RESULTING FORMS:--SECONDLY, CRESTS.
Sec. 1. Between the aiguilles, or other conditions of central peak, and the
hills which are clearly formed, as explained in Chap. XII. Sec. 11, by the
mere breaking of the edges of solid beds of coherent rock, there occurs
almost always a condition of mountain summit, intermediate in aspect, as
in position. The aiguille may generally be represented by the type _a_,
Fig. 42; the solid and simple beds of rock by the type _c_. The
condition _b_, clearly intermediate between the two, is, on the whole,
the most graceful and perfect in which mountain masses occur. It seems
to have attracted more of the attention of the poets than either of the
others; and the ordinary word, crest, which we carelessly use in
speaking of mountain summits, as if it meant little more than "edge" or
"ridge," has a peculiar force and propriety when applied to ranges of
cliff whose contours correspond thus closely to the principal lines of
the crest of a Greek helmet.
[Illustration: FIG. 42.]
Sec. 2. There is another resemblance which they can hardly fail to suggest
when at all irregular in form,--that of a wave about to break. Byron
uses the image definitely of Soracte; and, in a less clear way, it seems
to present itself occasionally to all minds, there being a general
tendency to give or accept accounts of mountain form under the image of
waves; and to speak of a hilly country, seen from above, as looking
like a "sea of mountains."
Such expressions, vaguely used, do not, I think, generally imply much
more than that the ground is waved or undulated into bold masses. But if
we give prolonged attention to the mountains of the group _b_ we shall
gradually begin to feel that more profound truth is couched under this
mode of speaking, and that there is indeed an appearance of action and
united movement in these crested masses, nearly resembling that of sea
waves; that they seem not to be heaped up, but to leap or toss
themselves up; and in doing so, to wreathe and twist their summits into
the most fantastic, yet harmonious, curves, governed by some grand
under-sweep like that of a tide, running through the whole body of the
mountain chain.
[Illustration: FIG 43.]
For instance, in Fig. 43, which gives, rudely, the leading lines of the
junction of the "Aiguille pourri"[66] (Chamouni) with the Aiguilles
Rouges, the reader cannot, I think, but feel that there is something
which binds the mountains together--some common influence at their heart
which they cannot resist: and that, however they may be broken or
disordered, there is as true unity among them as in the sweep of a wild
wave, governed, through all its foaming ridges, by constant laws of
weight and motion.
[Illustration: FIG. 44.]
Sec. 3. How far this apparent unity is the result of elevatory force _in_
mountain, and how far of the sculptural force of water _upon_ the
mountain, is the question we have mainly to deal with in the present
chapter.
[Illustration: FIG. 45.]
But first look back to Fig. 7, of Plate +8+, Vol. III., there given as
the typical representation of the ruling forces of growth in a leaf.
Take away the extreme portion of the curve on the left, and any segment
of the leaf remaining, terminated by one of its ribs, as _a_ or _b_,
Fig. 44, will be equally a typical contour of a common crested mountain.
If the reader will merely turn Plate +8+ so as to look at the figure
upright, with its stalk downwards, he will see that it is also the base
of the honeysuckle ornament of the Greeks. I may anticipate what we
shall have to note with respect to vegetation so far as to tell him that
it is also the base of form in all timber trees.
[Illustration: FIG. 46.]
Sec. 4. There seems something, therefore, in this contour which makes its
production one of the principal aims of Nature in all her compositions.
The cause of this appears to be, that as the cinqfoil is the simplest
expression of proportion, this is the simplest expression of opposition,
in unequal curved lines. If we take any lines, _a x_ and _e g_, Fig. 45,
both of varied curvature (not segments of circles), and one shorter than
the other, and join them together so as to form one line, as _b x_, _x
g_, we shall have one of the common lines of beauty; if we join them at
an angle, as _c x_, _x y_, we shall have the common crest, which is in
fact merely a jointed line of beauty. If we join them as at _a_, Fig.
46, they form a line at once monotonous and cramped, and the jointed
condition of this same line, _b_, is hardly less so. It is easily
proved, therefore, that the junction of lines _c x_, _x y_, is the
simplest and most graceful mode of opposition; and easily observed that
in branches of trees, wings of birds, and other more or less regular
organizations, such groups of line are continually made to govern the
contours. But it is not so easily seen why or how this form should be
impressed upon irregular heaps of mountain.
[Illustration: FIG. 47.]
Sec. 5. If a bed of coherent rock be raised, in the manner described in
Chap. XIII., so as to form a broken precipice with its edge, and a long
slope with its surface, as at _a_, Fig. 47 (and in this way nearly all
hills are raised), the top of the precipice has usually a tendency to
crumble down, and, in process of time, to form a heap of advanced ruins
at its foot. On the other side, the back or slope of the hill does not
crumble down, but is gradually worn away by the streams; and as these
are always more considerable, both in velocity and weight, at the bottom
of the slope than the top, the ground is faster worn away at the bottom,
and the straight slope is cut to a curve of continually increasing
steepness. Fig. 47 _b_ represents the contour to which the hill _a_
would thus be brought in process of time; the dotted line indicating its
original form. The result, it will be seen, is a crest.[67]
[Illustration: FIG. 48.]
Sec. 6. But crests of this uniform substance and continuous outline occur
only among hills composed of the softest coherent rocks, and seldom
attain any elevation such as to make them important or impressive. The
notable crests are composed of the hard coherents or slaty crystallines,
and then the contour of the crests depends mainly on the question
whether in the original mass of it, the beds lie as at _a_ or as at _b_,
Fig. 48. If they lie as at _a_, then the resultant crest will have the
general appearance seen at _c_; the edges of the beds getting separated
and serrated by the weather. If the beds lie as at _b_, the resultant
crest will be of such a contour as that at _d_.
