatters of fact.  Though indifferent in politics, he rises to social,\nto political eminence; but all the while he is feeding all his\nscholarly curiosity, his imagination, the very eye, with the, to him\never delightful, relieving, reassuring spectacle, of those\nstraightforward forces in human nature, which are also matters of fact.\nThere is the formula of Merimee! the enthusiastic amateur of rude,\ncrude, naked force in men and women wherever it could be found; himself\ncarrying ever, as a mask, the conventional attire of the modern\nworld--carrying it with an infinite, contemptuous grace, as if that,\ntoo, were an all-sufficient end in itself.  With a natural gift for\nwords, for expression, it will be his literary function to draw back\nthe veil of time from the true greatness of old Roman character; the\nveil of modern habit from the primitive energy of the creatures of his\nfancy, as the Lettres a une Inconnue discovered to general gaze, after\nhis death, a certain depth of [15] passionate force which had surprised\nhim in himself. And how forcible will be their outlines in an otherwise\ninsignificant world!  Fundamental belief gone, in almost all of us, at\nleast some relics of it remain--queries, echoes, reactions,\nafter-thoughts; and they help to make an atmosphere, a mental\natmosphere, hazy perhaps, yet with many secrets of soothing light and\nshade, associating more definite objects to each other by a perspective\npleasant to the inward eye against a hopefully receding background of\nremoter and ever remoter possibilities.  Not so with Merimee!  For him\nthe fundamental criticism has nothing more than it can do; and there\nare no half-lights.  The last traces of hypothesis, of supposition, are\nevaporated.  Sylla, the false Demetrius, Carmen, Colomba, that\nimpassioned self within himself, have no atmosphere.  Painfully\ndistinct in outline, inevitable to sight, unrelieved, there they stand,\nlike solitary mountain forms on some hard, perfectly transparent day.\nWhat Merimee gets around his singularly sculpturesque creations is\nneither more nor less than empty space.\n\nSo disparate are his writings that at first sight you might fancy them\nonly the random efforts of a man of pleasure or affairs, who, turning\nto this or that for the relief of a vacant hour, discovers to his\nsurprise a workable literary gift, of whose scope, however, he is not\nprecisely aware.  His sixteen volumes nevertheless range themselves in\nthree compact groups.  There are his letters [16] --those Lettres a une\nInconnue, and his letters to the librarian Panizzi, revealing him in\nsomewhat close contact with political intrigue.  But in this age of\nnovelists, it is as a writer of novels, and of fiction in the form of\nhighly descriptive drama, that he will count for most:--Colomba, for\ninstance, by its intellectual depth of motive, its firmly conceived\nstructure, by the faultlessness of its execution, vindicating the\nfunction of the novel as no tawdry light literature, but in very deed a\nfine art.  The Chronique du Regne de Charles IX., an unusually\nsuccessful specimen of historical romance, links his imaginative work\nto the third group of Merimee's writings, his historical essays.  One\nresource of the disabused soul of our century, as we saw, would be the\nempirical study of facts, the empirical science of nature and man,\nsurviving all dead metaphysical philosophies.  Merimee, perhaps, may\nhave had in him the making of a master of such science, disinterested,\npatient, exact: scalpel in hand, we may fancy, he would have penetrated\nfar.  But quite certainly he had something of genius for the exact\nstudy of history, for the pursuit of exact truth, with a keenness of\nscent as if that alone existed, in some special area of historic fact,\nto be determined by his own peculiar mental preferences.  Power here\ntoo again,--the crude power of men and women which mocks, while it\nmakes its use of, average human nature: it was the magic function of\nhistory to put one in living [17] contact with that.  To weigh the\npurely physiognomic import of the memoir, of the pamphlet saved by\nchance, the letter, the anecdote, the very gossip by which one came\nface to face with energetic personalities: there lay the true business\nof the historic student, not in that pretended theoretic interpretation\nof events by their mechanic causes, with which he dupes others if not\ninvariably himself.  In the great hero of the Social War, in Sylla,\nstudied, indeed, through his environment, but only so far as that was\nin dynamic contact with himself, you saw, without any manner of doubt,\non one side, the solitary height of human genius; on the other, though\non the seemingly so heroic stage of antique Roman story, the wholly\ninexpressive level of the humanity of every day, the spectacle of man's\neternal betise.  Fascinated, like a veritable son of the old pagan\nRenaissance, by the grandeur, the concentration, the satiric hardness\nof ancient Roman character, it is to Russia nevertheless that he most\nreadily turns--youthful Russia, whose native force, still unbelittled\nby our western civilisation, seemed to have in it the promise of a more\ndignified civilisation to come.  It was as if old Rome itself were here\nagain; as, occasionally, a new quarry is laid open of what was thought\nlong since exhausted, ancient marble, cipollino or verde antique.\nMerimee, indeed, was not the first to discern the fitness for\nimaginative service of the career of \"the false Demetrius,\" pretended\n[18] son of Ivan the Terrible; but he alone seeks its utmost force in a\ncalm, matter-of-fact carefully ascertained presentment of the naked\nevents.  Yes!  In the last years of the Valois, when its fierce\npassions seemed to be bursting France to pieces, you might have seen,\nfar away beyond the rude Polish dominion of which one of those Valois\nprinces had become king, a display more effective still of exceptional\ncourage and cunning, of horror in circumstance, of betise, of course,\nof betise and a slavish capacity of being duped, in average mankind:\nall that under a mask of solemn Muscovite court-ceremonial.  And\nMerimee's style, simple and unconcerned, but with the eye ever on its\nobject, lends itself perfectly to such purpose--to an almost phlegmatic\ndiscovery of the facts, in all their crude natural colouring, as if he\nbut held up to view, as a piece of evidence, some harshly dyed oriental\ncarpet from the sumptuous floor of the Kremlin, on which blood had\nfallen.\n\nA lover of ancient Rome, its great character and incident, Merimee\nvalued, as if it had been personal property of his, every extant relic\nof it in the art that had been most expressive of its\ngenius--architecture.  In that grandiose art of building, the most\nnational, the most tenaciously rooted of all the arts in the stable\nconditions of life, there were historic documents hardly less clearly\nlegible than the manuscript chronicle.  By the mouth of those stately\nRomanesque [19] churches, scattered in so many strongly characterised\nvarieties over the soil of France, above all in the hot, half-pagan\nsouth, the people of empire still protested, as he understood, against\nwhat must seem a smaller race.  The Gothic enthusiasm indeed was\nalready born, and he shared it--felt intelligently the fascination of\nthe Pointed Style, but only as a further transformation of old Roman\nstructure; the round arch is for him still the great architectural\nform, la forme noble, because it was to be seen in the monuments of\nantiquity.  Romanesque, Gothic, the manner of the Renaissance, of Lewis\nthe Fourteenth:--they were all, as in a written record, in the old\nabbey church of Saint-Savin, of which Merimee was instructed to draw up\na report.  Again, it was as if to his concentrated attention through\nmany months that deserted sanctuary of Benedict were the only thing on\nearth.  Its beauties, its peculiarities, its odd military features, its\nfaded mural paintings, are no merely picturesque matter for the pencil\nhe could use so well, but the lively record of a human society.  With\nwhat appetite! with all the animation of George Sand's Mauprat, he\ntells the story of romantic violence having its way there, defiant of\nlaw, so late as the year 1611; of the family of robber nobles perched,\nas abbots in commendam, in those sacred places.  That grey, pensive old\nchurch in the little valley of Poitou, was for a time like Santa Maria\ndel Fiore to [20] Michelangelo, the mistress of his affections--of a\npractical affection; for the result of his elaborate report was the\nGovernment grant which saved the place from ruin.  In architecture,\ncertainly, he had what for that day was nothing less than intuition--an\nintuitive sense, above all, of its logic, of the necessity which draws\ninto one all minor changes, as elements in a reasonable development.\nAnd his care for it, his curiosity about it, were symptomatic of his\nown genius.  Structure, proportion, design, a sort of architectural\ncoherency: that was the aim of his method in the art of literature, in\nthat form of it, especially, which he will live by, in fiction.\n\nAs historian and archaeologist, as a man of erudition turned artist, he\nis well seen in the Chronique du Regne de Charles IX., by which we pass\nnaturally from Merimee's critical or scientific work to the products of\nhis imagination.  What economy in the use of a large antiquarian\nknowledge! what an instinct amid a hundred details, for the detail that\ncarries physiognomy in it, that really tells!  And again what outline,\nwhat absolute clarity of outline!  For the historian of that puzzling\nage which centres in the \"Eve of Saint Bartholomew,\" outward events\nthemselves seem obscured by the vagueness of motive of the actors in\nthem.  But Merimee, disposing of them as an artist, not in love with\nhalf-lights, compels events and actors alike to the clearness he [21]\ndesired; takes his side without hesitation; and makes his hero a\nHuguenot of pure blood, allowing its charm, in that charming youth,\neven to Huguenot piety.  And as for the incidents--however freely it\nmay be undermined by historic doubt, all reaches a perfectly firm\nsurface, at least for the eye of the reader.  The Chronicle of Charles\nthe Ninth is like a series of masterly drawings in illustration of a\nperiod--the period in which two other masters of French fiction have\nfound their opportunity, mainly by the development of its actual\nhistoric characters.  Those characters--Catherine de Medicis and the\nrest--Merimee, with significant irony and self-assertion, sets aside,\npreferring to think of them as essentially commonplace.  For him the\ninterest lies in the creatures of his own will, who carry in them,\nhowever, so lightly! a learning equal to Balzac's, greater than that of\nDumas.  He knows with like completeness the mere fashions of the\ntime--how courtier and soldier dressed themselves, and the large\nmovements of the desperate game which fate or chance was playing with\nthose pretty pieces.  Comparing that favourite century of the French\nRenaissance with our own, he notes a decadence of the more energetic\npassions in the interest of general tranquillity, and perhaps (only\nperhaps!) of general happiness.  \"Assassination,\" he observes, as if\nwith regret, \"is no longer a part of our manners.\"  In fact, the duel,\nand the whole [22] morality of the duel, which does but enforce a\ncertain regularity on assassination, what has been well called le\nsentiment du fer, the sentiment of deadly steel, had then the\ndisposition of refined existence.  It was, indeed, very different, and\nis, in Merimee's romance.  In his gallant hero, Bernard de Mergy, all\nthe promptings of the lad's virile goodness are in natural collusion\nwith that sentiment du fer.  Amid his ingenuous blushes, his prayers,\nand plentiful tears between-while, it is a part of his very sex.  With\nhis delightful, fresh-blown air, he is for ever tossing the sheath from\nthe sword, but always as if into bright natural sunshine.  A winsome,\nyet withal serious and even piteous figure, he conveys his\npleasantness, in spite of its gloomy theme, into Merimee's one quite\ncheerful book.\n\nCheerful, because, after all, the gloomy passions it presents are but\nthe accidents of a particular age, and not like the mental conditions\nin which Merimee was most apt to look for the spectacle of human power,\nallied to madness or disease in the individual.  For him, at least, it\nwas the office of fiction to carry one into a different if not a better\nworld than that actually around us; and if the Chronicle of Charles the\nNinth provided an escape from the tame circumstances of contemporary\nlife into an impassioned past, Colomba is a measure of the resources\nfor mental alteration which may be found even in the modern age.  There\nwas a corner of [23] the French Empire, in the manners of which\nassassination still had a large part.\n\n\"The beauty of Corsica,\" says Merimee, \"is grave and sad.  The aspect\nof the capital does but augment the impression caused by the solitude\nthat surrounds it.  There is no movement in the streets.  You hear\nthere none of the laughter, the singing, the loud talking, common in\nthe towns of Italy.  Sometimes, under the shadow of a tree on the\npromenade, a dozen armed peasants will be playing cards, or looking on\nat the game.  The Corsican is naturally silent.  Those who walk the\npavement are all strangers: the islanders stand at their doors: every\none seems to be on the watch, like a falcon on its nest.  All around\nthe gulf there is but an expanse of tanglework; beyond it, bleached\nmountains.  Not a habitation!  Only, here and there, on the heights\nabout the town, certain white constructions detach themselves from the\nbackground of green.  They are funeral chapels or family tombs.\"\n\nCrude in colour, sombre, taciturn, Corsica, as Merimee here describes\nit, is like the national passion of the Corsican--that morbid personal\npride, usurping the place even of grief for the dead, which centuries\nof traditional violence had concentrated into an all-absorbing passion\nfor bloodshed, for bloody revenges, in collusion with the natural\nwildness, and the wild social condition of the island still unaffected\neven by the finer [24] ethics of the duel. The supremacy of that\npassion is well indicated by the cry, put into the mouth of a young man\nin the presence of the corpse of his father deceased in the course of\nnature--a young man meant to be commonplace.  \"Ah!  Would thou hadst\ndied malamorte--by violence!  We might have avenged thee!\"\n\nIn Colomba, Merimee's best known creation, it is united to a singularly\nwholesome type of personal beauty, a natural grace of manner which is\nirresistible, a cunning intellect patiently diverting every\ncircumstance to its design; and presents itself as a kind of genius,\nallied to fatal disease of mind.  The interest of Merimee's book is\nthat it allows us to watch the action of this malignant power on\nColomba's brother, Orso della Robbia, as it discovers, rouses,\nconcentrates to the leaping-point, in the somewhat weakly diffused\nnature of the youth, the dormant elements of a dark humour akin to her\nown.  Two years after his father's murder, presumably at the\ninstigation of his ancestral enemies, the young lieutenant is returning\nhome in the company of two humorously conventional English people,\nhimself now half Parisianised, with an immense natural cheerfulness,\nand willing to believe an account of the crime which relieves those\nhated Barricini of all complicity in its guilt.  But from the first,\nColomba, with \"voice soft and musical,\" is at his side, gathering every\naccident and echo and circumstance, the very lightest circumstance,\n[25] into the chain of necessity which draws him to the action every\none at home expects of him as the head of his race.  He is not unaware.\nHer very silence on the matter speaks so plainly.  \"You are forming\nme!\" he admits.  \"Well! 'Hot shot, or cold steel!'--you see I have not\nforgotten my Corsican.\"  More and more, as he goes on his way with her,\nhe finds himself accessible to the damning thoughts he has so long\ncombated.  In horror, he tries to disperse them by the memory of his\ncomrades in the regiment, the drawing-rooms of Paris, the English lady\nwho has promised to be his bride, and will shortly visit him in the\nhumble manoir of his ancestors.  From his first step among them the\nvillagers of Pietranera, divided already into two rival camps, are\nwatching him in suspense--Pietranera, perched among those deep forests\nwhere the stifled sense of violent death is everywhere.  Colomba places\nin his hands the little chest which contains the father's shirt covered\nwith great spots of blood.  \"Behold the lead that struck him!\" and she\nlaid on the shirt two rusted bullets.  \"Orso! you will avenge him!\" She\nembraces him with a kind of madness, kisses wildly the bullets and the\nshirt, leaves him with the terrible relics already exerting their\nmystic power upon him.  It is as if in the nineteenth century a girl,\namid Christian habits, had gone back to that primitive old pagan\nversion of the story of the Grail, which [26] identifies it not with\nthe Most Precious Blood, but only with the blood of a murdered relation\ncrying for vengeance.  Awake at last in his old chamber at Pietranera,\nthe house of the Barricini at the other end of the square, with its\nrival tower and rudely carved escutcheons, stares him in the face.  His\nancestral enemy is there, an aged man now, but with two well-grown\nsons, like two stupid dumb animals, whose innocent blood will soon be\non his so oddly lighted conscience.  At times, his better hope seemed\nto lie in picking a quarrel and killing at least in fair fight, one of\nthese two stupid dumb animals; with rude ill-suppressed laughter one\nday, as they overhear Colomba's violent utterances at a funeral feast,\nfor she is a renowned improvisatrice.  \"Your father is an old man,\" he\nfinds himself saying, \"I could crush with my hands.  'Tis for you I am\ndestined, for you and your brother!\"  And if it is by course of nature\nthat the old man dies not long after the murder of these sons\n(self-provoked after all), dies a fugitive at Pisa, as it happens, by\nan odd accident, in the presence of Colomba, no violent death by Orso's\nown hand could have been more to her mind.  In that last hard page of\nMerimee's story, mere dramatic propriety itself for a moment seems to\nplead for the forgiveness, which from Joseph and his brethren to the\npresent day, as we know, has been as winning in story as in actual\nlife.  Such dramatic propriety, however, was by no means [27] in\nMerimee's way.  \"What I must have is the hand that fired the shot,\" she\nhad sung, \"the eye that guided it; aye! and the mind moreover--the\nmind, which had conceived the deed!\"  And now, it is in idiotic terror,\na fugitive from Orso's vengeance, that the last of the Barricini is\ndying.\n\nExaggerated art! you think.  But it was precisely such exaggerated art,\nintense, unrelieved, an art of fierce colours, that is needed by those\nwho are seeking in art, as I said of Merimee, a kind of artificial\nstimulus.  And if his style is still impeccably correct, cold-blooded,\nimpersonal, as impersonal as that of Scott himself, it does but conduce\nthe better to his one exclusive aim.  It is like the polish of the\nstiletto Colomba carried always under her mantle, or the beauty of the\nfire-arms, that beauty coming of nice adaptation to purpose, which she\nunderstood so well--a task characteristic also of Merimee himself, a\nsort of fanatic joy in the perfect pistol-shot, at its height in the\nsingular story he has translated from the Russian of Pouchkine.  Those\nraw colours he preferred; Spanish, Oriental, African, perhaps, irritant\ncertainly to cisalpine eyes, he undoubtedly attained the colouring you\nassociate with sun-stroke, only possible under a sun in which dead\nthings rot quickly.\n\nPity and terror, we know, go to the making of the essential tragic\nsense.  In Merimee, certainly, we have all its terror, but without the\n[28] pity.  Saint-Clair, the consent of his mistress barely attained at\nlast, rushes madly on self-destruction, that he may die with the taste\nof his great love fresh on his lips.  All the grotesque accidents of\nviolent death he records with visual exactness, and no pains to relieve\nthem; the ironic indifference, for instance, with which, on the\nscaffold or the battle-field, a man will seem to grin foolishly at the\nugly rents through which his life has passed.  Seldom or never has the\nmere pen of a writer taken us so close to the cannon's mouth as in the\nTaking of the Redoubt, while Matteo Falcone--twenty-five short\npages--is perhaps the cruellest story in the world.\n\nColomba, that strange, fanatic being, who has a code of action, of\nself-respect, a conscience, all to herself, who with all her virginal\ncharm only does not make you hate her, is, in truth, the type of a sort\nof humanity Merimee found it pleasant to dream of--a humanity as alien\nas the animals, with whose moral affinities to man his imaginative work\nis often directly concerned.  Were they so alien, after all?  Were\nthere not survivals of the old wild creatures in the gentlest, the\npolitest of us?  Stories that told of sudden freaks of gentle, polite\nnatures, straight back, not into Paradise, were always welcome to men's\nfancies; and that could only be because they found a psychologic truth\nin them.  With much success, with a credibility insured by his literary\ntact, Merimee tried his own hand at such stories: unfrocked the [29]\nbear in the amorous young Lithuanian noble, the wolf in the revolting\npeasant of the Middle Age.  There were survivals surely in himself, in\nthat stealthy presentment of his favourite themes, in his own art.  You\nseem to find your hand on a serpent, in reading him.\n\nIn such survivals, indeed, you see the operation of his favourite\nmotive, the sense of wild power, under a sort of mask, or assumed\nhabit, realised as the very genius of nature itself; and that interest,\nwith some superstitions closely allied to it, the belief in the\nvampire, for instance, is evidenced especially in certain pretended\nIllyrian compositions--prose translations, the reader was to\nunderstand, of more or less ancient popular ballads; La Guzla, he\ncalled the volume, The Lyre, as we might say; only that the instrument\nof the Illyrian minstrel had but one string.  Artistic deception, a\ntrick of which there is something in the historic romance as such, in a\nbook like his own Chronicle of Charles the Ninth, was always welcome to\nMerimee; it was part of the machinery of his rooted habit of\nintellectual reserve.  A master of irony also, in Madame Lucrezia he\nseems to wish to expose his own method cynically; to explain his\nart--how he takes you in--as a clever, confident conjuror might do.  So\nproperly were the readers of La Guzla taken in that he followed up his\nsuccess in that line by the Theatre of Clara Gazul, purporting to be\nfrom a rare Spanish original, the work [30] of a nun, who, under tame,\nconventual reading, had felt the touch of mundane, of physical\npassions; had become a dramatic poet, and herself a powerful actress.\nIt may dawn on you in reading her that Merimee was a kind of Webster,\nbut with the superficial mildness of our nineteenth century.  At the\nbottom of the true drama there is ever, logically at least, the ballad:\nthe ballad dealing in a kind of short-hand (or, say! in grand, simple,\nuniversal outlines) with those passions, crimes, mistakes, which have a\nkind of fatality in them, a kind of necessity to come to the surface of\nthe human mind, if not to the surface of our experience, as in the case\nof some frankly supernatural incidents which Merimee re-handled.\nWhether human love or hatred has had most to do in shaping the\nuniversal fancy that the dead come back, I cannot say.  Certainly that\nold ballad literature has instances in plenty, in which the voice, the\nhand, the brief visit from the grave, is a natural response to the cry\nof the human creature.  That ghosts should return, as they do so often\nin Merimee's fiction, is but a sort of natural justice.  Only, in\nMerimee's prose ballads, in those admirable, short, ballad-like\nstories, where every word tells, of which he was a master, almost the\ninventor, they are a kind of half-material ghosts--a vampire tribe--and\nnever come to do people good; congruously with the mental constitution\nof the writer, which, alike in fact and fiction, [31] could hardly have\nhorror enough--theme after theme.  Merimee himself emphasises this\nalmost constant motive of his fiction when he adds to one of his\nvolumes of short stories some letters on a matter of fact--a Spanish\nbull-fight, in which those old Romans, he regretted, might seem,\ndecadently, to have survived.  It is as if you saw it.  In truth,\nMerimee was the unconscious parent of much we may think of dubious\nsignificance in later French literature.  It is as if there were\nnothing to tell of in this world but various forms of hatred, and a\nlove that is like lunacy; and the only other world, a world of\nmaliciously active, hideous, dead bodies.\n\nMerimee, a literary artist, was not a man who used two words where one\nwould do better, and he shines especially in those brief compositions\nwhich, like a minute intaglio, reveal at a glance his wonderful faculty\nof design and proportion in the treatment of his work, in which there\nis not a touch but counts.  That is an art of which there are few\nexamples in English; our somewhat diffuse, or slipshod, literary\nlanguage hardly lending itself to the concentration of thought and\nexpression, which are of the essence of such writing.  It is otherwise\nin French, and if you wish to know what art of that kind can come to,\nread Merimee's little romances; best of all, perhaps, La Venus d'Ille\nand Arsene Guillot.  The former is a modern version of the beautiful\nold story of the Ring given to Venus, given to her, in [32] this case,\nby a somewhat sordid creature of the nineteenth century, whom she looks\non with more than disdain. The strange outline of the Canigou, one of\nthe most imposing outlying heights of the Pyrenees, down the mysterious\nslopes of which the traveller has made his way towards nightfall into\nthe great plain of Toulouse, forms an impressive background, congruous\nwith the many relics of irrepressible old paganism there, but in entire\ncontrast to the bourgeois comfort of the place where his journey is to\nend, the abode of an aged antiquary, loud and bright just now with the\ncelebration of a vulgar worldly marriage.  In the midst of this\nwell-being, prosaic in spite of the neighbourhood, in spite of the\npretty old wedding customs, morsels of that local colour in which\nMerimee delights, the old pagan powers are supposed to reveal\nthemselves once more (malignantly, of course), in the person of a\nmagnificent bronze statue of Venus recently unearthed in the\nantiquary's garden.  On her finger, by ill-luck, the coarse young\nbridegroom on the morning of his marriage places for a moment the\nbridal ring only too effectually (the bronze hand closes, like a wilful\nliving one, upon it), and dies, you are to understand, in her angry\nmetallic embraces on his marriage night.  From the first, indeed, she\nhad seemed bent on crushing out men's degenerate bodies and souls,\nthough the supernatural horror of the tale is adroitly made credible by\na certain vagueness in the [33] events, which covers a quite natural\naccount of the bridegroom's mysterious death.\n\nThe intellectual charm of literary work so thoroughly designed as\nMerimee's depends in part on the sense as you read, hastily perhaps,\nperhaps in need of patience, that you are dealing with a composition,\nthe full secret of which is only to be attained in the last paragraph,\nthat with the last word in mind you will retrace your steps, more than\nonce (it may be) noting then the minuter structure, also the natural or\nwrought flowers by the way.  Nowhere is such method better illustrated\nthan by another of Merimee's quintessential pieces, Arsene Guillotand\nhere for once with a conclusion ethically acceptable also.  Merimee\nloved surprises in human nature, but it is not often that he surprises\nus by tenderness or generosity of character, as another master of\nFrench fiction, M. Octave Feuillet, is apt to do; and the simple pathos\nof Arsene Guillot gives it a unique place in Merimee's writings.  It\nmay be said, indeed, that only an essentially pitiful nature could have\ntold the exquisitely cruel story of Matteo Falcone precisely as Merimee\nhas told it; and those who knew him testify abundantly to his own\ncapacity for generous friendship.  He was no more wanting than others\nin those natural sympathies (sending tears to the eyes at the sight of\nsuffering age or childhood) which happily are no extraordinary\ncomponent in men's natures.  It was, perhaps, no fitting return for a\n[34] friendship of over thirty years to publish posthumously those\nLettres a une Inconnue, which reveal that reserved, sensitive,\nself-centred nature, a little pusillanimously in the power, at the\ndisposition of another.  For just there lies the interest, the\npsychological interest, of those letters.  An amateur of power, of the\nspectacle of power and force, followed minutely but without sensibility\non his part, with a kind of cynic pride rather for the mainspring of\nhis method, both of thought and expression, you find him here taken by\nsurprise at last, and somewhat humbled, by an unsuspected force of\naffection in himself.  His correspondent, unknown but for these letters\nexcept just by name, figures in them as, in truth, a being only too\nmuch like himself, seen from one side; reflects his taciturnity, his\ntouchiness, his incredulity except for self-torment.  Agitated,\ndissatisfied, he is wrestling in her with himself, his own difficult\nqualities.  He demands from her a freedom, a frankness, he would have\nbeen the last to grant.  It is by first thoughts, of course, that what\nis forcible and effective in human nature, the force, therefore, of\ncarnal love, discovers itself; and for her first thoughts Merimee is\nalways pleading, but always complaining that he gets only her second\nthoughts; the thoughts, that is, of a reserved, self-limiting nature,\nwell under the yoke of convention, like his own.  Strange conjunction!\nAt the beginning of the correspondence he seems to have been [35]\nseeking only a fine intellectual companionship; the lady, perhaps,\nlooking for something warmer.  Towards such companionship that likeness\nto himself in her might have been helpful, but was not enough of a\ncomplement to his own nature to be anything but an obstruction in love;\nand it is to that, little by little, that his humour turns.  He--the\nMegalopsychus, as Aristotle defines him--acquires all the lover's\nhumble habits: himself displays all the tricks of love, its\ncasuistries, its exigency, its superstitions, aye! even its\nvulgarities; involves with the significance of his own genius the mere\nhazards and inconsequence of a perhaps average nature; but too late in\nthe day--the years.  After the attractions and repulsions of half a\nlifetime, they are but friends, and might forget to be that, but for\nhis death, clearly presaged in his last weak, touching letter, just two\nhours before.  There, too, had been the blind and naked force of nature\nand circumstance, surprising him in the uncontrollable movements of his\nown so carefully guarded heart.\n\nThe intimacy, the effusion, the so freely exposed personality of those\nletters does but emphasise the fact that impersonality was, in literary\nart, Merimee's central aim.  Personality versus impersonality in\nart:--how much or how little of one's self one may put into one's work:\nwhether anything at all of it: whether one can put there anything\nelse:--is clearly a far-reaching and complex question.  Serviceable as\n[36] the basis of a precautionary maxim towards the conduct of our\nwork, self-effacement, or impersonality, in literary or artistic\ncreation, is, perhaps, after all, as little possible as a strict\nrealism.  \"It has always been my rule to put nothing of myself into my\nworks,\" says another great master of French prose, Gustave Flaubert;\nbut, luckily as we may think, he often failed in thus effacing himself,\nas he too was aware.  \"It has always been my rule to put nothing of\nmyself into my works\" (to be disinterested in his literary creations,\nso to speak), \"yet I have put much of myself into them\": and where he\nfailed Merimee succeeded. There they stand--Carmen, Colomba, the\n\"False\" Demetrius--as detached from him as from each other, with no\nmore filial likeness to their maker than if they were the work of\nanother person.  And to his method of conception, Merimee's\nmuch-praised literary style, his method of expression, is strictly\nconformable--impersonal in its beauty, the perfection of nobody's\nstyle--thus vindicating anew by its very impersonality that much worn,\nbut not untrue saying, that the style is the man:--a man, impassible,\nunfamiliar, impeccable, veiling a deep sense of what is forcible, nay,\nterrible, in things, under the sort of personal pride that makes a man\na nice observer of all that is most conventional.  Essentially unlike\nother people, he is always fastidiously in the fashion--an expert in\nall the little, half- [37] contemptuous elegances of which it is\ncapable.  Merimee's superb self-effacement, his impersonality, is\nitself but an effective personal trait, and, transferred to art,\nbecomes a markedly peculiar quality of literary beauty.  For, in truth,\nthis creature of disillusion who had no care for half-lights, and, like\nhis creations, had no atmosphere about him, gifted as he was with pure\nmind, with the quality which secures flawless literary structure, had,\non the other hand, nothing of what we call soul in literature:--hence,\nalso, that singular harshness in his ideal, as if, in theological\nlanguage, he were incapable of grace.  He has none of those\nsubjectivities, colourings, peculiarities of mental refraction, which\nnecessitate varieties of style--could we spare such?--and render the\nperfections of it no merely negative qualities.  There are masters of\nFrench prose whose art has begun where the art of Merimee leaves off.\n\nNOTES\n\n11. *A lecture delivered at the Taylor Institution, Oxford, and at the\nLondon Institution.  Published in the Fortnightly Review, Dec. 1890,\nand now reprinted by the kind permission of the proprietors.\n\n\n\nRAPHAEL*\n\n[38] By his immense productiveness, by the even perfection of what he\nproduced, its fitness to its own day, its hold on posterity, in the\nsuavity of his life, some would add in the \"opportunity\" of his early\ndeath, Raphael may seem a signal instance of the luckiness, of the good\nfortune, of genius.  Yet, if we follow the actual growth of his powers,\nwithin their proper framework, the age of the Renaissance--an age of\nwhich we may say, summarily, that it enjoyed itself, and found perhaps\nits chief enjoyment in the attitude of the scholar, in the enthusiastic\nacquisition of knowledge for its own sake:--if we thus view Raphael and\nhis works in their environment we shall find even his seemingly\nmechanical good fortune hardly distinguishable from his own patient\ndisposal of the means at hand.  Facile master as he may seem, as indeed\nhe is, he is also one of the world's typical scholars, with [39] Plato,\nand Cicero, and Virgil, and Milton.  The formula of his genius, if we\nmust have one, is this: genius by accumulation; the transformation of\nmeek scholarship into genius--triumphant power of genius.\n\nUrbino, where this prince of the Renaissance was born in 1483, year\nalso of the birth of Luther, leader of the other great movement of that\nage, the Reformation--Urbino, under its dukes of the house of\nMontefeltro, had wherewithal just then to make a boy of native artistic\nfaculty from the first a willing learner.  The gloomy old fortress of\nthe feudal masters of the town had been replaced, in those later years\nof the Quattro-cento, by a consummate monument of Quattro-cento taste,\na museum of ancient and modern art, the owners of which lived there,\ngallantly at home, amid the choicer flowers of living humanity.  The\nducal palace was, in fact, become nothing less than a school of\nambitious youth in all the accomplishments alike of war and peace.\nRaphael's connexion with it seems to have become intimate, and from the\nfirst its influence must have overflowed so small a place.  In the case\nof the lucky Raphael, for once, the actual conditions of early life had\nbeen suitable, propitious, accordant to what one's imagination would\nhave required for the childhood of the man.  He was born amid the art\nhe was, not to transform, but to perfect, by a thousand reverential\nretouchings.  In no palace, however, but [40] in a modest abode, still\nshown, containing the workshop of his father, Giovanni Santi.  But\nhere, too, though in frugal form, art, the arts, were present.  A store\nof artistic objects was, or had recently been, made there, and now\nespecially, for fitting patrons, religious pictures in the old Umbrian\nmanner.  In quiet nooks of the Apennines Giovanni's works remain; and\nthere is one of them, worth study, in spite of what critics say of its\ncrudity, in the National Gallery.  Concede its immaturity, at least,\nthough an immaturity visibly susceptible of a delicate grace, it wins\nyou nevertheless to return again and again, and ponder, by a sincere\nexpression of sorrow, profound, yet resigned, be the cause what it may,\namong all the many causes of sorrow inherent in the ideal of maternity,\nhuman or divine.  But if you keep in mind when looking at it the facts\nof Raphael's childhood, you will recognise in his father's picture, not\nthe anticipated sorrow of the \"Mater Dolorosa\" over the dead son, but\nthe grief of a simple household over the mother herself taken early\nfrom it.  That may have been the first picture the eyes of the world's\ngreat painter of Madonnas rested on; and if he stood diligently before\nit to copy, and so copying, quite unconsciously, and with no disloyalty\nto his original, refined, improved, substituted,--substituted himself,\nin fact, his finer self--he had already struck the persistent note of\nhis career.  As with his age, it is [41] his vocation, ardent worker as\nhe is, to enjoy himself--to enjoy himself amiably, and to find his\nchief enjoyment in the attitude of a scholar.  And one by one, one\nafter another, his masters, the very greatest of them, go to school to\nhim.\n\nIt was so especially with the artist of whom Raphael first became\ncertainly a learner--Perugino.  Giovanni Santi had died in Raphael's\nchildhood, too early to have been in any direct sense his teacher. The\nlad, however, from one and another, had learned much, when, with his\nshare of the patrimony in hand, enough to keep him, but not to tempt\nhim from scholarly ways, he came to Perugia, hoping still further to\nimprove himself.  He was in his eighteenth year, and how he looked just\nthen you may see in a drawing of his own in the University Galleries,\nof somewhat stronger mould than less genuine likenesses may lead you to\nexpect.  There is something of a fighter in the way in which the nose\nsprings from the brow between the wide-set, meditative eyes.  A\nstrenuous lad! capable of plodding, if you dare apply that word to\nlabour so impassioned as his--to any labour whatever done at Perugia,\ncentre of the dreamiest Apennine scenery. Its various elements (one\nhardly knows whether one is thinking of Italian nature or of Raphael's\nart in recounting them), the richly-planted lowlands, the sensitive\nmountain lines in flight one beyond the other into clear distance, the\ncool yet glowing atmosphere, [42] the romantic morsels of architecture,\nwhich lend to the entire scene I know not what expression of reposeful\nantiquity, arrange themselves here as for set purpose of pictorial\neffect, and have gone with little change into his painted backgrounds.\nIn the midst of it, on titanic old Roman and Etruscan foundations, the\nlater Gothic town had piled itself along the lines of a gigantic land\nof rock, stretched out from the last slope of the Apennines into the\nplain.  Between its fingers steep dark lanes wind down into the olive\ngardens; on the finger-tips military and monastic builders had perched\ntheir towns. A place as fantastic in its attractiveness as the human\nlife which then surged up and down in it in contrast to the peaceful\nscene around.  The Baglioni who ruled there had brought certain\ntendencies of that age to a typical completeness of expression, veiling\ncrime--crime, it might seem, for its own sake, a whole octave of\nfantastic crime--not merely under brilliant fashions and comely\npersons, but under fashions and persons, an outward presentment of life\nand of themselves, which had a kind of immaculate grace and discretion\nabout them, as if Raphael himself had already brought his unerring gift\nof selection to bear upon it all for motives of art.  With life in\nthose streets of Perugia, as with nature, with the work of his masters,\nwith the mere exercises of his fellow-students, his hand rearranges,\nrefines, renews, as if by simple contact; [43] but it is met here\nhalf-way in its renewing office by some special aptitude for such grace\nin the subject itself.  Seemingly innocent, full of natural gaiety,\neternally youthful, those seven and more deadly sins, embodied and\nattired in just the jaunty dress then worn, enter now and afterwards as\nspectators, or assistants, into many a sacred foreground and background\namong the friends and kinsmen of the Holy Family, among the very\nangels, gazing, conversing, standing firmly and unashamed.  During his\napprenticeship at Perugia Raphael visited and left his work in more\nmodest places round about, along those seductive mountain or lowland\nroads, and copied for one of them Perugino's \"Marriage of the Virgin\"\nsignificantly, did it by many degrees better, with a very novel effect\nof motion everywhere, and with that grace which natural motion evokes,\nintroducing for a temple in the background a lovely bit of his friend\nBramante's sort of architecture, the true Renaissance or perfected\nQuattro-cento architecture.  He goes on building a whole lordly new\ncity of the like as he paints to the end of his life.  The subject, we\nmay note, as we leave Perugia in Raphael's company, had been suggested\nby the famous mystic treasure of its cathedral church, the marriage\nring of the Blessed Virgin herself.