RESULTING FORMS:--FOURTHLY, BANKS.
Sec. 1. During all our past investigations of hill form, we have been
obliged to refer continually to certain results produced by the action
of descending streams or falling stones. The actual contours assumed by
any mountain range towards its foot depend usually more upon this
torrent sculpture than on the original conformation of the masses; the
existing hill side is commonly an accumulation of debris; the existing
glen commonly an excavated watercourse; and it is only here and there
that portions of rock, retaining impress of their original form, jut
from the bank, or shelve across the stream.
Sec. 2. Now this sculpture by streams, or by gradual weathering, is the
finishing work by which Nature brings her mountain forms into the state
in which she intends us generally to observe and love them. The violent
convulsion or disruption by which she first raises and separates the
masses may frequently be intended to produce impressions of terror
rather than of beauty; but the laws which are in constant operation on
all noble and enduring scenery must assuredly be intended to produce
results grateful to men. Therefore, as in this final pencilling of
Nature's we shall probably find her ideas of mountain beauty most
definitely expressed, it may be well that, before entering on this part
of our subject, we should recapitulate the laws respecting beauty of
form which we arrived at in the abstract.
Sec. 3. Glancing back to the fourteenth and fifteenth paragraphs of the
chapter on Infinity, in the second volume, and to the third and tenth of
the chapters on Unity, the reader will find that abstract beauty of form
is supposed to depend on continually varied curvatures of line and
surface, associated so as to produce an effect of some unity among
themselves, and opposed, in order to give them value, by more or less
straight or rugged lines.
The reader will, perhaps, here ask why, if both the straight and curved
lines are necessary, one should be considered more beautiful than the
other. Exactly as we consider light beautiful and darkness ugly, in the
abstract, though both are essential to all beauty. Darkness mingled with
color gives the delight of its depth or power; even pure blackness, in
spots or chequered patterns, is often exquisitely delightful; and yet we
do not therefore consider, in the abstract, blackness to be beautiful.
[Illustration: FIG. 90.]
Just in the same way straightness mingled with curvature, that is to
say, the close approximation of part of any curve to a straight line,
gives to such curve all its spring, power, and nobleness: and even
perfect straightness, limiting curves, or opposing them, is often
pleasurable: yet, in the abstract, straightness is always ugly, and
curvature always beautiful.
Thus, in the figure at the side, the eye will instantly prefer the
semicircle to the straight line; the trefoil (composed of three
semicircles) to the triangle; and the cinqfoil to the pentagon. The
mathematician may perhaps feel an opposite preference; but he must be
conscious that he does so under the influence of feelings quite
different from those with which he would admire (if he ever does admire)
a picture or statue; and that if he could free himself from those
associations, his judgment of the relative agreeableness of the forms
would be altered. He may rest assured that, by the natural instinct of
the eye and thought, the preference is given instantly, and always, to
the curved form; and that no human being of unprejudiced perceptions
would desire to substitute triangles for the ordinary shapes of clover
leaves, or pentagons for those of potentillas.
Sec. 4. All curvature, however, is not equally agreeable; but the
examination of the laws which render one curve more beautiful than
another, would, if carried out to any completeness, alone require a
volume. The following few examples will be enough to put the reader in
the way of pursuing the subject for himself.
[Illustration: FIG. 91.]
Take any number of lines, _a b_, _b c_, _c d_, &c., Fig. 91, bearing any
fixed proportion to each other. In this figure, _b c_ is one third
longer than _a b_, and _c d_ than _b c_; and so on. Arrange them in
succession, keeping the inclination, or angle, which each makes with the
preceding one always the same. Then a curve drawn through the
extremities of the lines will be a beautiful curve; for it is governed
by consistent laws; every part of it is connected by those laws with
every other, yet every part is different from every other; and the mode
of its construction implies the possibility of its continuance to
infinity; it would never return upon itself though prolonged for ever.
These characters must be possessed by every perfectly beautiful curve.
If we make the difference between the component or measuring lines less,
as in Fig. 92, in which each line is longer than the preceding one only
by a fifth, the curve will be more contracted and less beautiful. If we
enlarge the difference, as in Fig. 93, in which each line is double the
preceding one, the curve will suggest a more rapid proceeding into
infinite space, and will be more beautiful. Of two curves, the same in
other respects, that which suggests the quickest attainment of infinity
is always the most beautiful.