The crests of the contour _d_ are formed usually by the harder coherent
rocks, and are notable chiefly for their bold precipices in front, and
regular slopes, or sweeping curves, at the back. We shall examine them
under the special head of _precipices_. But the crests of the form at c
belong usually to the slaty crystallines, and are those properly called
crests, their edges looking, especially when covered with pines, like
separated plumes. These it is our chief business to examine in the
present chapter.
[Illustration: FIG. 49.]
Sec. 7. In order to obtain this kind of crest, we first require to have our
mountain beds thrown up in the form _a_, Fig. 48. This is not easily
done on a large scale, except among the slaty crystallines forming the
flanks of the great chains, as in Fig. 29, p. 176. In that figure it
will be seen that the beds forming each side of the chain of Mont Blanc
are thrown into the required steepness, and therefore, whenever they
are broken towards the central mountain, they naturally form the front
of a crest, while the torrents and glaciers falling over their longer
slopes, carve them into rounded banks towards the valley.
Sec. 8. But the beauty of a crest or bird's wing consists, in nature, not
merely in its curved terminal outline, but in the radiation of the
plumes, so that while each assumes a different curve, every curve shall
show a certain harmony of direction with all the others.
We shall have to enter into the examination of this subject at greater
length in the 17th chapter; meanwhile, it is sufficient to observe the
law in a single example, such as Fig. 49, which is a wing of one of the
angels in Durer's woodcut of the Fall of Lucifer.[68] At first sight,
the plumes seem disposed with much irregularity, but there is a sense of
power and motion in the whole which the reader would find was at once
lost by a careless copyist; for it depends on the fact that if we take
the principal curves at any points of the wing, and continue them in the
lines which they are pursuing at the moment they terminate, these
continued lines will all meet in a single point, C. It is this law which
gives unity to the wing.
All groups of curves set beside each other depend for their beauty upon
the observance of this law;[69] and if, therefore, the mountain crests
are to be perfectly beautiful, Nature must contrive to get this element
of radiant curvature into them in one way or another. Nor does it, at
first sight, appear easy for her to get, I do not say radiant curves,
but curves _at all_: for in the aiguilles, she actually bent their beds;
but in these slaty crystallines it seems not always convenient to her to
bend the beds; and when they are to remain straight, she must obtain the
curvature in some other way.
[Illustration: FIG. 50.]
[Illustration: FIG. 51.]
[Illustration: FIG. 52.]
Sec. 9. One way in which she gets it is curiously simple in itself, but
somewhat difficult to explain, unless the reader will be at the pains of
making a little model for himself out of paste or clay. Hitherto,
observe, we have spoken of these crests as seen at their sides, as a
Greek helmet is seen from the side of the wearer. By means presently to
be examined, these mountain crests are so shaped that, seen _in front_,
or from behind (as a helmet crest is seen in front of or behind the
wearer), they present the contour of a sharp ridge, or house gable. Now
if the breadth of this ridge at its base remains the same, while its
height gradually diminishes from the front of it to the back (as from
the top of the crest to the back of the helmet), it necessarily assumes
the form of such a quaint gable roof as that shown in profile in Fig.
50, and in perspective[70] in Fig. 51, in which the gable is steep at
the end farthest off, but depressed at the end nearest us; and the rows
of tiles, in consequence, though in reality quite straight, appear to
radiate as they retire, owing to their different slopes. When a mountain
crest is thus formed, and the concave curve of its front is carried into
its flanks, each edge of bed assuming this concave curve, and radiating,
like the rows of tiles, in perspective at the same time, the whole
crest is thrown into the form Fig. 52, which is that of the radiating
plume required.
[Illustration: FIG. 53.]
Sec. 10. It often happens, however, that Nature does not choose to keep the
ridge broad at the lower extremity, so as to diminish its steepness. But
when this is not so, and the base is narrowed so that the slope of side
shall be nearly equal everywhere, she almost always obtains her varied
curvature of the plume in another way, by merely turning the crest a
little round as it descends. I will not confuse the reader by examining
the complicated results of such turning on the inclined lines of the
strata; but he can understand, in a moment, its effect on another series
of lines, those caused by rivulets of water down the sides of the crest.
These lines are, of course, always, in general tendency, perpendicular.
Let _a_, Fig. 53, be a circular funnel, painted inside with a pattern of
vertical lines meeting at the bottom. Suppose these lines to represent
the ravines traced by the water. Cut off a portion of the lip of the
funnel, as at _b_, to represent the crest side. Cut the edge so as to
slope down towards you, and add a slope on the other side. Then give
each inner line the concave sweep, and you have your ridge _c_, of the
required form, with radiant curvature.
Sec. 11. A greater space of such a crest is always seen on its concave than
on its convex side (the outside of the funnel); of this other
perspective I shall have to speak hereafter; meantime, we had better
continue the examination of the proper crest, the _c_ of Fig. 48, in
some special instance.
The form is obtained usually in the greatest perfection among the high
ridges near the central chain, where the beds of the slaty crystallines
are steep and hard. Perhaps the most interesting example I can choose
for close examination will be that of a mountain in Chamouni, called
the Aiguille Bouchard, now familiar to the eye of every traveller, being
the ridge which rises, exactly opposite the Montanvert, beyond the Mer
de Glace. The structure of this crest is best seen from near the foot of
the Montanvert, on the road to the source of the Arveiron, whence the
top of it, _a_, presents itself under the outline given rudely in the
opposite plate (+33+), in which it will be seen that, while the main
energy of the mountain mass tosses itself against the central chain of
Mont Blanc (which is on the right hand), it is met by a group of
counter-crests, like the recoil of a broken wave cast against it from
the other side; and yet, as the recoiling water has a sympathy with the
under swell of the very wave against which it clashes, the whole mass
writhes together in strange unity of mountain passion; so that it is
almost impossible to persuade oneself, after long looking at it, that
the crests have not indeed been once fused and tossed into the air by a
tempest which had mastery over them, as the winds have over ocean.