\n\nRaphael's copy had been made for the little old Apennine town of Citta\ndi Castello; and another place he visits at this time is still more\n[44] effective in the development of his genius.  About his twentieth\nyear he comes to Siena--that other rocky Titan's hand, just lifted out\nof the surface of the plain.  It is the most grandiose place he has yet\nseen; it has not forgotten that it was once the rival of Florence; and\nhere the patient scholar passes under an influence of somewhat larger\nscope than Perugino's.  Perugino's pictures are for the most part\nreligious contemplations, painted and made visible, to accompany the\naction of divine service--a visible pattern to priests, attendants,\nworshippers, of what the course of their invisible thoughts should be\nat those holy functions.  Learning in the workshop of Perugino to\nproduce the like--such works as the Ansidei Madonna--to produce them\nvery much better than his master, Raphael was already become a freeman\nof the most strictly religious school of Italian art, the so devout\nUmbrian soul finding there its purest expression, still untroubled by\nthe naturalism, the intellectualism, the antique paganism, then astir\nin the artistic soul everywhere else in Italy.  The lovely work of\nPerugino, very lovely at its best, of the early Raphael also, is in\nfact \"conservative,\" and at various points slightly behind its day,\nthough not unpleasantly.  In Perugino's allegoric frescoes of the\nCambio, the Hall of the Money-changers, for instance, under the mystic\nrule of the Planets in person, pagan personages take their place indeed\nside by side with the figures of the New [45] Testament, but are no\nRomans or Greeks, neither are the Jews Jews, nor is any one of them,\nwarrior, sage, king, precisely of Perugino's own time and place, but\nstill contemplations only, after the manner of the personages in his\nchurch-work; or, say, dreams--monastic dreams--thin, do-nothing\ncreatures, conjured from sky and cloud.  Perugino clearly never broke\nthrough the meditative circle of the Middle Age.\n\nNow Raphael, on the other hand, in his final period at Rome, exhibits a\nwonderful narrative power in painting; and the secret of that\npower--the power of developing a story in a picture, or series of\npictures--may be traced back from him to Pinturicchio, as that painter\nworked on those vast, well-lighted walls of the cathedral library at\nSiena, at the great series of frescoes illustrative of the life of Pope\nPius the Second.  It had been a brilliant personal history, in contact\nnow and again with certain remarkable public events--a career religious\nyet mundane, you scarcely know which, so natural is the blending of\nlights, of interest in it.  How unlike the Peruginesque conception of\nlife in its almost perverse other-worldliness, which Raphael now leaves\nbehind him, but, like a true scholar, will not forget.  Pinturicchio\nthen had invited his remarkable young friend hither, \"to assist him by\nhis counsels,\" who, however, pupil-wise, after his habit also learns\nmuch as he thus assists.  He stands depicted there in person in the\nscene [46] of the canonisation of Saint Catherine; and though his\nactual share in the work is not to be defined, connoisseurs have felt\nhis intellectual presence, not at one place only, in touches at once\nfiner and more forcible than were usual in the steady-going, somewhat\nTeutonic, Pinturicchio, Raphael's elder by thirty years.  The meek\nscholar you see again, with his tentative sketches and suggestions, had\nmore than learned his lesson; through all its changes that flexible\nintelligence loses nothing; does but add continually to its store.\nHenceforward Raphael will be able to tell a story in a picture, better,\nwith a truer economy, with surer judgment, more naturally and easily\nthan any one else.\n\nAnd here at Siena, of all Italian towns perhaps most deeply impressed\nwith medieval character--an impress it still retains--grotesque,\nparti-coloured--parti-coloured, so to speak, in its genius--Satanic,\nyet devout of humour, as depicted in its old chronicles, and beautiful\nwithal, dignified; it is here that Raphael becomes for the first time\naware of that old pagan world, which had already come to be so much for\nthe art-schools of Italy.  There were points, as we saw, at which the\nschool of Perugia was behind its day.  Amid those intensely Gothic\nsurroundings in the cathedral library where Pinturicchio worked, stood,\nas it remained till recently, unashamed there, a marble group of the\nthree Graces--an average Roman work in [47] effect--the sort of thing\nwe are used to.  That, perhaps, is the only reason why for our part,\nexcept with an effort, we find it conventional or even tame.  For the\nyouthful Raphael, on the other hand, at that moment, antiquity, as with\n\"the dew of herbs,\" seemed therein \"to awake and sing\" out of the dust,\nin all its sincerity, its cheerfulness and natural charm.  He has\nturned it into a picture; has helped to make his original only too\nfamiliar, perhaps, placing the three sisters against his own favourite,\nso unclassic, Umbrian background indeed, but with no trace of the\nPeruginesque ascetic, Gothic meagreness in themselves; emphasising\nrather, with a hearty acceptance, the nude, the flesh; making the\nlimbs, in fact, a little heavy.  It was but one gleam he had caught\njust there in medieval Siena of that large pagan world he was, not so\nlong afterwards, more completely than others to make his own.  And when\nsomewhat later he painted the exquisite, still Peruginesque, Apollo and\nMarsyas, semi-medieval habits again asserted themselves with\ndelightfully blent effects.  It might almost pass for a parable--that\nlittle picture in the Louvre--of the contention between classic art and\nthe romantic, superseded in the person of Marsyas, a homely, quaintly\npoetical young monk, surely!  Only, Apollo himself also is clearly of\nthe same brotherhood; has a touch, in truth, of Heine's fancied Apollo\n\"in exile,\" who, Christianity now triumphing, has served as [48] a\nhired shepherd, or hidden himself under the cowl in a cloister; and\nRaphael, as if at work on choir-book or missal, still applies\nsymbolical gilding for natural sunlight.  It is as if he wished to\nproclaim amid newer lights--this scholar who never forgot a lesson--his\nloyal pupilage to Perugino, and retained still something of medieval\nstiffness, of the monastic thoughts also, that were born and lingered\nin places like Borgo San Sepolcro or Citta di Castello. Chef-d'oeuvre!\nyou might exclaim, of the peculiar, tremulous, half-convinced, monkish\ntreatment of that after all damnable pagan world. And our own\ngeneration certainly, with kindred tastes, loving or wishing to love\npagan art as sincerely as did the people of the Renaissance, and\nmedieval art as well, would accept, of course, of work conceived in\nthat so seductively mixed manner, ten per cent of even Raphael's later,\npurely classical presentments.\n\nThat picture was suggested by a fine old intaglio in the Medicean\ncollection at Florence, was painted, therefore, after Raphael's coming\nthither, and therefore also a survival with him of a style limited,\nimmature, literally provincial; for in the phase on which he had now\nentered he is under the influence of style in its most fully determined\nsense, of what might be called the thorough-bass of the pictorial art,\nof a fully realised intellectual system in regard to its processes,\nwell tested by experiment, upon a survey [49] of all the conditions and\nvarious applications of it--of style as understood by Da Vinci, then at\nwork in Florence.  Raphael's sojourn there extends from his\ntwenty-first to his twenty-fifth year.  He came with flattering\nrecommendations from the Court of Urbino; was admitted as an equal by\nthe masters of his craft, being already in demand for work, then and\never since duly prized; was, in fact, already famous, though he alone\nis unaware--is in his own opinion still but a learner, and as a learner\nyields himself meekly, systematically to influence; would learn from\nFrancia, whom he visits at Bologna; from the earlier naturalistic works\nof Masolino and Masaccio; from the solemn prophetic work of the\nvenerable dominican, Bartolommeo, disciple of Savonarola.  And he has\nalready habitually this strange effect, not only on the whole body of\nhis juniors, but on those whose manner had been long since formed; they\nlose something of themselves by contact with him, as if they went to\nschool again.\n\nBartolommeo, Da Vinci, were masters certainly of what we call \"the\nideal\" in art.  Yet for Raphael, so loyal hitherto to the traditions of\nUmbrian art, to its heavy weight of hieratic tradition, dealing still\nsomewhat conventionally with a limited, non-natural matter--for Raphael\nto come from Siena, Perugia, Urbino, to sharp-witted, practical,\nmasterful Florence was in immediate effect a transition from reverie to\n[50] realities--to a world of facts.  Those masters of the ideal were\nfor him, in the first instance, masters also of realism, as we say.\nHenceforth, to the end, he will be the analyst, the faithful reporter,\nin his work, of what he sees.  He will realise the function of style as\nexemplified in the practice of Da Vinci, face to face with the world of\nnature and man as they are; selecting from, asserting one's self in a\ntranscript of its veritable data; like drawing to like there, in\nobedience to the master's preference for the embodiment of the creative\nform within him.  Portrait-art had been nowhere in the school of\nPerugino, but it was the triumph of the school of Florence.  And here a\nfaithful analyst of what he sees, yet lifting it withal, unconsciously,\ninevitably, recomposing, glorifying, Raphael too becomes, of course, a\npainter of portraits. We may foresee them already in masterly series,\nfrom Maddalena Doni, a kind of younger, more virginal sister of La\nGioconda, to cardinals and popes--to that most sensitive of all\nportraits, the \"Violin-player,\" if it be really his.  But then, on the\nother hand, the influence of such portraiture will be felt also in his\ninventive work, in a certain reality there, a certain convincing\nloyalty to experience and observation.  In his most elevated religious\nwork he will still keep, for security at least, close to nature, and\nthe truth of nature.  His modelling of the visible surface is lovely\nbecause he understands, can see the hidden causes [51] of momentary\naction in the face, the hands--how men and animals are really made and\nkept alive.  Set side by side, then, with that portrait of Maddalena\nDoni, as forming together a measure of what he has learned at Florence,\nthe \"Madonna del Gran Duca,\" which still remains there. Call it on\nrevision, and without hesitation, the loveliest of his Madonnas,\nperhaps of all Madonnas; and let it stand as representative of as many\nas fifty or sixty types of that subject, onwards to the Sixtine\nMadonna, in all the triumphancy of his later days at Rome. Observe the\nveritable atmosphere about it, the grand composition of the drapery,\nthe magic relief, the sweetness and dignity of the human hands and\nfaces, the noble tenderness of Mary's gesture, the unity of the thing\nwith itself, the faultless exclusion of all that does not belong to its\nmain purpose; it is like a single, simple axiomatic thought.  Note\nwithal the novelty of its effect on the mind, and you will see that\nthis master of style (that's a consummate example of what is meant by\nstyle) has been still a willing scholar in the hands of Da Vinci.  But\nthen, with what ease also, and simplicity, and a sort of natural\nsuccess not his!\n\nIt was in his twenty-fifth year that Raphael came to the city of the\npopes, Michelangelo being already in high favour there.  For the\nremaining years of his life he paces the same streets with that grim\nartist, who was so great a [52] contrast with himself, and for the\nfirst time his attitude towards a gift different from his own is not\nthat of a scholar, but that of a rival.  If he did not become the\nscholar of Michelangelo, it would be difficult, on the other hand, to\ntrace anywhere in Michelangelo's work the counter influence usual with\nthose who had influenced him.  It was as if he desired to add to the\nstrength of Michelangelo that sweetness which at first sight seems to\nbe wanting there.  Ex forti dulcedo: and in the study of Michelangelo\ncertainly it is enjoyable to detect, if we may, sweet savours amid the\nwonderful strength, the strangeness and potency of what he pours forth\nfor us: with Raphael, conversely, something of a relief to find in the\nsuavity of that so softly moving, tuneful existence, an assertion of\nstrength.  There was the promise of it, as you remember, in his very\nlook as he saw himself at eighteen; and you know that the lesson, the\nprophecy of those holy women and children he has made his own, is that\n\"the meek shall possess.\"  So, when we see him at Rome at last, in that\natmosphere of greatness, of the strong, he too is found putting forth\nstrength, adding that element in due proportion to the mere sweetness\nand charm of his genius; yet a sort of strength, after all, still\ncongruous with the line of development that genius has hitherto taken,\nthe special strength of the scholar and his proper reward, a purely\ncerebral strength [53] the strength, the power of an immense\nunderstanding.\n\nNow the life of Raphael at Rome seems as we read of it hasty and\nperplexed, full of undertakings, of vast works not always to be\ncompleted, of almost impossible demands on his industry, in a world of\nbreathless competition, amid a great company of spectators, for great\nrewards.  You seem to lose him, feel he may have lost himself, in the\nmultiplicity of his engagements; might fancy that, wealthy, variously\ndecorated, a courtier, cardinal in petto, he was \"serving tables.\"\nBut, you know, he was forcing into this brief space of years (he died\nat thirty-seven) more than the natural business of the larger part of a\nlong life; and one way of getting some kind of clearness into it, is to\ndistinguish the various divergent outlooks or applications, and group\nthe results of that immense intelligence, that still untroubled,\nflawlessly operating, completely informed understanding, that purely\ncerebral power, acting through his executive, inventive or creative\ngifts, through the eye and the hand with its command of visible colour\nand form.  In that way you may follow him along many various roads till\nbrain and eye and hand suddenly fail in the very midst of his\nwork--along many various roads, but you can follow him along each of\nthem distinctly.\n\nAt the end of one of them is the Galatea, and in quite a different form\nof industry, the datum [54] for the beginnings of a great literary work\nof pure erudition.  Coming to the capital of Christendom, he comes also\nfor the first time under the full influence of the antique world, pagan\nart, pagan life, and is henceforth an enthusiastic archaeologist.  On\nhis first coming to Rome a papal bull had authorised him to inspect all\nancient marbles, inscriptions, and the like, with a view to their\nadaptation in new buildings then proposed.  A consequent close\nacquaintance with antiquity, with the very touch of it, blossomed\nliterally in his brain, and, under his facile hand, in artistic\ncreations, of which the Galatea is indeed the consummation.  But the\nfrescoes of the Farnese palace, with a hundred minor designs, find\ntheir place along that line of his artistic activity; they do not\nexhaust his knowledge of antiquity, his interest in and control of it.\nThe mere fragments of it that still cling to his memory would have\ncomposed, had he lived longer, a monumental illustrated survey of the\nmonuments of ancient Rome.\n\nTo revive something of the proportionable spirit at least of antique\nbuilding in the architecture of the present, came naturally to Raphael\nas the son of his age; and at the end of another of those roads of\ndiverse activity stands Saint Peter's, though unfinished. What a proof\nagain of that immense intelligence, by which, as I said, the element of\nstrength supplemented the element of mere sweetness and charm in his\n[55] work, that at the age of thirty, known hitherto only as a painter,\nat the dying request of the venerable Bramante himself, he should have\nbeen chosen to succeed him as the director of that vast enterprise!\nAnd if little in the great church, as we see it, is directly due to\nhim, yet we must not forget that his work in the Vatican also was\npartly that of an architect.  In the Loggie, or open galleries of the\nVatican, the last and most delicate effects of Quattro-cento taste come\nfrom his hand, in that peculiar arabesque decoration which goes by his\nname.\n\nSaint Peter's, as you know, had an indirect connexion with the Teutonic\nreformation.  When Leo X. pushed so far the sale of indulgences to the\noverthrow of Luther's Catholicism, it was done after all for the not\nentirely selfish purpose of providing funds to build the metropolitan\nchurch of Christendom with the assistance of Raphael; and yet, upon\nanother of those diverse outways of his so versatile intelligence, at\nthe close of which we behold his unfinished picture of the\nTransfiguration, what has been called Raphael's Bible finds its\nplace--that series of biblical scenes in the Loggie of the Vatican.\nAnd here, while he has shown that he could do something of\nMichelangelo's work a little more soothingly than he, this graceful\nRoman Catholic rivals also what is perhaps best in the work of the rude\nGerman reformer--of Luther, who came to Rome about this very [56] time,\nto find nothing admirable there. Place along with them the Cartoons,\nand observe that in this phase of his artistic labour, as Luther\nprinted his vernacular German version of the Scriptures, so Raphael is\npopularising them for an even larger world; he brings the simple, to\ntheir great delight, face to face with the Bible as it is, in all its\nvariety of incident, after they had so long had to content themselves\nwith but fragments of it, as presented in the symbolism and in the\nbrief lections of the Liturgy:--Biblia Pauperum, in a hundred forms of\nreproduction, though designed for popes and princes.\n\nBut then, for the wise, at the end of yet another of those divergent\nways, glows his painted philosophy in the Parnassus and the School of\nAthens, with their numerous accessories.  In the execution of those\nworks, of course, his antiquarian knowledge stood him in good stead;\nand here, above all, is the pledge of his immense understanding, at\nwork on its own natural ground on a purely intellectual deposit, the\napprehension, the transmission to others of complex and difficult\nideas.  We have here, in fact, the sort of intelligence to be found in\nLessing, in Herder, in Hegel, in those who, by the instrumentality of\nan organised philosophic system, have comprehended in one view or\nvision what poetry has been, or what Greek philosophy, as great complex\ndynamic facts in the world.  But then, with the artist of the sixteenth\ncentury, [57] this synoptic intellectual power worked in perfect\nidentity with the pictorial imagination and a magic hand.  By him large\ntheoretic conceptions are addressed, so to speak, to the intelligence\nof the eye.  There had been efforts at such abstract or theoretic\npainting before, or say rather, leagues behind him.  Modern efforts,\nagain, we know, and not in Germany alone, to do the like for that\nlarger survey of such matters which belongs to the philosophy of our\nown century; but for one or many reasons they have seemed only to prove\nthe incapacity of philosophy to be expressed in terms of art. They have\nseemed, in short, so far, not fit to be seen literally--those ideas of\nculture, religion, and the like.  Yet Plato, as you know, supposed a\nkind of visible loveliness about ideas.  Well! in Raphael, painted\nideas, painted and visible philosophy, are for once as beautiful as\nPlato thought they must be, if one truly apprehended them.  For note,\nabove all, that with all his wealth of antiquarian knowledge in detail,\nand with a perfect technique, it is after all the beauty, the grace of\npoetry, of pagan philosophy, of religious faith that he thus records.\n\nOf religious faith also.  The Disputa, in which, under the form of a\ncouncil representative of all ages, he embodies the idea of theology,\ndivinarum rerum notitia, as constantly resident in the Catholic Church,\nranks with the \"Parnassus\" and the \"School of Athens,\" if it does not\nrather [58] close another of his long lines of intellectual travail--a\nseries of compositions, partly symbolic, partly historical, in which\nthe \"Deliverance of St. Peter from Prison,\" the \"Expulsion of the\nHuns,\" and the \"Coronation of Charlemagne,\" find their places; and by\nwhich, painting in the great official chambers of the Vatican, Raphael\nasserts, interprets the power and charm of the Catholic ideal as\nrealised in history.  A scholar, a student of the visible world, of the\nnatural man, yet even more ardently of the books, the art, the life of\nthe old pagan world, the age of the Renaissance, through all its varied\nactivity, had, in spite of the weakened hold of Catholicism on the\ncritical intellect, been still under its influence, the glow of it, as\na religious ideal, and in the presence of Raphael you cannot think it a\nmere after-glow. Independently, that is, of less or more evidence for\nit, the whole creed of the Middle Age, as a scheme of the world as it\nshould be, as we should be glad to find it, was still welcome to the\nheart, the imagination.  Now, in Raphael, all the various conditions of\nthat age discover themselves as characteristics of a vivid personal\ngenius, which may be said therefore to be conterminous with the genius\nof the Renaissance itself.  For him, then, in the breadth of his\nimmense cosmopolitan intelligence, for Raphael, who had done in part\nthe work of Luther also, the Catholic Church--through all its phases,\nas reflected in its visible local centre, [59] the papacy--is alive\nstill as of old, one and continuous, and still true to itself.  Ah!\nwhat is local and visible, as you know, counts for so much with the\nartistic temper!\n\nOld friends, or old foes with but new faces, events repeating\nthemselves, as his large, clear, synoptic vision can detect, the\ninvading King of France, Louis XII., appears as Attila: Leo X. as Leo\nI.: and he thinks of, he sees, at one and the same moment, the\ncoronation of Charlemagne and the interview of Pope Leo with Francis\nI., as a dutiful son of the Church: of the deliverance of Leo X. from\nprison, and the deliverance of St. Peter.\n\nI have abstained from anything like description of Raphael's pictures\nin speaking of him and his work, have aimed rather at preparing you to\nlook at his work for yourselves, by a sketch of his life, and therein\nespecially, as most appropriate to this place, of Raphael as a scholar.\nAnd now if, in closing, I commend one of his pictures in particular to\nyour imagination or memory,, your purpose to see it, or see it again,\nit will not be the Transfiguration nor the Sixtine Madonna, nor even\nthe \"Madonna del Gran Duca,\" but the picture we have in London--the\nAnsidei, or Blenheim, Madonna.  I find there, at first sight, with\nsomething of the pleasure one has in a proposition of Euclid, a sense\nof the power of the understanding, in the economy with which he has\nreduced his material to the [60] simplest terms, has disentangled and\ndetached its various elements.  He is painting in Florence, but for\nPerugia, and sends it a specimen of its own old art--Mary and the babe\nenthroned, with St. Nicolas and the Baptist in attendance on either\nside.  The kind of thing people there had already seen so many times,\nbut done better, in a sense not to be measured by degrees, with a\nwholly original freedom and life and grace, though he perhaps is\nunaware, done better as a whole, because better in every minute\nparticular, than ever before.  The scrupulous scholar, aged\ntwenty-three, is now indeed a master; but still goes carefully.  Note,\ntherefore, how much mere exclusion counts for in the positive effect of\nhis work.  There is a saying that the true artist is known best by what\nhe omits.  Yes, because the whole question of good taste is involved\nprecisely in such jealous omission.  Note this, for instance, in the\nfamiliar Apennine background, with its blue hills and brown towns,\nfaultless, for once--for once only--and observe, in the Umbrian\npictures around, how often such background is marred by grotesque,\nnatural, or architectural detail, by incongruous or childish incident.\nIn this cool, pearl-grey, quiet place, where colour tells for\ndouble--the jewelled cope, the painted book in the hand of Mary, the\nchaplet of red coral--one is reminded that among all classical writers\nRaphael's preference was for the faultless Virgil.  How orderly, how\ndivinely [61] clean and sweet the flesh, the vesture, the floor, the\nearth and sky!  Ah, say rather the hand, the method of the painter!\nThere is an unmistakeable pledge of strength, of movement and animation\nin the cast of the Baptist's countenance, but reserved, repressed.\nStrange, Raphael has given him a staff of transparent crystal.  Keep\nthen to that picture as the embodied formula of Raphael's genius.  Amid\nall he has here already achieved, full, we may think, of the quiet\nassurance of what is to come, his attitude is still that of the\nscholar; he seems still to be saying, before all things, from first to\nlast, \"I am utterly purposed that I will not offend.\"\n\nNOTES\n\n38. *A lecture delivered to the University Extension Students, Oxford,\n2 August, 1892.  Published in the Fortnightly Review, Oct. 1892, and\nnow reprinted by the kind permission of the proprietors.\n\n\n\nPASCAL*\n\n[62] ABOUT the middle of the seventeenth century, two opposite views of\na question, upon which neither Scripture, nor Council, nor Pope, had\nspoken with authority--the question as to the amount of freedom left to\nman by the overpowering work of divine grace upon him--had seemed\nlikely for a moment to divide the Roman Church into two rival sects.\nIn the diocese of Paris, however, the controversy narrowed itself into\na mere personal quarrel between the Jesuit Fathers and the religious\ncommunity of Port-Royal, and might have been forgotten but for the\nintervention of a new writer in whom French literature made more than a\nnew step.  It became at once, as if by a new creation, what it has\nremained--a pattern of absolutely unencumbered expressiveness.\n\nIn 1656 Pascal, then thirty-three years old, under the form of \"Letters\nto a Provincial by one of his Friends,\" put forth a series of [63]\npamphlets in which all that was vulnerable in the Jesuit Fathers was\nlaid bare to the profit of their opponents.  At the moment the quarrel\nturned on the proposed censure of Antoine Arnauld by the Sorbonne, by\nthe University of Paris as a religious body. Pascal, intimate, like\nmany another fine intellect of the day, with the Port-Royalists, was\nArnauld's friend, and it belonged to the ardour of his genius, at least\nas he was then, to be a very active friend.  He took up the pen as\nother chivalrous gentlemen of the day took up the sword, and showed\nhimself a master of the art of fence therewith.  His delicate exercise\nof himself with that weapon was nothing less than a revelation to all\nthe world of the capabilities, the true genius of the French language\nin prose.\n\nThose who think of Pascal in his final sanctity, his detachment of soul\nfrom all but the greatest matters, may be surprised, when they turn to\nthe \"Letters,\" to find him treating questions, as serious for the\nfriends he was defending as for their adversaries, ironically, with a\nbut half-veiled disdain for them, or an affected humility at being\nunskilled in them and no theologian.  He does not allow us to forget\nthat he is, after all, a layman; while he introduces us, almost\navowedly, into a world of unmeaning terms, and unreal distinctions and\nsuppositions that can never be verified.  The world in general, indeed,\nse paye des paroles.  That saying belongs to Pascal, and [64] he uses\nit with reference to the Jesuits and their favourite expression of\n\"sufficient grace.\"  In the earliest \"Letters\" he creates in us a\nfeeling that, however orthodox one's intention, it is scarcely possible\nto speak of the matters then so abundantly discussed by religious\npeople without heresy at some unguarded point.  The suspected\nproposition of Arnauld, it is admitted by one of his foes, \"would be\nCatholic in the mouth of any one but M. Arnauld.\"  \"The truth,\" as it\nlay between Arnauld and his opponents, is a thing so delicate that\n\"pour peu qu'on s'en retire, on tombe dans l'erreur; mais cette erreur\nest si deliee, que, pour peu qu'on s'en eloigne, on se trouve dans la\nverite.\"\n\nSome, indeed, may find in the very delicacy, the curiosity, with which\nsuch distinctions are drawn, by Pascal's friends as well as by their\nfoes, only the impertinence, the profanities, of the theologian by\nprofession, all too intimate in laying down the law of the things he\ndeals with--the things \"which eye hath not seen\" pressing into the\nsecrets of God's sublime commerce with men, in which, it may be, He\ndiffers with every single human soul, by forms of thought adapted from\nthe poorest sort of men's dealings with each other, from the trader, or\nthe attorney.  Pascal notes too the \"impious buffooneries\" of his\nopponents.  The good Fathers, perhaps, only meant them to promote\ngeniality of temper in the debate.  But of such failures--failures of\ntaste, of respect towards one's [65] own point of view--the world is\never unamiably aware; and in the \"Letters\" there is much to move the\nself-complacent smile of the worldling, as Pascal describes his\nexperiences, while he went from one authority to another to find out\nwhat was really meant by the distinction between grace \"sufficient,\"\ngrace \"efficacious,\" grace \"active,\" grace \"victorious.\"  He heard, for\ninstance, that all men have sufficient grace to do God's will; but it\nis not always prochain, not always at hand, at the moment of temptation\nto do otherwise.  So far, then, Pascal's charges are those which may\nseem to lie ready to hand against all who study theology, a looseness\nof thought and language, that would pass nowhere else, in making what\nare professedly very fine distinctions; the insincerity with which\nterms are carefully chosen to cover opposite meanings; the fatuity with\nwhich opposite meanings revolve into one another, in the strange\nvacuous atmosphere generated by professional divines.\n\nUp to this point, you see, Pascal is the countryman of Rabelais and\nMontaigne, smiling with the fine malice of the one, laughing outright\nwith the gaiety of the other, all the world joining in the laugh--well,\nat the silliness of the clergy, who seem indeed not to know their own\nbusiness.  It is we, the laity, he would urge, who are serious, and\ndisinterested, because sincerely interested, in these great\nquestionings.  Jalousie de metier, the reader may suspect, has\nsomething to do with [66] the Professional leaders on both sides of the\ncontroversy; but at the actual turn controversy took just then, it was\nagainst the Jesuit Fathers that Pascal's charges came home in full\nforce.  And their sin is above all that sin, unpardonable with men of\nthe world sans peur et sans reproche, of a lack of self-respect, sins\nagainst pride, if the paradox may be allowed, all the undignified\nfaults, in a word, of essentially little people when they interfere in\ngreat matters--faults promoted in the direction of the consciences of\nwomen and children, weak concessions to weak people who want to be\nsaved in some easy way quite other than Pascal's high, fine, chivalrous\nway of gaining salvation, an incapacity to say what one thinks with the\nglove thrown down.  He supposes a Jansenist to turn upon his opponent\nwho uses the term \"sufficient\" grace, while really meaning, as he\nalleges, insufficient, with the words:--\"Your explanation would be\nodious to men of the world.  They speak more sincerely than you on\nmatters of far less importance than this.\" With the world, Pascal, in\nthe \"Provincial Letters,\" had immediate success.  \"All the world,\" we\nread in his friend's supposed reply to the second \"Letter,\" \"sees them;\nall the world understands them.  Men of the world find them agreeable,\nand even women intelligible.\"  A century later Voltaire found them very\nagreeable.  The spirit in which Pascal deals with his opponents, his\nirony, may remind us of the \"Apology\" of [67] Socrates; the style which\nsecured them immediate access to people who, as a rule, find the\nsubjects there treated hopelessly dry, reminds us of the \"Apologia\" of\nNewman.\n\nThe essence of all good style, whatever its accidents may be, is\nexpressiveness.  It is mastered in proportion to the justice, the\nnicety with which words balance or match their meaning, and their\nwriter succeeds in saying what he wills, grave or gay, severe or\nflorid, simple or complex.  Pascal was a master of style because, as\nhis sister tells us, recording his earliest years, he had a wonderful\nnatural facility a dire ce qu'il voulait en la maniere qu'il voulait.\n\nFacit indignatio versus.  The indignation which caused Pascal to write\nthe \"Letters\" was of a supercilious kind, and what he willed to say in\nthem led to the development of all those qualities that are summed up\nin the French term l'esprit.  Voltaire declared that the best comedies\nof Moliere n'ont pas plus de sel que les premieres lettres.  \"Vos\nmaximes,\" Pascal assures the Jesuit Fathers, \"ont je ne sais quoi de\ndivertissant, qui rejouit toujours le monde,\" and they lose nothing of\nthat character in his handling of them, so much so that it was clear\nfrom the first that the world in general would never ask whether Pascal\nhad been quite fair to his opponents: \"N'etes-vous donc pas ridicules,\nmes Peres?  Qu'on satisfait au precepte d'ouir la messe en entendant\nquatre quarts de messe a la fois de differents pretres!\"  When [68] you\nhave the like of that it is impossible not to laugh, parce que rien n'y\nporte davantage qu'une disproportion surprenante entre ce qu'on attend\net ce qu'on voit.\n\nHe has \"salt\" also, of another kind.  He drives straight at the\nJesuits, for instance, rather than at those who do but copy them,\nbecause, as he tells us: Les choses valent toujours mieux dans leur\nsource.  What equity of expression, how brief, how untranslateable! And\nthe \"Letters\" abound in such things.\n\nBut to his comparison of Pascal with Moliere, Voltaire added that\nBossuet n'a rien de plus sublime que les dernieres.  And in truth the\nmore serious note of the impassioned servant of religion whose lips\nhave been touched with altar-fire, whose seriousness came to be like\nsome incurable malady, a visitation of God, as people used to say, is\npresently struck when, in the natural course of his argument, his\nthoughts are carried, from a mere passage of arms between one man or\none class of men and another, deep down to those awful encounters of\nthe individual soul with itself which are formulated in the eternal\nproblem of predestination.\n\nIn their doctrine of \"sufficient grace\" the Jesuits had presented a\nview of the conflict of good and evil in the soul, which is honourable\nto God and encouraging to man, and which has catholicity on its face.\nAll to whom entrance into the Church, through its formal ministries,\n[69] lies open are truly called of God, while beyond it stretches the\nocean of \"His uncovenanted mercies.\"  That is a doctrine for the many,\nfor those whose position in the religious life is mediocrity, who so\nfar as themselves or others can discern have nothing about them of\neternal or necessary or irresistible reprobation, or of the eternal\ncondition opposite to that.\n\nThe so-called Jansenist doctrine, on the other hand, of [   ]+ but\nirresistible grace was the appropriate view of the Port-Royalists,\nhigh-pitched, eager souls as they were, and of their friend Pascal\nhimself, however much in his turn he might refine upon it.  Whether or\nnot, as a matter of fact, upon which, as distinct from matters of\nfaith, an infallible pope can be mistaken, the dreary old Dutch bishop\nJansenius had really taught Jansenism, the Port-Royalists had found in\nhis \"Augustinus\" an incentive to devotion, and were avowedly his\nadherents.  In that somewhat gloomy, that too deeply impressed, that\nfanatical age, they were the Calvinists of the Roman Catholic Church,\nmaintaining, emphasising in it a view, a tradition, really constant in\nit from St. Augustin, from St. Paul himself.  It is a merit of Pascal,\nhis literary merit, to have given a very fine-toned expression to that\ndoctrine, though mainly in the way of a criticism of its opponents, to\none side or aspect of an eternal controversy, eternally suspended, as\nrepresenting two opposite aspects of experience [70] itself.  Calvin\nand Arminius, Jansen and Molina sum up, in fact, respectively, like the\nrespective adherents of the freedom or of the necessity of the human\nwill, in the more general question of moral philosophy, two opposed,\ntwo counter trains of phenomena actually observable by us in human\naction, too large and complex a matter, as it is, to be embodied or\nsummed up in any one single proposition or idea.\n\nThere are moments of one's own life, aspects of the life of others, of\nwhich the conclusion that the will is free seems to be the only--is the\nnatural or reasonable--account.  Yet those very moments on reflexion,\non second thoughts, present themselves again, as but links in a chain,\nin an all-embracing network of chains.  In all education we assume, in\nsome inexplicable combination, at once the freedom and the necessity of\nthe subject of it.  And who on a survey of life from outside would\nwillingly lose the dramatic contrasts, the alternating interests, for\nwhich the opposed ideas of freedom and necessity are our respective\npoints of view?  How significant become the details we might otherwise\npass by almost unobserved, but to which we are put on the alert by the\nabstract query whether a man be indeed a freeman or a slave, as we\nwatch from aside his devious course, his struggles, his final tragedy\nor triumph.  So much value at least there may be in problems insoluble\nin themselves, such as that great controversy of Pascal's day [71]\nbetween Jesuit and Jansenist.  And here again who would forego, in the\nspectacle of the religious history of the human soul, the aspects, the\ndetails which the doctrines of universal and particular grace\nrespectively embody?  The Jesuit doctrine of sufficient grace is\ncertainly, to use the familiar expression, a very pleasant doctrine\nconducive to the due feeding of the whole flock of Christ, as being, as\nassuming them to be, what they really are, at the worst, God's silly\nsheep.  It has something in it congruous with the rising of the\nphysical sun on the evil and on the good, while the wheat and the tares\ngrow naturally, peacefully together.  But how pleasant also the\nopposite doctrine, how true, how truly descriptive of certain\ndistinguished, magnifical, or elect souls, vessels of election, epris\ndes hauteurs, as we see them pass across the world's stage, as if led\non by a kind of thirst for God!  Its necessary counterpart, of course,\nwe may find, at least dramatically true of some; we can name them in\nhistory, perhaps from our own experience; souls of whom it seems but an\nobvious story to tell that they seemed to be in love with eternal\ndeath, to have borne on them from the first signs of reprobation.  Of\ncertain quite visibly elect souls, at all events, the theory of\nirresistible grace might seem the almost necessary explanation.  Most\nreasonable, most natural, most truly is it descriptive of Pascal\nhimself.\n\n[72] So far, indeed, up to the year 1656, Pascal's annus mirabilis, the\nyear of the \"Letters,\" the world had been allowed to see only one side\nof him.  Early in life he had achieved brilliant overtures in the\nabstract sciences, and, inheriting much of the quality of a fine\ngentleman, he figures, with his trenchant manner, never at a loss, as a\nquite secular person, stirred on occasion to take part in a religious\ndebate.  But it is after the grand fashion of the mundane quarrels of\nthat day, the age of the sentiment of personal honour, in which it was\nso natural for the good-natured Jesuits, stirring all Pascal's satiric\npower, to excuse as well as they could the act de tuer pour un simple\nmedisance.  The Church was still an estate of the realm with all the\nobligations of the noblesse, and it was still something worse than bad\ntaste, it was dangerous to express religious doubts.  About the\nCatholic religion, as he conceived it, Pascal displays the assured\nattitude of an ancient Crusader.  He has the full courage of his\nopinions, and by his elegant easy gallantry in speaking for it he gives\nto religion then and now a kind of dignity it had lost with other\ncontroversialists in the eyes of the world. There is abundant gaiety\nalso in the \"Letters.\"  He quotes from Tertullian to the effect that\nc'est proprement a la verite qu'il appartient de rire parce qu'elle est\ngaie, et de se jouer de ses ennemis parce qu'elle est assuree de sa\nvictoire.  For he could find quotations to his purpose from recondite\nwriters, [73] though he was not a man of erudition; like a man of the\nworld again, he read little, but that absorbingly, was the master of\ntwo authors, Epictetus and Montaigne, and, as appeared afterwards, of\nthe Scriptures in the Vulgate.\n\nSo far, his imposing carriage of himself intellectually might lead us\nto suspect that the forced humilities of his later years are indirectly\na discovery of what seems one leading quality of the natural man in\nhim, a pride that could be quite fierce on occasion. And, like another\nrich young man whom Jesus loved, he lacked nothing to make the world\nalso love and confide in, as it already flattered, him.  He turned from\nit, decided to live a single life.  Was it the mere oddity of genius?\nOr its last fine dainty touch of difference from ordinary people and\ntheir motives?  Or that sanctity of which, in some cases, the world\nitself instinctively feels the distinction, though it shrinks from the\ntrue explanation of it?  Certainly, all things considered, on the\nmorrow of the \"Letters,\" Blaise Pascal, at the age of thirty-three, had\na brilliant worldly future before him, had he cared duly to wait upon,\nto serve it.  