[Illustration: FIG. 92.]
[Illustration: FIG. 93.]
Sec. 5. These three curves being all governed by the same general law, with
a difference only in dimensions of lines, together with all the other
curves so constructible, varied as they may be infinitely, either by
changing the lengths of line, or the inclination of the lines to each
other, are considered by mathematicians only as one curve, having this
peculiar character about it, different from that of most other infinite
lines, that any portion of it is a magnified repetition of the preceding
portion; that is to say, the portion between _e_ and _g_ is precisely
what that between _c_ and _e_ would look, if seen through a lens which
magnified somewhat more than twice. There is therefore a peculiar
equanimity and harmony about the look of lines of this kind, differing,
I think, from the expression of any others except the circle. Beyond the
point _a_ the curve may be imagined to continue to an infinite degree of
smallness, always circling nearer and nearer to a point, which, however,
it can never reach.
[Illustration: FIG. 94.]
Sec. 6. Again: if, along the horizontal line, A B, Fig. 94, we measure any
number of equal distances, A _b_, _b c_, &c., and raise perpendiculars
from the points _b_, _c_, _d_, &c., of which each perpendicular shall be
longer, by some given proportion (in this figure it is one third), than
the preceding one, the curve _x y_, traced through their extremities,
will continually change its direction, but will advance into space in
the direction of _y_ as long as we continue to measure distances along
the line A B, always inclining more and more to the nature of a straight
line, yet never becoming one, even if continued to infinity. It would,
in like manner, continue to infinity in the direction of _x_, always
approaching the line A B, yet never touching it.
Sec. 7. An infinite number of different lines, more or less violent in
curvature according to the measurements we adopt in designing them, are
included, or defined, by each of the laws just explained. But the number
of these laws themselves is also infinite. There is no limit to the
multitude of conditions which may be invented, each producing a group of
curves of a certain common nature. Some of these laws, indeed, produce
single curves, which, like the circle, can vary only in size; but, for
the most part, they vary also, like the lines we have just traced, in
the rapidity of their curvature. Among these innumerable lines, however,
there is one source of difference in character which divides them,
infinite as they are in number, into two great classes. The first class
consists of those which are limited in their course, either ending
abruptly, or returning to some point from which they set out; the second
class, of those lines whose nature is to proceed for ever into space.
Any portion of a circle, for instance, is, by the law of its being,
compelled, if it continue its course, to return to the point from which
it set out; so also any portion of the oval curve (called an ellipse),
produced by cutting a cylinder obliquely across. And if a single point
be marked on the rim of a carriage wheel, this point, as the wheel rolls
along the road, will trace a curve in the air from one part of the road
to another, which is called a cycloid, and to which the law of its
existence appoints that it shall always follow a similar course, and be
terminated by the level line on which the wheel rolls. All such curves
are of inferior beauty: and the curves which are incapable of being
completely drawn, because, as in the two cases above given, the law of
their being supposes them to proceed for ever into space, are of a
higher beauty.
Sec. 8. Thus, in the very first elements of form, a lesson is given us as
to the true source of the nobleness and chooseableness of all things.
The two classes of curves thus sternly separated from each other, may
most properly be distinguished as the "Mortal and Immortal Curves;" the
one having an appointed term of existence, the other absolutely
incomprehensible and endless, only to be seen or grasped during a
certain moment of their course. And it is found universally that the
class to which the human mind is attached for its chief enjoyment are
the Endless or Immortal lines.
Sec. 9. "Nay," but the reader answers, "what right have you to say that one
class is more beautiful than the other? Suppose I like the finite curves
best, who shall say which of us is right?"
No one. It is simply a question of experience. You will not, I think,
continue to like the finite curves best as you contemplate them
carefully, and compare them with the others. And if you should do so, it
then yet becomes a question to be decided by longer trial, or more
widely canvassed opinion. And when we find on examination that every
form which, by the consent of human kind, has been received as lovely,
in vases, flowing ornaments, embroideries, and all other things
dependent on abstract line, is composed of these infinite curves, and
that Nature uses them for every important contour, small or large, which
she desires to recommend to human observance, we shall not, I think,
doubt that the preference of such lines is a sign of healthy taste, and
true instinct.