Sec. 12. And yet, if we examine the crest structure closely, we shall find
that nearly all these curvatures are obtained by Nature's skilful
handling of perfectly straight beds,--only the meeting of those two
waves of crest is indeed indicative of the meeting of two masses of
different rocks; it marks that junction of the slaty with the compact
crystallines, which has before been noticed as the principal mystery of
rock structure. To this junction my attention was chiefly directed
during my stay at Chamouni, as I found it was always at that point that
Nature produced the loveliest mountain forms. Perhaps the time I gave to
the study of it may have exaggerated its interest in my eyes; and the
reader who does not care for these geological questions, except in their
direct bearing upon art, may, without much harm, miss the next seven
paragraphs, and go on at the twenty-first. Yet there is one point, in a
Turner drawing presently to be examined, which I cannot explain without
inflicting the tediousness even of these seven upon him.
[Illustration: J. Ruskin. R. P. Cuff.
33. Leading Contours of Aiguille Bouchard.]
Sec. 13. First, then, the right of the Aiguille Bouchard to be called a
crest at all depends, not on the slope from _a_ to _b_, Plate +33+, but
on that from _a_ to _h_. The slope from _a_ to _b_ is a perspective
deception; _b_ is much the highest point of the two. Seen from the
village of Chamouni, the range presents itself under the outline Fig.
54, the same points in each figure being indicated by the same letters.
From the end of the valley the supremacy of the mass _b c_ is still more
notable. It is altogether with mountains as with human spirits, you
never know which is greatest till they are far away.
[Illustration: FIG. 54.]
Sec. 14. It will be observed also, that the beauty of the crest, in both
Plate +33+ and Fig. 54, depends on the gradually increasing steepness of
the lines of slope between _a_ and _b_. This is in great part deceptive,
being obtained by the receding of the crest into a great mountain
crater, or basin, as explained in Sec. 11. But this very recession is a
matter of interest, for it takes place exactly on the line above spoken
of, where the slaty crystallines of the crest join the compact
crystallines of the aiguilles; at which junction a correspondent chasm
or recession, of some kind or another, takes place along the whole front
of Mont Blanc.
Sec. 15. In the third paragraph of the last chapter we had occasion to
refer to the junction of the slaty and compact crystallines at the roots
of the aiguilles. It will be seen in the figure there given, that this
change is not sudden, but gradated. The rocks to be joined are of the
two types represented in Fig. 3, p. 106 (for convenience' sake I shall
in the rest of this chapter call the slaty rock gneiss, and the compact
rock protogine, its usual French name). Fig. 55 shows the general
manner of junction, beds of gneiss occurring in the middle of the
protogine, and of protogine in the gneiss; sometimes one touching the
other so closely, that a hammer-stroke breaks off a piece of both;
sometimes one passing into the other by a gradual change, like the zones
of a rainbow; the only general phenomenon being this, that the higher up
the hill the gneiss is, the harder it is (so that while it often yields
to the pressure of the finger down in the valley, on the Montanvert it
is nearly as hard as protogine); and, on the other hand, the lower down
the hill, or the nearer the gneiss, the protogine is, the finer it is in
grain. But still the actual transition from one to the other is usually
within a few fathoms; and it is that transition, and the preparation for
it, which causes the great step, or jag, on the flank of the chain, and
forms the tops of the Aiguille Bouchard, Charmoz ridges, Tapia, Montagne
de la Cote, Montagne de Taconay, and Aiguille du Goute.
[Illustration: FIG. 55.]
[Illustration: FIG. 56.]
[Illustration: FIG. 57.]
[Illustration: FIG. 58.]
Sec. 16. But what most puzzled me was the intense _straightness_ of the
lines of the gneiss beds, dipping, as it seemed, under the Mont Blanc.
For it has been a chief theory with geologists that these central
protogine rocks have once been in fusion, and have risen up in molten
fury, overturning and altering all the rocks around. But every day, as
I looked at the crested flanks of the Mont Blanc, I saw more plainly the
exquisite _regularity_ of the slopes of the beds, ruled, it seemed, with
an architect's rule, along the edge of their every flake from the
summits to the valley. And this surprised me the more because I had
always heard it stated that the beds of the lateral crests, _a_ and _b_,
Fig. 56, varied in slope, getting less and less inclined as they
descended, so as to arrange themselves somewhat in the form of a fan. It
may be so; but I can only say that all my observations and drawings give
an opposite report, and that the beds seemed invariably to present
themselves to the eye and the pencil in parallelism, modified only by
the phenomena just explained (Sec.Sec. 9, 10). Thus the entire mass of the
Aiguille Bouchard, of which only the top is represented in Plate +33+,
appeared to me in profile, as in Fig. 57, dependent for all its effect
and character on the descent of the beds in the directions of the dotted
lines, _a_, _b_, _d_. The interrupting space, _g g_, is the Glacier des
Bois; M is the Montanvert; _c_, _c_, the rocks under the glacier, much
worn by the fall of avalanches, but, for all that, showing the steep
lines still with the greatest distinctness. Again, looking down the
valley instead of up, so as to put the Mont Blanc on the left hand, the
principal crests which support it, Taconay and La Cote, always appeared
to me constructed as in Plate +35+ (p. 212), they also depending for all
their effect on the descent of the beds in diagonal lines towards the
left. Nay, half-way up the Breven, whence the structure of the Mont
Blanc is commanded, as far as these lower buttresses are concerned,
better than from the top of the Breven, I drew carefully the cleavages
of the beds, as high as the edge of the Aiguille de Goute, and found
them exquisitely parallel throughout; and again on the Cormayeur side,
though less steep, the beds _a_, _b_, Fig. 58, traversing the vertical
irregular fissures of the great aiguille of the Allee Blanche, as seen
over the Lac de Combal, still appeared to me perfectly regular and
parallel.[71] I have not had time to trace them round, through the
Aiguille de Bionassay, and above the Col de Bonhomme, though I know the
relations of the beds of limestone to the gneiss on the latter col are
most notable and interesting. But, as far as was required for any
artistical purposes, I perfectly ascertained the fact that, whatever
their real structure might be, these beds did appear, through the softer
contours of the hill, as straight and parallel; that they continued to
appear so until near the tops of the crests; and that those tops seemed,
in some mysterious way, dependent on the junction of the gneissitic beds
with, or their transition into, the harder protogine of the aiguilles.