To develop the already considerable position of his\nfamily among the gentry of Auvergne would have been to follow the way\nof his time, in which so many noble names had been founded on\nprofessional talents.  Increasingly, however, from early youth, he had\nbeen the subject of a malady so hopeless [74] and inexplicable that in\nthat superstitious age some fancied it the result of a malign spell in\ninfancy.  Gradually, the world almost loses sight of him, hears at\nlast, some time after it had looked for that event, that he had died,\nof course very piously, among those sombre people, his friends and\nrelations of Port-Royal, with whom he had taken refuge, and seemed\nalready to have been buried alive.  And in the year 1670, not till\neight years after his death, the \"Pensees\" appeared--\"Pensees de M.\nPascal sur la Religion et sur quelques autres sujets\"--or rather a\nselection from those \"Thoughts\" by the Port-Royalists, still in fear of\nconsequences to the struggling Jansenist party, anxious to present\nPascal's doctrine as far as possible in conformity with the Jesuit\nsense, as also to divert the vaguer parts of it more entirely into\ntheir own.  The incomparable words were altered, the order changed or\nlost, the thoughts themselves omitted or retrenched.  Written in short\nintervals of relief from suffering, they were contributions to a large\nand methodical work--\"Pensees de M. Pascal sur la Religion et sur\nquelques autres sujets\"--on a good many things besides, as the reader\nfinds, on many of the great things of this world which seemed to him to\ncome in contact or competition with religion.  In the true version of\nthe \"Thoughts,\" edited at last by Faugere, in 1844, from Pascal's own\nMSS., in the National Library, they group themselves into certain\ndefinite trains [75] of speculation and study.  But it is still,\nnevertheless, as isolated thoughts, as inspirations, so to call them,\npenetrating what seemed hopelessly dark, summarising what seemed\nhopelessly confused, sticking fast in men's memories, floating lightly,\nor going far, that they have left so deep a mark in literature.  For\nagain the manner, also, their style precisely becomes them.  The merits\nof Pascal's style, indeed, as of the French language itself, still is\nto say beaucoup de choses en peu de mots; and the brevity, the\ndiscerning edge, the impassioned concentration of the language are here\none with the ardent immediate apprehensions of his spirit.\n\nOne of the literary merits of the \"Provincial Letters\" is that they are\nreally like letters; they are essentially a conversation by writing\nwith other persons.  What we have in the \"Thoughts\" is the conversation\nof the writer with himself, with himself and with God, or rather\nconcerning Him, for He is, in Pascal's favourite phrase from the\nVulgate, Deus absconditus, He who never directly shows Himself.  Choses\nde coeur the \"Thoughts\" are, indeed those of an individual, though they\nseem to have determined the very outlines of a great subject for all\nother persons.  In Pascal, at the summit of the Puy de Dome in his\nnative Auvergne, experimenting on the weight of the invisible air,\nproving it to be ever all around by its effects, we are presented with\none of the more pleasing [76] aspects of his earlier, more wholesome,\nopen-air life.  In the great work of which the \"Thoughts\" are the first\nhead, Pascal conceived himself to be doing something of the same kind\nin the spiritual order by a demonstration of this other invisible world\nall around us, with its really ponderable forces, its movement, its\nattractions and repulsions, the world of grace, unseen, but, as he\nthinks, the one only hypothesis that can explain the experienced,\nadmitted facts. Whether or not he was fixing permanently in the\n\"Pensees\" the outlines, the principles, of a great system of assent, of\nconviction, for acceptance by the intellect, he was certainly fixing\nthese with all the imaginative depth and sufficiency of Shakespeare\nhimself, the fancied opposites, the attitudes, the necessary forms of\npathos,+ of a great tragedy in the heart, the soul, the essential human\ntragedy, as typical and central in its expression here, as Hamlet--what\nthe  soul passes, and must pass, through, aux abois with nothingness,\nor with those offended mysterious powers that may really occupy it--or\nwhen confronted with the thought of what are called the \"four last\nthings\" it yields this way or that.  What might have passed with all\nits fiery ways for an esprit de secte et de cabale is now revealed amid\nthe disputes not of a single generation but of eternal ones, by the\nlight of a phenomenal storm of blinding and blasting inspirations.\n\n[77] Observe, he is not a sceptic converted, a returned infidel, but is\nseen there as if at the very centre of a perpetually maintained tragic\ncrisis holding the faith steadfastly, but amid the well-poised points\nof essential doubt all around him and it.  It is no mere calm\nsupersession of a state of doubt by a state of faith; the doubts never\ndie, they are only just kept down in a perpetual agonia. Everywhere in\nthe \"Letters\" he had seemed so great a master--a master of\nhimself--never at a loss, taking the conflict so lightly, with so light\na heart: in the great Atlantean travail of the \"Thoughts\" his feet\nsometimes \"are almost gone.\"  In his soul's agony, theological\nabstractions seem to become personal powers.  It was as if just below\nthe surface of the green undulations, the stately woods, of his own\nstrange country of Auvergne, the volcanic fires had suddenly discovered\nthemselves anew.  In truth into his typical diagnosis, as it may seem,\nof the tragedy of the human soul, there have passed not merely the\npersonal feelings, the temperament of an individual, but his malady\nalso, a physical malady.  Great genius, we know, has the power of\nelevating, transmuting, serving itself by the accidental conditions\nabout it, however unpromising--poverty, and the like.  It was certainly\nso with Pascal's long-continued physical sufferings. That aigreur,\nwhich is part of the native colour of Pascal's genius, is reinforced in\nthe [78] \"Pensees\" by insupportable languor, alternating with\nsupportable pain, as he died little by little through the eight years\nof their composition.  They are essentially the utterance of a soul\nmalade--a soul of great genius, whose malady became a new quality of\nthat genius, perfecting it thus, by its very defect, as a type on the\nintellectual stage, and thereby guiding, reassuring sympathetically,\nmanning by a sense of good company that large class of persons who are\nmalade in the same way.  \"La maladie est l'etat naturel des Chretiens,\"\nsays Pascal himself.  And we concede that every one of us more or less\nis ailing thus, as another has told us that life itself is a disease of\nthe spirit.\n\nFrom Port-Royal also came, about the year 1670, a painful book, the\n\"Life of Pascal,\" a portrait painted slowly from the life or living\ndeath, but with an almost exclusive preference for traits expressive of\ndisease.  The post-mortem examination of Pascal's brain revealed, we\nare now told, the secret, not merely of that long prostration, those\nsudden passing torments, but of something analogous to them in Pascal's\ngenius and work.  Well! the light cast indirectly on the literary work\nof Pascal by Mme. Perier's \"Life\" is of a similar kind. It is a\nveritable chapter in morbid pathology, though it may have truly a\nbeauty for experts, the beauty which belongs to all refined cases even\nof cerebral disturbance.  That he should [79] have sought relief from\nhis singular wretchedness, in that sombre company, is like the second\nstroke of tragedy upon him.  At moments Pascal becomes almost a\nsectarian, and seems to pass out of the genial broad heaven of the\nCatholic Church.  He had lent himself in those last years to a kind of\npieties which do not make a winning picture, which always have about\nthem, even when they show themselves in men physically strong,\nsomething of the small compass of the sick-chamber.  His medieval or\noriental self-tortures, all the painful efforts at absolute detachment,\na perverse asceticism taking all there still was to spare from the\ndenuded and suffering body, might well, you may think, have died with\nhim, but are here recorded, chiefly by way of showing the world, the\nJesuits, that the Jansenists, too, had a saint quite after their mind.\n\nBut though, at first sight, you may find a pettiness in those minute\npieties, they have their signification as a testimony to the wholeness\nof Pascal's assent, the entirety of his submission, his immense\nsincerity, the heroic grandeur of his achieved faith.  The seventeenth\ncentury presents survivals of the gloomy mental habits of the Middle\nAge, but for the most part of a somewhat theatrical kind, imitations of\nFrancis and Dominic or of their earlier imitators.  In Pascal they are\noriginal, and have all their seriousness.  Que je n'en sois [80] jamais\nsepare--pas separe eternellement, he repeats, or makes that strange\nsort of MS. amulet, of which his sister tells us, repeat for him.  Cast\nme not away from Thy presence; and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.\nIt is table rase he is trying to make of himself, that He might reign\nthere absolutely alone, who, however, as he was bound to think, had\nmade and blest all those things he declined to accept.  Deeper and\ndeeper, then, he retreated into the renuncient life.  He could not, had\nhe wished, deprive himself of that his greatest gift--literally a gift\nhe might have thought it not to be buried but accounted for--the gift\nof le beau dire, of writing beautifully.  \"Il avoit renonce depuis\nlongtemps aux sciences purement humains.\"  To him who had known them so\nwell, and as if by intuition, those abstract and perdurable forms of\nservice might well have seemed a part of \"the Lord's doing, marvellous\nin our eyes,\" as his favourite Psalm cxix., the psalm des petites\nheures, the cxviii. of the Vulgate, says.*  These, too, he counts now\nas but a variety of le neant and vanity of things.  He no longer\nrecords, therefore, the mathematical apercus that may visit him; and in\nhis scruples, his suspicions of' visible beauty, he interests us as\nprecisely an inversion of what is called the aesthetic life.\n\n[81] Yet his faith, as in the days of the Middle Age, had been\nsupported, rewarded, by what he believed to be visible miracle among\nthe strange lights and shades of that retired place.  Pascal's niece,\nthe daughter of Madame Perier, a girl ten years of age, suffered from a\ndisease of the eyes pronounced to be incurable.  The disease was a\npeculiarly distressing one, the sort of affliction which, falling on a\nyoung child, may lead one to question the presence of divine justice in\nthe world, makes one long that miracles were possible. Well!  Pascal,\nfor one, believed that on occasion that profound aspiration had been\nfollowed up by the power desired.  A thorn from the crown of Jesus, as\nwas believed, had been lately brought to the Port-Royal du Faubourg S.\nJacques in Paris, and was one day applied devoutly to the eye of the\nsuffering child.  What followed was an immediate and complete cure,\nfully attested by experts.  Ah!  Thou hast given him his heart's\ndesire: and hast not denied him the request of his lips.  Pascal, and\nthe young girl herself, faithfully to the end of a long life, believed\nthe circumstances to have been miraculous.  Otherwise, we do not see\nthat Pascal was ever permitted to enjoy (so to speak) the religion for\nwhich he had exchanged so much; that the sense of acceptance, of\nassurance, had come to him; that for him the Spouse had ever penetrated\nthe veil of the ordinary routine of the means of grace; [82] nothing\nthat corresponded as a matter of clear personal intercourse of the very\nsenses to the greatness of his surrender--who had emptied himself of\nall other things.  Besides, there was some not wholly-explained delay\nin his reception, in those his last days, of the Sacrament.  It was\nbrought to him just in time--\"Voici celui que vous avez tant\ndesire!\"--the ministrant says to the dying man.  Pascal was then aged\nthirty-nine--an age you may remember fancifully noted as fatal to\ngenius.\n\nPascal's \"Thoughts,\" then, we shall not rightly measure but as the\noutcome, the utterance, of a soul diseased, a soul permanently ill at\nease.  We find in their constant tension something of insomnia, of that\nsleeplessness which can never be a quite healthful condition of mind in\na human body.  Sometimes they are cries, cries of obscure pain rather\nthan thoughts--those great fine sayings which seem to betray by their\ndepth of sound the vast unseen hollow places of nature, of humanity,\njust beneath one's feet or at one's side. Reading them, so modern still\nare those thoughts, so rich and various in suggestion, that one seems\nto witness the mental seed-sowing of the next two centuries, and\nperhaps more, as to those matters with which he concerns himself.\nIntuitions of a religious genius, they may well be taken also as the\nfinal considerations of the natural man, as a religious inquirer on\ndoubt and faith, and their place in [83] things.  Listen now to some of\nthese \"Thoughts\" taken at random: taken at first for their brevity.\nPeu de chose nous console, parce que peu de chose nous afflige.  Par\nl'espace l'univers me comprend et m'engloutit comme un point: par la\npensee je le comprends.  Things like these put us en route with Pascal.\nToutes les bonnes maximes sont dans le monde: on ne manque que de les\nappliquer.  The great ascetic was always hard on amusements, on mere\npastimes: Le divertissement nous amuse, one and all of us, et nous fait\narriver insensiblement a la mort.  Nous perdons encore la vie avec\njoie, pourvu qu'on en parle.  On ne peut faire une bonne physionomie\n(in a portrait) qu'en accordant toutes nos contrarietes.  L'homme n'est\nqu'un roseau, le plus foible de la nature, mais c'est un roseau\npensant.  Il ne faut pas que l'univers entier s'arme pour l'ecraser.\nUne vapeur, une goutte d'eau, suffit pour le tuer.  Mais quand\nl'univers l'ecraseroit, l'homme seroit encore plus noble que se qui le\ntue, parce qu'il sait qu'il meurt, et l'avantage que l'univers a sur\nlui, l'univers n'en sait rien.  It is not thought by which that excels,\nbut the convincing force of imagination which sublimates its very\ntriteness.  Toute notre dignite consiste donc en la pensee.\n\nThere, then, you have at random the sort of stuff of which the\n\"Pensees\" are made.  Let me now briefly indicate, also by quotation\nagain, some of the main leading tendencies in them.  La chose la plus\nimportante a toute la vie c'est la [84] choix du metier: le hasard en\ndispose.  There we recognise the manner of thought of Montaigne.  Now\none of the leading interests in the study of Pascal is to trace the\ninfluence upon him of the typical sceptic of the preceding century.\nPascal's \"Thoughts\" we shall never understand unless we realise the\nunder-texture in them of Montaigne's very phrases, the fascination the\n\"Essays\" had for Pascal in his capacity of one of the children of\nlight, as giving a veritable compte rendu of the Satanic course of this\nworld since the Fall, set forth with all the persuasiveness, the power\nand charm, all the gifts of Satan, the veritable light on things he has\nat his disposal.\n\nPascal re-echoes Montaigne then in asserting the paradoxical character\nof man and his experience.  The old headings under which the\nPort-Royalist editors grouped the \"Thoughts\" recall the titles of\nMontaigne's \"Essays\"--\"Of the Disproportion of Man,\" and the like. As\nstrongly as Montaigne he delights in asserting the relative, local,\nephemeral and merely provisional character of our ideas of law, vice,\nvirtue, happiness, and so forth.  Comme la mode fait l'agrement aussi\nfait-elle la justice.  La justice et la verite sont deux pointes si\nsubtiles, que nos instruments sont trop mousses pour y toucher\nexactement.  Bien suivant la seule raison n'est juste de soi: tout\nbranle avec le temps.  Sometimes he strikes the express accent of\nMontaigne: Ceux qui sont dans un vaisseau croient que ceux qui sont\n[85] au bord fuient.  Le langage est pareil de tous cotes.  Il faut\navoir un point fixe pour en juger.  Le port juge ceux qui sont dans un\nvaisseau, mais ou prendrons-nous un port dans la morale?  At times he\nseems to forget that he himself and Montaigne are after all not of the\nsame flock, as his mind grazes in those pleasant places.  Qu'il (man)\nse regarde comme egare dans ce canton detourne de la nature, et de ce\npetit cachot ou il se trouve loge, qu'il apprenne the earth, et\nsoi-meme a son juste prix.  Il ffre, mais elle est ployable a tous\nsens; et ainsi il n'y en a point.  Un meme sens change selon les\nparoles qui l'expriment.  He has touches even of what he calls the\nmalignity, the malign irony of Montaigne.  Rien que la mediocrite n'est\nbon, he says,--epris des hauteurs, as he so conspicuously was--C'est\nsortir de l'humanite que de sortir du milieu; la grandeur de l'ame\nhumaine consiste a savoir s'y tenir.  Rien ne fortifie plus le\npyrrhonisme--that is ever his word for scepticism--que ce qu'il y en a\nqui ne sont pas pyrrhoniens: si tous etaient ils auraient tort. You may\neven credit him, like Montaigne, with a somewhat Satanic intimacy with\nthe ways, the cruel ways, the weakness, lachete, of the human heart, so\nthat, as he says of Montaigne, himself too might be a pernicious study\nfor those who have a native tendency to corruption.\n\nThe paradoxical condition of the world, the natural inconsistency of\nman, his strange [86] blending of meanness with ancient greatness, the\ncaprices of his status here, of his power and attainments, in the issue\nof his existence--that is what the study of Montaigne had enforced on\nPascal as the sincere compte rendu of experience.  But then he passes\nat a tangent from the circle of the great sceptic's apprehension.  That\nprospect of man and the world, undulant, capricious, inconsistent,\ncontemptible, lache, full of contradiction, with a soul of evil in\nthings good, irreducible to law, upon which, after all, Montaigne looks\nout with a complacency so entire, fills Pascal with terror.  It is the\nworld on the morrow of a great catastrophe, the casual forces of which\nhave by no means spent themselves.  Yes! this world we see, of which we\nare a part, with its thousand dislocations, is precisely what we might\nexpect as resultant from the Fall of Man, with consequences in full\nworking still.  It presents the appropriate aspect of a lost world,\nthough with beams of redeeming grace about it, those, too, distributed\nsomewhat capriciously to chosen people and elect souls, who, after all,\ncan have but an ill time of it here.  Under the tragic eclairs of\ndivine wrath essentially implacable, the gentle, pleasantly undulating,\nsunny, earthly prospect of poor loveable humanity which opens out for\none in Montaigne's \"Essays,\" becomes for Pascal a scene of harsh\nprecipices, of threatening heights and depths--the depths of his own\nnothingness.  Vanity: nothingness: these [87] are his catchwords: Nous\nsommes incapables et du vrai et du bien; nous sommes tous condamnes.\nCe qui y parait (i.e., what we see in the world) ne marque ni une\nexclusion totale ni une presence manifeste de divinite, mais la\npresence d'un Dieu qui se cache: (Deus absconditus, that is a recurrent\nfavourite thought of his) tout porte ce caractere.  In this world of\nabysmal dilemmas, he is ready to push all things to their extremes.\nAll or nothing; for him real morality will be nothing short of\nsanctity.  En Jesus Christ toutes les contradictions sont accordees.\nYet what difficulties again in the religion of Christ! Nulle autre\nreligion n'a propose de se hair.  La seule religion contraire a la\nnature, contraire au sens commun, est la seule qui ait toujours ete.\n\nMultitudes in every generation have felt at least the aesthetic charm\nof the rites of the Catholic Church.  For Pascal, on the other hand, a\ncertain weariness, a certain puerility, a certain unprofitableness in\nthem is but an extra trial of faith.  He seems to have little sense of\nthe beauty of holiness.  And for his sombre, trenchant, precipitous\nphilosophy there could be no middle terms; irresistible election,\nirresistible reprobation; only sometimes extremes meet, and again it\nmay be the trial of faith that the justified seem as loveless and\nunlovely as the reprobate.  Abetissez-vous!  A nature, you may think,\nthat would magnify things to the utmost, nurse, expand them beyond\ntheir natural bounds by his [88] reflex action upon them. Thus\nrevelation is to be received on evidence, indeed, but an evidence\nconclusive only on a presupposition or series of presuppositions,\nevidence that is supplemented by an act of imagination, or by the grace\nof faith, shall we say?  At any rate, the fact is, that the genius of\nthe great reasoner, of this great master of the abstract and deductive\nsciences, turned theologian, carrying the methods of thought there\nformed into the things of faith, was after all of the imaginative\norder.  Now hear what he says of imagination: Cette faculte trompeuse,\nqui semble nous etre donnee expres pour nous induire a une erreur\nnecessaire.  That has a sort of necessity in it.  What he says has\nagain the air of Montaigne, and he says much of the same kind: Cette\nsuperbe puissance ennemie de la raison, combien toutes les richesses de\nla terre sont insuffisantes sans son consentement.  The imagination has\nthe disposition of all things: Elle fait la beaute, la justice, et le\nbonheur, qui est le tout du monde.  L'imagination dispose de tout.  And\nwhat we have here to note is its extraordinary power in himself.\nStrong in him as the reasoning faculty, so to speak, it administered\nthe reasoning faculty in him a son grbut he was unaware of it, that\npower d'autant plus fourbe qu'elle ne l'est pas toujours.  Hidden under\nthe apparent rigidity of his favourite studies, imagination, even in\nthem, played a large part.  Physics, mathematics were with him largely\nmatters of intuition, anticipation, [89] precocious discovery, short\ncuts, superb guessing.  It was the inventive element in his work and\nhis way of putting things that surprised those best able to judge.  He\nmight have discovered the mathematical sciences for himself, it is\nalleged, had his father, as he once had a mind to do, withheld him from\ninstruction in them.\n\nAbout the time when he was bidding adieu to the world, Pascal had an\naccident.  As he drove round a corner on the Seine side to cross the\nbridge at Neuilly, the horses were precipitated down the bank into the\nwater.  Pascal escaped, but with a nervous shock, a certain\nhallucination, from which he never recovered.  As he walked or sat he\nwas apt to perceive a yawning depth beside him; would set stick or\nchair there to reassure himself.  We are now told, indeed, that that\ncircumstance has been greatly exaggerated.  But how true to Pascal's\ntemper, as revealed in his work, that alarmed precipitous character in\nit!  Intellectually the abyss was evermore at his side.  Nous avons, he\nobserves, un autre principe d'erreur, les maladies.  Now in him the\nimagination itself was like a physical malady, troubling, disturbing,\nor in active collusion with it....\n\nNOTES\n\n62. *Published in the Contemporary Review, Feb. 1895, and now reprinted\nby the kind permission of the proprietors.\n\n76. +Transliteration: pathos.\n\n80. *The words here cited are, however, from Psalm cxviii., the cxvii.\nof the Vulgate, and not from Pascal's favourite Psalm. (C.L.S.)\n+C.L.S. stands for Charles Shadwell, editor of the original volume.\n\n\n\nART NOTES IN NORTH ITALY*\n\n[90] TITIAN, as we see him in what some have thought his noblest work,\nthe large altar-piece, dated 1522, his forty-fifth year, of SS. Nazaro\ne Celso, at Brescia, is certainly a religious--a great, religious\npainter.  The famous Gabriel of the Annunciation, aflight, in all the\neffortless energy of an angel indeed, and Sebastian, adapted, it was\nsaid, from an ancient statue, yet as novel in design as if Titian had\nbeen the first to handle that so familiar figure in old religious\nart--may represent for us a vast and varied amount of work--in which he\nexpands to their utmost artistic compass the earlier religious dreams\nof Mantegna and the Bellini, affording sufficient proof how sacred\nthemes could rouse his imagination, and all his manual skill, to heroic\nefforts.  But he is also the painter of the Venus of the Tribune and\nthe Triumph of Bacchus; and such frank acceptance of the voluptuous\npaganism of the Renaissance, the motive of a large proportion of his\nwork, [91] might make us think that religion, grandly dramatic as was\nhis conception of it, can have been for him only one of many pictorial\nattitudes.  There are however painters of that date who, while their\nwork is great enough to be connected (perhaps groundlessly) with\nTitian's personal influence, or directly attributed to his hand,\npossess at least this psychological interest, that about their\nreligiousness there can be no question. Their work is to be looked for\nmainly in and about the two sub-alpine towns of Brescia and Bergamo; in\nthe former of which it becomes definable as a school--the school of\nMoretto, in whom the perfected art of the later Renaissance is to be\nseen in union with a catholicism as convinced, towards the middle of\nthe sixteenth century, as that of Giotto or Angelico.\n\nMoretto of Brescia, for instance, is one of the few painters who have\nfully understood the artistic opportunities of the subject of Saint\nPaul, for whom, for the most part, art has found only the conventional\ntrappings of a Roman soldier (a soldier, as being in charge of those\nprisoners to Damascus), or a somewhat commonplace old age.  Moretto\nalso makes him a nobly accoutred soldier--the rim of the helmet, thrown\nbackward in his fall to the earth, rings the head already with a faint\ncircle of glory--but a soldier still in possession of all those\nresources of unspoiled youth which he is ready to offer in a [92]\nmoment to the truth that has just dawned visibly upon him.  The\nterrified horse, very grandly designed, leaps high against the suddenly\ndarkened sky above the distant horizon of Damascus, with all Moretto's\npeculiar understanding of the power of black and white.  But what signs\nthe picture inalienably as Moretto's own is the thought of the saint\nhimself, at the moment of his recovery from the stroke of Heaven.  The\npure, pale, beardless face, in noble profile, might have had for its\nimmediate model some military monk of a later age, yet it breathes all\nthe joy and confidence of the Apostle who knows in a single flash of\ntime that he has found the veritable captain of his soul.  It is indeed\nthe Paul whose genius of conviction has so greatly moved the minds of\nmen--the soldier who, bringing his prisoners \"bound to Damascus,\" is\nbecome the soldier of Jesus Christ.\n\nMoretto's picture has found its place (in a dark recess, alas!) in the\nChurch of Santa Maria presso San Celso, in the suburbs of Milan, hard\nby the site of the old Roman cemetery, where Ambrose, at a moment when\nin one of his many conflicts a \"sign\" was needed, found the bodies of\nNazarus and Celsus, youthful patrician martyrs in the reign of Nero,\noverflowing now with miraculous powers, their blood still fresh upon\nthem--conspersa recenti sanguine.  The body of Saint Nazarus he removed\ninto the city: that of Saint Celsus remained within the little\nsanctuary [93] which still bears his name, and beside which, in the\nfifteenth century, arose the glorious Church of the Madonna, with\nspacious atrium after the Ambrosian manner, a facade richly sculptured\nin the style of the Renaissance, and sumptuously adorned within.\nBehind the massive silver tabernacle of the altar of the miraculous\npicture which gave its origin to this splendid building, the rare\nvisitor, peeping as into some sacred bird-nest, detects one of the\nloveliest works of Luini, a small, but exquisitely finished \"Holy\nFamily.\"  Among the fine pictures around are works by two other very\nnotable religious painters of the cinque-cento.  Both alike, Ferrari\nand Borgognone, may seem to have introduced into fiery Italian\nlatitudes a certain northern temperature, and somewhat twilight,\nFrench, or Flemish, or German, thoughts.  Ferrari, coming from the\nneighbourhood of Varallo, after work at Vercelli and Novara, returns\nthither to labour, as both sculptor and painter, in the \"stations\" of\nthe Sacro Monte, at a form of religious art which would seem to have\nsome natural kinship with the temper of a mountain people.  It is as if\nthe living actors in the \"Passion Play\" of Oberammergau had been\ntransformed into almost illusive groups in painted terra-cotta.  The\nscenes of the Last Supper, of the Martyrdom of the Innocents, of the\nRaising of Jairus' daughter, for instance, are certainly touching in\nthe naive piety of their life-sized realism.  But Gaudenzio Ferrari had\nmany [94] helpmates at the Sacro Monte; and his lovelier work is in the\nFranciscan Church at the foot of the hill, and in those two, truly\nItalian, far-off towns of the Lombard plain.  Even in his great,\nmany-storied fresco in the Franciscan Church at Varallo there are\ntraces of a somewhat barbaric hankering after solid form; the armour of\nthe Roman soldiers, for example, is raised and gilt.  It is as if this\nserious soul, going back to his mountain home, had lapsed again into\nmountain \"grotesque,\" with touches also, in truth, of a peculiarly\nnorthern poetry--a mystic poetry, which now and again, in his\ntreatment, for instance, of angel forms and faces, reminds one of\nBlake.  There is something of it certainly in the little white spectral\nsoul of the penitent thief making its escape from the dishonoured body\nalong the beam of his cross.\n\nThe contrast is a vigorous one when, in the space of a few hours, the\ntraveller finds himself at Vercelli, half-stifled in its thick pressing\ncrop of pumpkins and mulberry trees.  The expression of the prophet\noccurs to him: \"A lodge in a garden of cucumbers.\"  Garden of cucumbers\nand half-tropical flowers, it has invaded the quiet open spaces of the\ntown.  Search through them, through the almost cloistral streets, for\nthe Church of the Umiliati; and there, amid the soft garden-shadows of\nthe choir, you may find the sentiment of the neighbourhood expressed\nwith great refinement in what is perhaps [95] the masterpiece of\nFerrari, \"Our Lady of the Fruit-garden,\" as we might say--attended by\ntwelve life-sized saints and the monkish donors of the picture.  The\nremarkable proportions of the tall panel, up which the green-stuff is\nclimbing thickly above the mitres and sacred garniture of those sacred\npersonages, lend themselves harmoniously to the gigantic stature of\nSaint Christopher in the foreground as the patron saint of the church.\nWith the savour of this picture in his memory, the visitor will look\neagerly in some half-dozen neighbouring churches and deserted\nconventual places for certain other works from Ferrari's hand; and so,\nleaving the place under the influence of his delicate religious ideal,\nmay seem to have been listening to much exquisite church-music there,\nviolins and the like, on that perfectly silent afternoon--such music as\nhe may still really hear on Sundays at the neighbouring town of Novara,\nfamed for it from of old.  Here, again, the art of Gaudenzio Ferrari\nreigns. Gaudenzio!  It is the name of the saintly prelate on whom his\npencil was many times employed, First Bishop of Novara, and patron of\nthe magnificent basilica hard by which still covers his body, whose\nearthly presence in cope and mitre Ferrari has commemorated in the\naltar-piece of the \"Marriage of St. Catherine,\" with its refined\nrichness of colour, like a bank of real flowers blooming there, and\nlike nothing else around it in the [96] vast duomo of old Roman\narchitecture, now heavily masked in modern stucco.  The solemn\nmountains, under the closer shadow of which his genius put on a\nnorthern hue, are far away, telling at Novara only as the grandly\ntheatrical background to an entirely lowland life.  And here, as at\nVercelli so at Novara, Ferrari is not less graciously Italian than\nLuini himself.\n\nIf the name of Luini's master, Borgognone, is no proof of northern\nextraction, a northern temper is nevertheless a marked element of his\ngenius--something of the patience, especially, of the masters of Dijon\nor Bruges, nowhere more clearly than in the two groups of male and\nfemale heads in the National Gallery, family groups, painted in the\nattitude of worship, with a lowly religious sincerity which may remind\nus of the contemporary work of M. Legros.  Like those northern masters,\nhe accepts piously, but can refine, what \"has no comeliness.\"  And yet\nperhaps no painter has so adequately presented that purely personal\nbeauty (for which, indeed, even profane painters for the most part have\nseemed to care very little) as Borgognone in the two deacons, Stephen\nand Laurence, who, in one of the altar-pieces of the Certosa, assist at\nthe throne of Syrus, ancient, sainted, First Bishop of Pavia--stately\nyouths in quite imperial dalmatics of black and gold.  An indefatigable\nworker at many forms of religious art, here and elsewhere, assisting at\nlast in the [97] carving and inlaying of the rich marble facade of the\nCertosa, the rich carved and inlaid wood-work of Santa Maria at\nBergamo, he is seen perhaps at his best, certainly in his most\nsignificantly religious mood, in the Church of the Incoronata at Lodi,\nespecially in one picture there, the \"Presentation of Christ in the\nTemple.\" The experienced visitor knows what to expect in the sacristies\nof the great Italian churches; the smaller, choicer works of Luini,\nsay, of Della Robbia or Mino of Fiesole, the superb ambries and drawers\nand presses of old oak or cedar, the still untouched morsel of\nfresco--like sacred priestly thoughts visibly lingering there in the\nhalf-light.  Well! the little octagonal Church of the Incoronata is\nlike one of these sacristies.  The work of Bramante--you see it, as it\nis so rarely one's luck to do, with its furniture and internal\ndecoration complete and unchanged, the coloured pavement, the colouring\nwhich covers the walls, the elegant little organ of Domenico da Lucca\n(1507), the altar-screens with their dainty rows of brass cherubs.  In\nBorgognone's picture of the \"Presentation,\" there the place is,\nessentially as we see it to-day.  The ceremony, invested with all the\nsentiment of a Christian sacrament, takes place in this very church,\nthis \"Temple\" of the Incoronata where you are standing, reflected on\nthe dimly glorious wall, as in a mirror. Borgognone in his picture has\n[98] but added in long legend, letter by letter, on the fascia below\nthe cupola, the Song of Simeon.\n\nThe Incoronata however is, after all, the monument less of Ambrogio\nBorgognone than of the gifted Piazza family:--Callisto, himself born at\nLodi, his father, his uncle, his brothers, his son Fulvio, working\nthere in three generations, under marked religious influence, and with\nso much power and grace that, quite gratuitously, portions of their\nwork have been attributed to the master-hand of Titian, in some\nimaginary visit here to these painters, who were in truth the disciples\nof another--Romanino of Brescia.  At Lodi, the lustre of Scipione\nPiazza is lost in that of Callisto, his elder brother; but he might\nworthily be included in a list of painters memorable for a single\npicture, such pictures as the solemn Madonna of Pierino del Vaga, in\nthe Duomo of Pisa, or the Holy Family of Pellegrino Piola, in the\nGoldsmiths' Street at Genoa.  A single picture, a single figure in a\npicture, signed and dated, over the altar of Saint Clement, in the\nChurch of San Spirito, at Bergamo, might preserve the fame of Scipione\nPiazza, who did not live to be old.  The figure is that of the youthful\nClement of Rome himself, \"who had seen the blessed Apostles,\" writing\nat the dictation of Saint Paul.  For a moment he looks away from the\nletters of the book with all the wistful intelligence of a boy softly\ntouched already by the radiancy of the [99] celestial Wisdom.  \"Her\nways are ways of pleasantness!\" That is the lesson this winsome,\ndocile, spotless creature--ingenui vultus puer ingenuique\npudoris--younger brother or cousin of Borgognone's noble deacons at the\nCertosa--seems put there to teach us.  And in this church, indeed, as\nit happens, Scipione's work is side by side with work of his.\n\nIt is here, in fact, at Bergamo and at Brescia, that the late survival\nof a really convinced religious spirit becomes a striking fact in the\nhistory of Italian art.  Vercelli and Novara, though famous for their\nmountain neighbourhood, enjoy but a distant and occasional view of\nMonte Rosa and its companions; and even then those awful stairways to\ntracts of airy sunlight may seem hardly real.  But the beauty of the\ntwin sub-alpine towns further eastward is shaped by the circumstance\nthat mountain and plain meet almost in their streets, very effectively\nfor all purposes of the picturesque. Brescia, immediately below the\n\"Falcon of Lombardy\" (so they called its masterful fortress on the last\nledge of the Pie di Monte), to which you may now ascend by gentle\nturfed paths, to watch the purple mystery of evening mount gradually\nfrom the great plain up the mountain-walls close at hand, is as level\nas a church pavement, home-like, with a kind of easy walking from point\nto point about it, rare in Italian towns--a town full of walled\ngardens, giving even to [100] its smaller habitations the retirement of\ntheir more sumptuous neighbours, and a certain English air.  You may\npeep into them, pacing its broad streets, from the blaze of which you\nare glad to escape into the dim and sometimes gloomy churches, the\ntwilight sacristies, rich with carved and coloured woodwork.  The art\nof Romanino still lights up one of the darkest of those churches with\nthe altar-piece which is perhaps his most expressive and noblest work.\nThe veritable blue sky itself seems to be breaking into the\ndark-cornered, low-vaulted, Gothic sanctuary of the Barefoot Brethren,\naround the Virgin and Child, the bowed, adoring figures of Bonaventura,\nSaint Francis, Saint Antony, the youthful majesty of Saint Louis, to\nkeep for ever in memory--not the King of France however, in spite of\nthe fleurs-de-lys on his cope of azure, but Louis, Bishop of Toulouse.\nA Rubens in Italy! you may think, if you care to rove from the\ndelightful fact before you after vague supposititious\nalliances--something between Titian and Rubens! Certainly, Romanino's\nbold, contrasted colouring anticipates something of the northern\nfreshness of Rubens.  But while the peculiarity of the work of Rubens\nis a sense of momentary transition, as if the colours were even now\nmelting in it, Romanino's canvas bears rather the steady glory of broad\nItalian noonday; while he is distinguished also for a remarkable\nclearness of [101] design, which has perhaps something to do, is\ncertainly congruous with, a markedly religious sentiment, like that of\nAngelico or Perugino, lingering still in the soul of this Brescian\npainter towards the middle of the sixteenth century.\n\nRomanino and Moretto, the two great masters of Brescia in successive\ngenerations, both alike inspired above all else by the majesty, the\nmajestic beauty, of religion--its persons, its events, every\ncircumstance that belongs to it--are to be seen in friendly rivalry,\nthough with ten years' difference of age between them, in the Church of\nSan Giovanni Evangelista; Romanino approaching there, as near as he\nmight, in a certain candle-lighted scene, to that harmony in black,\nwhite, and grey preferred by the younger painter.  Before this or that\nexample of Moretto's work, in that admirably composed picture of Saint\nPaul's Conversion, for instance, you might think of him as but a very\nnoble designer in grisaille.  A more detailed study would convince you\nthat, whatever its component elements, there is a very complex tone\nwhich almost exclusively belongs to him; the \"Saint Ursula\" finally,\nthat he is a great, though very peculiar colourist--a lord of colour\nwho, while he knows the colour resources that may lie even in black and\nwhite, has really included every delicate hue whatever in that faded\n\"silver grey,\" which yet lingers in one's memory as their final effect.\nFor some admirers indeed he is definable [102] as a kind of really\nsanctified Titian.  It must be admitted, however, that whereas Titian\nsometimes lost a little of himself in the greatness of his designs, or\ncommitted their execution, in part, to others, Moretto, in his work, is\nalways all there--thorough, steady, even, in his workmanship.  That,\nagain, was a result of his late-surviving religious conscience.  And\nhere, as in other instances, the supposed influence of the greater\nmaster is only a supposition.  As a matter of fact, at least in his\nearlier life, Moretto made no visit to Venice; developed his genius at\nhome, under such conditions for development as were afforded by the\nexample of the earlier masters of Brescia itself; left his work there\nabundantly, and almost there alone, as the thoroughly representative\nproduct of a charming place.  In the little Church of San Clemente he\nis still \"at home\" to his lovers; an intimately religious artist, full\nof cheerfulness, of joy.  Upon the airy galleries of his great\naltar-piece, the angels dance against the sky above the Mother and the\nChild; Saint Clement, patron of the church, being attendant in\npontifical white, with Dominic, Catherine, the Magdalen, and good,\nbig-faced Saint Florian in complete armour, benign and strong.  He\nknows many a saint not in the Roman breviary.  Was there a single\nsweet-sounding name without its martyr patron?  Lucia, Agnes, Agatha,\nBarbara, Cecilia--holy women, dignified, high-bred, intelligent--[103]\nhave an altar of their own; and here, as in that festal high\naltar-piece, the spectator may note yet another artistic alliance,\nsomething of the pale effulgence of Correggio--an approach, at least,\nto that peculiar treatment of light and shade, and a pre-occupation\nwith certain tricks therein of nature itself, by which Correggio\ntouches Rembrandt on the one hand, Da Vinci on the other.  Here, in\nMoretto's work, you may think that manner more delightful, perhaps\nbecause more refined, than in Correggio himself.  Those pensive,\ntarnished, silver side-lights, like mere reflexions of natural\nsunshine, may be noticed indeed in many another painter of that day, in\nLanini, for instance, at the National Gallery.  