OF THE MATERIALS OF MOUNTAINS:--FOURTHLY, COMPACT COHERENTS.
Sec. 1. This group of rocks, the last we have to examine, is, as far as
respects geographical extent and usefulness to the human race, more
important than any of the preceding ones. It forms the greater part of
all low hills and uplands throughout the world, and supplies the most
valuable materials for building and sculpture, being distinguished from
the group of the slaty coherents by its incapability of being separated
into thin sheets. All the rocks belonging to the group break
irregularly, like loaf sugar or dried clay. Some of them are composed of
hardened calcareous matter, and are known as limestone; others are
merely hardened sand, and are called freestone or sandstone; and others,
appearing to consist of dry mud or clay, are of less general importance,
and receive different names in different localities.
Sec. 2. Among these rocks, the foremost position is, of course, occupied by
the great group of the marbles, of which the substance appears to have
been prepared expressly in order to afford to human art a perfect means
of carrying out its purposes. They are of exactly the necessary
hardness,--neither so soft as to be incapable of maintaining themselves
in delicate forms, nor so hard as always to require a blow to give
effect to the sculptor's touch; the mere pressure of his chisel produces
a certain, effect upon them. The color of the white varieties is of
exquisite delicacy, owing to the partial translucency of the pure rock;
and it has always appeared to me a most wonderful ordinance,--one of the
most _marked_ pieces of purpose in the creation,--that all the
variegated kinds should be comparatively opaque, so as to set off the
color on the surface, while the white, which if it had been opaque would
have looked somewhat coarse (as, for instance, common chalk does), is
rendered just translucent enough to give an impression of extreme
purity, but not so translucent as to interfere in the least with the
distinctness of any forms into which it is wrought. The colors of
variegated marbles are also for the most part very beautiful, especially
those composed of purple, amber, and green, with white; and there seems
to be something notably attractive to the human mind in the vague and
veined labyrinths of their arrangements. They are farther marked as the
prepared material for human work by the dependence of their beauty on
smoothness of surface; for their veins are usually seen but dimly in the
native rock; and the colors they assume under the action of weather are
inferior to those of the crystallines: it is not until wrought and
polished by man that they show their character. Finally, they do not
decompose. The exterior surface is sometimes destroyed by a sort of
mechanical disruption of its outer flakes, but rarely to the extent in
which such action takes place in other rocks; and the most delicate
sculptures, if executed in good marble, will remain for ages
undeteriorated.
Sec. 3. Quarries of marble are, however, rare, and we owe the greatest part
of the good architecture of this world to the more ordinary limestones
and sandstones, easily obtainable in blocks of considerable size, and
capable of being broken, sawn, or sculptured with ease; the color,
generally grey, or warm red (the yellow and white varieties becoming
grey with age), being exactly that which will distinguish buildings by
an agreeable contrast from the vegetation by which they may be
surrounded.
To these inferior conditions of the compact coherence we owe also the
greater part of the _pretty_ scenery of the inhabited globe. The sweet
winding valleys, with peeping cliffs on either side; the light,
irregular wanderings of broken streamlets; the knolls and slopes covered
with rounded woods; the narrow ravines, carpeted with greensward, and
haunted by traditions of fairy or gnome; the jutting crags, crowned by
the castle or watch-tower; the white sea-cliff and sheep-fed down; the
long succession of coteau, sunburnt, and bristling with vines,--all
these owe whatever they have of simple beauty to the peculiar nature of
the group of rocks of which we are speaking; a group which, though
occasionally found in mountain masses of magnificent form and size, is
on the whole characterized by a comparative smallness of scale, and a
tendency to display itself less in true mountains than in elevated downs
or plains, through which winding valleys, more or less deep, are cut by
the action of the streams.
Sec. 4. It has been said that this group of rocks is distinguished by its
incapability of being separated into sheets. This is only true of it in
small portions, for it is usually deposited in beds or layers of
irregular thickness, which are easily separable from each other; and
when, as not unfrequently happens, some of these beds are only half an
inch or a quarter of an inch thick, the rock appears to break into flat
plates like a slaty coherent. But this appearance is deceptive. However
thin the bed may be, it will be found that it is in its own substance
compact, and not separable into two other beds; but the true slaty
coherents possess a delicate slatiness of structure, carried into their
most minute portions, so that however thin a piece of them may be, it is
usually possible, if we have instruments fine enough, to separate it
into two still thinner flakes. As, however, the slaty and compact
crystallines, so also the slaty and compact coherents pass into each
other by subtle gradations, and present many intermediate conditions,
very obscure and indefinable.