Look back to Plate +33+. The peak of the Bouchard, _a_, is of gneiss,
and its beds run down in lines originally straight, but more or less
hollowed by weathering, to the point _h_, where they plunge under
debris. But the point _b_ is, I believe, of protogine; and all the
opposed writhing of the waves of rock to the right appears to be in
consequence of the junction.
[Illustration: 34. Cleavages of Aiguille Bouchard.]
Sec. 17. The way in which these curves are produced cannot, however, be
guessed at until we examine the junction more closely. Ascending about
five hundred feet above the cabin of the Montanvert, the opposite crest
of the Bouchard, from _a_ to _c_, Plate +33+, is seen more in front,
expanded into the jagged line, _a_ to _c_, Plate +34+, and the beds,
with their fractures, are now seen clearly throughout the mass, namely:
1st. (See references on plate). The true gneiss beds dipping down in the
direction G H, the point H being the same as _h_ in Plate +33+. These
are the beds so notable for their accurate straightness and parallelism.
2nd. The smooth fractures which in the middle of the etching seem to
divide the column of rock into a kind of brickwork. They are very neat
and sharp, running nearly at right angles with the true beds.[72]
3rd. The curved fractures of the aiguilles (seen first under the letter
_b_, and seeming to push outwards against the gneiss beds[73])
continuing through _c_ and the spur below.
4th. An irregular cleavage, something like that of starch, showing
itself in broken vertical lines.
5th. Writhing lines, cut by water. These have the greatest possible
influence on the aspect of the precipice: they are not merely caused by
torrents, but by falls of winter snow, and stones from the glacier
moraines, so that the cliff being continually worn away at the foot of
it, is wrought into a great amphitheatre, of which the receding sweep
continually varies the apparent steepness of the crest, as already
explained. I believe in ancient times the great Glacier des Bois itself
used to fill this amphitheatre, and break right up against the base of
the Bouchard.
6th. Curvatures worn by water over the back of the crest towards the
valley, in the direction _g i_.
7th. A tendency (which I do not understand) to form horizontal masses
at the levels _k_ and _l_.[74]
[Illustration: FIG. 61.]
Sec. 18. The reader may imagine what strange harmonies and changes of line
must result throughout the mass of the mountain from the varied
prevalence of one or other of these secret inclinations of its rocks
(modified, also, as they are by perpetual deceptions of perspective),
and how completely the rigidity or parallelism of any one of them is
conquered by the fitful urgencies of the rest,--a sevenfold action
seeming to run through every atom of crag. For the sake of clearness, I
have shown in this plate merely leading lines; the next (Plate +35+,
opposite) will give some idea of the complete aspect of two of the
principal crests on the Mont Blanc flanks, known as the Montagne de la
Cote, and Montagne de Taconay, _c_ and _t_ in Fig. 22, at page 163. In
which note, first, that the eminences marked _a a_, _b b_, _c c_, here,
in the reference figure (61), are in each of the mountains
correspondent, and indicate certain changes in the conditions of their
beds at those points. I have no doubt the two mountains were once one
mass, and that they have been sawn asunder by the great glacier of
Taconay, which descends between them; and similarly the Montagne de
la Cote sawn from the Tapia by the glacier des Bossons, B B in reference
figure.
[Illustration: 35. Crests of La Cote and Taconay.]
[Illustration: 36. Crest of La Cote.]
Sec. 19. Note, secondly, the general tendency in each mountain to throw
itself into concave curves towards the Mont Blanc, and descend in
rounded slopes to the valley; more or less interrupted by the direct
manifestation of the straight beds, which are indeed, in this view of
Taconay, the principal features of it. They necessarily become, however,
more prominent in the outline etching than in the scene itself, because
in reality the delicate cleavages are lost in distance or in mist, and
the effects of light bring out the rounded forms of the larger masses;
and wherever the clouds fill the hollows between, as they are apt to do,
(the glaciers causing a chillness in the ravines, while the wind,
blowing _up_ the larger valleys, clears the edges of the crests,) the
summits show themselves as in Plate 36, dividing, with their dark
frontlets, the perpetual sweep of the glaciers and the clouds.[75]
Sec. 20. Of the aqueous curvatures of this crest, we shall have more to say
presently; meantime let us especially observe how the providential laws
of beauty, acting with reversed data, arrive at similar results in the
aiguilles and crests. In the aiguilles, which are of such hard rock that
the fall of snow and trickling of streams do not affect them, the inner
structure is so disposed as to bring out the curvatures by the mere
fracture. In the crests and lower hills, which are of softer rock, and
largely influenced by external violence, the inner structure is
straight, and the necessary curvatures are produced by perspective, by
external modulation, and by the balancing of adverse influences of
cleavage. But, as the accuracy of an artist's eye is usually shown by
his perceiving the inner anatomy which regulates growth and form, and as
in the aiguilles, while we watch them, we are continually discovering
new curves, so in the crests, while we watch them, we are continually
discovering new straightnesses; and nothing more distinguishes good
mountain-drawing, or mountain-seeing, from careless and inefficient
mountain-drawing, than the observance of the marvellous parallelisms
which exist among the beds of the crests.
[Illustration: FIG. 62.]