In his \"Nativity\" at\nthe Brera, Procaccini of Verona almost anticipates Correggio's Heilige\nNacht.  It is, in truth, the first step in the decomposition of light,\na touch of decadence, of sunset, along the whole horizon of\nNorth-Italian art.  It is, however, as the painter of the white-stoled\nUrsula and her companions that the great master of Brescia is most\nlikely to remain in the memory of the visitor; with this fact, above\nall, clearly impressed on it, that Moretto had attained full\nintelligence of all the pictorial powers of white.  In the clearness,\nthe cleanliness, the hieratic distinction, of this earnest and\ndeeply-felt composition, there is something \"pre-Raphaelite\"; as also\nin a certain liturgical formality in the grouping of the virgins--the\n[104] looks, \"all one way,\" of the closely-ranged faces; while in the\nlong folds of the drapery we may see something of the severe grace of\nearly Tuscan sculpture--something of severity in the long, thin,\nemphatic shadows.  For the light is high, as with the level lights of\nearly morning, the air of which ruffles the banners borne by Ursula in\nher two hands, her virgin companions laying their hands also upon the\ntall staves, as if taking share, with a good will, in her\nself-dedication, with all the hazard of battle.  They bring us,\nappropriately, close to the grave of this manly yet so virginal\npainter, born in the year 1500, dead at forty-seven.\n\nOf Moretto and Romanino, whose works thus light up, or refine, the dark\nchurches of Brescia and its neighbourhood, Romanino is scarcely to be\nseen beyond it.  The National Gallery, however, is rich in Moretto's\nwork, with two of his rare poetic portraits; and if the large\naltar-picture would hardly tell his secret to one who had not studied\nhim at Brescia, in those who already know him it will awake many a\nreminiscence of his art at its best.  The three white mitres, for\ninstance, grandly painted towards the centre of the picture, at the\nfeet of Saint Bernardino of Siena--the three bishoprics refused by that\nlowly saint--may remind one of the great white mitre which, in the\ngenial picture of Saint Nicholas, in the Miracoli at Brescia, one of\nthe children, who as delightfully+ [105] unconventional acolytes\naccompany their beloved patron into the presence of the Madonna,\ncarries along so willingly, laughing almost, with pleasure and pride,\nat his part in so great a function.  In the altar-piece at the National\nGallery those white mitres form the key-note from which the pale,\ncloistral splendours of the whole picture radiate.  You see what a\nwealth of enjoyable colour Moretto, for one, can bring out of monkish\nhabits in themselves sad enough, and receive a new lesson in the\nartistic value of reserve.\n\nRarer still (the single work of Romanino, it is said, to be seen out of\nItaly) is the elaborate composition in five parts on the opposite side\nof the doorway.  Painted for the high-altar of one of the many churches\nof Brescia, it seems to have passed into secular hands about a century\nago.  Alessandro, patron of the church, one of the many youthful\npatrician converts Italy reveres from the ranks of the Roman army,\nstands there on one side, with ample crimson banner superbly furled\nabout his lustrous black armour, and on the other--Saint Jerome,\nRomanino's own namesake--neither more nor less than the familiar,\nself-tormenting anchorite; for few painters (Bellini, to some degree,\nin his picture of the saint's study) have perceived the rare pictorial\nopportunities of Jerome; Jerome with the true cradle of the Lord, first\nof Christian antiquaries, author of the fragrant Vulgate version of the\n[106] Scriptures.  Alessandro and Jerome support the Mother and the\nChild in the central place.  But the loveliest subjects of this fine\ngroup of compositions are in the corners above, half-length, life-sized\nfigures--Gaudioso, Bishop of Brescia, above Saint Jerome; above\nAlessandro, Saint Filippo Benizzi, meek founder of the Order of\nServites to which that church at Brescia belonged, with his lily, and\nin the right hand a book; and what a book!  It was another very\ndifferent painter, Giuseppe Caletti, of Cremona, who, for the truth and\nbeauty of his drawing of them, gained the title of the \"Painter of\nBooks.\"  But if you wish to see what can be made of the leaves, the\nvellum cover, of a book, observe that in Saint Philip's hand.--The\nwriter? the contents? you ask: What may they be? and whence did it\ncome?--out of embalmed sacristy, or antique coffin of some early\nBrescian martyr, or, through that bright space of blue Italian sky,\nfrom the hands of an angel, like his Annunciation lily, or the book\nreceived in the Apocalypse by John the Divine?  It is one of those old\nsaints, Gaudioso (at home in every church in Brescia), who looks out\nwith full face from the opposite corner of the altar-piece, from a\nbackground which, though it might be the new heaven over a new earth,\nis in truth only the proper, breathable air of Italy.  As we see him\nhere, Saint Gaudioso is one of the more exquisite treasures of our\nNational Gallery.  It was thus that at the magic [107] touch of\nRomanino's art the dim, early, hunted-down Brescian church of the\nprimitive centuries, crushed into the dust, it might seem, was \"brought\nto her king,\" out of those old dark crypts, \"in raiment of\nneedle-work\"--the delicate, richly folded, pontifical white vestments,\nthe mitre and staff and gloves, and rich jewelled cope, blue or green.\nThe face, of remarkable beauty after a type which all feel though it is\nactually rare in art, is probably a portrait of some distinguished\nchurchman of Romanino's own day; a second Gaudioso, perhaps, setting\nthat later Brescian church to rights after the terrible French\noccupation in the painter's own time, as his saintly predecessor, the\nGaudioso of the earlier century here commemorated, had done after the\ninvasion of the Goths.  The eloquent eyes are open upon some glorious\nvision.  \"He hath made us kings and priests!\" they seem to say for him,\nas the clean, sensitive lips might do so eloquently.  Beauty and\nHoliness had \"kissed each other,\" as in Borgognone's imperial deacons\nat the Certosa.  At the Renaissance the world might seem to have parted\nthem again.  But here certainly, once more, Catholicism and the\nRenaissance, religion and culture, holiness and beauty, might seem\nreconciled, by one who had conceived neither after any feeble way, in a\ngifted person.  Here at least, by the skill of Romanino's hand, the\nobscure martyr of the crypts shines as a [108] saint of the later\nRenaissance, with a sanctity of which the elegant world itself would\nhardly escape the fascination, and which reminds one how the great\nApostle Saint Paul has made courtesy part of the content of the Divine\ncharity itself.  A Rubens in Italy!--so Romanino has been called.  In\nthis gracious presence we might think that, like Rubens also, he had\nbeen a courtier.\n\nNOTES\n\n90. *Published in the New Review, Nov. 1890, and now reprinted by the\nkind permission of the proprietors.\n\n\n\nNOTRE-DAME D'AMIENS*\n\n[109] THE greatest and purest of Gothic churches, Notre-Dame d'Amiens,\nillustrates, by its fine qualities, a characteristic secular movement\nof the beginning of the thirteenth century. Philosophic writers of\nFrench history have explained how, in that and in the two preceding\ncenturies, a great number of the more important towns in eastern and\nnorthern France rose against the feudal establishment, and developed\nseverally the local and municipal life of the commune.  To guarantee\ntheir independence therein they obtained charters from their formal\nsuperiors.  The Charter of Amiens served as the model for many other\ncommunes.  Notre-Dame d'Amiens is the church of a commune.  In that\ncentury of Saint Francis, of Saint Louis, they were still religious.\nBut over against monastic interests, as identified with a central\nauthority--king, emperor, or pope--they pushed forward the local, and,\nso to call it, secular authority of their [110] bishops, the flower of\nthe \"secular clergy\" in all its mundane astuteness, ready enough to\nmake their way as the natural Protectors of such townships.  The people\nof Amiens, for instance, under a powerful episcopal patron, invested\ntheir civic pride in a vast cathedral, outrivalling neighbours, as\nbeing in effect their parochial church, and promoted there the new,\nrevolutionary, Gothic manner, at the expense of the derivative and\ntraditional, Roman or Romanesque, style, the imperial style, of the\ngreat monastic churches.  Nay, those grand and beautiful people's\nchurches of the thirteenth century, churches pre-eminently of \"Our\nLady,\" concurred also with certain novel humanistic movements of\nreligion itself at that period, above all with the expansion of what is\nreassuring and popular in the worship of Mary, as a tender and\naccessible, though almost irresistible, intercessor with her severe and\nawful Son.\n\nHence the splendour, the space, the novelty, of the great French\ncathedrals in the first Pointed style, monuments for the most part of\nthe artistic genius of laymen, significant pre-eminently of that Queen\nof Gothic churches at Amiens.  In most cases those early Pointed\nchurches are entangled, here or there, by the constructions of the old\nround-arched style, the heavy, Norman or other, Romanesque chapel or\naisle, side by side, though in strong contrast with, the soaring new\nGothic of nave or transept.  But of that older [111] manner of the\nround arch, the plein-cintre, Amiens has nowhere, or almost nowhere, a\ntrace.  The Pointed style, fully pronounced, but in all the purity of\nits first period, found here its completest expression.  And while\nthose venerable, Romanesque, profoundly characteristic, monastic\nchurches, the gregarious product of long centuries, are for the most\npart anonymous, as if to illustrate from the first a certain personal\ntendency which came in with the Gothic manner, we know the name of the\narchitect under whom, in the year A.D. 1220, the building of the church\nof Amiens began--a layman, Robert de Luzarches.\n\nLight and space--floods of light, space for a vast congregation, for\nall the people of Amiens, for their movements, with something like the\nheight and width of heaven itself enclosed above them to breathe\nin;--you see at a glance that this is what the ingenuity of the Pointed\nmethod of building has here secured.  For breadth, for the easy flow of\na processional torrent, there is nothing like the \"ambulatory,\" the\naisle of the choir and transepts.  And the entire area is on one level.\nThere are here no flights of steps upward, as at Canterbury, no\ndescending to dark crypts, as in so many Italian churches--a few low,\nbroad steps to gain the choir, two or three to the high altar.  To a\nlarge extent the old pavement remains, though almost worn-out by the\nfootsteps of centuries.  Priceless, though not composed of precious\nmaterial, it gains its effect [112] by ingenuity and variety in the\npatterning, zig-zags, chequers, mazes, prevailing respectively, in\nwhite and grey, in great square, alternate spaces--the original floor\nof a medieval church for once untouched.  The massive square bases of\nthe pillars of a Romanesque church, harshly angular, obstruct,\nsometimes cruelly, the standing, the movements, of a multitude of\npersons.  To carry such a multitude conveniently round them is the\nmatter-of-fact motive of the gradual chiselling away, the softening of\nthe angles, the graceful compassing, of the Gothic base, till in our\nown Perpendicular period it all but disappears.  You may study that\ntendency appropriately in the one church of Amiens; for such in effect\nNotre-Dame has always been.  That circumstance is illustrated by the\ngreat font, the oldest thing here, an oblong trough, perhaps an ancient\nsaintly coffin, with four quaint prophetic figures at the angles,\ncarved from a single block of stone.  To it, as to the baptistery of an\nItalian town, not so long since all the babes of Amiens used to come\nfor christening.\n\nStrange as it may seem, in this \"queen\" of Gothic churches, l'eglise\nogivale par excellence, there is nothing of mystery in the vision,\nwhich yet surprises, over and over again, the eye of the visitor who\nenters at the western doorway.  From the flagstone at one's foot to the\ndistant keystone of the chevet, noblest of its species-- [113]\nreminding you of how many largely graceful things, sails of a ship in\nthe wind, and the like!--at one view the whole is visible,\nintelligible;--the integrity of the first design; how later additions\naffixed themselves thereto; how the rich ornament gathered upon it; the\nincreasing richness of the choir; its glazed triforium; the realms of\nlight which expand in the chapels beyond; the astonishing boldness of\nthe vault, the astonishing lightness of what keeps it above one; the\nunity, yet the variety of perspective.  There is no mystery here, and\nindeed no repose.  Like the age which projected it, like the impulsive\ncommunal movement which was here its motive, the Pointed style at\nAmiens is full of excitement.  Go, for repose, to classic work, with\nthe simple vertical law of pressure downwards, or to its Lombard,\nRhenish, or Norman derivatives.  Here, rather, you are conscious\nrestlessly of that sustained equilibrium of oblique pressure on all\nsides, which is the essence of the hazardous Gothic construction, a\nconstruction of which the \"flying buttress\" is the most significant\nfeature.  Across the clear glass of the great windows of the triforium\nyou see it, feel it, at its Atlas-work audaciously.  \"A pleasant thing\nit is to behold the sun\" those first Gothic builders would seem to have\nsaid to themselves; and at Amiens, for instance, the walls have\ndisappeared; the entire building is composed of its windows.  Those who\nbuilt it [114] might have had for their one and only purpose to enclose\nas large a space as possible with the given material.\n\nNo; the peculiar Gothic buttress, with its double, triple, fourfold\nflights, while it makes such marvels possible, securing light and space\nand graceful effect, relieving the pillars within of their massiveness,\nis not a restful architectural feature.  Consolidation of matter\nnaturally on the move, security for settlement in a very complex system\nof construction--that is avowedly a part of the Gothic situation, the\nGothic problem.  With the genius which contended, though not always\nquite successfully, with this difficult problem, came also novel\naesthetic effect, a whole volume of delightful aesthetic effects.  For\nthe mere melody of Greek architecture, for the sense as it were of\nmusic in the opposition of successive sounds, you got harmony, the\nricher music generated by opposition of sounds in one and the same\nmoment; and were gainers.  And then, in contrast with the classic\nmanner, and the Romanesque survivals from it, the vast complexity of\nthe Gothic style seemed, as if consciously, to correspond to the\nrichness, the expressiveness, the thousandfold influence of the\nCatholic religion, in the thirteenth century still in natural movement\nin every direction.  The later Gothic of the fifteenth and sixteenth\ncenturies tended to conceal, as it now took for granted, the structural\nuse of the buttress, for [115] example; seemed to turn it into a mere\noccasion for ornament, not always pleasantly:--while the ornament was\nout of place, the structure failed.  Such falsity is far enough away\nfrom what at Amiens is really of the thirteenth century.  In this\npre-eminently \"secular\" church, the execution, in all the defiance of\nits method, is direct, frank, clearly apparent, with the result not\nonly of reassuring the intelligence, but of keeping one's curiosity\nalso continually on the alert, as we linger in these restless aisles.\n\nThe integrity of the edifice, together with its volume of light, has\nindeed been diminished by the addition of a range of chapels, beyond\nthe proper limits of the aisles, north and south.  Not a part of the\noriginal design, these chapels were formed for private uses in the\nfourteenth century, by the device of walling in and vaulting the open\nspaces between the great buttresses of the nave.  Under the broad but\nsubdued sunshine which falls through range upon range of windows,\nreflected from white wall and roof and gallery, soothing to the eye,\nwhile it allows you to see the delicate carved work in all its\nrefinement of touch, it is only as an after-thought, an artificial\nafter-thought, that you regret the lost stained glass, or the vanished\nmural colour, if such to any large extent there ever were. The best\nstained glass is often that stained by weather, by centuries of\nweather, [116] and we may well be grateful for the amazing cheerfulness\nof the interior of Amiens, as we actually find it. Windows of the\nrichest remain, indeed, in the apsidal chapels; and the rose-windows of\nthe transepts are known, from the prevailing tones of their stained\nglass, as Fire and Water, the western rose symbolising in like manner\nEarth and Air, as respectively green and blue.  But there is no reason\nto suppose that the interior was ever so darkened as to prevent one's\nseeing, really and clearly, the dainty ornament, which from the first\nabounded here; the floriated architectural detail; the broad band of\nflowers and foliage, thick and deep and purely sculptured, above the\narches of nave and choir and transepts, and wreathing itself\ncontinuously round the embedded piers which support the roof; with the\nwoodwork, the illuminated metal, the magnificent tombs, the jewellers'\nwork in the chapels. One precious, early thirteenth-century window of\ngrisaille remains, exquisite in itself, interesting as evidence of the\nsort of decoration which originally filled the larger number of the\nwindows. Grisaille, with its lace-work of transparent grey, set here\nand there with a ruby, a sapphire, a gemmed medallion, interrupts the\nclear light on things hardly more than the plain glass, of which indeed\nsuch windows are mainly composed.  The finely designed frames of iron\nfor the support of the glass, in the windows from which even [117] this\ndecoration is gone, still remain, to the delight of those who are\nknowing in the matter.\n\nVery ancient light, this seems, at any rate, as if it had been lying\nimprisoned thus for long centuries; were in fact the light over which\nthe great vault originally closed, now become almost substance of\nthought, one might fancy,--a mental object or medium.  We are reminded\nthat after all we must of necessity look on the great churches of the\nMiddle Age with other eyes than those who built or first worshipped in\nthem; that there is something verily worth having, and a just\nequivalent for something else lost, in the mere effect of time, and\nthat the salt of all aesthetic study is in the question,--What,\nprecisely what, is this to me?  You and I, perhaps, should not care\nmuch for the mural colouring of a medieval church, could we see it as\nit was; might think it crude, and in the way. What little remains of it\nat Amiens has parted, indeed, in the course of ages, with its\nshrillness and its coarse grain.  And in this matter certainly, in view\nof Gothic polychrome, our difference from the people of the thirteenth\ncentury is radical.  We have, as it was very unlikely they should have,\na curiosity, a very pleasurable curiosity, in the mere working of the\nstone they built with, and in the minute facts of their construction,\nwhich their colouring, and the layer of plaster it involved, disguised\nor hid.  We may think that in architecture stone is the most beautiful\n[118] of all things. Modern hands have replaced the colour on some of\nthe tombs here--the effigies, the tabernacles above--skilfully as may\nbe, and have but deprived them of their dignity.  Medieval colouring,\nin fact, must have improved steadily, as it decayed, almost till there\ncame to be no question of colour at all.  In architecture, close as it\nis to men's lives and their history, the visible result of time is a\nlarge factor in the realised aesthetic value, and what a true architect\nwill in due measure always trust to.  A false restoration only\nfrustrates the proper ripening of his work.\n\nIf we may credit our modern eyes, then, those old, very secular\nbuilders aimed at, they achieved, an immense cheerfulness in their\ngreat church, with a purpose which still pursued them into their\nminuter decoration.  The conventional vegetation of the Romanesque, its\nblendings of human or animal with vegetable form, in cornice or\ncapital, have given way here, in the first Pointed style, to a\npleasanter, because more natural, mode of fancy; to veritable forms of\nvegetable life, flower or leaf, from meadow and woodside, though still\nindeed with a certain survival of the grotesque in a confusion of the\nleaf with the flower, which the subsequent Decorated period will wholly\npurge away in its perfect garden-borders.  It was not with monastic\nartists and artisans that the sheds and workshops around Amiens\nCathedral were filled, [119] as it rose from its foundations through\nfifty years; and those lay schools of art, with their communistic\nsentiment, to which in the thirteenth century the great episcopal\nbuilders must needs resort, would in the natural course of things tend\ntowards naturalism.  The subordinate arts also were no longer at the\nmonastic stage, borrowing inspiration exclusively from the experiences\nof the cloister, but belonged to guilds of laymen--smiths, painters,\nsculptors.  The great confederation of the \"city,\" the commune,\nsubdivided itself into confederations of citizens.  In the natural\nobjects of the first Pointed style there is the freshness as of nature\nitself, seen and felt for the first time; as if, in contrast, those\nolder cloistral workmen had but fed their imagination in an\nembarrassed, imprisoned, and really decadent manner, or mere\nreminiscence of, or prescriptions about, things visible.\n\nCongruous again with the popularity of the builders of Amiens, of their\nmotives, is the wealth, the freedom and abundance, of popular, almost\nsecular, teaching, here afforded, in the carving especially, within and\nwithout; an open Bible, in place of later legend, as at monastic\nVezelay,--the Bible treated as a book about men and women, and other\npersons equally real, but blent with lessons, with the liveliest\nobservations, on the lives of men as they were then and now, what they\ndo, and how they do it, or did it then, and on the doings of nature\n[120] which so greatly influence what man does; together with certain\nimpressive metaphysical and moral ideas, a sort of popular scholastic\nphilosophy, or as if it were the virtues and vices Aristotle defines,\nor the characters of Theophrastus, translated into stone.  Above all,\nit is to be observed that as a result of this spirit, this \"free\"\nspirit, in it, art has at last become personal.  The artist, as such,\nappears at Amiens, as elsewhere, in the thirteenth century; and, by\nmaking his personal way of conception and execution prevail there,\nrenders his own work vivid and organic, and apt to catch the interest\nof other people.  He is no longer a Byzantine, but a Greek--an\nunconscious Greek.  Proof of this is in the famous Beau-Dieu of Amiens,\nas they call that benign, almost classically proportioned figure, on\nthe central pillar of the great west doorway; though in fact neither\nthat, nor anything else on the west front of Amiens, is quite the best\nwork here.  For that we must look rather to the sculpture of the portal\nof the south transept, called, from a certain image there, Portail de\nla Vierge doree, gilded at the expense of some unknown devout person at\nthe beginning of the last century.  A presentation of the mystic, the\ndelicately miraculous, story of Saint Honore, eighth Bishop of Amiens,\nand his companions, with its voices, its intuitions, and celestial\nintimations, it has evoked a correspondent method of work at once [121]\nnaive and nicely expressive.  The rose, or roue, above it, carries on\nthe outer rim seventeen personages, ascending and descending--another\npiece of popular philosophy--the wheel of fortune, or of human life.\n\nAnd they were great brass-founders, surely, who at that early day\nmodelled and cast the tombs of the Bishops Evrard and Geoffrey, vast\nplates of massive black bronze in half-relief, like abstract thoughts\nof those grand old prelatic persons.  The tomb of Evrard, who laid the\nfoundations (qui fundamenta hujus basilicae locavit), is not quite as\nit was.  Formerly it was sunk in the pavement, while the tomb of Bishop\nGeoffrey opposite (it was he closed in the mighty vault of the nave:\nhanc basilicam culmen usque perduxit), itself vaulted-over the space of\nthe grave beneath.  The supreme excellence of those original workmen,\nthe journeymen of Robert de Luzarches and his successor, would seem\nindeed to have inspired others, who have been at their best here, down\nto the days of Louis the Fourteenth. It prompted, we may think, a high\nlevel of execution, through many revolutions of taste in such matters;\nin the marvellous furniture of the choir, for instance, like a whole\nwood, say a thicket of old hawthorn, with its curved topmost branches\nspared, slowly transformed by the labour of a whole family of artists,\nduring fourteen years, into the stalls, in number one hundred and ten,\nwith nearly four [122] thousand figures.  Yet they are but on a level\nwith the Flamboyant carved and coloured enclosures of the choir, with\nthe histories of John the Baptist, whose face-bones are here preserved,\nand of Saint Firmin--popular saint, who protects the houses of Amiens\nfrom fire.  Even the screens of forged iron around the sanctuary, work\nof the seventeenth century, appear actually to soar, in their way, in\nconcert with the airy Gothic structure; to let the daylight pass as it\nwill; to have come, they too, from smiths, odd as it may seem at just\nthat time, with some touch of inspiration in them.  In the beginning of\nthe fifteenth century they had reared against a certain bald space of\nwall, between the great portal and the western \"rose,\" an organ, a\nlofty, many-chambered, veritable house of church-music, rich in azure\nand gold, finished above at a later day, not incongruously, in the\nquaint, pretty manner of Henri-Deux.  And those who are interested in\nthe curiosities of ritual, of the old provincial Gallican \"uses,\" will\nbe surprised to find one where they might least have expected it.  The\nreserved Eucharist still hangs suspended in a pyx, formed like a dove,\nin the midst of that lamentable \"glory\" of the eighteenth century in\nthe central bay of the sanctuary, all the poor, gaudy, gilt rays\nconverging towards it. There are days in the year in which the great\nchurch is still literally filled with reverent worshippers, and if you\ncome late to service you push the [123] doors in vain against the\nclosely serried shoulders of the good people of Amiens, one and all in\nblack for church-holiday attire.  Then, one and all, they intone the\nTantum ergo (did it ever sound so in the Middle Ages?) as the\nEucharist, after a long procession, rises once more into its\nresting-place.\n\nIf the Greeks, as at least one of them says, really believed there\ncould be no true beauty without bigness, that thought certainly is most\nspecious in regard to architecture; and the thirteenth-century church\nof Amiens is one of the three or four largest buildings in the world,\nout of all proportion to any Greek building, both in that and in the\nmultitude of its external sculpture.  The chapels of the nave are\nembellished without by a double range of single figures, or groups,\ncommemorative of the persons, the mysteries, to which they are\nrespectively dedicated--the gigantic form of Christopher, the Mystery\nof the Annunciation.\n\nThe builders of the church seem to have projected no very noticeable\ntowers; though it is conventional to regret their absence, especially\nwith visitors from England, where indeed cathedral and other towers are\napt to be good, and really make their mark.  Robert de Luzarches and\nhis successors aimed rather at the domical outline, with its central\npoint at the centre of the church, in the spire or fleche. The existing\nspire is a wonderful mass of carpentry [124] of the beginning of the\nsixteenth century, at which time the lead that carefully wraps every\npart of it was heavily gilt.  The great western towers are lost in the\nwest front, the grandest, perhaps the earliest, example of its\nspecies--three profound, sculptured portals; a double gallery above,\nthe upper gallery carrying colossal images of twenty-two kings of the\nHouse of Judah, ancestors of Our Lady; then the great rose; above it\nthe ringers' gallery, half masking the gable of the nave, and uniting\nat their top-most storeys the twin, but not exactly equal or similar,\ntowers, oddly oblong in plan, as if never intended to carry pyramids or\nspires.  They overlook an immense distance in those flat, peat-digging,\nblack and green regions, with rather cheerless rivers, and are the\ncentre of an architectural region wider still--of a group to which\nSoissons, far beyond the woods of Compiegne, belongs, with St. Quentin,\nand, towards the west, a too ambitious rival, Beauvais, which has stood\nhowever--what we now see of it--for six centuries.\n\nIt is a spare, rather sad world at most times that Notre-Dame d'Amiens\nthus broods over; a country with little else to be proud of; the sort\nof world, in fact, which makes the range of conceptions embodied in\nthese cliffs of quarried and carved stone all the more welcome as a\nhopeful complement to the meagreness of most people's present\nexistence, and its apparent ending in a [125] sparely built coffin\nunder the flinty soil, and grey, driving sea-winds.  In Notre-Dame,\ntherefore, and her sisters, there is not only a common method of\nconstruction, a single definable type, different from that of other\nFrench latitudes, but a correspondent common sentiment also; something\nwhich speaks, amid an immense achievement just here of what is\nbeautiful and great, of the necessity of an immense effort in the\nnatural course of things, of what you may see quaintly designed in one\nof those hieroglyphic carvings--radix de terra sitienti: \"a root out of\na dry ground.\"\n\nNOTES\n\n109. *Published in the Nineteenth Century, March 1894, and now\nreprinted by the kind permission of the proprietors.\n\n\n\nVEZELAY*\n\n[126] As you discern the long unbroken line of its roof, low-pitched\nfor France, above the cottages and willow-shaded streams of the place,\nyou might think the abbey church of Pontigny, the largest Cistercian\nchurch now remaining, only a great farm-building.  On a nearer view\nthere is something unpretending, something pleasantly English, in the\nplain grey walls, pierced with long \"lancet\" windows, as if they\noverlooked the lowlands of Essex, or the meadows of Kent or Berkshire,\nthe sort of country from which came those saintly exiles of our race\nwho made the cloisters of Pontigny famous, and one of whom, Saint\nEdmund of Abingdon, Saint-Edme, still lies enshrined here.  The country\nwhich the sons of Saint Bernard choose for their abode is in fact but a\npatch of scanty pasture-land in the midst of a heady wine-district.\nLike its majestic Cluniac rivals, the church has its western portico,\nelegant in structure but of comparatively humble [127] proportions,\nunder a plain roof of tiles, pent-wise. Within, a heavy coat of\nwhite-wash seems befitting to the simple forms of the \"Transition,\" or\nquite earliest \"Pointed,\" style, to its remarkable continence of\nspirit, its uniformity, and cleanness of build.  The long prospect of\nnave and choir ends, however, with a sort of graceful smallness, in a\nchevet of seven closely packed, narrow bays.  It is like a nun's\nchurch, or like a nun's coif.\n\nThe church of Pontigny, representative generally of the churches of the\nCistercian order, including some of the loveliest early English ones,\nwas in truth significant of a reaction, a reaction against monasticism\nitself, as it had come to be in the order of Cluny, the genius of which\nfound its proper expression in the imperious, but half-barbaric,\nsplendours of the richest form of the Romanesque, the monastic style\npre-eminently, as we may still see it at La Charite-sur-Loire, at\nSaint-Benoit, above all, on the hill of Vezelay.  Saint Bernard, who\nhad lent his immense influence to the order of Citeaux by way of a\nmonastic reform, though he had a genius for hymns and was in other ways\nan eminent religious poet, and though he gave new life to the expiring\nromance of the crusades, was, as regards the visible world, much of a\nPuritan.  Was it he who, wrapt in thought upon the world unseen, walked\nalong the shores of Lake Leman without observing it?--the eternal snows\nhe might have taken for the walls of the New Jerusalem; the blue waves\nhe [128] might have fancied its pavement of sapphire.  In the churches,\nthe worship, of his new order he required simplicity, and even\nseverity, being fortunate in finding so winsome an exponent of that\nprinciple as the early Gothic of Pontigny, or of the first Cistercian\nchurch, now destroyed, at Citeaux itself. Strangely enough, while\nBernard's own temper of mind was a survival from the past (we see this\nin his contest with Abelard), hierarchic, reactionary, suspicious of\nnovelty, the architectural style of his preference was largely of\nsecular origin.  It had a large share in that inventive and innovating\ngenius, that expansion of the natural human soul, to which the art, the\nliterature, the religious movements of the thirteenth century in\nFrance, as in Italy, where it ends with Dante, bear witness.\n\nIn particular, Bernard had protested against the sculpture, rich and\nfantastic, but gloomy, it might be indecent, developed more abundantly\nthan anywhere else in the churches of Burgundy, and especially in those\nof the Cluniac order.  \"What is the use,\" he asks, \"of those grotesque\nmonsters in painting and sculpture?\" and almost certainly he had in\nmind the marvellous carved work at Vezelay, whither doubtless he came\noften--for example on Good Friday, 1146, to preach, as we know, the\nsecond crusade in the presence of Louis the Seventh.  He too might have\nwept at the sight of the doomed multitude (one in ten, it is said,\nreturned from the Holy [129] Land), as its enthusiasm, under the charm\nof his fiery eloquence, rose to the height of his purpose.  Even the\naisles of Vezelay were not sufficient for the multitude of his hearers,\nand he preached to them in the open air, from a rock still pointed out\non the hillside. Armies indeed have been encamped many times on the\nslopes and meadows of the valley of the Cure, now to all seeming so\nimpregnably tranquil.  The Cluniac order even then had already declined\nfrom its first intention; and that decline became especially visible in\nthe Abbey of Vezelay itself not long after Bernard's day.  Its majestic\nimmoveable church was complete by the middle of the twelfth century.\nAnd there it still stands in spite of many a threat, while the\nconventual buildings around it have disappeared; and the institution it\nrepresented--secularised at its own request at the Reformation--had\ndwindled almost to nothing at all, till in the last century the last\nAbbot built himself, in place of the old Gothic lodging below those\nsolemn walls, a sort of Chateau Gaillard, a dainty abode in the manner\nof Louis Quinze--swept away that too at the Revolution--where the great\noaks now flourish, with the rooks and squirrels.\n\nYet the order of Cluny, in its time, in that dark period of the\neleventh and twelfth centuries, had deserved well of those to whom\nreligion, and art, and social order are precious.  The Cluniacs had in\nfact represented monasticism in the most [130] legitimate form of its\nactivity; and, if the church of Vezelay was not quite the grandest of\ntheir churches, it is certainly the grandest of them which remains.  It\nis also typical in character.  As Notre-Dame d'Amiens is pre-eminently\nthe church of the city, of a commune, so the Madeleine of Vezelay is\ntypically the church of a monastery.\n\nThe monastic style proper, then, in its peculiar power and influence,\nwas Romanesque, and with the Cluniac order; and here perhaps better\nthan anywhere else we may understand what it really came to, what was\nits effect on the spirits, the imagination.\n\nAs at Pontigny, the Cistercians, for the most part, built their\nchurches in lowly valleys, according to the intention of their founder.\nThe representative church of the Cluniacs, on the other hand, lies amid\nthe closely piled houses of the little town, which it protected and\ncould punish, on a steep hill-top, like a long massive chest there,\nheavy above you, as you climb slowly the winding road, the old\nunchanged pathway of Saint Bernard.  In days gone by it threatened the\nsurrounding neighbourhood with four boldly built towers; had then also\na spire at the crossing; and must have been at that time like a more\nmagnificent version of the buildings which still crown the hill of\nLaon.  Externally, the proportions, the squareness, of the nave (west\nand east, the vast narthex or porch, and the [131] Gothic choir, rise\nabove its roof-line), remind one of another great Romanesque church at\nhome--of the nave of Winchester, out of which Wykeham carved his richly\npanelled Perpendicular interior.\n\nAt Vezelay however, the Romanesque, the Romanesque of Burgundy, alike\nin the first conception of the whole structure, and in the actual\nlocking together of its big stones, its masses of almost unbroken\nmasonry, its inertia, figures as of more imperial character, and nearer\nto the Romans of old, than its feebler kindred in England or Normandy.\nWe seem to have before us here a Romanesque architecture, studied, not\nfrom Roman basilicas or Roman temples, but from the arenas, the\ncolossal gateways, the triumphal arches, of the people of empire, such\nas remain even now, not in the South of France only. The simple\n\"flying,\" or rather leaning and almost couchant, buttresses, quadrants\nof a circle, might be parts of a Roman aqueduct.  In contrast to the\nlightsome Gothic manner of the last quarter of the twelfth century (as\nwe shall presently find it here too, like an escape for the eye, for\nthe temper, out of some grim underworld into genial daylight), the\nCluniac church might seem a still active instrument of the iron tyranny\nof Rome, of its tyranny over the animal spirits.  As the ghost of\nancient Rome still lingers \"over the grave thereof,\" in the papacy, the\nhierarchy, so is it with the material structures [132] also, the\nCluniac and other Romanesque churches, which most emphatically express\nthe hierarchical, the papal system.  There is something about this\nchurch of Vezelay, in the long-sustained patience of which it tells,\nthat brings to mind the labour of slaves, whose occasional Fescennine\nlicence and fresh memories of a barbaric life also find expression, now\nand again, in the strange sculpture of the place.  Yet here for once,\naround a great French church, there is the kindly repose of English\n\"precincts,\" and the country which this monastic acropolis overlooks\nsouthwards is a very pleasant one, as we emerge from the shadows\nof--yes! of that peculiarly sad place--a country all the pleasanter by\nreason of the toil upon it, performed, or exacted from others, by the\nmonks, through long centuries; Le Morvan, with its distant blue hills\nand broken foreground, the vineyards, the patches of woodland, the\nroads winding into their cool shadows; though in truth the\nfortress-like outline of the monastic church and the sombre hue of its\nmaterial lend themselves most readily to the effects of a stormy sky.\n\nBy a door, which in the great days opened from a magnificent cloister,\nyou enter what might seem itself but the ambulatory of a cloister,\nsuperbly vaulted and long and regular, and built of huge stones of a\nmetallic colour.  It is the southern aisle of the nave, a nave of ten\nbays, the grandest Romanesque interior in France, [133] perhaps in the\nworld.  In its mortified light the very soul of monasticism, Roman and\nhalf-military, as the completest outcome of a religion of threats,\nseems to descend upon one.  Monasticism is indeed the product of many\nvarious tendencies of the religious soul, one or another of which may\nvery properly connect itself with the Pointed style, as we saw in those\nlightsome aisles of Pontigny, so expressive of the purity, the lowly\nsweetness, of the soul of Bernard.  But it is here at Vezelay, in this\niron place, that monasticism in its central, its historically most\nsignificant purpose, presents itself as most completely at home.  There\nis no triforium.  The monotonous cloistral length of wall above the\nlong-drawn series of stately round arches, is unbroken save by a plain\nsmall window in each bay, placed as high as possible just below the\ncornice, as a mere after-thought, you might fancy.  Those windows were\nprobably unglazed, and closed only with wooden shutters as occasion\nrequired.  Furnished with the stained glass of the period, they would\nhave left the place almost in darkness, giving doubtless full effect to\nthe monkish candle-light in any case needful here.  An almost perfect\ncradle-roof, tunnel-like from end to end of the long central aisle,\nadds by its simplicity of form to the magnificent unity of effect.  The\nbearing-arches, which span it from bay to bay, being parti-coloured,\nwith voussures of alternate white and a kind of grey or green, [134]\nbeing also somewhat flat at the keystone, and literally eccentric,\nhave, at least for English eyes, something of a Saracenic or other\nOriental character.  Again, it is as if the architects--the\nengineers--who worked here, had seen things undreamt of by other\nRomanesque builders, the builders in England and Normandy.\n\nHere then, scarcely relieving the almost savage character of the work,\nabundant on tympanum and doorway without, above all on the immense\ncapitals of the nave within, is the sculpture which offended Bernard.\nA sumptuous band of it, a carved guipure of singular boldness, passes\ncontinuously round the arches, and along the cornices from bay to bay,\nand with the large bossy tendency of the ornament throughout may be\nregarded as typical of Burgundian richness.  Of sculptured capitals, to\nlike, or to dislike with Saint Bernard, there are nearly a hundred,\nunwearied in variety, unique in the energy of their conception, full of\nwild promise in their coarse execution, cruel, you might say, in the\nrealisation of human form and features.  