Sec. 10. I am not sure, however, how far the delightfulness of such line,
is owing, not merely to their expression of infinity, but also to that
of restraint or moderation. Compare Stones of Venice, vol. iii. chap. i.
Sec. 9, where the subject is entered into at some length. Certainly the
beauty of such curvature is owing, in a considerable degree, to both
expressions; but when the line is sharply terminated, perhaps more to
that of moderation than of infinity. For the most part, gentle or
subdued sounds, and gentle or subdued colors, are more pleasing than
either in their utmost force; nevertheless, in all the noblest
compositions, this utmost power is permitted, but only for a short time,
or over a small space. Music must rise to its utmost loudness, and fall
from it; color must be gradated to its extreme brightness, and descend
from it; and I believe that absolutely perfect treatment would, in
either case, permit the intensest sound and purest color only for a
point or for a moment.
[Illustration: 42. Leaf Curvature. Magnolia and Laburnum.]
[Illustration: 43. Leaf Curvature. Dead Laurel.]
[Illustration: 44. Leaf Curvature. Young Ivy.]
Curvature is regulated by precisely the same laws. For the most part,
delicate or slight curvature is more agreeable than violent or rapid
curvature; nevertheless, in the best compositions, violent
curvature is permitted, but permitted only over small spaces in the
curve.
Sec. 11. The right line is to the curve what monotony is to melody, and
what unvaried color is to gradated color. And as often the sweetest
music is so low and continuous as to approach a monotone; and as often
the sweetest gradations so delicate and subdued as to approach to
flatness, so the finest curves are apt to hover about the right line,
nearly coinciding with it for a long space of their curve; never
absolutely losing their own curvilinear character, but apparently every
moment on the point of merging into the right line. When this is the
case, the line generally returns into vigorous curvature at some part of
its course, otherwise it is apt to be weak, or slightly rigid;
multitudes of other curves, not approaching the right line so nearly,
remain less vigorously bent in the rest of their course; so that the
quantity[88] of curvature is the same in both, though differently
distributed.
[Illustration: FIG. 95.]
Sec. 12. The modes in which Nature produces variable curves on a large
scale are very numerous, but may generally be resolved into the gradual
increase or diminution of some given force. Thus, if a chain hangs
between two points A and B, Fig. 95, the weight of chain sustained by
any given link increases gradually from the central link at C, which has
only its own weight to sustain, to the link at B, which sustains,
besides its own, the weight of all the links between it and C. This
increased weight is continually pulling the curve of the swinging chain
more nearly straight as it ascends towards B; and hence one of the most
beautifully gradated natural curves--called the catenary--of course
assumed not by chains only, but by all flexible and elongated
substances, suspended between two points. If the points of suspension be
near each other, we have such curves as at D; and if, as in nine cases
out of ten will be the case, one point of suspension is lower than the
other, a still more varied and beautiful curve is formed, as at E. Such
curves constitute nearly the whole beauty of general contour in falling
drapery, tendrils and festoons of weeds over rocks, and such other
pendent objects.[89]
Sec. 13. Again. If any object be cast into the air, the force with which it
is cast dies gradually away, and its own weight brings it downwards; at
first slowly, then faster and faster every moment, in a curve which, as
the line of fall necessarily nears the perpendicular, is continually
approximating to a straight line. This curve--called the parabola--is
that of all projected or bounding objects.
Sec. 14. Again. If a rod or stick of any kind gradually becomes more
slender or more flexible, and is bent by any external force, the force
will not only increase in effect as the rod becomes weaker, but the rod
itself, once bent, will continually yield more willingly, and be more
easily bent farther in the same direction, and will thus show a
continual increase of curvature from its thickest or most rigid part to
its extremity. This kind of line is that assumed by boughs of trees
under wind.
Sec. 15. Again. Whenever any vital force is impressed on any organic
substance, so as to die gradually away as the substance extends, an
infinite curve is commonly produced by its outline. Thus, in the budding
of the leaf, already examined, the gradual dying away of the
exhilaration of the younger ribs produces an infinite curve in the
outline of the leaf, which sometimes fades imperceptibly into a right
line,--sometimes is terminated sharply, by meeting the opposite curve at
the point of the leaf.