Sec. 21. It indeed happens, not unfrequently, that in hills composed of
somewhat soft rock, the aqueous contours will so prevail over the
straight cleavage as to leave nothing manifest at the first glance but
sweeping lines like those of waves. Fig. 43, p. 196, is the crest of a
mountain on the north of the valley of Chamouni, known, from the rapid
decay and fall of its crags, as the Aiguille _Pourri_; and at first
there indeed seems little distinction between its contours and those of
the summit of a sea wave. Yet I think also, if it _were_ a wave, we
should immediately suppose the tide was running towards the right hand;
and if we examined the reason for this supposition, we should perceive
that along the ridge the steepest falls of crag were always on the
right-hand side; indicating a tendency in them to break rather in the
direction of the line _a b_ than any other. If we go half-way down the
Montanvert, and examine the left side of the crest somewhat more
closely, we shall find this tendency still more definitely visible, as
in Fig. 62.
Sec. 22. But what, then, has given rise to all those coiled plungings of
the crest hither and thither, yet with such strange unity of motion?
Yes. There is the cloud. How the top of the hill was first shaped so as
to let the currents of water act upon it in so varied a way we know not,
but I think that the appearance of _interior_ force of elevation is for
the most part deceptive. The series of beds would be found, if examined
in section, very uniform in their arrangement, only a little harder in
one place, and more delicate in another. A stream receives a slight
impulse this way or that, at the top of the hill, but increases in
energy and sweep as it descends, gathering into itself others from its
sides, and uniting their power with its own. A single knot of quartz
occurring in a flake of slate at the crest of the ridge may alter the
entire destinies of the mountain form. It may turn the little rivulet of
water to the right or left, and that little turn will be to the future
direction of the gathering stream what the touch of a finger on the
barrel of a rifle would be to the direction of the bullet. Each
succeeding year increases the importance of every determined form, and
arranges in masses yet more and more harmonious, the promontories shaped
by the sweeping of the eternal waterfalls.
Sec. 23. The importance of the results thus obtained by the slightest
change of direction in the infant streamlets, furnishes an interesting
type of the formation of human characters by habit. Every one of those
notable ravines and crags is the expression, not of any sudden violence
done to the mountain, but of its little _habits_, persisted in
continually. It was created with one ruling instinct; but its destiny
depended nevertheless, for effective result, on the direction of the
small and all but invisible tricklings of water, in which the first
shower of rain found its way down its sides. The feeblest, most
insensible oozings of the drops of dew among its dust were in reality
arbiters of its eternal form; commissioned, with a touch more tender
than that of a child's finger,--as silent and slight as the fall of a
half-checked tear on a maiden's cheek,--to fix for ever the forms of
peak and precipice, and hew those leagues of lifted granite into the
shapes that were to divide the earth and its kingdoms. Once the little
stone evaded,--once the dim furrow traced,--and the peak was for ever
invested with its majesty, the ravine for ever doomed to its
degradation. Thenceforward, day by day, the subtle habit gained in
power; the evaded stone was left with wider basement; the chosen furrow
deepened with swifter-sliding wave; repentance and arrest were alike
impossible, and hour after hour saw written in larger and rockier
characters upon the sky, the history of the choice that had been
directed by a drop of rain, and of the balance that had been turned by a
grain of sand.
[Illustration: FIG. 63.]
Sec. 24. Such are the principal laws, relating to the crested mountains,
for the expression of which we are to look to art; and we shall
accordingly find good and intelligent mountain-drawing distinguished
from bad mountain-drawing, by an indication, first, of the artist's
recognition of some great harmony among the summits, and of their
tendency to throw themselves into tidal waves, closely resembling those
of the sea itself; sometimes in free tossing towards the sky, but more
frequently still in the form of _breakers_, concave and steep on one
side, convex and less steep on the other; secondly, by his indication of
straight beds or fractures, continually stiffening themselves through
the curves in some given direction.
[Illustration: FIG. 64.]
Sec. 25. Fig. 63 is a facsimile of a piece of the background in Albert
Durer's woodcut of the binding of the great Dragon in the Apocalypse. It
is one of his most careless and rudest pieces of drawing; yet, observe
in it how notably the impulse of the breaking wave is indicated; and
note farther, how different a thing good drawing may be from delicate
_drawing_ on the one hand, and how different it must be from ignorant
drawing on the other. Woodcutting, in Durer's days, had reached no
delicacy capable of expressing subtle detail or aerial perspective. But
all the subtlety and aerial perspective of modern days are useless, and
even barbarous, if they fail in the expression of the essential mountain
facts.
Sec. 26. It will be noticed, however, that in this example of Durer's, the
recognition of straightness of line does not exist, and that for this
reason the hills look soft and earthy, not rocky.
So, also, in the next example, Fig. 64, the crest in the middle distance
is exceedingly fine in its expression of mountain force; the two ridges
of it being thrown up like the two edges of a return wave that has just
been beaten back from a rock. It is still, however, somewhat wanting in
the expression of straightness, and therefore slightly unnatural. It was
not people's way in the Middle Ages to look at mountains carefully
enough to discover the most subtle elements of their structure. Yet in
the next example, Fig. 65, the parallelism and rigidity are definitely
indicated, the crest outline being, however, less definite.
[Illustration: FIG. 65.]
Note, also (in passing), the entire equality of the lines in all these
examples, whether turned to dark or light. All good outline drawing, as
noticed in the chapter on finish, agrees in this character.
Sec. 27. The next figure (66) is interesting because it furnishes one of
the few instances in which Titian definitely took a suggestion from the
Alps, as he saw them from his house at Venice. It is from an old print
of a shepherd with a flock of sheep by the sea-side, in which he has
introduced a sea distance, with the Venetian church of St. Helena, some
subordinate buildings resembling those of Murano, and this piece of
cloud and mountain. The peak represented is one of the greater Tyrolese
Alps, which shows itself from Venice behind an opening in the chain,
and is their culminating point. In reality the mass is of the shape
given in Fig. 67. Titian has modified it into an energetic crest,
showing his feeling for the form, but I have no doubt that the woodcut
reverses Titian's original work (whatever it was), and that he gave the
crest the true inclination to the right, or east, which it has in
nature.