Irresistibly they rivet\nattention.\n\nThe subjects are for the most part Scriptural, chosen apparently as\nbeing apt for strongly satiric treatment, the suicide of Judas, the\nfall of Goliath.  The legend of Saint Benedict, naturally at home in a\nBenedictine church, presented the sculptor with a series of forcible\ngrotesques ready-made.  Some monkish story, [135] half moral, half\nfacetious, perhaps a little coarse, like that of Sainte Eugenie, from\ntime to time makes variety; or an example of the punishment of the\nwicked by men or by devils, who play a large, and to themselves\nthoroughly enjoyable and merry, part here.  The sculptor would seem to\nhave witnessed the punishment of the blasphemer; how adroitly the\nexecutioner planted knee on the culprit's bosom, as he lay on the\nground, and out came the sinful tongue, to meet the iron pincers.  The\nminds of those who worked thus seem to have been almost insanely\npreoccupied just then with the human countenance, but by no means\nexclusively in its pleasantness or dignity.  Bold, crude, original,\ntheir work indicates delight in the power of reproducing fact,\ncuriosity in it, but little or no sense of beauty.  The humanity\ntherefore here presented, as in the Cluniac sculpture generally, is\nwholly unconventional.  M. Viollet-le-Duc thinks he can trace in it\nindividual types still actually existing in the peasantry of Le Morvan.\nMan and morality, however, disappearing at intervals, the acanthine\ncapitals have a kind of later Venetian beauty about them, as the\nVenetian birds also, the conventional peacocks, or birds wholly of\nfantasy, amid the long fantastic foliage.  There are still however no\ntrue flowers of the field here. There is pity, it must be confessed, on\nthe other hand, and the delicacy, the beauty, which that always brings\n[136] with it, where Jephtha peeps at the dead daughter's face, lifting\ntimidly the great leaves that cover it; in the hanging body of Absalom;\nin the child carried away by the eagle, his long frock twisted in the\nwind as he goes.  The parents run out in dismay, and the devil grins,\nnot because it is the punishment of the child or of them; but because\nhe is the author of all mischief everywhere, as the monkish carver\nconceived--so far wholesomely.\n\nWe must remember that any sculpture less emphatic would have been\nineffective, because practically invisible, in this sombre place. But\nat the west end there is an escape for the eye, for the soul, towards\nthe unhindered, natural, afternoon sun; not however into the outer and\nopen air, but through an arcade of three bold round arches, high above\nthe great closed western doors, into a somewhat broader and loftier\nplace than this, a reservoir of light, a veritable camera lucida.  The\nlight is that which lies below the vault and within the tribunes of the\nfamous narthex (as they say), the vast fore-church or vestibule, into\nwhich the nave is prolonged.  A remarkable feature of many Cluniac\nchurches, the great western porch, on a scale which is approached in\nEngland only at Peterborough, is found also in some of the churches of\nthe Cistercians.  It is characteristic, in fact, rather of Burgundy\nthan of either of those religious orders especially.\n\n[137] At Pontigny itself, for instance, there is a good one; and a very\nearly one at Paray-le-Monial.  Saint-Pere-sous-Vezelay, daughter of the\ngreat church, in the vale below, has a late Gothic example; Semur also,\nwith fantastic lodges above it.  The cathedral of Autun, a secular\nchurch in rivalry of the \"religious,\" presents, by way of such western\nporch or vestibule, two entire bays of the nave, unglazed, with the\nvast western arch open to the air; the west front, with its rich\nportals, being thrown back into the depths of the great fore-church\nthus produced.\n\nThe narthex of Vezelay, the largest of these singular structures, is\nglazed, and closed towards the west by what is now the facade.  It is\nitself in fact a great church, a nave of three magnificent bays, and of\nthree aisles, with a spacious triforium.  With their fantastic\nsculpture, sheltered thus from accident and weather, in all its\noriginal freshness, the great portals of the primitive facade serve now\nfor doorways, as a second, solemn, door of entrance, to the church\nproper within.  The very structure of the place, and its relation to\nthe main edifice, indicate that it was for use on occasion, when, at\ncertain great feasts, that of the Magdalen especially, to whom the\nchurch of Vezelay is dedicated, the monastery was swollen with\npilgrims, too poor, too numerous, to be lodged in the town, come hither\nto worship before the [138] relics of the friend of Jesus, enshrined in\na low-vaulted crypt, the floor of which is the natural rocky surface of\nthe hill-top.  It may be that the pilgrims were permitted to lie for\nthe night, not only on the pavement, but (if so favoured) in the high\nand dry chamber formed by the spacious triforium over the north aisle,\nawaiting an early Mass. The primitive west front, then, had become but\na wall of partition; and above its central portal, where the round\narched west windows had been, ran now a kind of broad, arcaded tribune,\nin full view of the entire length of the church.  In the midst of it\nstood an altar; and here perhaps, the priest who officiated being\nvisible to the whole assembled multitude east and west, the early Mass\nwas said.\n\nThe great vestibule was finished about forty years after the completion\nof the nave, towards the middle of the twelfth century. And here, in\nthe great pier-arches, and in the eastern bay of the vault, still with\nthe large masonry, the large, flat, unmoulded surfaces, and amid the\nfantastic carvings of the Romanesque building about it, the Pointed\nstyle, determined yet discreet, makes itself felt--makes itself felt by\nappearing, if not for the first time, yet for the first time in the\norganic or systematic development of French architecture.  Not in the\nunambitious facade of Saint-Denis, nor in the austere aisles of Sens,\nbut at Vezelay, in this grandiose fabric, so worthy of the event,\nViollet-le-Duc would [139] fain see the birthplace of the Pointed\nstyle.  Here at last, with no sense of contrast, but by way of\nveritable \"transition,\" and as if by its own matured strength, the\nround arch breaks into the double curve, les arcs brises, with a\nwonderful access of grace.  And the imaginative effect is forthwith\nenlarged.  Beyond, far beyond, what is actually presented to the eye in\nthat peculiar curvature, its mysterious grace, and by the stateliness,\nthe elevation of the ogival method of vaulting, the imagination is\nstirred to present one with what belongs properly to it alone.  The\nmasonry, though large, is nicely fitted; a large light is admitted\nthrough the now fully pronounced Gothic windows towards the west.  At\nAmiens we found the Gothic spirit, reigning there exclusively, to be a\nrestless one.  At Vezelay, where it breathes for the first time amid\nthe heavy masses of the old imperial style, it breathes the very genius\nof monastic repose.  And then, whereas at Amiens, and still more at\nBeauvais, at Saint-Quentin, you wonder how these monuments of the past\ncan have endured so long, in strictly monastic Vezelay you have a sense\nof freshness, such as, in spite of their ruin, we perceive in the\nbuildings of Greece.  We enjoy here not so much, as at Amiens, the\nsentiment of antiquity, but that of eternal duration.\n\nBut let me place you once more where we stood for a while, on entering\nby the doorway [140] in the midst of the long southern aisle.  Cross\nthe aisle, and gather now in one view the perspective of the whole.\nAway on the left hand the eye is drawn upward to the tranquil light of\nthe vaults of the fore-church, seeming doubtless the more spacious\nbecause partly concealed from us by the wall of partition below.  But\non the right hand, towards the east, as if with the set purpose of a\nstriking architectural contrast, an instruction as to the place of this\nor that manner in the architectural series, the long, tunnel-like,\nmilitary work of the Romanesque nave opens wide into the exhilarating\ndaylight of choir and transepts, in the sort of Gothic Bernard would\nhave welcomed, with a vault rising now high above the roof-line of the\nbody of the church, sicut lilium excelsum.  The simple flowers, the\nflora, of the early Pointed style, which could never have looked at\nhome as an element in the half-savage decoration of the nave, seem to\nbe growing here upon the sheaves of slender, reedy pillars, as if\nnaturally in the carved stone.  Even here indeed, Roman, or Romanesque,\ntaste still lingers proudly in the monolith columns of the chevet.\nExternally, we may note with what dexterity the Gothic choir has been\ninserted into its place, below and within the great buttresses of the\nearlier Romanesque one.\n\nVisitors to the great church of Assisi have sometimes found a kind of\nparable in the threefold [141] ascent from the dark crypt where the\nbody of Saint Francis lies, through the gloomy \"lower\" church, into the\nheight and breadth, the physical and symbolic \"illumination,\" of the\nchurch above.  At Vezelay that kind of contrast suggests itself in one\nview; the hopeful, but transitory, glory upon which one enters; the\nlong, darksome, central avenue; the \"open vision\" into which it\nconducts us.  As a symbol of resurrection, its choir is a fitting\ndiadem to the church of the Magdalen, whose remains the monks meant it\nto cover.\n\nAnd yet, after all, notwithstanding this assertion of the superiority\n(are we so to call it?) of the new Gothic way, perhaps by the very\nforce of contrast, the Madeleine of Vezelay is still pre-eminently a\nRomanesque, and thereby the typically monastic, church.  In spite of\nrestoration even, as we linger here, the impression of the monastic\nMiddle Age, of a very exclusive monasticism, that has verily turned its\nback upon common life, jealously closed inward upon itself, is a\nsingularly weighty one; the more so because, as the peasant said when\nasked the way to an old sanctuary that had fallen to the occupation of\nfarm-labourers, and was now deserted even by them: Maintenant il n'y a\npersonne la.\n\nNOTES\n\n126. *Published in the Nineteenth Century, June 1894, and now reprinted\nby the kind permission of the proprietors.\n\n\n\nAPOLLO IN PICARDY*\n\n[142] \"CONSECUTIVE upon Apollo in all his solar fervour and\neffulgence,\" says a writer of Teutonic proclivities, \"we may discern\neven among the Greeks themselves, elusively, as would be natural with\nsuch a being, almost like a mock sun amid the mists, the northern or\nultra-northern sun-god.  In hints and fragments the lexicographers and\nothers have told us something of this Hyperborean Apollo, fancies about\nhim which evidence some knowledge of the Land of the Midnight Sun, of\nthe sun's ways among the Laplanders, of a hoary summer breathing very\nsoftly on the violet beds, or say, the London-pride and crab-apples,\nprovided for those meagre people, somewhere amid the remoteness of\ntheir icy seas.  In such wise Apollo had already anticipated his sad\nfortunes in the Middle Age as a god definitely in exile, driven north\nof the Alps, and even here ever in flight before the summer.  Summer\nindeed he leaves now to the management of [143] others, finding his way\nfrom France and Germany to still paler countries, yet making or taking\nwith him always a certain seductive summer-in-winter, though also with\na divine or titanic regret, a titanic revolt in his heart, and\nconsequent inversion at times of his old beneficent and properly solar\ndoings.  For his favours, his fallacious good-humour, which has in\ntruth a touch of malign magic about it, he makes men pay sometimes a\nterrible price, and is in fact a devil!\"\n\nDevilry, devil's work:--traces of such you might fancy were to be found\nin a certain manuscript volume taken from an old monastic library in\nFrance at the Revolution.  It presented a strange example of a cold and\nvery reasonable spirit disturbed suddenly, thrown off its balance, as\nby a violent beam, a blaze of new light, revealing, as it glanced here\nand there, a hundred truths unguessed at before, yet a curse, as it\nturned out, to its receiver, in dividing hopelessly against itself the\nwell-ordered kingdom of his thought. Twelfth volume of a dry enough\ntreatise on mathematics, applied, still with no relaxation of strict\nmethod, to astronomy and music, it should have concluded that work, and\ntherewith the second period of the life of its author, by drawing tight\ntogether the threads of a long and intricate argument.  In effect\nhowever, it began, or, in perturbed manner, and as [144] with throes of\nchildbirth, seemed the preparation for, an argument of an entirely new\nand disparate species, such as would demand a new period of life also,\nif it might be, for its due expansion.\n\nBut with what confusion, what baffling inequalities!  How afflicting to\nthe mind's eye!  It was a veritable \"solar storm\"--this illumination,\nwhich had burst at the last moment upon the strenuous, self-possessed,\nmuch-honoured monastic student, as he sat down peacefully to write the\nlast formal chapters of his work ere he betook himself to its\nwell-earned practical reward as superior, with lordship and mitre and\nring, of the abbey whose music and calendar his mathematical knowledge\nhad qualified him to reform.  The very shape of Volume Twelve, pieced\ntogether of quite irregularly formed pages, was a solecism.  It could\nnever be bound.  In truth, the man himself, and what passed with him in\none particular space of time, had invaded a matter, which is nothing if\nnot entirely abstract and impersonal.  Indirectly the volume was the\nrecord of an episode, an interlude, an interpolated page of life.  And\nwhereas in the earlier volumes you found by way of illustration no more\nthan the simplest indispensable diagrams, the scribe's hand had strayed\nhere into mazy borders, long spaces of hieroglyph, and as it were\nveritable pictures of the theoretic elements of his subject.  Soft\nwintry auroras seemed to play behind whole pages of crabbed textual\nwriting, line and figure [145] bending, breathing, flaming, in, to\nlovely \"arrangements\" that were like music made visible; till writing\nand writer changed suddenly, \"to one thing constant never,\" after the\nknown manner of madmen in such work.  Finally, the whole matter broke\noff with an unfinished word, as a later hand testified, adding the date\nof the author's death, \"deliquio animi.\"\n\nHe had been brought to the monastery as a little child; was bred there;\nhad never yet left it, busy and satisfied through youth and early\nmanhood; was grown almost as necessary a part of the community as the\nstones of its material abode, as a pillar of the great tower he\nascended to watch the movement of the stars.  The structure of a\nfortified medieval town barred in those who belonged to it very\neffectively.  High monastic walls intrenched the monk still further.\nFrom the summit of the tower you looked straight down into the deep\nnarrow streets, upon the houses (in one of which Prior Saint-Jean was\nborn) climbing as high as they dared for breathing space within that\nnarrow compass.  But you saw also the green breadth of Normandy and\nPicardy, this way and that; felt on your face the free air of a still\nwider realm beyond what was seen.  The reviving scent of it, the mere\nsight of the flowers brought thence, of the country produce at the\nconvent gate, stirred the ordinary monkish soul with desires, sometimes\nwith efforts, to be sent on duty there.  Prior [146] Saint-Jean, on the\nother hand, shuddered at the view, at the thoughts it suggested to him;\nthoughts of unhallowed wild places, where the old heathen had\nworshipped \"stocks and stones,\" and where their wickedness might still\nsurvive them in something worse than mischievous tricks of nature, such\nas you might read of in Ovid, whose verses, however, he for his part\nhad never so much as touched with a finger.  He gave thanks rather,\nthat his vocation to the abstract sciences had kept him far apart from\nthe whole crew of miscreant poets--Abode of demons.\n\nThither nevertheless he was now to depart, sent to the Grange or\nObedience of Notre-Dame De-Pratis by the aged Abbot (about to resign in\nhis favour) for the benefit of his body's health, a little impaired at\nlast by long intellectual effort, yet so invaluable to the community.\nBut let him beware! whispered his dearest friend, who shared those\nstrange misgivings, let him \"take heed to his ways\" when he was come to\nthat place.  \"The mere contact of one's feet with its soil might change\none.\"  And that same night, disturbed perhaps by thoughts of the coming\njourney with which his brain was full, Prior Saint-Jean himself dreamed\nvividly, as he had been little used to do. He saw the very place in\nwhich he lay (he knew it! his little inner cell, the brown doors, the\nwhite breadth of wall, the black crucifix upon it) alight, alight [147]\nsoftly; and looking, as he fancied, from the window, saw also a low\ncirclet of soundless flame, waving, licking daintily up the black sky,\nbut harmless, beautiful, closing in upon that round dark space in the\nmidst, which was the earth.  He seemed to feel upon his shoulder just\nthen the touch of his friend beside him.  \"It is hell-fire!\" he said.\n\nThe Prior took with him a very youthful though devoted\ncompanion--Hyacinthus, the pet of the community.  They laughed\nadmiringly at the rebellious masses of his black hair, with blue in the\ndepths of it, like the wings of the swallow, which refused to conform\nto the monkish pattern.  It only grew twofold, crown upon crown, after\nthe half-yearly shaving.  And he was as neat and serviceable as he was\ndelightful to be with.  Prior Saint-Jean, then, and the boy started\nbefore daybreak for the long journey; onwards, till darkness, a soft\ntwilight rather, was around them again.  How unlike a winter night it\nseemed, the further they went through the endless, lonely, turf-grown\ntracts, and along the edge of a valley, at length--vallis monachorum,\nmonksvale--taken aback by its sudden steepness and depth, as of an\nimmense oval cup sunken in the grassy upland, over which a golden moon\nnow shone broadly.  Ah! there it was at last, the white Grange, the\nwhite gable of the chapel apart amid a few scattered white gravestones,\nthe white flocks crouched about on the hoar-frost, [148] like the white\nclouds, packed somewhat heavily on the horizon, and nacres as the\nclouds of June, with their own light and heat in them, in their\nhollows, you might fancy.\n\nFrom the very first, the atmosphere, the light, the influence of\nthings, seemed different from what they knew; and how distant already\nthe dark buildings of their home!  Was there the breath of surviving\nsummer blossom on the air?  Now and then came a gentle, comfortable\nbleating from the folds, and themselves slept soundly at last in the\ngreat open upper chamber of the Grange; were awakened by the sound of\nthunder.  Strange, in the late November night!  It had parted, however,\nwith its torrid fierceness; modulated by distance, seemed to break away\ninto musical notes.  And the lightning lingered along with it, but\nglancing softly; was in truth an aurora, such as persisted month after\nmonth on the northern sky as they sojourned here.  Like Prospero's\nenchanted island, the whole place was \"full of noises.\" The wind it\nmight have been, passing over metallic strings, but that they were\naudible even when the night was breathless.\n\nSo like veritable music, however, were they on that first night that,\nupon reflexion, the Prior climbed softly the winding stair down which\nthey appeared to flow, to the great solar among the beams of the roof,\nwhere the farm produce lay stored.  A flood of moonlight now fell\nthrough the unshuttered dormer-windows; and, [149] under the glow of a\nlamp hanging from the low rafters, Prior Saint-Jean seemed to be\nlooking for the first time on the human form, on the old Adam fresh\nfrom his Maker's hand.  A servant of the house, or farm-labourer,\nperhaps!--fallen asleep there by chance on the fleeces heaped like\ngolden stuff high in all the corners of the place.  A serf!  But what\nunserflike ease, how lordly, or godlike rather, in the posture!  Could\none fancy a single curve bettered in the rich, warm, white limbs; in\nthe haughty features of the face, with the golden hair, tied in a\nmystic knot, fallen down across the inspired brow?  And yet what gentle\nsweetness also in the natural movement of the bosom, the throat, the\nlips, of the sleeper!  Could that be diabolical, and really spotted\nwith unseen evil, which was so spotless to the eye?  The rude sandals\nof the monastic serf lay beside him apart, and all around was of the\nroughest, excepting only two strange objects lying within reach (even\nin their own renowned treasury Prior Saint-Jean had not seen the like\nof them), a harp, or some such instrument, of silver-gilt once, but the\ngold had mostly passed from it, and a bow, fashioned somehow of the\nsame precious substance.  The very form of these things filled his mind\nwith inexplicable misgivings.  He repeated a befitting collect, and\ntrod softly away.\n\nIt was in truth but a rude place to which they were come.  But, after\nlife in the [150] monastery, the severe discipline of which the Prior\nhimself had done much to restore, there was luxury in the free,\nself-chosen hours, the irregular fare, in doing pretty much as one\npleased, in the sweet novelties of the country; to the boy Hyacinth\nespecially, who forgot himself, or rather found his true self for the\nfirst time.  Girding up his heavy frock, which he laid aside erelong\naltogether to go in his coarse linen smock only, he seemed a monastic\nnovice no longer; yet, in his natural gladness, was found more\ncompanionable than ever by his senior, surprised, delighted, for his\npart, at the fresh springing of his brain, the spring of his footsteps\nover the close greensward, as if smoothed by the art of man.  Cause of\nhis renewed health, or concurrent with its effects, the air here might\nhave been that of a veritable paradise, still unspoiled.  \"Could there\nbe unnatural magic,\" he asked himself again, \"any secret evil, lurking\nin these tranquil vale-sides, in their sweet low pastures, in the belt\nof scattered woodland above them, in the rills of pure water which\nlisped from the open down beyond?\" Making what was really a boy's\nexperience, he had a wholly boyish delight in his holiday, and\ncertainly did not reflect how much we beget for ourselves in what we\nsee and feel, nor how far a certain diffused music in the very breath\nof the place was the creation of his own ear or brain.\n\n[151] That strange enigmatic owner of the harp and the bow, whom he had\nfound sleeping so divinely, actually waited on them the next morning\nwith all obsequiousness, stirred the great fire of peat, adjusted duly\ntheir monkish attire, laid their meal.  It seemed an odd thing to be\nserved thus, like St. Jerome by the lion, as if by some imperiously\nbeautiful wild animal tamed.  You hesitated to permit, were a little\nafraid of, his services.  Their silent tonsured porter himself,\ncontrast grim enough to any creature of that kind, had been so far\nseduced as to permit him to sleep there in the Grange, as he loved to\ndo, instead of in ruder, rougher quarters; and, coaxed into odd\ngarrulity on this one matter, told the new-comers the little he knew,\nwith much also that he only suspected, about him; among other things,\nas to the origin of those precious objects, which might have belonged\nto some sanctuary or noble house, found thus in the possession of a\nmere labourer, who is no Frenchman, but a pagan, or gipsy, white as he\nlooks, from far south or east, and who works or plays furtively, by\nnight for the most part, returning to sleep awhile before daybreak.\nThe other herdsmen of the valley are bond-servants, but he a hireling\nat will, though coming regularly at a certain season.  He has come thus\nfor any number of years past, though seemingly never grown older (as\nthe speaker reflects), singing his way meagrely from farm to farm, to\nthe sound of [152] his harp. His name?--It was scarcely a name at all,\nin the diffident syllables he uttered in answer to that question, on\nfirst coming there; but of names known to them it came nearest to a\nmalignant one in Scripture, Apollyon.  Apollyon had a just discernible\ntonsure, but probably no right to it.\n\nWell skilled in architecture, Prior Saint-Jean was set, by way of a\nholiday task, to superintend the completion of the great monastic barn\nthen in building.  The visitor admires it still; perhaps supposes it,\nwith its noble aisle, though set north and south, to be a desecrated\nchurch.  If he be an expert in such matters, he will remark a sort of\nclassical harmony in its broad, very simple proportions, with a certain\nsuppression of Gothic emphasis, more especially in that peculiarly\nGothic feature, the buttresses, scarcely marking the unbroken,\nwindowless walls, which rise very straight, taking the sun placidly.\nThe silver-grey stone, cut, if it came from this neighbourhood at all,\nfrom some now forgotten quarry, has the fine, close-grained texture of\nantique marble.  The great northern gable is almost a classic pediment.\nThe horizontal lines of plinth and ridge and cornice are kept unbroken,\nthe roof of sea-grey slates being pitched less angularly than is usual\nin this rainy clime.  A welcome contrast, the Prior thought it, to the\nsort of architectural nightmare he came from.  He found the structure\nalready more than half- [153] way up, the low squat pillars ready for\ntheir capitals.\n\nYes! it must have so happened often in the Middle Age, as you feel\nconvinced, in looking sometimes at medieval building.  Style must have\nchanged under the very hands of men who were no wilful innovators.\nThus it was here, in the later work of Prior Saint-Jean, all\nunconsciously.  The mysterious harper sat there always, at the topmost\npoint achieved; played, idly enough it might seem, on his precious\ninstrument, but kept in fact the hard taxed workmen literally in tune,\nworking for once with a ready will, and, so to speak, with really\ninventive hands--working expeditiously, in this favourable weather,\ntill far into the night, as they joined unbidden in a chorus, which\nhushed, or rather turned to music, the noise of their chipping.  It was\nhardly noise at all, even in the night-time. Now and again Brother\nApollyon descended nimbly to surprise them, at an opportune moment, by\nthe display of an immense strength.  A great cheer exploded suddenly,\nas single-handed he heaved a massive stone into its place.  He seemed\nto have no sense of weight: \"Put there by the devil!\" the modern\nvillager assures you.\n\nWith a change then, not so much of style as of temper, of management,\nin the application of acknowledged rules, Prior Saint-Jean shaping\nonly, adapting, simplifying, partly with a view [154] to economy, not\nthe heavy stones only, but the heavy manner of using them, turned\nlight.  With no pronounced ornamentation, it is as if in the upper\nstory ponderous root and stem blossomed gracefully, blossomed in\ncornice and capital and pliant arch-line, as vigorous as they were\ngraceful, and rose on high quickly.  Almost suddenly tie-beam and\nrafter knit themselves together into the stone, and the dark, dry,\nroomy place was closed in securely to this day.  Mere audible music,\ncertainly, had counted for something in the operations of an art, held\nat its best (as we know) to be a sort of music made visible. That idle\nsinger, one might fancy, by an art beyond art, had attracted beams and\nstones into their fit places.  And there, sure enough, he still sits,\nas a final decorative touch, by way of apex on the gable which looks\nnorthward, though much weather-worn, and with an ugly gap between the\nshoulder and the fingers on the harp,* as if, literally, he had cut off\nhis right hand and put it from him:--King David, or an angel? guesses\nthe careless tourist.  The space below has been lettered.  After a\nlittle puzzling you recognise there the relics of a familiar verse from\na Latin psalm Nisi Dominus aedificaverit domum,+ and the rest:\ninscribed as well as may be in Greek characters.  Prior Saint-Jean\ncaused it to be so inscribed, absurdly, during his last days there.\n\n[155] And is not the human body, too, a building, with architectural\nlaws, a structure, tending by the very forces which primarily held it\ntogether to drop asunder in time?  Not in vain, it seemed, had Prior\nSaint-Jean come to this mystic place for the improvement of his body's\nhealth.  Thenceforth that fleshly tabernacle had housed him, had housed\nhis cunning, overwrought and excitable soul, ever the better day by\nday, and he began to feel his bodily health to be a positive quality or\nforce, the presence near him of that singular being having surely\nsomething to do with this result.  He and his fascinations, his music,\nhimself, might at least be taken for an embodiment of all those genial\ninfluences of earth and sky, and the easy ways of living here, which\nmade him turn, with less of an effort than he had known for many years\npast, to his daily tasks, and sink so regularly, so immediately, to\nwholesome rest on returning from them.  It was as if Brother Apollyon\nhimself abhorred the spectacle of distress, and mainly for his own\nsatisfaction charmed away other people's maladies.  The mere touch of\nthat ice-cold hand, laid on the feverish brow, when the Prior lapsed\nfrom time to time into his former troubles, certainly calmed the\nrespiration of a troubled sleeper.  Was there magic in it, not wholly\nnatural?  The hand might have been a dead one.  But then, was it\nsurprising, after all, that the [156] methods of curing men's maladies,\nas being in very deed the fruit of sin, should have something strange\nand unlooked-for about them, like some of those Old Testament healings\nand purifications which the Prior's biblical lore suggested to him?\nYet Brother Apollyon, if their surly Janitor, in his less kindly\nmoments, spoke truly, himself greatly needed purification, being not\nonly a thief, but a homicide in hiding from the law.  Nay, once, on his\nannual return from southern or eastern lands, he had been observed on\nhis way along the streets of the great town literally scattering the\nseeds of disease till his serpent-skin bag was empty.  And within seven\ndays the \"black death\" was there, reaping its thousands.  As a wise man\ndeclared, he who can best cure disease can also most cunningly engender\nit.\n\nIn short, these creatures of rule, these \"regulars,\" the Prior and his\ncompanion, were come in contact for the first time in their lives with\nthe power of untutored natural impulse, of natural inspiration. The boy\nexperienced it immediately in the games which suited his years, but\nwhich he had never so much as seen before; as his superior was to\nundergo its influence by-and-by in serious study.  By night chiefly, in\nits long, continuous twilights, Hyacinth became really a boy at last,\nwith immense gaiety; eyes, hands and feet awake, expanding, as he raced\nhis comrade over the [157] turf, with the conical Druidic stone for a\ngoal, or wrestled lithely enough with him, though as with a rock; or,\ntaking the silver bow in hand for a moment, transfixed a mark, next a\nbird, on the bough, on the wing, shedding blood for the first time,\nwith a boy's delight, a boy's remorse.  Friend Apollyon seemed able to\ndraw the wild animals too, to share their sport, yet not altogether\nkindly.  Tired, surfeited, he destroys them when his game with them is\nat an end; breaks the toy; deftly snaps asunder the fragile back.\nThough all alike would come at his call, or the sound of his harp, he\nhad his preferences; and warred in the night-time, as if on principle,\nagainst the creatures of the day.  The small furry thing he pierced\nwith his arrow fled to him nevertheless caressingly, with broken limb,\nto die palpitating in his hand.  In this wonderful season, the\nmigratory birds, from Norway, from Britain beyond the seas, came there\nas usual on the north wind, with sudden tumult of wings; but went that\nyear no further, and by Christmas-time had built their nests, filling\nthat belt of woodland around the vale with the chatter of their\nbusiness and love quarrels.  In turn they drew after them strangers no\none here had ever known before; the like of which Hyacinth, who knew\nhis bestiary, had never seen even in a picture.  The wild-cat, the\nwild-swan--the boy peeped on these wonders as they floated over the\nvale, or [158] glided with unwonted confidence over its turf, under the\nmoonlight, or that frequent continuous aurora which was not the dawn.\nEven the modest rivulets of the hill-side felt that influence, and\n\"lisped\" no longer, but babbled as they leapt, like mountain streams,\nexposing their rocky bed.  Were they angry, as they ran red sometimes\nwith blood-drops from the stricken bird caught there by rock or bough,\nas it fell with rent breast among the waves?\n\nBut say, think, what you might against him, the pagan outlaw was worth\nhis hire as a herdsman; seemingly loved his sheep; was an \"affectionate\nshepherd\"; cured their diseases; brought them easily to the birth, and\nif they strayed afar would bring them back tenderly upon his shoulders.\nMonastic persons would have seen that image many times before.  Yet if\nApollyon looked like the great carved figure over the low doorway of\ntheir place of penitence at home, that could be but an accident, or\nperhaps a deceit; so closely akin to those soulless creatures did he\nstill seem to the wondering Prior,--immersed in, or actually a part of,\nthat irredeemable natural world he had dreaded so greatly ere he came\nhither.  And was he after all making terms with it now, in the\nseductive person of this mysterious being--man or demon--suspected of\nmurder; who has an air of unfathomable evil about him as from a distant\nbut ineffaceable past, and a sort of heathen [159] understanding with\nthe dark realm of matter; who is bringing the simple people, the women\nand lovesick lads, back to those caves and cromlechs and blasted trees,\nresorts of old godless secret-telling?  And still he has all his own\nway with beasts and man, with the Prior himself, much as all alike\ndistrust him.\n\nMost conspicuous in the little group of buildings, a feudal tower of\ngoodly white stone, cylindrical and smoothly polished without to hinder\nthe ascent of creeping things, and snugly plastered within to resist\nthe damp, was the pigeon-house--a veritable feudal tower, a veritable\nfeudal plaisance of birds, which the common people dared not so much as\nruffle.  About a thousand of them were housed there, each in its little\nchamber, encouraged to grow plump, and to breed, in perfect\nself-content.  From perch to perch of the great axle-tree in the\ncentre, monastic feet might climb, gentle monastic hands pass round to\nevery tiny compartment in turn.  The arms of the monastery were carved\non the keystone of the doorway, and the tower finished in a conical\nroof, with becoming aerial gaillardise, with pretty dormer-windows for\nthe inmates to pass in and out, little balconies for brooding in the\nsun, little awnings to protect them from rough breezes, and a great\nweather-vane, on which the birds crowded for the chance of a ride.  If\nthe peasants of that day, whose small fields they plundered, noting all\nthis, perhaps [160] envied the birds dumbly, for the brethren, on the\nother hand, it was a constant delight to watch the feathered\nbrotherhood, which supplied likewise their daintiest fare.  Who then,\nwhat hawk, or wild-cat, or other savage beast, had ravaged it so\nwantonly, so very cruelly destroyed the bright creatures in a single\nnight--broken backs, rent away limbs, pierced the wings?  And what was\nthat object there below?  The silver harp surely, lying broken likewise\non the sanded floor, soaking in the pale milky blood and torn plumage.\n\nApollyon sobbed and wept audibly as he went about his ordinary doings\nnext day, for once fully, though very sadly, awake in it; and towards\nevening, when the villagers came to the Prior to confess themselves,\nthe Feast of the Nativity being now at hand, he too came along with\nthem in his place meekly, like any other penitent, touched the lustral\nwater devoutly, knew all the ways, seemed to desire absolution from\nsome guilt of blood heavier than the slaughter of beast or bird.  The\nPrior and his attendant, on their side, are reminded that by this time\nthey have wellnigh forgotten the monastic duties still incumbent upon\nthem, especially in that matter of the \"Offices.\"  On the vigil of the\nfeast, however, Brother Apollyon himself summoned the devout to\nMidnight Mass with the great bell, which had hung silent for a\ngeneration, wedged in immoveably by a beam of [161] the cradle fallen\nout of its place.  With an immense effort of strength he relieved it,\nhitched the bell back upon its wheel; the thick rust cracked on the\nhinges, and the strokes tolled forth betimes, with a hundred querulous,\nquaint creatures, bats and owls, circling stupidly in the waves of\nsound, but allowed to settle back again undisturbedly into their beds.\n\nPeople and priest, the Prior, vested as well as might be, with Hyacinth\nas \"server,\" come in due course, all alike amazed to find that frozen\nneglected place, with its low-browed vault and narrow windows, alight,\nand as if warmed with flowers from a summer more radiant far than that\nof France, with ilex and laurel--gilt laurel--by way of holly and box.\nPrior Saint-Jean felt that he had never really seen flowers before.\nSomewhat later they and the like of them seemed to have grown into and\nover his brain; to have degraded the scientific and abstract outlines\nof things into a tangle of useless ornament.  Whence were they\nprocured?  From what height, or hellish depth perhaps?  Apollyon, who\nentered the chapel just then, as if quite naturally, though with a\nbleating lamb in his bosom (\"dropped\" thus early in that wonderful\nseason) by way of an offering, took his place at the altar's very foot,\nand drawing forth his harp, now restrung, at the right moment, turned\nto real silvery music the hoarse Gloria in Excelsis of those rude\nworshippers, still [162] shrinking from him, while they listened in a\nlittle circle, as he stood there in his outlandish attire of skins\nstrangely spotted and striped.  With that however the Mass broke off\nunconsummated.  The Prior felt obliged to desist from the sacred\noffice, and had left the altar hurriedly.\n\nBut Brother Apollyon put his strange attire aside next day, and in a\nmuch-worn monk's frock, drawn forth from a dark corner, came with them,\nstill like a Penitent, when they turned once more to their neglected\nstudies somewhat sadly.  See them then, after a collect for \"Light\"\nrepeated by Hyacinth, skull-cap in hand, seated at their desks in the\nlittle scriptorium, panelled off from their living-room on the first\nfloor, while the Prior makes an effort to recover the last thought of\nhis long-suspended work, in the execution of which the boy is to assist\nwith his skilful pen.  The great glazed windows remain open; admit, as\nif already on the soft air of spring, what seems like a stream of\nflowery odours, the entire moonlit scene, with the thorn bushes on the\nvale-side prematurely bursting into blossom, and the sound of birds and\nflocks emphasising the deep silence of the night.\n\nApollyon then, as if by habit, as he had shared all their occupations\nof late, had taken his seat beside them, meekly enough, at first with\nthe manner of a mere suppliant for the [163] crumbs of their high\nstudies.  But, straightway again, he surprises by more than racing\nforward incredibly on the road to facts, and from facts to luminous\ndoctrine; Prior Saint-Jean himself, in comparison, seeming to lag\nincompetently behind.  He can but wonder at this strange scholar's\nknowledge of a distant past, evidenced in his familiarity (it was as if\nhe might once have spoken them) with the dead languages in which their\ntext-books are written.  There was more surely than the utmost merely\nnatural acuteness in his guesses as to the words intended by those\ncrabbed contractions, of their meaning, in his sense of allusions and\nthe like.  An ineffaceable memory it might rather seem of the entire\nworld of which those languages had been the living speech, once more\nvividly awake under the Prior's cross-questioning, and now more than\nsupplementing his own laborious search.\n\nAnd at last something of the same kind happens with himself.  Had he,\non his way hither from the convent, passed unwittingly through some\nriver or rivulet of Lethe, that had carried away from him all his so\ncarefully accumulated intellectual baggage of fact and theory?  The\nhard and abstract laws, or theory of the laws, of music, of the stars,\nof mechanical structure, in hard and abstract formulae, adding to the\nabstract austerity of the man, seemed to have deserted him; to be\nrevived in him again [164] however, at the contact of this\nextraordinary pupil or fellow-inquirer, though in a very different\nguise or attitude towards himself, as matters no longer to be reasoned\nupon and understood, but to be seen rather, to be looked at and heard.\nDid not he see the angle of the earth's axis with the ecliptic, the\ndeflexions of the stars from their proper orbits with fatal results\nhere below, and the earth--wicked, unscriptural truth!--moving round\nthe sun, and those flashes of the eternal and unorbed light such as\nbring water, flowers, living things, out of the rocks, the dust?  The\nsinging of the planets: he could hear it, and might in time effect its\nnotation.  Having seen and heard, he might erelong speak also, truly\nand with authority, on such matters.  Could one but arrest it for one's\nself, for final transference to others, on the written or printed\npage--this beam of insight, or of inspiration!\n\nAlas! one result of its coming was that it encouraged delay.  If he set\nhand to the page, the firm halo, here a moment since, was gone, had\nflitted capriciously to the wall; passed next through the window, to\nthe wall of the garden; was dancing back in another moment upon the\ninnermost walls of one's own miserable brain, to swell there--that\nastounding white light!