Sec. 16. Nature, however, rarely condescends to use one curve only in any
of her finer forms. She almost always unites two infinite ones, so as to
form a reversed curve for each main line, and then modulates each of
them into myriads of minor ones. In a single elm leaf, such as Fig. 4,
Plate +8+, she uses three such--one for the stalk, and one for each of
the sides,--to regulate their _general_ flow; dividing afterwards each
of their broad lateral lines into some twenty less curves by the jags of
the leaf, and then again into minor waves. Thus, in any complicated
group of leaves whatever, the infinite curves are themselves almost
countless. In a single extremity of a magnolia spray, the uppermost
figure in Plate +42+, including only sixteen leaves, each leaf having
some three to five distinct curves along its edge, the lines for
separate study, including those of the stems, would be between sixty and
eighty. In a single spring-shoot of laburnum, the lower figure in the
same plate, I leave the reader to count them for himself; all these,
observe, being seen at one view only, and every change of position
bringing into sight another equally numerous set of curves. For
instance, in Plate +43+ is a group of four withered leaves, in four
positions, giving, each, a beautiful and well composed group of curves,
variable gradually into the next group as the branch is turned.
Sec. 17. The following Plate (+44+), representing a young shoot of
independent ivy, just beginning to think it would like to get something
to cling to, shows the way in which Nature brings subtle curvature into
forms that at first seem rigid. The stems of the young leaves look
nearly straight, and the sides of the projecting points, or bastions, of
the leaves themselves nearly so; but on examination it will be found
that there is not a stem nor a leaf-edge but is a portion of one
infinite curve, if not of two or three. The main line of the supporting
stem is a very lovely one; and the little half-opened leaves, in their
thirteenth-century segmental simplicity (compare Fig. 9, Plate 8 in Vol.
III.), singularly spirited and beautiful. It may, perhaps, interest the
general reader to know that one of the infinite curves derives its name
from its supposed resemblance to the climbing of ivy up a tree.
[Illustration: FIG. 97.]
Sec. 18. I spoke just now of "well-composed" curves,--I mean curves so
arranged as to oppose and set each other off, and yet united by a common
law; for as the beauty of every curve depends on the unity of its
several component lines, so the beauty of each group of curves depends
on their submission to some general law. In forms which quickly attract
the eye, the law which unites the curves is distinctly manifest; but, in
the richer compositions of Nature, cunningly concealed by delicate
infractions of it;--wilfulnesses they seem, and forgetfulnesses, which,
if once the law be perceived, only increase our delight in it by showing
that it is one of equity, not of rigor, and allows, within certain
limits, a kind of individual liberty. Thus the system of unison which
regulates the magnolia shoot, in Plate +42+, is formally expressed in
Fig. 97. Every line has its origin in the point p, and the curves
generally diminish in intensity towards the extremities of the leaves,
one or two, however, again increasing their sweep near the points. In
vulgar ornamentation, entirely rigid laws of line are always observed;
and the common Greek honeysuckle and other such formalisms are
attractive to uneducated eyes, owing to their manifest compliance with
the first conditions of unity and symmetry, being to really noble
ornamentation what the sing-song of a bad reader of poetry, laying
regular emphasis on every required syllable of every foot, is to the
varied, irregular, unexpected, inimitable cadence of the voice of a
person of sense and feeling reciting the same lines,--not incognisant of
the rhythm, but delicately bending it to the expression of passion, and
the natural sequence of the thought.
Sec. 19. In mechanically drawn patterns of dress, Alhambra and common
Moorish ornament, Greek mouldings, common flamboyant traceries, common
Corinthian and Ionic capitals, and such other work, lines of this
declared kind (generally to be classed under the head of "doggerel
ornamentation") may be seen in rich profusion; and they are necessarily
the only kind of lines which can be felt or enjoyed by persons who have
been educated without reference to natural forms; their instincts being
blunt, and their eyes actually incapable of perceiving the inflexion of
noble curves. But the moment the perceptions have been refined by
reference to natural form, the eye requires perpetual variation and
transgression of the formal law. Take the simplest possible condition of
thirteenth-century scroll-work, Fig. 98. The law or cadence established
is of a circling tendril, terminating in an ivy-leaf. In vulgar design,
the curves of the circling tendril would have been similar to each
other, and might have been drawn by a machine, or by some mathematical
formula. But in good design all imitation by machinery is impossible. No
curve is like another for an instant; no branch springs at an expected
point. A cadence is observed, as in the returning clauses of a beautiful
air in music; but every clause has its own change, its own surprises.