[Illustration: FIG. 66.]
Sec. 28. Now, it not unfrequently happens that in Claude's distances he
introduces actual outlines of Capri, Ischia, Monte St. Angelo, the Alban
Mount, and other chains about Rome and Naples, more or less faithfully
copied from nature. When he does so, confining himself to mere outline,
the grey contours seen against the distance are often satisfactory
enough; but as soon as he brings one of them nearer, so as to require
any drawing within its mass, it is quite curious to see the state of
paralysis into which he is thrown for want of any perception of the
mountain anatomy. Fig. 68 is one of the largest hills I can find in the
Liber Veritatis (No. 86), and it will be seen that there are only a few
lines inserted towards the edges, drawn in the direction of the sides of
the heap, or cone, wholly without consciousness of any interior
structure.
[Illustration: FIG. 67.]
[Illustration: FIG. 68.]
Sec. 29. I put below it, outlined also in the rudest way (for as I take the
shade away from the Liber Veritatis, I am bound also to take it away
from Turner), Fig. 69, a bit of the crags in the drawing of Loch
Coriskin, partly described already in Sec. 5 of the chapter on the Inferior
Mountains in Vol. I. The crest form is, indeed, here accidentally
prominent, and developed to a degree rare even with Turner; but note,
besides this, the way in which Turner leans on the _centre_ and body of
the hill, not on its edge; marking its strata stone by stone, just as a
good figure painter, drawing a limb, marks the fall and rise of the
joint, letting the outline sink back softened; and compare the exactly
opposite method of Claude, holding for life to his outline, as a Greek
navigator holds to the shore.[76]
[Illustration: FIG. 69.]
Sec. 30. Lest, however, it should be thought that I have unfairly chosen
my examples, let me take an instance at once less singular and more
elaborate.
We saw in our account of Turnerian topography, Chap. II., Sec. 14, that it
had been necessary for the painter, in his modification of the view in
the ravine of Faido, to introduce a passage from among the higher peaks;
which, being thus intended expressly to convey the general impression of
their character, must sufficiently illustrate what Turner felt that
character to be. Observe: it could not be taken from the great central
aiguilles, for none such exist at all near Faido; it could only be an
expression of what Turner considered the noblest attributes of the hills
next to these in elevation,--that is to say, those which we are now
examining.
I have etched the portion of the picture which includes this passage, on
page 221, on its own scale, including the whole couloir above the
gallery, and the gallery itself, with the rocks beside it.[77] And now,
if the reader will look back to Plate +20+, which is the outline of the
_real_ scene, he will have a perfect example, in comparing the two, of
the operation of invention of the highest order on a given subject. I
should recommend him to put a piece of tracing paper over the etching,
Plate +37+, and with his pen to follow some of the lines of it as
carefully as he can, until he feels their complexity, and the redundance
of the imaginative power which amplified the simple theme, furnished by
the natural scene, with such detail; and then let him observe what great
mountain laws Turner has been striving to express in all these
additions.
Sec. 31. The cleavages which govern the whole are precisely the same as
those of the Aiguille Bouchard, only wrought into grander combinations.
That the reader may the better distinguish them, I give the leading
lines coarsely for reference in Fig. 70, opposite. The cleavages and
lines of force are the following.
[Illustration: J. M. W. Turner. J. Ruskin.
37. Crests of the Slaty Crystallines.]
[Illustration: FIG. 70.]
1. A B and associated lines _a b_, _a b_, &c., over the whole plate.
True beds or cleavage beds (_g h_ in Aiguille Bouchard, Plate
+34+); here, observe, closing in retiring perspective with
exquisite subtlety, and giving the great unity of radiation to
the whole mass.
2. D E and associated lines _d e_, _d e_, over all the plate. Cross
cleavage, the second in Aiguille Bouchard; straight and sharp.
Forming here the series of crests at B and D.
3. _r s_, _r s_. Counter-crests, closely corresponding to
counter-fracture, the third in Aiguille Bouchard.
4. _m n_, _m n_, &c., over the whole. Writhing aqueous lines falling
gradually into the cleavages. Fifth group in Aiguille Bouchard.
The starchy cleavage is not seen here, it being not generally
characteristic of the crests, and present in the Bouchard only
accidentally.
5. _x x x_. Sinuous lines worn by the water, indicative of some softness
or flaws in the rock; these probably the occasion or consequence
of the formation of the great precipice or brow on the right. We
shall have more to say of them in Chap. XVII.
[Illustration: FIG. 71.]
6. _g f_, _g f_, &c. Broad aqueous or glacial curvatures. The sixth
group in Aiguille Bouchard.
7. _k l_, _k l_. Concave curves wrought by the descending avalanche;
peculiar, of course, to this spot.
8. _i h_, _i h_. Secondary convex curves, glacial or aqueous,
corresponding to _g f_, but wrought into the minor secondary
ravine. This secondary ravine is associated with the opponent
aiguillesque masses _r s_; and the cause of the break or gap
between these and the crests B D is indicated by the elbow or
joint of nearer rock, M, where the distortion of the beds or
change in their nature first takes place. Turner's idea of the
structure of the whole mass has evidently been that in section it
was as in Fig. 71, snapped asunder by elevation, with a nucleus
at M, which, allowing for perspective, is precisely on the line
of the chasm running in the direction of the arrow; but he gives
more of the curved aiguillesque fracture to these upper crests,
which are greater in elevation (and we saw, sometime ago, that
the higher the rock the harder). And that nucleus of change at M,
the hinge, as it were, on which all these promontories of upper
crest revolve, is the first or nearest of the evaded stones,
which have determined the course of streams and nod of cliffs
throughout the chain.