--rising steadily in the cup, the mental\nreceptacle, till it overflowed, and he lay faint and drowning in it. Or\nhe rose above it, as above a great liquid surface, and hung giddily\nover it--light, [165] simple, and absolute--ere he fell.  Or there was\na battle between light and darkness around him, with no way of escape\nfrom the baffling strokes, the lightning flashes; flashes of blindness\none might rather call them.  In truth, the intuitions of the night (for\nthey worked still, or tried to work, by night) became the sickly\nnightmares of the day, in which Prior Saint-Jean slept, or tried to\nsleep, or lay sometimes in a trance without food for many hours, from\nwhich he would spring up suddenly to crowd, against time, as much as he\ncould into his book with pen or brush; winged flowers, or stars with\nhuman limbs and faces, still intruding themselves, or mere notes of\nlight and darkness from the actual horizon.  There it all is still in\nthe faded gold and colours of the ancient volume--\"Prior Saint-Jean's\nfolly\":--till on a sudden the hand collapses, as he becomes aware of\nthat real, prosaic, broad daylight lying harsh upon the page, making\nhis delicately toned auroras seem but a patch of grey, and himself for\na moment, with a sigh of disgust, of self-reproach, to be his old\nunimpassioned monastic self once more.\n\nThe boy, for his part, was grown at last full of misgiving.  He ponders\nhow he may get the Prior away, or escape by himself, find his way back\nto the convent and report his master's condition, his strange loss of\nmemory for names and the like, his illusions about himself and [166]\nothers.  And he is more than ever distrustful now of his late beloved\nplaymate, who quietly obstructs any movement of the kind, and has\nundertaken, at the Prior's entreaty, to draw down the moon from the\nsky, for some shameful price, known to the magicians of that day.\n\nYet Apollyon, at all events, would still play as gaily as ever on\noccasion.  Hitherto they had played as young animals do; without\nplaythings namely, applying hand or foot only to their games.  But it\nhappened about this time that a grave was dug, a grave of unusual\ndepth, to be ready, in that fiery plaguesome weather, the first heat of\nveritable summer come suddenly, for the body of an ancient villager\nthen at the point of death.  In the drowsy afternoon Hyacinth awakes\nApollyon, to see the strange thing he has found at the grave-side,\namong the gravel and yellow bones cast up there.  He had wrested it\nwith difficulty from the hands of the half-crippled gravedigger, at\neighty still excitable by the mere touch of metal.\n\nThe like of it had indeed been found before, within living memory, in\nthis place of immemorial use as a graveyard--\"Devil's penny-pieces\"\npeople called them.  Five such lay hidden already in a dark corner of\nthe chapel, to keep them from superstitious employment.  To-day they\ncame out of hiding at last.  Apollyon knew the use of the thing at a\nglance; had put an expert hand to it forthwith; poises the [167]\ndiscus; sets it wheeling.  How easily it spins round under one's arm,\nin the groove of the bent fingers, slips thence smoothly like a knife\nflung from its sheath, as if for a course of perpetual motion!\nSplendescit eundo: it seems to burn as it goes.  It is heavier many\ntimes than it looks, and sharp-edged.  By night they have scoured and\npolished the corroded surfaces.  Apollyon promises Hyacinth and himself\nrare sport in the cool of the evening--an evening however, as it turned\nout, not less breathless than the day.\n\nIn the great heat Apollyon had flung aside, as if for ever, the last\nsorry remnant of his workman's attire, and challenged the boy to do the\nsame.  On the moonlit turf there, crouching, right foot foremost, and\nwith face turned backwards to the disk in his right hand, his whole\nbody, in that moment of rest, full of the circular motion he is about\nto commit to it, he seemed--beautiful pale spectre--to shine from\nwithin with a light of his own, like that of the glow-worm in the\nthicket, or the dead and rotten roots of the old trees.  And as if they\nhad a proper motion of their own in them, the disks, the quoits, ran,\namid the delighted shouts and laughter of the boy, as he follows,\nscarcely less swift, to score the points of their contact with the\ngrass.  Again and again they recommence, forgetful of the hours; while\nthe death-bell cries out harshly for the grave's occupant, and [168]\nthe corpse itself is borne along stealthily not far from them, and,\nunnoticed by either, the entire aspect of things has changed.  Under\nthe overcast sky it is in darkness they are playing, by guess and touch\nchiefly; and suddenly an icy blast of wind has lifted the roof from the\nold chapel, the trees are moaning in wild circular motion, and their\ndevil's penny-piece, when Apollyon throws it for the last time, is\nitself but a twirling leaf in the wind, till it sinks edgewise, sawing\nthrough the boy's face, uplifted in the dark to trace it, crushing in\nthe tender skull upon the brain.\n\nHis shout of laughter is turned in an instant to a cry of pain, of\nreproach; and in that which echoed it--an immense cry, as from the very\nheart of ancient tragedy, over the Picard wolds--it was as if that\nhalf-extinguished deity, its proper immensity, its old greatness and\npower, were restored for a moment.  The villagers in their beds\nwondered.  It was like the sound of some natural catastrophe.\n\nThe storm which followed was still in possession, still moving\ntearfully among the poplar groves, though it had spent its heat and\nthunder.  The last drops of the blood of Hyacinth still trickled\nthrough the thick masses of dark hair, where the tonsure had been. An\nabundant rain, mingling with the copious purple stream, had coloured\nthe grass all around where the corpse lay, stealing afar in tiny\nchannels.\n\n[169] So it was, when Apollyon, reduced in the morning light to his\nsmaller self, came with the other people of the Grange to gaze, to\nenquire, and found the Prior already there, speechless.  Clearly this\nwas no lightning stroke; and Apollyon straightway conceives certain\nvery human fears that, coming upon those antecedent suspicions of\nhimself, the boy's death may be thought the result of intention on his\npart.  He proposes to bury the body at once, with no delay for\nreligious rites, in that still uncovered grave, the bearers having fled\nfrom it in the tempest.\n\nAnd next day, fulfilling his annual custom, he went his way northward,\nwithout a word of farewell to Prior Saint-Jean, whom he leaves in fact\nunder suspicion of murder.  From the profound slumber which had\nfollowed the excitements of yesterday, the Prior awoke amid the sound\nof voices, the voices of the peasants singing no Christian song,\ncertainly, but a song which Apollyon himself had taught them, to\ndismiss him on his journey.  For, strange or not as it might be, they\nloved him, perhaps in spite of themselves; would certainly protect him\nat any risk.  Prior Saint-Jean arose, and looked forth--with wonder.  A\nbrief spell of sunshine amid the rain had clothed the vale with a\nmarvel of blue flowers, if it were not rather with remnants of the blue\nsky itself, fallen among the woods there.  But there too, in the little\ncourtyard, [170] the officers of justice are already in waiting to take\nhim, on the charge of having caused the death of his young server by\nviolence, in a fit of mania, induced by dissolute living in that\nsolitary place.  One hitherto so prosperous in life would, of course,\nhave his enemies.\n\nThe monastic authorities, however, claim him from the secular power, to\ncorrect his offence in their own way, and with friendly interpretation\nof the facts.  Madness, however wicked, being still madness, Prior, now\nsimple Brother, Saint-Jean, is detained in a sufficiently cheerful\napartment, in a region of the atmosphere likely to restore lost wits,\nwhence indeed he can still see the country--vallis monachorum.  The one\ndesire which from time to time fitfully rouses him again to animation\nfor a few moments is to return thither. Here then he remains in peace,\nostensibly for the completion of his great work.  He never again set\npen to it, consistent and clear now on nothing save that longing to be\nonce more at the Grange, that he may get well, or die and be well so.\nHe is like the damned spirit, think some of the brethren, saying \"I\nwill return to the house whence I came out.\"  Gazing thither daily for\nmany hours, he would mistake mere blue distance, when that was visible,\nfor blue flowers, for hyacinths, and wept at the sight; though blue, as\nhe observed, was the colour of Holy Mary's gown on the illuminated\npage, the colour of hope, of merciful [171] omnipresent deity.  The\nnecessary permission came with difficulty, just too late.  Brother\nSaint-Jean died, standing upright with an effort to gaze forth once\nmore, amid the preparations for his departure.\n\nNOTES\n\n142. *Published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Nov. 1893, and now\nreprinted by the kind permission of the proprietors.\n\n154. *Or sundial, as some maintain, though turned from the south.\n\n154. +Latin Vulgate (ed. Saint Jerome) Psalm 126, verse 1: \"canticum\ngraduum Salomonis nisi Dominus aedificaverit domum in vanum\nlaboraverunt qui aedificant eam nisi Dominus custodierit civitatem\nfrustra vigilavit qui custodit.\"  King James Bible's translation: \"When\nthe Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that\ndream.\"\n\n\n\nTHE CHILD IN THE HOUSE*\n\n[172] As Florian Deleal walked, one hot afternoon, he overtook by the\nwayside a poor aged man, and, as he seemed weary with the road, helped\nhim on with the burden which he carried, a certain distance. And as the\nman told his story, it chanced that he named the place, a little place\nin the neighbourhood of a great city, where Florian had passed his\nearliest years, but which he had never since seen, and, the story told,\nwent forward on his journey comforted.  And that night, like a reward\nfor his pity, a dream of that place came to Florian, a dream which did\nfor him the office of the finer sort of memory, bringing its object to\nmind with a great clearness, yet, as sometimes happens in dreams,\nraised a little above itself, and above ordinary retrospect.  The true\naspect of the place, especially of the house there in which he had\nlived as a child, the fashion of its doors, its hearths, its windows,\nthe very scent upon the air of it, was with him in sleep for a season;\nonly, with tints more musically blent on wall [173] and floor, and some\nfiner light and shadow running in and out along its curves and angles,\nand with all its little carvings daintier.  He awoke with a sigh at the\nthought of almost thirty years which lay between him and that place,\nyet with a flutter of pleasure still within him at the fair light, as\nif it were a smile, upon it.  And it happened that this accident of his\ndream was just the thing needed for the beginning of a certain design\nhe then had in view, the noting, namely, of some things in the story of\nhis spirit--in that process of brain-building by which we are, each one\nof us, what we are.  With the image of the place so clear and\nfavourable upon him, he fell to thinking of himself therein, and how\nhis thoughts had grown up to him.  In that half-spiritualised house he\ncould watch the better, over again, the gradual expansion of the soul\nwhich had come to be there--of which indeed, through the law which\nmakes the material objects about them so large an element in children's\nlives, it had actually become a part; inward and outward being woven\nthrough and through each other into one inextricable texture--half,\ntint and trace and accident of homely colour and form, from the wood\nand the bricks; half, mere soul-stuff, floated thither from who knows\nhow far.  In the house and garden of his dream he saw a child moving,\nand could divide the main streams at least of the winds that had played\non [174] him, and study so the first stage in that mental journey.\n\nThe old house, as when Florian talked of it afterwards he always called\nit, (as all children do, who can recollect a change of home, soon\nenough but not too soon to mark a period in their lives) really was an\nold house; and an element of French descent in its inmates--descent\nfrom Watteau, the old court-painter, one of whose gallant pieces still\nhung in one of the rooms--might explain, together with some other\nthings, a noticeable trimness and comely whiteness about everything\nthere--the curtains, the couches, the paint on the walls with which the\nlight and shadow played so delicately; might explain also the tolerance\nof the great poplar in the garden, a tree most often despised by\nEnglish people, but which French people love, having observed a certain\nfresh way its leaves have of dealing with the wind, making it sound, in\nnever so slight a stirring of the air, like running water.\n\nThe old-fashioned, low wainscoting went round the rooms, and up the\nstaircase with carved balusters and shadowy angles, landing half-way up\nat a broad window, with a swallow's nest below the sill, and the\nblossom of an old pear-tree showing across it in late April, against\nthe blue, below which the perfumed juice of the find of fallen fruit in\nautumn was so fresh.  At the next turning came the closet which held on\nits deep shelves the best china.  Little angel [175] faces and reedy\nflutings stood out round the fireplace of the children's room.  And on\nthe top of the house, above the large attic, where the white mice ran\nin the twilight--an infinite, unexplored wonderland of childish\ntreasures, glass beads, empty scent-bottles still sweet, thrum of\ncoloured silks, among its lumber--a flat space of roof, railed round,\ngave a view of the neighbouring steeples; for the house, as I said,\nstood near a great city, which sent up heavenwards, over the twisting\nweather-vanes, not seldom, its beds of rolling cloud and smoke, touched\nwith storm or sunshine.  But the child of whom I am writing did not\nhate the fog because of the crimson lights which fell from it sometimes\nupon the chimneys, and the whites which gleamed through its openings,\non summer mornings, on turret or pavement.  For it is false to suppose\nthat a child's sense of beauty is dependent on any choiceness or\nspecial fineness, in the objects which present themselves to it, though\nthis indeed comes to be the rule with most of us in later life;\nearlier, in some degree, we see inwardly; and the child finds for\nitself, and with unstinted delight, a difference for the sense, in\nthose whites and reds through the smoke on very homely buildings, and\nin the gold of the dandelions at the road-side, just beyond the houses,\nwhere not a handful of earth is virgin and untouched, in the lack of\nbetter ministries to its desire of beauty.\n\n[176] This house then stood not far beyond the gloom and rumours of the\ntown, among high garden-wall, bright all summer-time with Golden-rod,\nand brown-and-golden Wall-flower--Flos Parietis, as the children's\nLatin-reading father taught them to call it, while he was with them.\nTracing back the threads of his complex spiritual habit, as he was used\nin after years to do, Florian found that he owed to the place many\ntones of sentiment afterwards customary with him, certain inward lights\nunder which things most naturally presented themselves to him.  The\ncoming and going of travellers to the town along the way, the shadow of\nthe streets, the sudden breath of the neighbouring gardens, the\nsingular brightness of bright weather there, its singular darknesses\nwhich linked themselves in his mind to certain engraved illustrations\nin the old big Bible at home, the coolness of the dark, cavernous shops\nround the great church, with its giddy winding stair up to the pigeons\nand the bells--a citadel of peace in the heart of the trouble--all this\nacted on his childish fancy, so that ever afterwards the like aspects\nand incidents never failed to throw him into a well-recognised\nimaginative mood, seeming actually to have become a part of the texture\nof his mind.  Also, Florian could trace home to this point a pervading\npreference in himself for a kind of comeliness and dignity, an urbanity\nliterally, in modes of life, which he connected with the pale [177]\npeople of towns, and which made him susceptible to a kind of exquisite\nsatisfaction in the trimness and well-considered grace of certain\nthings and persons he afterwards met with, here and there, in his way\nthrough the world.\n\nSo the child of whom I am writing lived on there quietly; things\nwithout thus ministering to him, as he sat daily at the window with the\nbirdcage hanging below it, and his mother taught him to read, wondering\nat the ease with which he learned, and at the quickness of his memory.\nThe perfume of the little flowers of the lime-tree fell through the air\nupon them like rain; while time seemed to move ever more slowly to the\nmurmur of the bees in it, till it almost stood still on June\nafternoons.  How insignificant, at the moment, seem the influences of\nthe sensible things which are tossed and fall and lie about us, so, or\nso, in the environment of early childhood.  How indelibly, as we\nafterwards discover, they affect us; with what capricious attractions\nand associations they figure themselves on the white paper, the smooth\nwax, of our ingenuous souls, as \"with lead in the rock for ever,\"\ngiving form and feature, and as it were assigned house-room in our\nmemory, to early experiences of feeling and thought, which abide with\nus ever afterwards, thus, and not otherwise.  The realities and\npassions, the rumours of the greater world without, steal in upon us,\neach by its own special little passage-way, through the wall of custom\n[178] about us; and never afterwards quite detach themselves from this\nor that accident, or trick, in the mode of their first entrance to us.\nOur susceptibilities, the discovery of our powers, manifold\nexperiences--our various experiences of the coming and going of bodily\npain, for instance--belong to this or the other well-remembered place\nin the material habitation--that little white room with the window\nacross which the heavy blossoms could beat so peevishly in the wind,\nwith just that particular catch or throb, such a sense of teasing in\nit, on gusty mornings; and the early habitation thus gradually becomes\na sort of material shrine or sanctuary of sentiment; a system of\nvisible symbolism interweaves itself through all our thoughts and\npassions; and irresistibly, little shapes, voices, accidents--the angle\nat which the sun in the morning fell on the pillow--become parts of the\ngreat chain wherewith we are bound.\n\nThus far, for Florian, what all this had determined was a peculiarly\nstrong sense of home--so forcible a motive with all of us--prompting to\nus our customary love of the earth, and the larger part of our fear of\ndeath, that revulsion we have from it, as from something strange,\nuntried, unfriendly; though life-long imprisonment, they tell you, and\nfinal banishment from home is a thing bitterer still; the looking\nforward to but a short space, a mere childish gouter and dessert of it,\nbefore the end, being so great a resource of [179] effort to pilgrims\nand wayfarers, and the soldier in distant quarters, and lending, in\nlack of that, some power of solace to the thought of sleep in the home\nchurchyard, at least--dead cheek by dead cheek, and with the rain\nsoaking in upon one from above.\n\nSo powerful is this instinct, and yet accidents like those I have been\nspeaking of so mechanically determine it; its essence being indeed the\nearly familiar, as constituting our ideal, or typical conception, of\nrest and security.  Out of so many possible conditions, just this for\nyou and that for me, brings ever the unmistakeable realisation of the\ndelightful chez soi; this for the Englishman, for me and you, with the\nclosely-drawn white curtain and the shaded lamp; that, quite other, for\nthe wandering Arab, who folds his tent every morning, and makes his\nsleeping-place among haunted ruins, or in old tombs.\n\nWith Florian then the sense of home became singularly intense, his good\nfortune being that the special character of his home was in itself so\nessentially home-like.  As after many wanderings I have come to fancy\nthat some parts of Surrey and Kent are, for Englishmen, the true\nlandscape, true home-counties, by right, partly, of a certain earthy\nwarmth in the yellow of the sand below their gorse-bushes, and of a\ncertain grey-blue mist after rain, in the hollows of the hills there,\nwelcome to fatigued eyes, and never seen farther south; so I think that\nthe sort of [180] house I have described, with precisely those\nproportions of red-brick and green, and with a just perceptible\nmonotony in the subdued order of it, for its distinguishing note, is\nfor Englishmen at least typically home-life. And so for Florian that\ngeneral human instinct was reinforced by this special home-likeness in\nthe place his wandering soul had happened to light on, as, in the\nsecond degree, its body and earthly tabernacle; the sense of harmony\nbetween his soul and its physical environment became, for a time at\nleast, like perfectly played music, and the life led there singularly\ntranquil and filled with a curious sense of self-possession.  The love\nof security, of an habitually undisputed standing-ground or\nsleeping-place, came to count for much in the generation and correcting\nof his thoughts, and afterwards as a salutary principle of restraint in\nall his wanderings of spirit.  The wistful yearning towards home, in\nabsence from it, as the shadows of evening deepened, and he followed in\nthought what was doing there from hour to hour, interpreted to him much\nof a yearning and regret he experienced afterwards, towards he knew not\nwhat, out of strange ways of feeling and thought in which, from time to\ntime, his spirit found itself alone; and in the tears shed in such\nabsences there seemed always to be some soul-subduing foretaste of what\nhis last tears might be.\n\nAnd the sense of security could hardly have [181] been deeper, the\nquiet of the child's soul being one with the quiet of its home, a place\n\"inclosed\" and \"sealed.\"  But upon this assured place, upon the child's\nassured soul which resembled it, there came floating in from the larger\nworld without, as at windows left ajar unknowingly, or over the high\ngarden walls, two streams of impressions, the sentiments of beauty and\npain--recognitions of the visible, tangible, audible loveliness of\nthings, as a very real and somewhat tyrannous element in them--and of\nthe sorrow of the world, of grown people and children and animals, as a\nthing not to be put by in them.  From this point he could trace two\npredominant processes of mental change in him--the growth of an almost\ndiseased sensibility to the spectacle of suffering, and, parallel with\nthis, the rapid growth of a certain capacity of fascination by bright\ncolour and choice form--the sweet curvings, for instance, of the lips\nof those who seemed to him comely persons, modulated in such delicate\nunison to the things they said or sang,--marking early the activity in\nhim of a more than customary sensuousness, \"the lust of the eye,\" as\nthe Preacher says, which might lead him, one day, how far!  Could he\nhave foreseen the weariness of the way!  In music sometimes the two\nsorts of impressions came together, and he would weep, to the surprise\nof older people.  Tears of joy too the child knew, also to older\npeople's surprise; real tears, once, of relief from long-strung, [182]\nchildish expectation, when he found returned at evening, with new roses\nin her cheeks, the little sister who had been to a place where there\nwas a wood, and brought back for him a treasure of fallen acorns, and\nblack crow's feathers, and his peace at finding her again near him\nmingled all night with some intimate sense of the distant forest, the\nrumour of its breezes, with the glossy blackbirds aslant and the\nbranches lifted in them, and of the perfect nicety of the little cups\nthat fell.  So those two elementary apprehensions of the tenderness and\nof the colour in things grew apace in him, and were seen by him\nafterwards to send their roots back into the beginnings of life.\n\nLet me note first some of the occasions of his recognition of the\nelement of pain in things--incidents, now and again, which seemed\nsuddenly to awake in him the whole force of that sentiment which Goethe\nhas called the Weltschmerz, and in which the concentrated sorrow of the\nworld seemed suddenly to lie heavy upon him.  A book lay in an old\nbook-case, of which he cared to remember one picture--a woman sitting,\nwith hands bound behind her, the dress, the cap, the hair, folded with\na simplicity which touched him strangely, as if not by her own hands,\nbut with some ambiguous care at the hands of others--Queen Marie\nAntoinette, on her way to execution--we all remember David's drawing,\nmeant merely to make her ridiculous.  The face [183] that had been so\nhigh had learned to be mute and resistless; but out of its very\nresistlessness, seemed now to call on men to have pity, and forbear;\nand he took note of that, as he closed the book, as a thing to look at\nagain, if he should at any time find himself tempted to be cruel.\nAgain, he would never quite forget the appeal in the small sister's\nface, in the garden under the lilacs, terrified at a spider lighted on\nher sleeve.  He could trace back to the look then noted a certain mercy\nhe conceived always for people in fear, even of little things, which\nseemed to make him, though but for a moment, capable of almost any\nsacrifice of himself. Impressible, susceptible persons, indeed, who had\nhad their sorrows, lived about him; and this sensibility was due in\npart to the tacit influence of their presence, enforcing upon him\nhabitually the fact that there are those who pass their days, as a\nmatter of course, in a sort of \"going quietly.\"  Most poignantly of all\nhe could recall, in unfading minutest circumstance, the cry on the\nstair, sounding bitterly through the house, and struck into his soul\nfor ever, of an aged woman, his father's sister, come now to announce\nhis death in distant India; how it seemed to make the aged woman like a\nchild again; and, he knew not why, but this fancy was full of pity to\nhim. There were the little sorrows of the dumb animals too--of the\nwhite angora, with a dark tail like an ermine's, and a face like a\n[184] flower, who fell into a lingering sickness, and became quite\ndelicately human in its valetudinarianism, and came to have a hundred\ndifferent expressions of voice--how it grew worse and worse, till it\nbegan to feel the light too much for it, and at last, after one wild\nmorning of pain, the little soul flickered away from the body, quite\nworn to death already, and now but feebly retaining it.\n\nSo he wanted another pet; and as there were starlings about the place,\nwhich could be taught to speak, one of them was caught, and he meant to\ntreat it kindly; but in the night its young ones could be heard crying\nafter it, and the responsive cry of the mother-bird towards them; and\nat last, with the first light, though not till after some debate with\nhimself, he went down and opened the cage, and saw a sharp bound of the\nprisoner up to her nestlings; and therewith came the sense of\nremorse,--that he too was become an accomplice in moving, to the limit\nof his small power, the springs and handles of that great machine in\nthings, constructed so ingeniously to play pain-fugues on the delicate\nnerve-work of living creatures.\n\nI have remarked how, in the process of our brain-building, as the house\nof thought in which we live gets itself together, like some airy\nbird's-nest of floating thistle-down and chance straws, compact at\nlast, little accidents have their consequence; and thus it happened\nthat, as he [185] walked one evening, a garden gate, usually closed,\nstood open; and lo! within, a great red hawthorn in full flower,\nembossing heavily the bleached and twisted trunk and branches, so aged\nthat there were but few green leaves thereon--a plumage of tender,\ncrimson fire out of the heart of the dry wood. The perfume of the tree\nhad now and again reached him, in the currents of the wind, over the\nwall, and he had wondered what might be behind it, and was now allowed\nto fill his arms with the flowers--flowers enough for all the old\nblue-china pots along the chimney-piece, making fete in the children's\nroom.  Was it some periodic moment in the expansion of soul within him,\nor mere trick of heat in the heavily-laden summer air?\n\nBut the beauty of the thing struck home to him feverishly; and in\ndreams all night he loitered along a magic roadway of crimson flowers,\nwhich seemed to open ruddily in thick, fresh masses about his feet, and\nfill softly all the little hollows in the banks on either side.  Always\nafterwards, summer by summer, as the flowers came on, the blossom of\nthe red hawthorn still seemed to him absolutely the reddest of all\nthings; and the goodly crimson, still alive in the works of old\nVenetian masters or old Flemish tapestries, called out always from afar\nthe recollection of the flame in those perishing little petals, as it\npulsed gradually out of them, kept long in the drawers of an old\ncabinet.\n\n[186] Also then, for the first time, he seemed to experience a\npassionateness in his relation to fair outward objects, an inexplicable\nexcitement in their presence, which disturbed him, and from which he\nhalf longed to be free.  A touch of regret or desire mingled all night\nwith the remembered presence of the red flowers, and their perfume in\nthe darkness about him; and the longing for some undivined, entire\npossession of them was the beginning of a revelation to him, growing\never clearer, with the coming of the gracious summer guise of fields\nand trees and persons in each succeeding year, of a certain, at times\nseemingly exclusive, predominance in his interests, of beautiful\nphysical things, a kind of tyranny of the senses over him.\n\nIn later years he came upon philosophies which occupied him much in the\nestimate of the proportion of the sensuous and the ideal elements in\nhuman knowledge, the relative parts they bear in it; and, in his\nintellectual scheme, was led to assign very little to the abstract\nthought, and much to its sensible vehicle or occasion.  Such\nmetaphysical speculation did but reinforce what was instinctive in his\nway of receiving the world, and for him, everywhere, that sensible\nvehicle or occasion became, perhaps only too surely, the necessary\nconcomitant of any perception of things, real enough to be of any\nweight or reckoning, in his house of thought.  There were times when he\ncould think of the [187] necessity he was under of associating all\nthoughts to touch and sight, as a sympathetic link between himself and\nactual, feeling, living objects; a protest in favour of real men and\nwomen against mere grey, unreal abstractions; and he remembered\ngratefully how the Christian religion, hardly less than the religion of\nthe ancient Greeks, translating so much of its spiritual verity into\nthings that may be seen, condescends in part to sanction this\ninfirmity, if so it be, of our human existence, wherein the world of\nsense is so much with us, and welcomed this thought as a kind of keeper\nand sentinel over his soul therein.  But certainly, he came more and\nmore to be unable to care for, or think of soul but as in an actual\nbody, or of any world but that wherein are water and trees, and where\nmen and women look, so or so, and press actual hands.  It was the trick\neven his pity learned, fastening those who suffered in anywise to his\naffections by a kind of sensible attachments.  He would think of\nJulian, fallen into incurable sickness, as spoiled in the sweet blossom\nof his skin like pale amber, and his honey-like hair; of Cecil, early\ndead, as cut off from the lilies, from golden summer days, from women's\nvoices; and then what comforted him a little was the thought of the\nturning of the child's flesh to violets in the turf above him.  And\nthinking of the very poor, it was not the things which most men care\nmost for that he yearned to give them; [188] but fairer roses, perhaps,\nand power to taste quite as they will, at their ease and not\ntask-burdened, a certain desirable, clear light in the new morning,\nthrough which sometimes he had noticed them, quite unconscious of it,\non their way to their early toil.\n\nSo he yielded himself to these things, to be played upon by them like a\nmusical instrument, and began to note with deepening watchfulness, but\nalways with some puzzled, unutterable longing in his enjoyment, the\nphases of the seasons and of the growing or waning day, down even to\nthe shadowy changes wrought on bare wall or ceiling--the light cast up\nfrom the snow, bringing out their darkest angles; the brown light in\nthe cloud, which meant rain; that almost too austere clearness, in the\nprotracted light of the lengthening day, before warm weather began, as\nif it lingered but to make a severer workday, with the school-books\nopened earlier and later; that beam of June sunshine, at last, as he\nlay awake before the time, a way of gold-dust across the darkness; all\nthe humming, the freshness, the perfume of the garden seemed to lie\nupon it--and coming in one afternoon in September, along the red gravel\nwalk, to look for a basket of yellow crab-apples left in the cool, old\nparlour, he remembered it the more, and how the colours struck upon\nhim, because a wasp on one bitten apple stung him, and he felt the\npassion of [189] sudden, severe pain.  For this too brought its curious\nreflexions; and, in relief from it, he would wonder over it--how it had\nthen been with him--puzzled at the depth of the charm or spell over\nhim, which lay, for a little while at least, in the mere absence of\npain; once, especially, when an older boy taught him to make flowers of\nsealing-wax, and he had burnt his hand badly at the lighted taper, and\nbeen unable to sleep.  He remembered that also afterwards, as a sort of\ntypical thing--a white vision of heat about him, clinging closely,\nthrough the languid scent of the ointments put upon the place to make\nit well.\n\nAlso, as he felt this pressure upon him of the sensible world, then, as\noften afterwards, there would come another sort of curious questioning\nhow the last impressions of eye and ear might happen to him, how they\nwould find him--the scent of the last flower, the soft yellowness of\nthe last morning, the last recognition of some object of affection,\nhand or voice; it could not be but that the latest look of the eyes,\nbefore their final closing, would be strangely vivid; one would go with\nthe hot tears, the cry, the touch of the wistful bystander, impressed\nhow deeply on one! or would it be, perhaps, a mere frail retiring of\nall things, great or little, away from one, into a level distance?\n\nFor with this desire of physical beauty mingled itself early the fear\nof death--the fear of death [190] intensified by the desire of beauty.\nHitherto he had never gazed upon dead faces, as sometimes, afterwards,\nat the Morgue in Paris, or in that fair cemetery at Munich, where all\nthe dead must go and lie in state before burial, behind glass windows,\namong the flowers and incense and holy candles--the aged clergy with\ntheir sacred ornaments, the young men in their dancing-shoes and\nspotless white linen--after which visits, those waxen, resistless faces\nwould always live with him for many days, making the broadest sunshine\nsickly.  The child had heard indeed of the death of his father, and\nhow, in the Indian station, a fever had taken him, so that though not\nin action he had yet died as a soldier; and hearing of the\n\"resurrection of the just,\" he could think of him as still abroad in\nthe world, somehow, for his protection--a grand, though perhaps rather\nterrible figure, in beautiful soldier's things, like the figure in the\npicture of Joshua's Vision in the Bible--and of that, round which the\nmourners moved so softly, and afterwards with such solemn singing, as\nbut a worn-out garment left at a deserted lodging.  So it was, until on\na summer day he walked with his mother through a fair churchyard.  In a\nbright dress he rambled among the graves, in the gay weather, and so\ncame, in one corner, upon an open grave for a child--a dark space on\nthe brilliant grass--the black mould lying heaped up round it, weighing\ndown the little jewelled [191] branches of the dwarf rose-bushes in\nflower.  And therewith came, full-grown, never wholly to leave him,\nwith the certainty that even children do sometimes die, the physical\nhorror of death, with its wholly selfish recoil from the association of\nlower forms of life, and the suffocating weight above.  No benign,\ngrave figure in beautiful soldier's things any longer abroad in the\nworld for his protection! only a few poor, piteous bones; and above\nthem, possibly, a certain sort of figure he hoped not to see.  For\nsitting one day in the garden below an open window, he heard people\ntalking, and could not but listen, how, in a sleepless hour, a sick\nwoman had seen one of the dead sitting beside her, come to call her\nhence; and from the broken talk evolved with much clearness the notion\nthat not all those dead people had really departed to the churchyard,\nnor were quite so motionless as they looked, but led a secret,\nhalf-fugitive life in their old homes, quite free by night, though\nsometimes visible in the day, dodging from room to room, with no great\ngoodwill towards those who shared the place with them.  All night the\nfigure sat beside him in the reveries of his broken sleep, and was not\nquite gone in the morning--an odd, irreconcileable new member of the\nhousehold, making the sweet familiar chambers unfriendly and suspect by\nits uncertain presence.  He could have hated the dead he had pitied so,\nfor being [192] thus.  Afterwards he came to think of those poor,\nhome-returning ghosts, which all men have fancied to themselves--the\nrevenants--pathetically, as crying, or beating with vain hands at the\ndoors, as the wind came, their cries distinguishable in it as a wilder\ninner note.  But, always making death more unfamiliar still, that old\nexperience would ever, from time to time, return to him; even in the\nliving he sometimes caught its likeness; at any time or place, in a\nmoment, the faint atmosphere of the chamber of death would be breathed\naround him, and the image with the bound chin, the quaint smile, the\nstraight, stiff feet, shed itself across the air upon the bright\ncarpet, amid the gayest company, or happiest communing with himself.\n\nTo most children the sombre questionings to which impressions like\nthese attach themselves, if they come at all, are actually suggested by\nreligious books, which therefore they often regard with much secret\ndistaste, and dismiss, as far as possible, from their habitual thoughts\nas a too depressing element in life.  To Florian such impressions,\nthese misgivings as to the ultimate tendency of the years, of the\nrelationship between life and death, had been suggested spontaneously\nin the natural course of his mental growth by a strong innate sense for\nthe soberer tones in things, further strengthened by actual\ncircumstances; and religious sentiment, that [193] system of biblical\nideas in which he had been brought up, presented itself to him as a\nthing that might soften and dignify, and light up as with a \"lively\nhope,\" a melancholy already deeply settled in him.  So he yielded\nhimself easily to religious impressions, and with a kind of mystical\nappetite for sacred things; the more as they came to him through a\nsaintly person who loved him tenderly, and believed that this early\npre-occupation with them already marked the child out for a saint.  He\nbegan to love, for their own sakes, church lights, holy days, all that\nbelonged to the comely order of the sanctuary, the secrets of its white\nlinen, and holy vessels, and fonts of pure water; and its hieratic\npurity and simplicity became the type of something he desired always to\nhave about him in actual life.  He pored over the pictures in religious\nbooks, and knew by heart the exact mode in which the wrestling angel\ngrasped Jacob, how Jacob looked in his mysterious sleep, how the bells\nand pomegranates were attached to the hem of Aaron's vestment, sounding\nsweetly as he glided over the turf of the holy place.  His way of\nconceiving religion came then to be in effect what it ever afterwards\nremained--a sacred history indeed, but still more a sacred ideal, a\ntranscendent version or representation, under intenser and more\nexpressive light and shade, of human life and its familiar or\nexceptional incidents, birth, death, marriage, [194] youth, age, tears,\njoy, rest, sleep, waking--a mirror, towards which men might turn away\ntheir eyes from vanity and dullness, and see themselves therein as\nangels, with their daily meat and drink, even, become a kind of sacred\ntransaction--a complementary strain or burden, applied to our every-day\nexistence, whereby the stray snatches of music in it re-set themselves,\nand fall into the scheme of some higher and more consistent harmony.  A\nplace adumbrated itself in his thoughts, wherein those sacred\npersonalities, which are at once the reflex and the pattern of our\nnobler phases of life, housed themselves; and this region in his\nintellectual scheme all subsequent experience did but tend still\nfurther to realise and define.  Some ideal, hieratic persons he would\nalways need to occupy it and keep a warmth there. And he could hardly\nunderstand those who felt no such need at all, finding themselves quite\nhappy without such heavenly companionship, and sacred double of their\nlife, beside them.\n\nThus a constant substitution of the typical for the actual took place\nin his thoughts.  Angels might be met by the way, under English elm or\nbeech-tree; mere messengers seemed like angels, bound on celestial\nerrands; a deep mysticity brooded over real meetings and partings;\nmarriages were made in heaven; and deaths also, with hands of angels\nthereupon, to bear soul and body quietly asunder, each to its [195]\nappointed rest.  All the acts and accidents of daily life borrowed a\nsacred colour and significance; the very colours of things became\nthemselves weighty with meanings like the sacred stuffs of Moses'\ntabernacle, full of penitence or peace.  Sentiment, congruous in the\nfirst instance only with those divine transactions, the deep, effusive\nunction of the House of Bethany, was assumed as the due attitude for\nthe reception of our every-day existence; and for a time he walked\nthrough the world in a sustained, not unpleasurable awe, generated by\nthe habitual recognition, beside every circumstance and event of life,\nof its celestial correspondent.