Sec. 5. I said just now that the colors of the compact coherents were
usually such as would pleasantly distinguish buildings from vegetation.
They are so; but considered as abstract hues, are yet far less agreeable
than those of the nobler and older rocks. And it is to be noticed, that
as these inferior rocks are the materials with which we usually build,
they form the ground of the idea suggested to most men's minds by the
word "stone," and therefore the general term "stone-color" is used in
common parlance as expressive of the hue to which the compact coherents
for the most part approximate. By stone-color I suppose we all
understand a sort of tawny grey, with too much yellow in it to be called
cold, and too little to be called warm. And it is quite true that over
enormous districts of Europe, composed of what are technically known as
"Jura" and "mountain" limestones, and various pale sandstones, such is
generally the color of any freshly broken rock which peeps out along the
sides of their gentler hills. It becomes a little greyer as it is
colored by time, but never reaches anything like the noble hues of the
gneiss and slate; the very lichens which grow upon it are poorer and
paler; and although the deep wood mosses will sometimes bury it
altogether in golden cushions, the minor mosses, whose office is to
decorate and chequer the rocks without concealing them, are always more
meagrely set on these limestones than on the crystallines.
Sec. 6. I never have had time to examine and throw into classes the
varieties of the mosses which grow on the two kinds of rock, nor have I
been able to ascertain whether there are really numerous differences
between the species, or whether they only grow more luxuriantly on the
crystallines than on the coherents. But this is certain, that on the
broken rocks of the foreground in the crystalline groups the mosses seem
to set themselves consentfully and deliberately to the task of producing
the most exquisite harmonies of color in their power. They will not
conceal the form of the rock, but will gather over it in little brown
bosses, like small cushions of velvet made of mixed threads of dark ruby
silk and gold, rounded over more subdued films of white and grey, with
lightly crisped and curled edges like hoar frost on fallen leaves, and
minute clusters of upright orange stalks with pointed caps, and fibres
of deep green, and gold, and faint purple passing into black, all woven
together, and following with unimaginable fineness of gentle growth the
undulation of the stone they cherish, until it is charged with color so
that it can receive no more; and instead of looking rugged, or cold, or
stern, as anything that a rock is held to be at heart, it seems to be
clothed with a soft, dark leopard skin, embroidered with arabesque of
purple and silver. But in the lower ranges this is not so. The mosses
grow in more independent spots, not in such a clinging and tender way
over the whole surface; the lichens are far poorer and fewer; and the
color of the stone itself is seen more frequently; altered, if at all,
only into a little chiller grey than when it is freshly broken. So that
a limestone landscape is apt to be dull, and cold in general tone, with
some aspect even of barrenness. The sandstones are much richer in
vegetation: there are, perhaps, no scenes in our own island more
interesting than the wooded dingles which traverse them, the red rocks
growing out on either side, and shelving down into the pools of their
deep brown rivers, as at Jedburgh and Langholme; the steep oak copses
climbing the banks, the paler plumes of birch shaking themselves free
into the light of the sky above, and the few arches of the monastery
where the fields in the glen are greenest, or the stones of the border
tower where its cliffs are steepest, rendering both field and cliff a
thousandfold more dear to the heart and sight. But deprived of
associations, and compared in their mere natural beauty with the ravines
of the central ranges, there can be no question but that even the
loveliest passages of such scenery are imperfect and poor in foreground
color. And at first there would seem to be an unfairness in this, unlike
the usual system of compensation which so often manifests itself
throughout nature. The higher mountains have their scenes of power and
vastness, their blue precipices and cloud-like snows: why should they
also have the best and fairest colors given to their foreground rocks,
and overburden the human mind with wonder; while the less majestic
scenery, tempting us to the observance of details for which amidst the
higher mountains we had no admiration left, is yet, in the beauty of
those very details, as inferior as it is in scale of magnitude?
Sec. 7. I believe the answer must be, simply, that it is not good for man
to live among what is most beautiful;--that he is a creature incapable
of satisfaction by anything upon earth; and that to allow him habitually
to possess, in any kind whatsoever, the utmost that earth can give, is
the surest way to cast him into lassitude or discontent.