Sec. 32. I can well believe that the reader will doubt the possibility of
all this being intended by Turner: and _intended_, in the ordinary
sense, it was not. It was simply seen and instinctively painted,
according to the command of the imaginative dream, as the true Griffin
was, and as all noble things are. But if the reader fancies that the
apparent truth came by mere chance, or that I am imagining purpose and
arrangement where they do not exist, let him be once for all assured
that no man goes through the kind of work which, by this time, he must
be beginning to perceive I _have_ gone through, either for the sake of
deceiving others, or with any great likelihood of deceiving himself. He
who desires to deceive the picture-purchasing public may do so cheaply;
and it is easy to bring almost any kind of art into notice without
climbing Alps or measuring cleavages. But any one, on the other hand,
who desires to ascertain facts, and will refer all art directly to
nature for many laborious years, will not at last find himself an easy
prey to groundless enthusiasms, or erroneous fancies. Foolish people are
fond of repeating a story which has gone the full round of the
artistical world,--that Turner, some day, somewhere, said to somebody
(time, place, or person never being ascertainable), that I discovered in
his pictures things which he did himself not know were there. Turner was
not a person apt to say things of this kind; being generally, respecting
all the movements of his own mind, as silent as a granite crest; and if
he ever did say it, was probably laughing at the person to whom he was
speaking. But he _might_ have said it in the most perfect sincerity;
nay, I am quite sure that, to a certain extent, the case really was as
he is reported to have declared, and that he neither was aware of the
value of the truths he had seized nor understood the nature of the
instinct that combined them. And yet the truth was assuredly
apprehended, and the instinct assuredly present and imperative; and any
artists who try to imitate the smallest portion of his work will find
that no happy chances will, for them, gather together the resemblances
of fact, nor, for them, mimic the majesty of invention.[78]
Sec. 33. No happy chance--nay, no happy thought--no perfect knowledge--will
ever take the place of that mighty unconsciousness. I have often had to
repeat that Turner, in the ordinary sense of the words, neither knew nor
thought so much as other men. Whenever his _perception_ failed--that is
to say, with respect to scientific truths which produce no results
palpable to the eye--he fell into the frankest errors. For instance, in
such a thing as the relation of position between a rainbow and the sun,
there is not any definitely visible connection between them; it needs
attention and calculation to discover that the centre of the rainbow is
the shadow of the spectator's head.[79] And attention or calculation of
this abstract kind Turner appears to have been utterly incapable of; but
if he drew a piece of drapery, in which every line of the folds has a
_visible_ relation to the points of suspension, not a merely calculable
one, this relation he will see to the last thread; and thus he traces
the order of the mountain crests to their last stone, not because he
knows anything of geology, but because he instinctively seizes the last
and finest traces of any visible law.
[Illustration: FIG. 72.]
Sec. 34. He was, however, especially obedient to these laws of the crests,
because he heartily loved them. We saw in the early part of this chapter
how the crest outlines harmonized with nearly every other beautiful form
of natural objects, especially in the continuity of their external
curves. This continuity was so grateful to Turner's heart that he would
often go great lengths to serve it. For instance, in one of his drawings
of the town of Lucerne he has first outlined the Mont Pilate in pencil,
with a central peak, as indicated by the dotted line in Fig. 72. This is
nearly true to the local fact; but being inconsistent with the general
look of crests, and contrary to Turner's instincts, he strikes off the
refractory summit, and, leaving his pencil outline still in the sky,
touches with color only the contour shown by the continuous line in the
figure, thus treating it just as we saw Titian did the great Alp of the
Tyrol. He probably, however, would not have done this with so important
a feature of the scene as the Mont Pilate, had not the continuous line
been absolutely necessary to his composition, in order to oppose the
peaked towers of the town, which were his principal subject; the form of
the Pilate being seen only as a rosy shadow in the far off sky. We
cannot, however, yet estimate the importance, in his mind, of this
continuity of descending curve, until we come to the examination of the
lower hill _flanks_, hitherto having been concerned only with their
rocky summits; and before we leave those summits, or rather the harder
rocks which compose them, there is yet another condition of those rocks
to be examined; and that the condition which is commonly the most
interesting, namely, the Precipice. To this inquiry, however, we had
better devote a separate chapter.
FOOTNOTES
[66] So called from the mouldering nature of its rocks. They are
slaty crystallines, but unusually fragile.
[67] The materials removed from the slope are spread over the plain
or valley below. A nearly equal quantity is supposed to be removed
from the other side; but besides this _removed_ mass, the materials
crumble heavily from above, and form the concave curve.
[68] The lines are a little too straight in their continuations, the
engraver having cut some of the curvature out of their thickness,
thinking I had drawn them too coarsely. But I have chosen this
coarsely lined example, and others like it, following, because I
wish to accustom the reader to distinguish between the mere fineness
of instrument in the artist's hand, and the precision of the line he
draws. Give Titian a blunt pen, and still Titian's line will be a
noble one: a tyro, with a pen well mended, may draw more neatly; but
his lines ought to be discerned from Titian's, if we understand
drawing. Every line in this woodcut of Durer's is _refined_; and
that in the noblest sense. Whether broad or fine does not matter,
the lines are _right_; and the most delicate false line is evermore
to be despised, in presence of the coarsest faithful one.
[69] Not absolutely on the meeting of the curves in one point, but
on their radiating with some harmonious succession of difference in
direction. The difference between lines which are in true harmony of
radiation, and lines which are not, can, in complicated masses, only
be detected by a trained eye; yet it is often the chief difference
between good and bad drawing. A cluster of six or seven black plumes
forming the wing of one of the cherubs in Titian's Assumption, at
Venice, has a freedom and force about it in the painting which no
copyist or engraver has ever yet rendered, though it depends merely
on the subtlety of the curves, not on the color.
[70] "_Out of_ perspective," I should have said: but it will show
what I mean.