\n\nSensibility--the desire of physical beauty--a strange biblical awe,\nwhich made any reference to the unseen act on him like solemn\nmusic--these qualities the child took away with him, when, at about the\nage of twelve years, he left the old house, and was taken to live in\nanother place.  He had never left home before, and, anticipating much\nfrom this change, had long dreamed over it, jealously counting the days\ntill the time fixed for departure should come; had been a little\ncareless about others even, in his strong desire for it--when Lewis\nfell sick, for instance, and they must wait still two days longer. At\nlast the morning came, very fine; and all things--the very pavement\nwith its dust, at the roadside--seemed to have a white, pearl-like\nlustre in them.  They were to travel by a [196] favourite road on which\nhe had often walked a certain distance, and on one of those two\nprisoner days, when Lewis was sick, had walked farther than ever\nbefore, in his great desire to reach the new place.  They had started\nand gone a little way when a pet bird was found to have been left\nbehind, and must even now--so it presented itself to him--have already\nall the appealing fierceness and wild self-pity at heart of one left by\nothers to perish of hunger in a closed house; and he returned to fetch\nit, himself in hardly less stormy distress.  But as he passed in search\nof it from room to room, lying so pale, with a look of meekness in\ntheir denudation, and at last through that little, stripped white room,\nthe aspect of the place touched him like the face of one dead; and a\nclinging back towards it came over him, so intense that he knew it\nwould last long, and spoiling all his pleasure in the realisation of a\nthing so eagerly anticipated.  And so, with the bird found, but himself\nin an agony of home-sickness, thus capriciously sprung up within him,\nhe was driven quickly away, far into the rural distance, so fondly\nspeculated on, of that favourite country-road.\n\nNOTES\n\n172. *Published in Macmillan's Magazine, Aug. 1878.\n\n\n\nEMERALD UTHWART*\n\n[197] WE smile at epitaphs--at those recent enough to be read easily;\nsmile, for the most part, at what for the most part is an unreal and\noften vulgar branch of literature; yet a wide one, with its flowers\nhere or there, such as make us regret now and again not to have\ngathered more carefully in our wanderings a fair average of the like.\nTheir very simplicity, of course, may set one's thoughts in motion to\nfill up the scanty tale, and those of the young at least are almost\nalways worth while.  At Siena, for instance, in the great Dominican\nchurch, even with the impassioned work of Sodoma at hand, you may\nlinger in a certain dimly lit chapel to spell out the black-letter\nmemorials of the German students who died here--aetatis flore!--at the\nUniversity, famous early in the last century; young nobles chiefly, far\nfrom the Rhine, from Nuremberg, or Leipsic.  Note one in particular!\nLoving parents and elder brother meant to record [198] carefully the\nvery days of the lad's poor life--annos, menses, dies; sent the order,\ndoubtless, from the distant old castle in the Fatherland, but not quite\nexplicitly; the spaces for the numbers remain still unfilled; and they\nnever came to see.  After two centuries the omission is not to be\nrectified; and the young man's memorial has perhaps its propriety as it\nstands, with those unnumbered, or numberless, days.  \"Full of\naffections,\" observed, once upon a time, a great lover of boys and\nyoung men, speaking to a large company of them:--\"full of affections,\nfull of powers, full of occupation, how naturally might the younger\npart of us especially (more naturally than the older) receive the\ntidings that there are things to be loved and things to be done which\nshall never pass away. We feel strong, we feel active, we feel full of\nlife; and these feelings do not altogether deceive us, for we shall\nlive for ever. We see a long prospect before us, for which it is worth\nwhile to work, even with much labour; for we are as yet young, and the\npast portion of our lives is but small in comparison of that which\nprobably remains to us.  It is most true!  The past years of our life\nare absolutely beyond proportion small in comparison with those which\ncertainly remain to us.\"\n\nIn a very different neighbourhood, here at home, in a remote Sussex\nchurchyard, you may read that Emerald Uthwart was born on such a [199]\nday, \"at Chase Lodge, in this parish; and died there,\" on a day in the\nyear 18--, aged twenty-six.  Think, thereupon, of the years of a very\nEnglish existence passed without a lost week in that bloomy English\nplace, amid its English lawns and flower-beds, its oldish brick and\nraftered plaster; you may see it still, not far off, on a clearing of\nthe wooded hill-side sloping gradually to the sea.  But you think\nwrong.  Emerald Uthwart, in almost unbroken absence from his home,\nlonged greatly for it, but left it early and came back there only to\ndie, in disgrace, as he conceived; of which it was he died there,\nfinding the sense of the place all around him at last, like blessed oil\nin one's wounds.\n\nHow they shook their musk from them!--those gardens, among which the\nyoungest son, but not the youngest child, grew up, little considered\ntill he returned there in those last years.  The rippling note of the\nbirds he distinguished so acutely seemed a part of this tree-less\nplace, open freely to sun and air, such as rose and carnation loved, in\nthe midst of the old disafforested chase.  Brothers and sisters, all\nalike were gardeners, methodically intimate with their flowers. You\nneed words compact rather of perfume than of colour to describe them,\nin nice annual order; terms for perfume, as immediate and definite as\nred, purple, and yellow.  Flowers there were which seemed to yield\ntheir sweetest in the faint sea-salt, when the loosening wind [200] was\nstrong from the south-west; some which found their way slowly towards\nthe neighbourhood of the old oaks and beech-trees. Others consorted\nmost freely with the wall-fruit, or seemed made for pot-pourri to\nsweeten the old black mahogany furniture.  The sweet-pea stacks loved\nthe broad path through the kitchen garden; the old-fashioned garden\nazalea was the making of a nosegay, with its honey which clung to one's\nfinger.  There were flowers all the sweeter for a battle with the rain;\na flower like aromatic medicine; another like summer lingering into\nwinter; it ripened as fruit does; and another was like August, his own\nbirthday time, dropped into March.\n\nThe very mould here, rich old black gardener's earth, was flower-seed;\nand beyond, the fields, one after another, through the white gates\nbreaking the well-grown hedge-rows, were hardly less garden-like;\nlittle velvety fields, little with the true sweet English littleness of\nour little island, our land of vignettes.  Here all was little; the\nvery church where they went to pray, to sit, the ancient Uthwarts\nsleeping all around outside under the windows, deposited there as\nquietly as fallen trees on their native soil, and almost unrecorded, as\nthere had been almost nothing to record; where however, Sunday after\nSunday, Emerald Uthwart reads, wondering, the solitary memorial of one\nsoldierly member of his race, who had,--well! who had not died here\n[201] at home, in his bed.  How wretched! how fine! how inconceivably\ngreat and difficult!--not for him!  And yet, amid all its littleness,\nhow large his sense of liberty in the place he, the cadet doomed to\nleave it--his birth-place, where he is also so early to die--had loved\nbetter than any one of them! Enjoying hitherto all the freedom of the\nalmost grown-up brothers, the unrepressed noise, the unchecked hours,\nthe old rooms, all their own way, he is literally without the\nconsciousness of rule.  Only, when the long irresponsible day is over,\namid the dew, the odours, of summer twilight, they roll their\ncricket-field against to-morrow's game.  So it had always been with the\nUthwarts; they never went to school.  In the great attic he has chosen\nfor himself Emerald awakes;--it was a rule, sanitary, almost medical,\nnever to rouse the children--rises to play betimes; or, if he choose,\nwith window flung open to the roses, the sea, turns to sleep again,\ndeliberately, deliciously, under the fine old blankets.\n\nA rather sensuous boy! you may suppose, amid the wholesome, natural\nself-indulgence of a very English home.  His days began there: it\nclosed again, after an interval of the larger number of them,\nindulgently, mercifully, round his end.  For awhile he became its\ncentre, old habits changing, the old furniture rearranged about him,\nfor the first time in many generations, though he left it now with\nsomething like [202] resentment in his heart, as if thrust harshly\naway, sent ablactatus a matre; made an effort thereon to snap the last\nthread which bound him to it.  Yet it would come back upon him\nsometimes, amid so different a scene, as through a suddenly opened\ndoor, or a rent in the wall, with softer thoughts of his\npeople,--there, or not there,--and a sudden, dutiful effort on his part\nto rekindle wasting affection.\n\nThe youngest of four sons, but not the youngest of the family!--you\nconceive the sort of negligence that creeps over even the kindest\nmaternities, in such case; unless, perhaps, sickness, or the sort of\nmisfortune, making the last first for the affectionate, that brought\nEmerald back at length to die contentedly, interferes with the way of\nnature.  Little by little he comes to understand that, while the\nbrothers are indulged with lessons at home, are some of them free even\nof these and placed already in the world, where, however, there remains\nno place for him, he is to go to school, chiefly for the convenience of\nothers--they are going to be much away from home!--that now for the\nfirst time, as he says to himself, an old-English Uthwart is to pass\nunder the yoke.  The tutor in the house, meantime, aware of some\nfascination in the lad, teaches him, at his own irregularly chosen\nhours, more carefully than the others; exerts all his gifts for the\npurpose, winning him on almost insensibly to youthful proficiency in\nthose difficult rudiments.\n\n[203] See him as he stands, seemingly rooted in the spot where he has\ncome to flower!  He departs, however, a few days before the departure\nof the rest--some to foreign parts, the brothers, who shut up the old\nplace, to town.  For a moment, he makes an effort to figure to himself\nthose coming absences as but exceptional intervals in his life here; he\nwill count the days, going more quickly so; find his pleasure in\nwatching the sands fall, as even the sands of time at school must.  In\nfact, he was scarcely ever to lie at ease here again, till he came to\ntake his final leave of it, lying at his length so.  In brief holidays\nhe rejoins his people, anywhere, anyhow, in a sort of hurry and\nmakeshift:--Flos Parietis! thus carelessly plucked forth.  Emerald\nUthwart was born on such a day \"at Chase Lodge, in this parish, and\ndied there.\"\n\nSee him then as he stands! counting now the hours that remain, on the\neve of that first emigration, and look away next at the other place,\nwhich through centuries has been forming to receive him; from those\ngarden-beds, now at their richest, but where all is so winsomely\nlittle, to that place of \"great matters,\" great stones, great memories\nout of reach.  Why! the Uthwarts had scarcely had more memories than\ntheir woods, noiselessly deciduous; or their prehistoric, entirely\nunprogressive, unrecording forefathers, in or before the days of the\nDruids.  Centuries of almost \"still\" life--of birth, death, [204] and\nthe rest, as merely natural processes--had made them and their home\nwhat we find them.  Centuries of conscious endeavour, on the other\nhand, had builded, shaped, and coloured the place, a small cell, which\nEmerald Uthwart was now to occupy; a place such as our most\ncharacteristic English education has rightly tended to \"find itself a\nhouse\" in--a place full, for those who came within its influence, of a\nwill of its own.  Here everything, one's very games, have gone by rule\nonwards from the dim old monastic days, and the Benedictine school for\nnovices with the wholesome severities which have descended to our own\ntime.  Like its customs,--there's a book in the cathedral archives with\nthe names, for centuries Past, of the \"scholars\" who have missed church\nat the proper times for going there--like its customs, well-worn yet\nwell-preserved, time-stained, time-engrained, time-mellowed, the\nvenerable Norman or English stones of this austere, beautifully\nproportioned place look like marble, to which Emerald's softly nurtured\nbeing, his careless wild-growth must now adapt itself, though somewhat\npainfully recoiling from contact with what seems so hard also, and\nbright, and cold.  From his native world of soft garden touches,\ncarnation and rose (they had been everywhere in those last weeks),\nwhere every one did just what he liked, he was passed now to this world\nof grey stone; and here it was always the decisive word [205] of\ncommand.  That old warrior Uthwart's record in the church at home, so\nfine, yet so wretched, so unspeakably great and difficult! seemed\nwritten here everywhere around him, as he stood feeling himself fit\nonly to be taught, to be drilled into, his small compartment; in every\nmovement of his companions, with their quaint confining little cloth\ngowns; in the keen, clear, well-authorised dominancy of some, the\ninstant submission of others.  In fact, by one of our wise English\ncompromises, we still teach our so modern boys the Classics; a lesson\nin attention and patience, at the least.  Nay! by a double compromise,\nwith delightful physiognomic results sometimes, we teach them their\npagan Latin and Greek under the shadow of medieval church-towers, amid\nthe haunts, the traditions, and with something of the discipline, of\nmonasticism; for which, as is noticeable, the English have never wholly\nlost an early inclination.  The French and others have swept their\nscholastic houses empty of it, with pedantic fidelity to their\ntheories.  English pedants may succeed in doing the like.  But the\nresult of our older method has had its value so far, at least, say! for\nthe careful aesthetic observer.  It is of such diagonal influences,\nthrough complication of influence, that expression comes, in life, in\nour culture, in the very faces of men and boys--of these boys.  Nothing\ncould better harmonise present with past than the sight of them just\nhere, as they [206] shout at their games, or recite their lessons,\nover-arched by the work of medieval priors, or pass to church meekly,\ninto the seats occupied by the young monks before them.\n\nIf summer comes reluctantly to our English shores, it is also apt to\nlinger with us;--its flora of red and gold leaves on the branches\nwellnigh to Christmas; the hot days that surprise you, and persist,\nthough heralded by white mornings, hinting that it is but the year's\nindulgence so to deal with us.  To the fanciful, such days may seem\nmost at home in the places where England has thus preferred to locate\nthe somewhat pensive education of its more favoured youth.  As Uthwart\npasses through the old ecclesiastical city, upon which any more modern\ntouch, modern door or window, seems a thing out of place through\nnegligence, the diluted sunlight itself seems driven along with a\nsparing trace of gilded vane or red tile in it, under the wholesome\nactive wind from the East coast.  The long, finely weathered, leaden\nroof, and the great square tower, gravely magnificent, emphatic from\nthe first view of it over the grey down above the hop-gardens, the\ngently-watered meadows, dwarf now everything beside; have the bigness\nof nature's work, seated up there so steadily amid the winds, as rain\nand fog and heat pass by.  More and more persistently, as he proceeds,\nin the \"Green Court\" at last, they occupy the outlook.  He is shown the\nnarrow [207] cubicle in which he is to sleep; and there it still is,\nwith nothing else, in the window-pane, as he lies;--\"our tower,\" the\n\"Angel Steeple,\" noblest of its kind.  Here, from morning to night,\neverything seems challenged to follow the upward lead of its long,\nbold, \"perpendicular\" lines.  The very place one is in, its stone-work,\nits empty spaces, invade you; invade all who belong to them, as Uthwart\nbelongs, yielding wholly from the first; seem to question you\nmasterfully as to your purpose in being here at all, amid the great\nmemories of the past, of this school;--challenge you, so to speak, to\nmake moral philosophy one of your acquirements, if you can, and to\nsystematise your vagrant self; which however will in any case be here\nsystematised for you.  In Uthwart, then, is the plain tablet, for the\ninfluences of place to inscribe.  Say if you will, that he is under the\npower of an \"embodied ideal,\" somewhat repellent, but which he cannot\ndespise.  He sits in the schoolroom--ancient, transformed chapel of the\npilgrims; sits in the sober white and brown place, at the heavy old\ndesks, carved this way and that, crowded as an old churchyard with\nforgotten names, side by side with sympathetic or antipathetic\ncompetitors, as it may chance.  In a delightful, exactly measured,\nquarter of an hour's rest, they come about him, seem to wish to be\nfriends at once, good and bad alike, dull and clever; wonder a little\nat the name, and [208] the owner.  A family name--he explains,\ngood-humouredly; tries to tell some story no one could ever remember\nprecisely of the ancestor from whom it came, the one story of the\nUthwarts; is spared; nay! petulantly forbidden to proceed. But the name\nsticks the faster.  Nicknames mark, for the most part, popularity.\nEmerald! so every one called Uthwart, but shortened to Aldy.  They\ndisperse; flock out into the court; acquaint him hastily with the\ncuriosities of the Precincts, the \"dark entry,\" the rich heraldries of\nthe blackened and mouldering cloister, the ruined overgrown spaces\nwhere the old monastery stood, the stones of which furnished material\nfor the rambling prebends houses, now \"antediluvian\" in their turn; are\nready also to climb the scaffold-poles always to be found somewhere\nabout the great church, or dive along the odd, secret passages of the\nold builders, with quite learned explanations (being proud of, and\ntherefore painstaking about, the place) of architectural periods, of\nGothic \"late\" and \"early,\" layer upon layer, down to round-arched\n\"Norman,\" like the famous staircase of their school.\n\nThe reader comprehends that Uthwart was come where the genius loci was\na strong one, with a claim to mould all who enter it to a perfect,\nuninquiring, willing or unwilling, conformity to itself.  On Saturday\nhalf-holidays the scholars are taken to church in their surplices,\nacross the [209] court, under the lime-trees; emerge at last up the\ndark winding passages into the melodious, mellow-lighted space, always\nthree days behind the temperature outside, so thick are the walls;--how\nwarm and nice! how cool and nice!  The choir, to which they glide in\norder to their places below the clergy, seems conspicuously cold and\nsad.  But the empty chapels lying beyond it all about into the distance\nare a trap on sunny mornings for the clouds of yellow effulgence.  The\nAngel Steeple is a lantern within, and sheds down a flood of the like\njust beyond the gates.  You can peep up into it where you sit, if you\ndare to gaze about you.  If at home there had been nothing great, here,\nto boyish sense, one seems diminished to nothing at all, amid the grand\nwaves, wave upon wave, of patiently-wrought stone; the daring height,\nthe daring severity, of the innumerable, long, upward, ruled lines,\nrigidly bent just at last, in due place, into the reserved grace of the\nperfect Gothic arch; the peculiar daylight which seemed to come from\nfurther than the light outside.  Next morning they are here again.  In\ncontrast to those irregularly broken hours at home, the passive length\nof things impresses Uthwart now.  It develops patience--that tale of\nhours, the long chanted English service; our English manner of\neducation is a development of patience, of decorous and mannerly\npatience.  \"It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in [210] his\nyouth: he putteth his mouth in the dust, he keepeth silence, because he\nhath borne it upon him.\"--They have this for an anthem; sung however to\nwonderfully cheerful and sprightly music, as if one liked the thought.\n\nThe aim of a veritable community, says Plato, is not that this or that\nmember of it should be disproportionately at ease, but that the whole\nshould flourish; though indeed such general welfare might come round\nagain to the loyal unit therein, and rest with him, as a privilege of\nhis individual being after all.  The social type he preferred, as we\nknow, was conservative Sparta and its youth; whose unsparing discipline\nhad doubtless something to do with the fact that it was the handsomest\nand best-formed in all Greece.  A school is not made for one.  It would\nmisrepresent Uthwart's wholly unconscious humility to say that he felt\nthe beauty of the askesis+ (we need that Greek word) to which he not\nmerely finds himself subject, but as under a fascination submissively\nyields himself, although another might have been aware of the charm of\nit, half ethic, half physical, as visibly effective in him.  Its\npeculiarity would have lain in the expression of a stress upon him and\nhis customary daily existence, beyond what any definitely proposed\nissue of it, at least for the moment, explained.  Something of that is\ninvolved in the very idea of a classical education, at least for such\nas he; in its seeming indirectness [211] or lack of purpose, amid so\nmuch difficulty, as contrasted with forms of education more obviously\nuseful or practical.  He found himself in a system of fixed rules, amid\nwhich, it might be, some of his own tendencies and inclinations would\ndie out of him through disuse.  The confident word of command, the\ninstantaneous obedience expected, the enforced silence, the very games\nthat go by rule, a sort of hardness natural to wholesome English youths\nwhen they come together, but here de rigueur as a point of good\nmanners;--he accepts all these without hesitation; the early hours\nalso, naturally distasteful to him, which gave to actual morning, to\nall that had passed in it, when in more self-conscious mood he looked\nback on the morning of life, a preponderance, a disproportionate place\nthere, adding greatly to the effect of its dreamy distance from him at\nthis later time;--an ideal quality, he might have said, had he ever\nused such words as that.\n\nUthwart duly passes his examination; and, in their own chapel in the\ntransept of the choir, lighted up late for evening prayer after the\nlong day of trial, is received to the full privileges of a Scholar with\nthe accustomed Latin words:--Introitum tuum et exitum tuum custodiat\nDominus!  He takes them, not to heart, but rather to mind, as few, if\nthey so much as heard them, were wont to do; ponders them for a while.\nThey seem scarcely meant for him--words like those! [212] increase\nhowever his sense of responsibility to the place, of which he is now\nmore exclusively than before a part--that he belongs to it, its great\nmemories, great dim purposes; deepen the consciousness he had on first\ncoming hither of a demand in the world about him, whereof the very\nstones are emphatic, to which no average human creature could be\nsufficient; of reproof, reproaches, of this or that in himself.\n\nIt was reported, there was a funny belief, at school, that Aldy Uthwart\nhad no feeling and was incapable of tears.  They never came to him\ncertainly, when, at nights for the most part, the very touch of home,\nso soft, yet so indifferent to him, reached him, with a sudden opulent\nrush of garden perfumes; came at the rattling of the window-pane in the\nwind, with anything that expressed distance from the bare white walls\naround him here.  He thrust it from him brusquely, being of a practical\nturn, and, though somewhat sensuous, wholly without sentimentality.\nThere is something however in the lad's soldier-like, impassible\nself-command, in his sustained expression of a certain indifference to\nthings, which awakes suddenly all the sentiment, the poetry, latent\nhitherto in another--James Stokes, the prefect, his immediate superior;\nawakes for the first time into ample flower something of genius in a\nseemingly plodding scholar, and therewith also something of the\nwaywardness popularly thought to belong to [213] genius.  Preceptores,\ncondiscipuli, alike, marvel at a sort of delicacy coming into the\nhabits, the person, of that tall, bashful, broad-shouldered, very\nKentish, lad; so unaffectedly nevertheless, that it is understood after\nall to be but the smartness properly significant of change to early\nmanhood, like the down on his lip.  Wistful anticipations of manhood\nare in fact aroused in him, thoughts of the future; his ambition takes\neffective outline.  The well-worn, perhaps conventional, beauties of\ntheir \"dead\" Greek and Latin books, associated directly now with the\nliving companion beside him, really shine for him at last with their\npristine freshness; seem more than to fulfil their claim upon the\npatience, the attention, of modern youth.  He notices as never before\nminute points of meaning in Homer, in Virgil; points out thus, for\ninstance, to his junior, one day in the sunshine, how the Greeks had a\nspecial word for the Fate which accompanied one who would come to a\nviolent end.  The common Destinies of men, Moirai,+ Moerae--they\naccompanied all men indifferently.  But Ker,+ the extraordinary\nDestiny, one's Doom, had a scent for distant blood-shedding; and, to be\nin at a sanguinary death, one of their number came forth to the very\ncradle, followed persistently all the way, over the waves, through\npowder and shot, through the rose-gardens;--where not? Looking back,\none might trace the red footsteps all along, side by [214] side.\n(Emerald Uthwart, you remember, was to \"die there,\" of lingering\nsickness, in disgrace, as he fancied, while the word glory came to be\nsoftly whispered of them and of their end.) Classic felicities, the\nchoice expressions, with which James Stokes has so patiently stored his\nmemory, furnish now a dainty embroidery upon every act, every change in\ntime or place, of their daily life in common.  He finds the Greek or\nthe Latin model of their antique friendship or tries to find it, in the\nbooks they read together. None fits exactly.  It is of military glory\nthey are really thinking, amid those ecclesiastical surroundings, where\nhowever surplices and uniforms are often mingled together; how they\nwill lie, in costly glory, costly to them, side by side, (as they work\nand walk and play now, side by side) in the cathedral aisle, with a\ntattered flag perhaps above them, and under a single epitaph, like that\nof those two older scholars, Ensigns, Signiferi, in their respective\nregiments, in hac ecclesia pueri instituti,+ with the sapphic stanza in\nimitation of the Horace they had learned here, written by their old\nmaster.\n\nHorace!--he was, had been always, the idol of their school; to know him\nby heart, to translate him into effective English idiom, have an apt\nphrase of his instinctively on one's lips for every occasion. That boys\nshould be made to spout him under penalties, would have seemed\ndoubtless to that sensitive, vain, winsome poet, [215] even more than\nto grim Juvenal, quite the sorriest of fates; might have seemed not so\nbad however, could he, from the \"ashes\" so persistently in his\nthoughts, have peeped on these English boys, row upon row, with black\nor golden heads, repeating him in the fresh morning, and observed how\nwell for once the thing was done; how well he was understood by English\nJames Stokes, feeling the old \"fire\" really \"quick\" still, under the\ninfluence which now in truth quickened, enlivened, everything around\nhim.  The old heathen's way of looking at things, his melodious\nexpression of it, blends, or contrasts itself oddly with the everyday\ndetail, with the very stones, the Gothic stones, of a world he could\nhardly have conceived, its medieval surroundings, their half-clerical\nlife here.  Yet not so inconsistently after all!  The builders of these\naisles and cloisters had known and valued as much of him as they could\ncome by in their own un-instructed time; had built up their\nintellectual edifice more than they were aware of from fragments of\npagan thought, as, quite consciously, they constructed their churches\nof old Roman bricks and pillars, or frank imitations of them.  One's\nday, then, began with him, for all alike, Sundays of course\nexcepted,--with an Ode, learned over-night by the prudent, who,\nobserving how readily the words which send us to sleep cling to the\nbrain and seem an inherent part of it next morning, kept him under\n[216] their pillows.  Prefects, without a book, heard the repetition of\nthe Juniors, must be able to correct their blunders.  Odes and Epodes,\nthus acquired, were a score of days and weeks; alcaic and sapphic\nverses like a bead-roll for counting off the time that intervened\nbefore the holidays.  Time--that tardy servant of youthful\nappetite--brought them soon enough to the point where they desired in\nvain \"to see one of\" those days, erased now so willingly; and\nsentimental James Stokes has already a sense that this \"pause 'twixt\ncup and lip\" of life is really worth pausing over, worth\ndeliberation:--all this poetry, yes! poetry, surely, of their alternate\nwork and play; light and shade, call it!  Had it been, after all, a\nlife in itself less commonplace than theirs--that life, the trivial\ndetails of which their Horace had touched so daintily, gilded with real\ngold words?\n\nRegular, submissive, dutiful to play also, Aldy meantime enjoys his\ntriumphs in the Green Court; loves best however to run a paper-chase\nafar over the marshes, till you come in sight, or within scent, of the\nsea, in the autumn twilight; and his dutifulness to games at least had\nits full reward.  A wonderful hit of his at cricket was long\nremembered; right over the lime-trees on to the cathedral roof, was it?\nor over the roof, and onward into space, circling there independently,\nminutely, as Sidus Cantiorum?  A comic poem on it in Latin, and a\npretty one in English, [217] were penned by James Stokes, still not so\nserious but that he forgets time altogether one day, in a manner the\nconverse of exemplary in a prefect, whereupon Uthwart, his companion as\nusual, manages to take all the blame, and the due penalty next morning.\nStokes accepted the sacrifice the more readily, believing--he too--that\nAldy was \"incapable of pain.\"  What surprised those who were in the\nsecret was that, when it was over, he rose, and facing the\nhead-master--could it be insolence? or was it the sense of\nuntruthfulness in his friendly action, or sense of the universal\npeccancy of all boys and men?--said submissively: \"And now, sir, that I\nhave taken my punishment, I hope you will forgive my fault.\"\n\nSubmissiveness!--It had the force of genius with Emerald Uthwart.  In\nthat very matter he had but yielded to a senior against his own\ninclination.  What he felt in Horace was the sense, original, active,\npersonal, of \"things too high for me!\", the sense, not really\nunpleasing to him, of an unattainable height here too, in this royal\nfelicity of utterance, this literary art, the minute cares of which had\nbeen really designed for the minute carefulness of a disciple such as\nthis--all attention.  Well! the sense of authority, of a large\nintellectual authority over us, impressed anew day after day, of some\nimpenetrable glory round \"the masters of those who know,\" is, of\ncourse, one of the effects we [218] look for from a classical\neducation:--that, and a full estimate of the preponderating value of\nthe manner of the doing of it in the thing done; which again, for\ningenuous youth, is an encouragement of good manners on its part:--\"I\nbehave myself orderly.\"  Just at those points, scholarship attains\nsomething of a religious colour.  And in that place, religion,\nreligious system, its claim to overpower one, presented itself in a way\nof which even the least serious by nature could not be unaware. Their\ngreat church, its customs and traditions, formed an element in that\nesprit de corps into which the boyish mind throws itself so readily.\nAfterwards, in very different scenes, the sentiment of that place would\ncome back upon him, as if resentfully, by contrast with the conscious\nor unconscious profanities of others, crushed out about him\nstraightway, by the shadow of awe, the minatory flash, felt around his\nunopened lips, in the glance, the changed manner.  Not to be \"occupied\nwith great matters\" recommends in heavenly places, as we know, the\nsouls of some.  Yet there were a few to whom it seemed unfortunate that\nreligion whose flag Uthwart would have borne in hands so pure, touched\nhim from first to last, and till his eyes were finally closed on this\nworld, only, again, as a thing immeasurable, surely not meant for the\nlike of him; its high claims, to which no one could be equal; its\nreproaches.  He would scarcely have proposed to \"enter into\" [219] such\nmatters; was constitutionally shy of them. His submissiveness, you see,\nwas a kind of genius; made him therefore, of course, unlike those\naround him; was a secret; a thing, you might say, \"which no one\nknoweth, saving he that receiveth it.\"\n\nThus repressible, self-restrained, always concurring with the\ninfluence, the claim upon him, the rebuke, of others, in the bustle of\nschool life he did not count even with those who knew him best, with\nthose who taught him, for the intellectual capacity he really had.  In\nevery generation of schoolboys there are a few who find out, almost for\nthemselves, the beauty and power of good literature, even in the\nliterature they must read perforce; and this, in turn, is but the\nhandsel of a beauty and power still active in the actual world, should\nthey have the good fortune, or rather, acquire the skill, to deal with\nit properly.  It has something of the stir and unction--this\nintellectual awaking with a leap--of the coming of love.  So it was\nwith Uthwart about his seventeenth year.  He felt it, felt the\nintellectual passion, like the pressure outward of wings within him--he\npterou dynamis,+ says Plato, in the Phaedrus; but again, as some do\nwith everyday love, withheld, restrained himself; the status of a\nfreeman in the world of intellect can hardly be for him.  The sense of\nintellectual ambition, ambitious thoughts such as sweeten the toil of\nsome of those about him, [220] coming to him once in a way, he is\nfrankly recommended to put them aside, and acquiesces; puts them from\nhim once for all, as he could do with besetting thoughts and feelings,\nhis preferences, (as he had put aside soft thoughts of home as a\ndisobedience to rule) and with a countenance more good-humoured than\never, an absolute placidity.  It is fit he should be treated sparingly\nin this matter of intellectual enjoyment.  He is made to understand\nthat there is at least a score of others as good scholars as he.  He\nwill have of course all the pains, but must not expect the prizes, of\nhis work; of his loyal, incessant, cheerful industry.\n\nBut only see him as he goes.  It is as if he left music, delightfully\nthrobbing music, or flowers, behind him, as he passes, careless of\nthem, unconsciously, through the world, the school, the precincts, the\nold city.  Strangers' eyes, resting on him by chance, are deterred for\na while, even among the rich sights of the venerable place, as he walks\nout and in, in his prim gown and purple-tasselled cap; goes in, with\nthe stream of sunlight, through the black shadows of the mouldering\nGothic gateway, like youth's very self, eternal, immemorial, eternally\nrenewed, about those immemorially ancient stones.  \"Young Apollo!\"\npeople say--people who have pigeon-holes for their impressions,\nwatching the slim, trim figure with the exercise books.  His very dress\nseems touched [221] with Hellenic fitness to the healthy youthful form.\n\"Golden-haired, scholar Apollo!\" they repeat, foolishly, ignorantly.\nHe was better; was more like a real portrait of a real young Greek,\nlike Tryphon, Son of Eutychos, for instance, (as friends remembered him\nwith regret, as you may see him still on his tombstone in the British\nMuseum) alive among the paler physical and intellectual lights of\nmodern England, under the old monastic stonework of the Middle Age.\nThat theatrical old Greek god never took the expressiveness, the lines\nof delicate meaning, such as were come into the face of the English\nlad, the physiognomy of his race; ennobled now, as if by the writing,\nthe signature, there, of a grave intelligence, by grave information and\na subdued will, though without a touch of melancholy in this \"best of\nplayfellows.\"  A musical composer's notes, we know, are not themselves\ntill the fit executant comes, who can put all they may be into them.\nThe somewhat unmeaningly handsome facial type of the Uthwarts, moulded\nto a mere animal or physical perfection through wholesome centuries, is\nbreathed on now, informed, by the touches, traces, complex influences\nfrom past and present a thousandfold, crossing each other in this late\ncentury, and yet at unity in the simple law of the system to which he\nis now subject.  Coming thus upon an otherwise vigorous and healthy\nnature, an untainted [222] physique, and limited by it, those combining\nmental influences leave the firm unconscious simplicity of the boyish\nnature still unperplexed.  The sisters, their friends, when he comes\nrarely upon them in foreign places, are proud of the schoolboy's\ncompany--to walk at his side; the brothers, when he sees them for a\nday, more considerate than of old.  Everywhere he leaves behind him an\nodd regret for his presence, as he in turn wonders sometimes at the\ndeference paid to one so unimportant as himself by those he meets by\naccident perhaps; at the ease, for example, with which he attains to\nthe social privileges denied to others.\n\nThey tell him, he knows it already, he would \"do for the army.\" \"Yes!\nthat would suit you,\" people observe at once, when he tells them what\n\"he is to be\"--undoubtedly suit him, that dainty, military, very\nEnglish kind of pride, in seeming precisely what one is, neither more\nnor less.  And the first mention of Uthwart's purpose defines also the\nvague outlooks of James Stokes, who will be a soldier too. Uniforms,\ntheir scarlet and white and blue, spruce leather and steel, and gold\nlace, enlivening the old oak stalls at service time--uniforms and\nsurplices were always close together here, where a military garrison\nhad been established in the suburbs for centuries past, and there were\nalways sons of its officers in the school.  If you stole out of an\nevening, it was like a stage scene-- [223] nay! like the Middle Age,\nitself, with this multitude of soldiers mingling in the crowd which\nfilled the unchanged, gabled streets.  A military tradition had been\ncontinuous, from the days of crusading knights who lay humbly on their\nbacks in the \"Warriors' Chapel\" to the time of the civil wars, when a\ncertain heroic youth of eighteen was brought to rest there, onward to\nDutch and American wars, and to Harry, and Geoffrey, and another James\nalso, in hac ecclesia pueri instituti. It was not so long since one of\nthem sat on those very benches in the sixth form; had come back and\nentered the school, in full uniform, to say good-bye!  Then the\n\"colours\" of his regiment had been brought, to be deposited by Dean and\nCanons in the cathedral; and a few weeks later they had passed,\nscholars and the rest in long procession, to deposit Ensign--himself\nthere under his flag, or what remained of it, a sorry, tattered fringe,\nalong the staff he had borne out of the battle at the cost of his life,\nas a little tablet explained.  There were others in similar terms.\nAlas! for that extraordinary, peculiarly-named, Destiny, or Doom,\nappointed to walk side by side with one or another, aware from the\nfirst, but never warning him, till the random or well-considered shot\ncomes.\n\nMeantime however, the University, with work in preparation thereto,\nfills up the thoughts, the hours, of these would-be soldiers, of James\n[224] Stokes, and therefore of Emerald Uthwart, through the long\nsummer-time, till the Green Court is fragrant with lime-blossom, and\nspeech-day comes, on which, after their flower-service and sermon from\nan old comrade, Emerald surprises masters and companions by the fine\nquality of a recitation; still more when \"Scholar Stokes\" and he are\nfound bracketed together as \"Victors\" of the school, who will proceed\ntogether to Oxford.  His speech in the Chapter-house was from that\nplace in Homer, where the soul of the lad Elpenor, killed by accident,\nentreats Ulysses for due burial rites.  \"Fix my oar over my grave,\" he\nsays, \"the oar I rowed with when I lived, when I went with my\ncompanions.\"  And in effect what surprised, charmed the hearers was the\nscruple with which those naturally graceful lips dealt with every word,\nevery syllable, put upon them.  He seemed to be thinking only of his\nauthor, except for just so much of self-consciousness as was involved\nin the fact that he seemed also to be speaking a little against his\nwill; like a monk, it might be said, who sings in choir with a really\nfine voice, but at the bidding of his superior, and counting the notes\nall the while till his task be done, because his whole nature revolts\nfrom so much as the bare opportunity for personal display.  It was his\nduty to speak on the occasion.  They had always been great in\nspeech-making, in theatricals, from before [225] the days when the\nPuritans destroyed the Dean's \"Great Hall\" because \"the King's Scholars\nhad profaned it by acting plays there\"; and that peculiar note or\naccent, as being conspicuously free from the egotism which vulgarises\nmost of us, seemed to befit the person of Emerald, impressing weary\nlisteners pleasantly as a novelty in that kind.  Singular!--The words,\nbecause seemingly forced from him, had been worth hearing.  