If the most exquisite orchestral music could be continued without a
pause for a series of years, and children were brought up and educated
in the room in which it was perpetually resounding, I believe their
enjoyment of music, or understanding of it, would be very small. And an
accurately parallel effect seems to be produced upon the powers of
contemplation, by the redundant and ceaseless loveliness of the high
mountain districts. The faculties are paralyzed by the abundance, and
cease, as we before noticed of the imagination, to be capable of
excitement, except by other subjects of interest than those which
present themselves to the eye. So that it is, in reality, better for
mankind that the forms of their common landscape should offer no
violent stimulus to the emotions,--that the gentle upland, browned by
the bending furrows of the plough, and the fresh sweep of the chalk
down, and the narrow winding of the copse-clad dingle, should be more
frequent scenes of human life than the Arcadias of cloud-capped mountain
or luxuriant vale; and that, while humbler (though always infinite)
sources of interest are given to each of us around the homes to which we
are restrained for the greater part of our lives, these mightier and
stranger glories should become the objects of adventure,--at once the
cynosures of the fancies of childhood, and themes of the happy memory,
and the winter's tale of age.
Sec. 8. Nor is it always that the inferiority is felt. For, so natural is
it to the human heart to fix itself in hope rather than in present
possession, and so subtle is the charm which the imagination casts over
what is distant or denied, that there is often a more touching power in
the scenes which contain far-away promise of something greater than
themselves, than in those which exhaust the treasures and powers of
Nature in an unconquerable and excellent glory, leaving nothing more to
be by the fancy pictured, or pursued.
I do not know that there is a district in the world more calculated to
illustrate this power of the expectant imagination, than that which
surrounds the city of Fribourg in Switzerland, extending from it towards
Berne. It is of grey sandstone, considerably elevated, but presenting no
object of striking interest to the passing traveller; so that, as it is
generally seen in the course of a hasty journey from the Bernese Alps to
those of Savoy, it is rarely regarded with any other sensation than that
of weariness, all the more painful because accompanied with reaction
from the high excitement caused by the splendor of the Bernese Oberland.
The traveller, footsore, feverish, and satiated with glacier and
precipice, lies back in the corner of the diligence, perceiving little
more than that the road is winding and hilly, and the country through
which it passes cultivated and tame. Let him, however, only do this tame
country the justice of staying in it a few days, until his mind has
recovered its tone, and take one or two long walks through its fields,
and he will have other thoughts of it. It is, as I said, an undulating
district of grey sandstone, never attaining any considerable height,
but having enough of the mountain spirit to throw itself into continual
succession of bold slope and dale; elevated, also, just far enough above
the sea to render the pine a frequent forest tree along its irregular
ridges. Through this elevated tract the river cuts its way in a ravine
some five or six hundred feet in depth, which winds for leagues between
the gentle hills, unthought of, until its edge is approached; and then
suddenly, through the boughs of the firs, the eye perceives, beneath,
the green and gliding stream, and the broad walls of sandstone cliff
that form its banks; hollowed out where the river leans against them, at
its turns, into perilous overhanging, and, on the other shore, at the
same spots, leaving little breadths of meadow between them and the
water, half-overgrown with thicket, deserted in their sweetness,
inaccessible from above, and rarely visited by any curious wanderers
along the hardly traceable footpath which struggles for existence
beneath the rocks. And there the river ripples, and eddies, and murmurs
in an utter solitude. It is passing through the midst of a thickly
peopled country; but never was a stream so lonely. The feeblest and most
far-away torrent among the high hills has its companions: the goats
browse beside it; and the traveller drinks from it, and passes over it
with his staff; and the peasant traces a new channel for it down to his
mill-wheel. But this stream has no companions: it flows on in an
infinite seclusion, not secret nor threatening, but a quietness of sweet
daylight and open air,--a broad space of tender and deep desolateness,
drooped into repose out of the midst of human labor and life; the waves
plashing lowly, with none to hear them; and the wild birds building in
the boughs, with none to fray them away; and the soft, fragrant herbs
rising, and breathing, and fading, with no hand to gather them;--and yet
all bright and bare to the clouds above, and to the fresh fall of the
passing sunshine and pure rain.