[71] Nor did any nearer observations ever induce me to form any
contrary opinion. It is not easy to get any consistent series of
_measurements_ of the slope of these gneiss beds; for, although
parallel on the great scale, they admit many varieties of dip in
minor projections. But all my notes unite, whether at the bottom or
top of the great slope of the Montanvert and La Cote, in giving an
angle of from 60 deg. to 80 deg. with the horizon; the consistent angle
being about 75 deg.. I cannot be mistaken in the measurements
themselves, however inconclusive observations on minor portions of
rock may be; for I never mark an angle unless enough of the upper or
lower surface of the beds be smoothly exposed to admit of my pole
being adjusted to it by the spirit-level. The pole then indicates
the strike of the beds, and a quadrant with a plumb-line their dip;
to all intents and purposes accurately. There is a curious
distortion of the beds in the ravine between the Glacier des Bois
and foot of the Montanvert, near the ice, about a thousand feet
above the valley; the beds there seem to bend suddenly back under
the glacier, and in some places to be quite vertical. On the
opposite side of the glacier, below the Chapeau, the dip of the
limestone under the gneiss, with the intermediate bed, seven or
eight feet thick, of the grey porous rock which the French call
_cargneule_, is highly interesting; but it is so concealed by debris
and the soil of the pine forests, as to be difficult to examine to
any extent. On the whole, the best position for getting the angle of
the beds accurately, is the top of the Tapia, a little below the
junction there of the granite and gneiss (see notice of this
junction in Appendix 2); a point from which the summit of the
Aiguille du Goute bears 11 deg. south of west, and that of the Aiguille
Bouchard 17 deg. north of east, the Aiguille Dru 51/2 deg. or 6 deg. north of
east, the peak of it appearing behind the Petit Charmoz. The beds of
gneiss emerging from the turf under the spectator's feet may be
brought parallel by the eye with the slopes of the Aiguille du Goute
on one side, and the Bouchard (and base of Aiguille d'Argentiere) on
the other; striking as nearly as possible from summit to summit
through that on which the spectator stands, or from about 10 deg. north
of east to 10 deg. south of west, and dipping with exquisite uniformity
at an angle of 74 degrees with the horizon. But what struck me as
still more strange was, that from this point I could distinctly see
traces of the same straight structure running through the Petit
Charmoz, and the roots of the aiguilles themselves, as in Fig. 59;
nor could I ever, in the course of countless observations, fairly
determine any point where this slaty structure altogether had
ceased. It seemed only to get less and less traceable towards the
centre of the mass of Mont Blanc; and, from the ridge of the
Aiguille Bouchard itself, at the point _a_ in Plate 33, whence,
looking south-west, the aiguilles can be seen in the most accurate
profile obtainable throughout the valley of Chamouni, I noticed a
very singular parallelism even on the south-east side of the
Charmoz, _x y_ (Fig. 60), as if the continued influence of this
cleavage were carried on from the Little Charmoz, _c_, _d_ (in
which, seen on the opposite side, I had traced it as in Fig. 59),
through the central mass of rock _r_. In this profile, M is the Mont
Blanc itself; _m_, the Aiguille du Midi; P, Aiguille du Plan; _b_,
Aiguille Blaitiere; C, Great Charmoz; _c_, Petit Charmoz; E, passage
called de l'Etala.
[Illustration: FIG. 59.]
[Illustration: FIG. 60.]
[72] Many geologists think they _are_ the true beds. They run across
the gneissitic folia, and I hold with De Saussure, and consider them
a cleavage.
[73] I tried in vain to get along the ridge of the Bouchard to this
junction, the edge of the precipice between _a_ and _b_ (Plate 33)
being too broken; but the point corresponds so closely to that of
the junction of the gneiss and protogine on the Charmoz ridge, that,
adding the evidence of the distant contour, I have no doubt as to
the general relations of the rocks.
[74] De Saussure often refers to these as "assaissements." They
occur, here and there, in the aiguilles themselves.
[75] The aqueous curves and roundings on the nearer crest (La Cote)
are peculiarly tender, because the gneiss of which it is composed is
softer in grain than that of the Bouchard, and remains so even to
the very top of the peak, _a_, in Fig. 61, where I found it mixed
with a yellowish and somewhat sandy quartz rock, and generally much
less protogenic than is usual at such elevations on other parts of
the chain.
[76] It is worth while noting here, in comparing Fig. 66 and Fig.
68, how entirely our judgment of some kinds of art depends upon
knowledge, not on feeling. Any person unacquainted with hills would
think Claude's right and Titian's ridiculous: but, after inquiring a
little farther into the matter, we find Titian's a careless and
intense expression of true knowledge, and Claude's a slow and
plausible expression of total ignorance.
It will be observed that Fig. 69 is one of the second order of
crests, _d_, Fig. 48. The next instance given is of the first order
of crests, _c_, in the same figure
[77] This etching, like that of the Bolton rocks, is prepared for
future mezzo-tint, and looks harsh in its present state; but will
mark all the more clearly several points of structure in question.
The diamond-shaped rock, however, (M, in the reference figure,) is
not so conspicuous here as it will be when the plate is finished,
being relieved in light from the mass behind, as also the faint
distant crests in dark from the sky.
[78] An anecdote is related, more to our present purpose, and better
authenticated, inasmuch as the name of the artist to whom Turner was
speaking at the time is commonly stated, though I do not give it
here, not having asked his permission. The story runs that this
artist (one of our leading landscape painters) was complaining to
Turner that, after going to Domo d'Ossola, to find the site of a
particular view which had struck him several years before, he had
entirely failed in doing so; "it looked different when he went back
again." "What," replied Turner, "do you not know yet, at your age,
that you ought to _paint_ your _impressions_?"
[79] So, in the exact length or shape of shadows in general, he will
often be found quite inaccurate; because the irregularity caused in
shadows by the shape of what they fall _on_, as well as what they
fall from, renders the law of connection untraceable by the eye or
the instinct. The chief _visible_ thing about a shadow is, that it
is always of some form which nobody would have thought of; and this
visible principle Turner always seizes, sometimes wrongly in
calculated fact, but always so rightly as to give more the look of a
real shadow than any one else.