The cheers,\nthe \"Kentish Fire,\" of their companions might have broken down the\ncrumbling black arches of the old cloister, or roused the dead under\nfoot, as the \"Victors\" came out of the Chapter-house side by side; side\nby side also out of that delightful period of their life at school, to\nproceed in due course to the University.\n\nThey left it precipitately, after brief residence there, taking\nadvantage of a sudden outbreak of war to join the army at once,\nregretted--James Stokes for his high academic promise, Uthwart for a\nquality, or group of qualities, not strictly to be defined.  He seemed,\nin short, to harmonise by their combination in himself all the various\nqualities proper to a large and varied community of youths of nineteen\nor twenty, to which, when actually present there, he was felt from hour\nto hour to be indispensable.  In fact school habits and standards had\nsurvived in a world not so different from that of school for those who\nare faithful to its type.  When he looked back upon [226] it a little\nlater, college seemed to him, seemed indeed at the time, had he\nventured to admit it, a strange prolongation of boyhood, in its\nprovisional character, the narrow limitation of its duties and\nresponsibility, the very divisions of one's day, the routine of play\nand work, its formal, perhaps pedantic rules.  The veritable plunge\nfrom youth into manhood came when one passed finally through those old\nGothic gates, from a somewhat dreamy or problematic preparation for it,\ninto the world of peremptory facts.  A college, like a school, is not\nmade for one; and as Uthwart sat there, still but a scholar, still\nreading with care the books prescribed for him by others--Greek and\nLatin books--the contrast between his own position and that of the\nmajority of his coevals already at the business of life impressed\nitself sometimes with an odd sense of unreality in the place around\nhim.  Yet the schoolboy's sensitive awe for the great things of the\nintellectual world had but matured itself, and was at its height here\namid this larger competition, which left him more than ever to find in\ndoing his best submissively the sole reward of so doing.  He needs now\nin fact less repression than encouragement not to be a \"passman,\" as he\nmay if he likes, acquiescing in a lowly measure of culture which\ncertainly will not manufacture Miltons, nor turn serge into silk,\nbroom-blossom into verbenas, but only, perhaps not so faultily, leave\nEmerald Uthwart and the like of him [227] essentially what they are.\n\"He holds his book in a peculiar way,\" notes in manuscript one of his\ntutors; \"holds on to it with both hands; clings as if from below, just\nas his tough little mind clings to the sense of the Greek words he can\nEnglish so closely, precisely.\"  Again, as at school, he had put his\nneck under the yoke; though he has now also much reading quite at his\nown choice; by preference, when he can come by such, about the place\nwhere he finds himself, about the earlier youthful occupants, if it\nmight be, of his own quaint rooms on the second floor just below the\nroof; of what he can see from his windows in the old black front\neastwards, with its inestimable patina of ancient smoke and weather and\nnatural decay (when you look close the very stone is a composite of\nminute dead bodies) relieving heads like his so effectively on summer\nmornings.  On summer nights the scent of the hay, the wild-flowers,\ncomes across the narrow fringe of town to right and left; seems to come\nfrom beyond the Oxford meadows, with sensitive, half-repellent thoughts\nfrom the gardens at home.  He looks down upon the green square with the\nslim, quaint, black, young figures that cross it on the way to chapel\non yellow Sunday mornings, or upwards to the dome, the spire; can watch\nthem closely in freakish moonlight, or flickering softly by an\noccasional bonfire in the quadrangle behind him.  Yet how hard, how\nforbidding sometimes, under [228] a late stormy sky, the scheme of\nblack, white, and grey, to which the group of ancient buildings could\nattune itself.  And what he reads most readily is of the military life\nthat intruded itself so oddly, during the Civil War, into these\nhalf-monastic places, till the timid old academic world scarcely knew\nitself.  He treasures then every incident which connects a soldier's\ncoat with any still recognisable object, wall, or tree, or garden-walk;\nthat walk, for instance, under Merton garden where young Colonel\nWindebank was shot for a traitor. His body lies in Saint Mary\nMagdalen's churchyard.  Unassociated to such incident, the mere\nbeauties of the place counted at the moment for less than in\nretrospect.  It was almost retrospect even now, with an anticipation of\nregret, in rare moments of solitude perhaps, when the oars splashed far\nup the narrow streamlets through the fields on May evenings among the\nfritillaries--does the reader know them? that strange remnant just here\nof a richer extinct flora--dry flowers, though with a drop of dubious\nhoney in each.  Snakes' heads, the rude call them, for their shape,\nscale-marked too, and in colour like rusted blood, as if they grew from\nsome forgotten battle-field, the bodies, the rotten armour--yet\ndelicate, beautiful, waving proudly. In truth the memory of Oxford made\nalmost everything he saw after it seem vulgar.  But he feels also\nnevertheless, characteristically, that such local pride (fastus he\nterms it) is proper [229] only for those whose occupations are wholly\ncongruous with it; for the gifted, the freemen who can enter into the\ngenius, who possess the liberty, of the place; that it has a reproach\nin it for the outsider, which comes home to him.\n\nHere again then as he passes through the world, so delightfully to\nothers, they tell him, as if weighing him, his very self, against his\nmerely scholastic capacity and effects, that he would \"do for the\narmy\"; which he is now wholly glad to hear, for from first to last,\nthrough all his successes there, the army had still been scholar\nStokes' choice, and he had no difficulty, as the reader sees, in\nkeeping Uthwart also faithful to first intentions.  Their names were\nalready entered for commissions; but the war breaking out afresh,\ninformation reaches them suddenly one morning that they may join their\nregiment forthwith.  Bidding good-bye therefore, gladly, hastily, they\nset out with as little delay as possible for Flanders; and passing the\nold school by their nearest road thither, stay for an hour, find an\nexcuse for coming into the hall in uniform, with which it must be\nconfessed they seem thoroughly satisfied--Uthwart quite perversely at\nease in the stiff make of his scarlet jacket with black facings--and so\npass onward on their way to Dover, Dunkirk, they scarcely know whither\nfinally, among the featureless villages, the long monotonous lines of\nthe windmills, the poplars, blurred with cold fogs, but marking the\n[230] roads through the snow which covers the endless plain, till they\ncome in sight at last of the army in motion, like machines moving--how\nlittle it looked on that endless plain!--pass on their rapid way to\nfame, to unpurchased promotion, as a matter of course to responsibility\nalso, till, their fortune turning upon them, they miscarry in the\nlatter fatally.  They joined in fact a distinguished regiment in a\ngallant army, immediately after a victory in those Flemish regions;\nshared its encouragement as fully as if they had had a share in its\nperils; the high character of the young officers consolidating itself\neasily, pleasantly for them, till the hour of an act of thoughtless\nbravery, almost the sole irregular or undisciplined act of Uthwart's\nlife, he still following his senior--criminal however to the military\nconscience, under the actual circumstances, and in an enemy's country.\nThe faulty thing was done, certainly, with a scrupulous, a\ncharacteristic completeness on their part; and with their prize\nactually in hand, an old weather-beaten flag such as hung in the\ncathedral aisle at school, they bethought them for the first time of\nits price, with misgivings now in rapid growth, as they return to their\nposts as nearly as may be, for the division has been ordered forward in\ntheir brief absence, to find themselves under arrest, with that damning\nproof of heroism, of guilt, in their possession, relinquished however\nalong with the swords they will never handle [231] again--toys,\nidolised toys of our later youth, we weep at the thought of them as\nnever to be handled again!--as they enter the prison to await summary\ntrial next day on the charge of wantonly deserting their posts while in\nposition of high trust in time of war.\n\nThe full details of what had happened could have been told only by one\nor other of themselves; by Uthwart best, in the somewhat matter-of-fact\nand prosaic journal he had managed to keep from the first, noting there\nthe incidents of each successive day, as if in anticipation of its\npossible service by way of piece justificative, should such become\nnecessary, attesting hour by hour their single-hearted devotion to\nsoldierly duty.  Had a draughtsman equally truthful or equally\n\"realistic,\" as we say, accompanied them and made a like use of his\npencil, he might have been mistaken at home for an artist aiming at\n\"effect,\" by skilful \"arrangements\" to tickle people's interest in the\nspectacle of war--the sudden ruin of a village street, the heap of\nbleeding horses in the half-ploughed field, the gaping bridges, hand or\nface of the dead peeping from a hastily made grave at the roadside,\nsmoke-stained rents in cottage-walls, ignoble ruin everywhere--ignoble\nbut for its frank expression.\n\nBut you find in Uthwart's journal, side by side with those ugly\npatches, very precise and unadorned records of their common gallantry,\nthe more effective indeed for their simplicity; [232] and not of\ngallantry only, but of the long-sustained patience also, the essential\nmonotony of military life, even on a campaign.  Peril, good-luck,\npromotion, the grotesque hardships which leave them smart as ever, (as\nif, so others observe, dust and mire wouldn't hold on them, so \"spick\nand span\" they were, more especially on days of any exceptional risk or\neffort) the great confidence reposed in them at last; all is noted,\ntill, with a little quiet pride, he records a gun-shot wound which\nkeeps him a month alone in hospital wearily; and at last, its hasty but\nseemingly complete healing.\n\nFollowing, leading, resting sometimes perforce, amid gun-shots,\nputrefying wounds, green corpses, they never lacked good spirits, any\nmore than the birds warbling perennially afresh, as they will, over\nsuch gangrened places, or the grass which so soon covers them.  And at\nlength fortune, their misfortune, perversely determined that heroism\nshould take the form of patience under the walls of an unimportant\nfrontier town, with old Vauban fortifications seemingly made only for\nappearance' sake, like the work in the trenches--gardener's work! round\nabout the walls they are called upon to superintend day after day.  It\nwas like a calm at sea, delaying one's passage, one's purpose in being\non board at all, a dead calm, yet with an awful feeling of tension,\nintolerable at last for those who were still all athirst for action.\nHow dumb and [233] stupid the place seemed, in its useless defiance of\nconquerors, anxious, for reasons not indeed apparent, but which they\nwere undoubtedly within their rights in holding to, not to blow it at\nonce into the air--the steeple, the perky weathercock--to James Stokes\nin particular, always eloquent in action, longing for heroic effort,\nand ready to pay its price, maddened now by the palpable imposture in\nfront of him morning after morning, as he demonstrates conclusively to\nUthwart, seduced at last from the clearer sense of duty and discipline,\nnot by the demonstrated ease, but rather by the apparent difficulty of\nwhat Stokes proposes to do.  They might have been deterred by recent\nexample.  Colonel --, who, as every one knew, had actually gained a\nvictory by disobeying orders, had not been suffered to remain in the\narmy of which he was an ornament.  It was easy in fact for both, though\nit seemed the heroic thing, to dash through the calm with delightful\nsense of active powers renewed; to pass into the beleaguered town with\na handful of men, and no loss, after a manner the feasibility of which\nStokes had explained acutely but in vain at headquarters.  He proved it\nto Uthwart at all events, and a few others.  Delightful heroism!\ndelightful self-indulgence!  It was delayed for a moment by orders to\nmove forward at last, with hopes checked almost immediately after by a\ncountermand, bringing them right round their [234] stupid dumb enemy to\nthe same wearisome position once again, to the trenches and the rest,\nbut with their thirst for action only stimulated the more.  How great\nthe disappointment! encouraging a certain laxity of discipline that had\nprevailed about them of late.  They take advantage however of a vague\nphrase in their instructions; determine in haste to proceed on their\nplan as carefully, as sparingly of the lives of others as may be;\ndetach a small company, hazarding thereby an algebraically certain\nscheme at headquarters of victory or secure retreat, which embraced the\nentire country in its calculations; detach themselves; finally pass\ninto the place, and out again with their prize, themselves secure.\nThemselves only could have told the details--the intensely pleasant,\nthe glorious sense of movement renewed once more; of defiance, just for\nonce, of a seemingly stupid control; their dismay at finding their\ncompany led forward by others, their own posts deserted, their handful\nof men--nowhere!\n\nIn an ordinary trial at law, the motives, every detail of so irregular\nan act might have been weighed, changing the colour of it. Their\ngeneral character would have told in their favour, but actually told\nagainst them now; they had but won an exceptional trust to betray it.\nMartial courts exist not for consideration, but for vivid exemplary\neffect and prompt punishment.  \"There is a kind of tribunal incidental\n[235] to service in the field,\" writes another diarist, who may tell in\nhis own words what remains to be told.  \"This court,\" he says, \"may\nconsist of three staff-officers only, but has the power of sentencing\nto death.  On the --st two young officers of the --th regiment, in whom\nit appears unusual confidence had been placed, were brought before this\ncourt, on the charge of desertion and wantonly exposing their company\nto danger.  They were found guilty, and the proper penalty death, to be\ninflicted next morning before the regiment marches.  The delinquents\nwere understood to have appealed to a general court-martial;\ndesperately at last, to 'the judgment of their country'; but were held\nto have no locus standi whatever for an appeal under the actual\ncircumstances.  As a civilian I cannot but doubt the justice, whatever\nmay be thought of the expediency, of such a summary process in regard\nto the capital penalty.  The regiment to which the culprits belonged,\nwith some others, was quartered for the night in the faubourg of Saint\n--, recently under blockade by a portion of our forces.  I was awoke at\ndaybreak by the sound of marching.  The morning was a particularly\nclear one, though, as the sun was not yet risen, it looked grey and sad\nalong the empty street, up which a party of grey soldiers were passing\nwith steady pace.  I knew for what purpose.\n\n\"The whole of the force in garrison here [236] had already marched to\nthe place of execution, the immense courtyard of a monastery,\nsurrounded irregularly by ancient buildings like those of some\ncathedral precincts I have seen in England.  Here the soldiers then\nformed three sides of a great square, a grave having been dug on the\nfourth side.  Shortly afterwards the funeral procession came up. First\ncame the band of the --th, playing the Dead March; next the firing\nparty, consisting of twelve non-commissioned officers; then the\ncoffins, followed immediately by the unfortunate prisoners, accompanied\nby a chaplain.  Slowly and sadly did the mournful procession approach,\nwhen it passed through three sides of the square, the troops having\nbeen previously faced inwards, and then halted opposite to the grave.\nThe proceedings of the court-martial were then read; and the elder\nprisoner having been blindfolded was ordered to kneel down on his\ncoffin, which had been placed close to the grave, the firing party\ntaking up a position exactly opposite at a few yards' distance.  The\npoor fellow's face was deadly pale, but he had marched his last march\nas steadily as ever I saw a man step, and bore himself throughout most\nbravely, though an oddly mixed expression passed over his countenance\nwhen he was directed to remove himself from the side of his companion,\nshaking his hand first.  At this moment there was hardly a dry eye, and\nseveral young soldiers fainted, numberless as must be [237] the scenes\nof horror which even they have witnessed during these last months.  At\nlength the chaplain, who had remained praying with the prisoner,\nquietly withdrew, and at a given signal, but without word of command,\nthe muskets were levelled, a volley was fired, and the body of the\nunfortunate man sprang up, falling again on his back.  One shot had\npurposely been reserved; and as the presiding officer thought he was\nnot quite dead a musket was placed close to his head and fired.  All\nwas now over; but the troops having been formed into columns were\nmarched close by the body as it lay on the ground, after which it was\nplaced in one of the coffins and buried.\n\n\"I had almost forgotten his companion, the younger and more fortunate\nprisoner, though I could scarcely tell, as I looked at him, whether his\nfate was really preferable in leaving his own rough coffin unoccupied\nbehind him there.  Lieutenant (I think Edward) Uthwart, as being the\nyounger of the two offenders, 'by the mercy of the court' had his\nsentence commuted to dismissal from the army with disgrace. A\ncolour-sergeant then advanced with the former officer's sword, a\nremarkably fine one, which he thereupon snapped in sunder over the\nprisoner's head as he knelt.  After this the prisoner's regimental coat\nwas handed forward and put upon him, the epaulettes and buttons being\nthen torn off and flung to a distance.  This part of [238] such\nsentences is almost invariably spared; but, I suppose through\nunavoidable haste, was on the present occasion somewhat rudely carried\nout.  I shall never forget the expression of this man's countenance,\nthough I have seen many sad things in the course of my profession.  He\nhad the sort of good looks which always rivet attention, and in most\nminds friendly interest; and now, amid all his pain and bewilderment,\nbore a look of humility and submission as he underwent those\nextraordinary details of his punishment, which touched me very oddly\nwith a sort of desire (I cannot otherwise express it) to share his lot,\nto be actually in his place for a moment.  Yet, alas! --no! say rather\nThank Heaven! the nearest approach to that look I have seen has been on\nthe face of those whom I have known from circumstances to be almost\nincapable at the time of any feeling whatever.  I would have offered\nhim pecuniary aid, supposing he needed it, but it was impossible.  I\nwent on with the regiment, leaving the poor wretch to shift for\nhimself, Heaven knows how, the state of the country being what it is.\nHe might join the enemy!\"\n\nWhat money Uthwart had about him had in fact passed that morning into\nthe hands of his guards.  To tell what followed would be to accompany\nhim on a roundabout and really aimless journey, the details of which he\ncould never afterwards recall.  See him lingering for morsels [239] of\nfood at some shattered farmstead, or assisted by others almost as\nwretched as himself, sometimes without his asking.  In his worn\nmilitary dress he seems a part of the ruin under which he creeps for a\nnight's rest as darkness comes on.  He actually came round again to the\nscene of his disgrace, of the execution; looked in vain for the precise\nspot where he had knelt; then, almost envying him who lay there, for\nthe unmarked grave; passed over it perhaps unrecognised for some change\nin that terrible place, or rather in himself; wept then as never before\nin his life; dragged himself on once more, till suddenly the whole\ncountry seems to move under the rumour, the very thunder, of \"the\ncrowning victory,\" as he is made to understand.  Falling in with the\ntide of its heroes returning to English shores, his vagrant footsteps\nare at last directed homewards. He finds himself one afternoon at the\ngate, turning out of the quiet Sussex road, through the fields for\nwhose safety he had fought with so much of undeniable gallantry and\napproval.\n\nOn that July afternoon the gardens, the woods, mounted in flawless\nsweetness all round him as he stood, to meet the circle of a flawless\nsky.  Not a cloud; not a motion on the grass!  At the first he had\nintended to return home no more; and it had been a proof of his great\ndejection that he sent at last, as best he could, for money.  They knew\nhis fate already [240] by report, and were touched naturally when that\nhad followed on the record of his honours.  Had it been possible they\nwould have set forth at any risk to meet, to seek him; were waiting now\nfor the weary one to come to the gate, ready with their oil and wine,\nto speak metaphorically, and from this time forth underwent his charm\nto the utmost--the charm of an exquisite character, felt in some way to\nbe inseparable from his person, his characteristic movements, touched\nalso now with seemingly irreparable sorrow.  For his part, drinking in\nhere the last sweets of the sensible world, it was as if he, the lover\nof roses, had never before been aware of them at all.  The original\nsoftness of his temperament, against which the sense of greater things\nthrust upon him had successfully reacted, asserted itself again now as\nhe lay at ease, the ease well merited by his deeds, his sorrows.  That\nhe was going to die moved those about him to humour this mood, to\nsoften all things to his touch; and looking back he might have\npronounced those four last years of doom the happiest of his life.  The\nmemory of the grave into which he had gazed so steadily on the\nexecution morning, into which, as he feels, one half of himself had\nthen descended, does not lessen his shrinking from the fate before him,\nyet fortifies him to face it manfully, gives a sort of fraternal\nfamiliarity to death; in a few weeks' time this battle too is fought\nout; it is as if the thing were ended. [241] The delightful summer\nheat, the freshness it enhances--he contrasts such things no longer\nwith the sort of place to which he is hastening.  The possible duration\nof life for him was indeed uncertain, the future to some degree\nindefinite; but as regarded any fairly distant date, anything like a\nterm of years, from the first there had been no doubt at all; he would\nbe no longer here. Meantime it was like a delightful few days'\nadditional holiday from school, with which perforce one must be content\nat last; or as though he had not been pardoned on that terrible\nmorning, but only reprieved for two or three years.  Yet how large a\nproportion they would have seemed in the whole sum of his years.  He\nwould have liked to lie finally in the garden among departed pets, dear\ndead dogs and horses; faintly proposes it one day; but after a while\ncomprehends the churchyard, with its white spots in the distant flowery\nview, as filling harmoniously its own proper place there.  The weary\nsoul seemed to be settling deeper into the body and the earth it came\nof, into the condition of the flowers, the grass, proper creatures of\nthe earth to which he is returning.  The saintly vicar visits him\nconsiderately; is repelled with politeness; goes on his way pondering\ninwardly what kind of place there might be, in any possible scheme of\nanother world, for so absolutely unspiritual a subject.  In fact, as\nthe breath of the infinite world came about him, he clung all [242] the\nfaster to the beloved finite things still in contact with him; he had\nsuccessfully hidden from his eyes all beside.\n\nHis reprieve however lasted long enough, after all, for a certain\nchange of opinion of immense weight to him--a revision or reversal of\njudgment.  It came about in this way.  When peace was arranged, with\nquestion of rewards, pensions, and the like, certain battles or\nincidents therein were fought over again, sometimes in the highest\nplaces of debate.  On such an occasion a certain speaker cites the case\nof Lieutenant James Stokes and another, as being \"pessimi exempli\":\nwhereupon a second speaker gets up, prepared with full detail, insists,\nbrings that incidental matter to the front for an hour, tells his\nunfortunate friend's story so effectively, pathetically, that, as\nhappens with our countrymen, they repent.  The matter gets into the\nnewspapers, and, coming thus into sympathetic public view, something\nlike glory wins from Emerald Uthwart his last touch of animation.  Just\nnot too late he received the offer of a commission; kept the letter\nthere open within sight.  Aldy, who \"never shed tears and was incapable\nof pain,\" in his great physical weakness, wept--shall we say for the\nsecond time in his life?  A less excitement would have been more\nfavorable to any chance there might be of the patient's surviving.  In\nfact the old gun-shot wound, wrongly thought to be cured, which had\ncaused [243] the one illness of his life, is now drawing out what\nremains of it, as he feels with a kind of odd satisfaction and\npride--his old glorious wound!  And then, as of old, an absolute\nsubmissiveness comes over him, as he gazes round at the place, the\nrelics of his uniform, the letter lying there.  It was as if there was\nnothing more that could be said. Accounts thus settled, he stretched\nhimself in the bed he had occupied as a boy, more completely at his\nease than since the day when he had left home for the first time.\nRespited from death once, he was twice believed to be dead before the\ndate actually registered on his tomb.  \"What will it matter a hundred\nyears hence?\" they used to ask by way of simple comfort in boyish\ntroubles at school, overwhelming at the moment.  Was that in truth part\nof a certain revelation of the inmost truth of things to \"babes,\" such\nas we have heard of?  What did it matter--the gifts, the good-fortune,\nits terrible withdrawal, the long agony?  Emerald Uthwart would have\nbeen all but a centenarian to-day.\n\nPostscript, from the Diary of a Surgeon, August --th, 18--.\n\nI was summoned by letter into the country to perform an operation on\nthe dead body of a young man, formerly an officer in the army.  The\ncause of death is held to have been some [244] kind of distress of\nmind, concurrent with the effects of an old gun-shot wound, the ball\nstill remaining somewhere in the body.  My instructions were to remove\nthis, at the express desire, as I understood, of the deceased, rather\nthan to ascertain the precise cause of death.  This however became\napparent in the course of my search for the ball, which had enveloped\nitself in the muscular substance in the region of the heart, and was\nremoved with difficulty.  I have known cases of this kind, where\nanxiety has caused incurable cardiac derangement (the deceased seems to\nhave been actually sentenced to death for some military offence when on\nservice in Flanders), and such mental strain would of course have been\naggravated by the presence of a foreign object in that place.  On\narriving at my destination, a small village in a remote part of Sussex,\nI proceeded through the little orderly churchyard, where however the\nmonthly roses were blooming all their own way among the formal white\nmarble monuments of the wealthier people of the neighbourhood.  At one\nof these the masons were at work, picking and chipping in the otherwise\nabsolute stillness of the summer afternoon.  They were in fact opening\nthe family burial-place of the people who summoned me hither; and the\nworkmen pointed out their abode, conspicuous on the slope beyond,\ntowards which I bent my steps accordingly.  I was conducted to a large\nupper [245] room or attic, set freely open to sun and air, and found\nthe body lying in a coffin, almost hidden under very rich-scented cut\nflowers, after a manner I have never seen in this country, except in\nthe case of one or two Catholics laid out for burial.  The mother of\nthe deceased was present, and actually assisted my operations, amid\nsuch tokens of distress, though perfectly self-controlled, as I\nfervently hope I may never witness again.\n\nDeceased was in his twenty-seventh year, but looked many years younger;\nhad indeed scarcely yet reached the full condition of manhood.  The\nextreme purity of the outlines, both of the face and limbs, was such as\nis usually found only in quite early youth; the brow especially, under\nan abundance of fair hair, finely formed, not high, but arched and\nfull, as is said to be the way with those who have the imaginative\ntemper in excess.  Sad to think that had he lived reason must have\ndeserted that so worthy abode of it!  I was struck by the great beauty\nof the organic developments, in the strictly anatomic sense; those of\nthe throat and diaphragm in particular might have been modelled for a\nteacher of normal physiology, or a professor of design.  The flesh was\nstill almost as firm as that of a living person; as happens when, as in\nthis case, death comes to all intents and purposes as gradually as in\nold age.\n\nThis expression of health and life, under my seemingly merciless\ndoings, together with the mother's distress, touched me to a degree\nvery [246] unusual, I conceive, in persons of my years and profession.\nThough I believed myself to be acting by his express wish, I felt like\na criminal.  The ball, a small one, much corroded with blood, was at\nlength removed; and I was then directed to wrap it in a partly-printed\nletter, or other document, and place it in the breast-pocket of a faded\nand much-worn scarlet soldier's coat, put over the shirt which\nenveloped the body.  The flowers were then hastily replaced, the hands\nand the peak of the handsome nose remaining visible among them; the\nwind ruffled the fair hair a little; the lips were still red.  I shall\nnot forget it.  The lid was then placed on the coffin and screwed down\nin my presence.  There was no plate or other inscription upon it.\n\nNOTES\n\n197. *Published in the New Review, June and July 1892, and now\nreprinted by the kind permission of the proprietors.\n\n210. +Transliteration: askesis.  Liddel and Scott definition:\n\"exercise, training.\"\n\n213. +Transliteration: Moirai.  Liddel and Scott definition: \"[singular\n=] one's portion in life, lot, destiny.\"\n\n213. +Transliteration: Ker.  Brief Liddel and Scott definition: \"doom,\ndeath, destruction.\"\n\n214. +Translation: \"in this church established for boys.\"\n\n219. +Transliteration: he pterou dynamis.\n\n\n\nDIAPHANEITE\n\n[247] THERE are some unworldly types of character which the world is\nable to estimate.  It recognises certain moral types, or categories,\nand regards whatever falls within them as having a right to exist. The\nsaint, the artist, even the speculative thinker, out of the world's\norder as they are, yet work, so far as they work at all, in and by\nmeans of the main current of the world's energy.  Often it gives them\nlate, or scanty, or mistaken acknowledgment; still it has room for them\nin its scheme of life, a place made ready for them in its affections.\nIt is also patient of doctrinaires of every degree of littleness.  As\nif dimly conscious of some great sickness and weariness of heart in\nitself, it turns readily to those who theorise about its unsoundness.\nTo constitute one of these categories, or types, a breadth and\ngenerality of character is required.  There is another type of\ncharacter, which is not broad and general, rare, precious above all to\nthe artist, a character which seems to have been the supreme moral\ncharm in the Beatrice of the [248] Commedia. It does not take the eye\nby breadth of colour; rather it is that fine edge of light, where the\nelements of our moral nature refine themselves to the burning point.\nIt crosses rather than follows the main current of the world's life.\nThe world has no sense fine enough for those evanescent shades, which\nfill up the blanks between contrasted types of character--delicate\nprovision in the organisation of the moral world for the transmission\nto every part of it of the life quickened at single points!  For this\nnature there is no place ready in its affections.  This colourless,\nunclassified purity of life it can neither use for its service, nor\ncontemplate as an ideal.\n\n\"Sibi unitus et simplificatus esse,\" that is the long struggle of the\nImitatio Christi.  The spirit which it forms is the very opposite of\nthat which regards life as a game of skill, and values things and\npersons as marks or counters of something to be gained, or achieved,\nbeyond them.  It seeks to value everything at its eternal worth, not\nadding to it, or taking from it, the amount of influence it may have\nfor or against its own special scheme of life.  It is the spirit that\nsees external circumstances as they are, its own power and tendencies\nas they are, and realises the given conditions of its life, not\ndisquieted by the desire for change, or the preference of one part in\nlife rather than another, or passion, or opinion.  The character we\nmean to indicate achieves this [249] perfect life by a happy gift of\nnature, without any struggle at all.  Not the saint only, the artist\nalso, and the speculative thinker, confused, jarred, disintegrated in\nthe world, as sometimes they inevitably are, aspire for this simplicity\nto the last.  The struggle of this aspiration with a lower practical\naim in the mind of Savonarola has been subtly traced by the author of\nRomola.  As language, expression, is the function of intellect, as art,\nthe supreme expression, is the highest product of intellect, so this\ndesire for simplicity is a kind of indirect self-assertion of the\nintellectual part of such natures.  Simplicity in purpose and act is a\nkind of determinate expression in dexterous outline of one's\npersonality.  It is a kind of moral expressiveness; there is an\nintellectual triumph implied in it.  Such a simplicity is\ncharacteristic of the repose of perfect intellectual culture.  The\nartist and he who has treated life in the spirit of art desires only to\nbe shown to the world as he really is; as he comes nearer and nearer to\nperfection, the veil of an outer life not simply expressive of the\ninward becomes thinner and thinner.  This intellectual throne is rarely\nwon.  Like the religious life, it is a paradox in the world, denying\nthe first conditions of man's ordinary existence, cutting obliquely the\nspontaneous order of things.  But the character we have before us is a\nkind of prophecy of this repose and simplicity, coming as it were in\nthe order of grace, not of nature, by [250] some happy gift, or\naccident of birth or constitution, showing that it is indeed within the\nlimits of man's destiny.  Like all the higher forms of inward life this\ncharacter is a subtle blending and interpenetration of intellectual,\nmoral and spiritual elements.  But it is as a phase of intellect, of\nculture, that it is most striking and forcible.  It is a mind of taste\nlighted up by some spiritual ray within.  What is meant by taste is an\nimperfect intellectual state; it is but a sterile kind of culture.  It\nis the mental attitude, the intellectual manner of perfect culture,\nassumed by a happy instinct.  Its beautiful way of handling everything\nthat appeals to the senses and the intellect is really directed by the\nlaws of the higher intellectual life, but while culture is able to\ntrace those laws, mere taste is unaware of them.  In the character\nbefore us, taste, without ceasing to be instructive, is far more than a\nmental attitude or manner.  A magnificent intellectual force is latent\nwithin it.  It is like the reminiscence of a forgotten culture that\nonce adorned the mind; as if the mind of one philosophesas pote met'\nerotos,+ fallen into a new cycle, were beginning its spiritual progress\nover again, but with a certain power of anticipating its stages.  It\nhas the freshness without the shallowness of taste, the range and\nseriousness of culture without its strain and over-consciousness.  Such\na habit may be described as wistfulness of mind, the feeling that there\nis \"so much to [251] know,\" rather as a longing after what is\nunattainable, than as a hope to apprehend.  Its ethical result is an\nintellectual guilelessness, or integrity, that instinctively prefers\nwhat is direct and clear, lest one's own confusion and intransparency\nshould hinder the transmission from without of light that is not yet\ninward.  He who is ever looking for the breaking of a light he knows\nnot whence about him, notes with a strange heedfulness the faintest\npaleness in the sky.  That truthfulness of temper, that receptivity,\nwhich professors often strive in vain to form, is engendered here less\nby wisdom than by innocence.  Such a character is like a relic from the\nclassical age, laid open by accident to our alien modern atmosphere.\nIt has something of the clear ring, the eternal outline of the antique.\nPerhaps it is nearly always found with a corresponding outward\nsemblance.  The veil or mask of such a nature would be the very\nopposite of the \"dim blackguardism\" of Danton, the type Carlyle has\nmade too popular for the true interest of art.  It is just this sort of\nentire transparency of nature that lets through unconsciously all that\nis really lifegiving in the established order of things; it detects\nwithout difficulty all sorts of affinities between its own elements,\nand the nobler elements in that order.  But then its wistfulness and a\nconfidence in perfection it has makes it love the lords of change.\nWhat makes revolutionists is either self-pity, or indignation [252] for\nthe sake of others, or a sympathetic perception of the dominant\nundercurrent of progress in things.  The nature before us is\nrevolutionist from the direct sense of personal worth, that chlide,+\nthat pride of life, which to the Greek was a heavenly grace.  How can\nhe value what comes of accident, or usage, or convention, whose\nindividual life nature itself has isolated and perfected?  Revolution\nis often impious.  They who prosecute revolution have to violate again\nand again the instinct of reverence. That is inevitable, since after\nall progress is a kind of violence. But in this nature revolutionism is\nsoftened, harmonised, subdued as by distance.  It is the revolutionism\nof one who has slept a hundred years.  Most of us are neutralised by\nthe play of circumstances.  To most of us only one chance is given in\nthe life of the spirit and the intellect, and circumstances prevent our\ndexterously seizing that one chance.  The one happy spot in our nature\nhas no room to burst into life.  Our collective life, pressing equally\non every part of every one of us, reduces nearly all of us to the level\nof a colourless uninteresting existence.  Others are neutralised, not\nby suppression of gifts, but by just equipoise among them.  In these no\nsingle gift, or virtue, or idea, has an unmusical predominance.  The\nworld easily confounds these two conditions.  It sees in the character\nbefore us only indifferentism.  Doubtless the chief vein of the life of\nhumanity [253] could hardly pass through it.  Not by it could the\nprogress of the world be achieved.  It is not the guise of Luther or\nSpinoza; rather it is that of Raphael, who in the midst of the\nReformation and the Renaissance, himself lighted up by them, yielded\nhimself to neither, but stood still to live upon himself, even in\noutward form a youth, almost an infant, yet surprising all the world.\nThe beauty of the Greek statues was a sexless beauty; the statues of\nthe gods had the least traces of sex.  Here there is a moral\nsexlessness, a kind of impotence, an ineffectual wholeness of nature,\nyet with a divine beauty and significance of its own.\n\nOver and over again the world has been surprised by the heroism, the\ninsight, the passion, of this clear crystal nature.  Poetry and\npoetical history have dreamed of a crisis, where it must needs be that\nsome human victim be sent down into the grave.  These are they whom in\nits profound emotion humanity might choose to send.  \"What,\" says\nCarlyle, of Charlotte Corday, \"What if she had emerged from her\nsecluded stillness, suddenly like a star; cruel-lovely, with\nhalf-angelic, half-daemonic splendour; to gleam for a moment, and in a\nmoment be extinguished; to be held in memory, so bright complete was\nshe, through long centuries!\"\n\nOften the presence of this nature is felt like a sweet aroma in early\nmanhood.  Afterwards, as the adulterated atmosphere of the world\nassimilates [254] us to itself, the savour of it faints away. Perhaps\nthere are flushes of it in all of us; recurring moments of it in every\nperiod of life.  Certainly this is so with every man of genius.  It is\na thread of pure white light that one might disentwine from the\ntumultuary richness of Goethe's nature.  It is a natural prophecy of\nwhat the next generation will appear, renerved, modified by the ideas\nof this.  There is a violence, an impossibility about men who have\nideas, which makes one suspect that they could never be the type of any\nwidespread life.  Society could not be conformed to their image but by\nan unlovely straining from its true order.  Well, in this nature the\nidea appears softened, harmonised as by distance, with an engaging\nnaturalness, without the noise of axe or hammer.\n\nPeople have often tried to find a type of life that might serve as a\nbasement type.  The philosopher, the saint, the artist, neither of them\ncan be this type; the order of nature itself makes them exceptional.\nIt cannot be the pedant, or the conservative, or anything rash and\nirreverent.  Also the type must be one discontented with society as it\nis.  The nature here indicated alone is worthy to be this type.  A\nmajority of such would be the regeneration of the world.\n\nJuly, 1864.\n\nNOTES\n\n250. +Transliteration: philosophesas pote met' erotos.\n\n252. +Transliteration: chlide.\n\n\n\nTHE END","title":"Miscellaneous Studies; a series of essays","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":60132}