The enclosing form is here stiff and (nearly) straight-sided, in order
to oppose the circular scroll-work; but on looking close it will be
found that each of its sides is a portion of an infinite curve, almost
too delicate to be traced; except the short lowest one, which is made
quite straight, to oppose the rest.
[Illustration: FIG. 98.]
I give one more example from another leaf of the same manuscript, Fig.
99, merely to show the variety introduced by the old designers between
page and page. And, in general, the reader may take it for a settled law
that, whatever can be done by machinery, or imitated by formula, is not
worth doing or imitating at all.
Sec. 20. The quantity of admissible transgression of law varies with the
degree in which the ornamentation involves or admits imitation of
nature. Thus, if these ivy leaves in Fig. 99 were completely drawn in
light and shade, they would not be properly connected with the more or
less regular sequences of the scroll; and in every subordinate ornament,
something like complete symmetry may be admitted, as in bead mouldings,
chequerings, &c. Also, the ways in which the transgression may be
granted vary infinitely; in the finest compositions it is perpetual, and
yet so balanced and atoned for as always to bring about more beauty than
if there had been no transgression. In a truly fine mountain or organic
line, if it is looked at in detail, no one would believe in its being a
continuous curve, or being subjected to any fixed law. It seems broken,
and bending a thousand ways; perfectly free and wild, and yielding to
every impulse. But, after following with the eye three or four of its
impulses, we shall begin to trace some strange order among them; every
added movement will make the ruling intent clearer; and when the whole
life of the line is revealed at last, it will be found to have been,
throughout, as obedient to the true law of its course as the stars in
their orbits.
[Illustration: FIG. 99.]
The four systems of mountain line.
Sec. 21. Thus much may suffice for our immediate purpose respecting
beautiful lines in general. We have now to consider the particular
groups of them belonging to mountains.
The lines which are produced by course of time upon hill contours are
mainly divisible into four systems.
1. Lines of Fall. Those which are wrought out on the solid mass by the
fall of water or of stones.
2. Lines of Projection. Those which are produced in debris by the
bounding of the masses, under the influence of their falling force.
3. Lines of Escape. Those which are produced by the spreading of debris
from a given point over surfaces of varied shape.
4. Lines of Rest. Those which are assumed by debris when in a state of
comparative permanence and stability.
1. Lines of Fall.
1. Lines of Fall. Produced by falling bodies upon hill-surfaces.
However little the reader may be acquainted with hills, I believe that,
almost instinctively, he will perceive that the form supposed to belong
to a wooded promontory at _a_, Fig. 100, is an impossible one; and that
the form at _b_ is not only a possible but probable one. The lines are
equally formal in both. But in _a_, the curve is a portion of a circle,
meeting a level line: in _b_ it is an infinite line, getting less and
less steep as it ascends.
[Illustration: FIG. 100.]
Whenever a mass of mountain is worn gradually away by forces descending
from its top, it _necessarily_ assumes, more or less perfectly,
according to the time for which it has been exposed, and the tenderness
of its substance, such contours as those at _b_, for the simple reason
that every stream and every falling grain of sand gains in velocity and
erosive power as it descends. Hence, cutting away the ground gradually
faster and faster, they produce the most rapid curvature (provided the
rock be hard enough) towards the bottom of the hill.[90]
Sec. 22. But farther: in _b_ it will be noticed that the lines always get
steeper as they fall more and more to the right; and I should think the
reader must feel that they look more natural, so drawn, than, as at _a_,
in unvarying curves.
[Illustration: FIG. 101.]