Sec. 9. But above the brows of those scarped cliffs, all is in an instant
changed. A few steps only beyond the firs that stretch their branches,
angular, and wild, and white, like forks of lightning, into the air of
the ravine, and we are in an arable country of the most perfect
richness; the swathes of its corn glowing and burning from field to
field; its pretty hamlets all vivid with fruitful orchards and flowery
gardens, and goodly with steep-roofed storehouse and barn; its
well-kept, hard, park-like roads rising and falling from hillside to
hillside, or disappearing among brown banks of moss, and thickets of the
wild raspberry and rose; or gleaming through lines of tall trees, half
glade, half avenue, where the gate opens, or the gateless path turns
trustedly aside, unhindered, into the garden of some statelier house,
surrounded in rural pride with its golden hives, and carved granaries,
and irregular domain of latticed and espaliered cottages, gladdening to
look upon in their delicate homeliness--delicate, yet, in some sort,
rude; not like our English homes--trim, laborious, formal,
irreproachable in comfort; but with a peculiar carelessness and
largeness in all their detail, harmonizing with the outlawed loveliness
of their country. For there is an untamed strength even in all that soft
and habitable land. It is, indeed, gilded with corn and fragrant with
deep grass, but it is not subdued to the plough or to the scythe. It
gives at its own free will,--it seems to have nothing wrested from it
nor conquered in it. It is not redeemed from desertness, but
unrestrained in fruitfulness,--a generous land, bright with capricious
plenty, and laughing from vale to vale in fitful fulness, kind and wild;
nor this without some sterner element mingled in the heart of it. For
along all its ridges stand the dark masses of innumerable pines, taking
no part in its gladness, asserting themselves for ever as fixed shadows,
not to be pierced or banished, even in the intensest sunlight; fallen
flakes and fragments of the night, stayed in their solemn squares in the
midst of all the rosy bendings of the orchard boughs, and yellow
effulgence of the harvest, and tracing themselves in black network and
motionless fringes against the blanched blue of the horizon in its
saintly clearness. And yet they do not sadden the landscape, but seem to
have been set there chiefly to show how bright everything else is round
them; and all the clouds look of purer silver, and all the air seems
filled with a whiter and more living sunshine, where they are pierced by
the sable points of the pines; and all the pastures look of more glowing
green, where they run up between the purple trunks: and the sweet field
footpaths skirt the edges of the forest for the sake of its shade,
sloping up and down about the slippery roots, and losing themselves
every now and then hopelessly among the violets, and ground ivy, and
brown sheddings of the fibrous leaves; and, at last, plunging into some
open aisle where the light through the distant stems shows that there is
a chance of coming out again on the other side; and coming out, indeed,
in a little while, from the scented darkness, into the dazzling air and
marvellous landscape, that stretches still farther and farther in new
wilfulness of grove and garden, until, at last, the craggy mountains of
the Simmenthal rise out of it, sharp into the rolling of the southern
clouds.
Sec. 10. I believe, for general development of human intelligence and
sensibility, country of this kind is about the most perfect that exists.
A richer landscape, as that of Italy, enervates, or causes wantonness; a
poorer contracts the conceptions, and hardens the temperament of both
mind and body; and one more curiously or prominently beautiful deadens
the sense of beauty. Even what is here of attractiveness,--far
exceeding, as it does that of most of the thickly peopled districts of
the temperate zone,--seems to act harmfully on the poetical character of
the Swiss; but take its inhabitants all in all, as with deep love and
stern penetration they are painted in the works of their principal
writer, Gotthelf, and I believe we shall not easily find a peasantry
which would completely sustain comparison with them.
Sec. 11. But be this as it may, it is certain that the compact coherent
rocks are appointed to form the greatest part of the earth's surface,
and by their utility, and easily changed and governed qualities, to
tempt man to dwell among them; being, however, in countries not
definitely mountainous, usually covered to a certain depth by those beds
of loose gravel and sand to which we agreed to give the name of
diluvium. There is nothing which will require to be noted respecting
these last, except the forms into which they are brought by the action
of water; and the account of these belongs properly to the branch of
inquiry which follows next in the order we proposed to ourselves,
namely, that touching the sculpture of mountains, to which it will be
best to devote some separate chapters; this only being noted in
conclusion respecting the various rocks whose nature we have been
describing, that out of the entire series of them we may obtain almost
every color pleasant to human sight, not the less so for being generally
a little softened or saddened. Thus we have beautiful subdued reds,
reaching tones of deep purple, in the porphyries, and of pale rose
color, in the granites; every kind of silvery and leaden grey, passing
into purple, in the slates; deep green, and every hue of greenish grey,
in the volcanic rocks and serpentines; rich orange, and golden brown, in
the gneiss; black, in the lias limestones; and all these, together with
pure white, in the marbles. One color only we hardly ever get in an
exposed rock--that dull _brown_ which we noticed above, in speaking of
color generally, as the most repulsive of all hues; every approximation
to it is softened by nature, when exposed to the atmosphere, into a
purple grey. All this can hardly be otherwise interpreted, than as
prepared for the delight and recreation of man; and I trust that the
time may soon come when these beneficent and beautiful gifts of color
may be rightly felt and wisely employed, and when the variegated fronts
of our houses may render the term "stone-color" as little definite in
the mind of the architect as that of "flower-color" would be to the
horticulturist.