This is no less easily accounted for. The simplest typical form under
which a hill can occur is that of a cone. Let A C B, Fig. 101, have been
its original contour. Then the aqueous forces will cut away the shaded
portions, reducing it to the outline _d_ C _e_. Farther, in doing so,
the water will certainly have formed for itself gullies or channels from
top to bottom. These, supposing them at equal distances round the cone,
will appear, in perspective, in the lines _g h i_. It does not, of
course, matter whether we consider the lines in this figure to represent
the bottom of the ravines, or the ridges between, both being formed on
similar curves; but the rounded lines in Fig. 100 would be those of
forests seen on the edges of each detached ridge.
Sec. 23. Now although a mountain is rarely perfectly conical, and never
divided by ravines at exactly equal distances, the law which is seen in
entire simplicity in Fig. 101, applies with a sway more or less
interrupted, but always manifest, to every convex and retiring mountain
form. All banks that thus turn away from the spectator necessarily are
thrown into perspectives like that of one side of this figure; and
although not divided with equality, their irregular divisions crowd
gradually together towards the distant edge, being then less steep, and
separate themselves towards the body of the hill, being then more steep.
[Illustration: FIG. 102.]
Sec. 24. It follows, also, that not only the whole of the nearer curves,
will be steeper, but, if seen from below, the steepest parts of them
will be the more important. Supposing each, instead of a curve, divided
into a sloping line and a precipitous one, the perspective of the
precipice, raising its top continually, will give the whole cone the
shape of _a_ or _b_ in Fig. 102, in which, observe, the precipice is of
more importance, and the slope of less, precisely in proportion to the
nearness of the mass.
Sec. 25. Fig. 102, therefore, will be the general type of the form of a
convex retiring hill symmetrically constructed. The precipitous part of
it may vary in height or in slope according to original conformation;
but the heights being supposed equal along the whole flank, the contours
will be as in that figure; the various rise and fall of real height
altering the perspective appearance accordingly, as we shall see
presently, after examining the other three kinds of line.
2. Lines of Projection.
2. Lines of Projection. Produced by fragments bounding or carried
forward from the bases of hills.
Sec. 26. The fragments carried down by the torrents from the flanks of the
hill are of course deposited at the base of it. But they are deposited
in various ways, of which it is most difficult to analyze the laws; for
they are thrown down under the influence partly of flowing water, partly
of their own gravity, partly of projectile force caused by their fall
from the higher summits of the hill; while the debris itself, after it
has fallen, undergoes farther modification by surface streamlets. But in
a general way debris descending from the hill side, _a b_, Fig. 103,
will arrange itself in a form approximating to the concave line _d c_,
the larger masses remaining undisturbed at the bottom, while the smaller
are gradually carried farther and farther by surface streams.
[Illustration: FIG. 103.]
3. Lines of Escape.
3. Lines of Escape. Produced by the lateral dissemination of the
fragments.
Sec. 27. But this form is much modified by the special direction of the
descending force as it escapes from confinement. For a stream coming
down a ravine is kept by the steep sides of its channel in concentrated
force: but it no sooner reaches the bottom, and escapes from its ravine,
than it spreads in all directions, or at least tries to choose a new
channel at every flood. Let _a b c_, Fig. 104, be three ridges of
mountain. The two torrents coming down the ravine between them meet, at
_d_ and _e_, with the heaps of ground formerly thrown down by their own
agency. These heaps being more or less in the form of cones, the torrent
has a tendency to divide upon their apex, like water poured on the top
of a sugar-loaf, and branch into the radiating channels _e x_, _e y_,
&c. The stronger it is, the more it is disposed to rush straightforward,
or with little curvature, as in the line _e x_, with the impetus it has
received in coming down the ravine; the weaker it is, the more readily
it will lean to one side or the other, and fall away in the lines of
escape, _e y_, or _e h_; but of course at times of highest flood it
fills all its possible channels, and invents a few new ones, of which
afterwards the straightest will be kept by the main stream, and the
lateral curves occupied by smaller branches; the whole system
corresponding precisely to the action of the ribs of the young leaf, as
shown in Plate +8+ of Vol. III., especially in Fig. 6,--the main
torrent, like the main rib, making the largest fortune, i. e. raising
the highest heap of gravel and dust.
[Illustration: FIG. 104.]
Sec. 28. It may easily be imagined that when the operation takes place on a
large scale, the mass of earth thus deposited in a gentle slope at the
mountain's foot becomes available for agricultural purposes, and that
then it is of the greatest importance to prevent the stream from
branching into various channels at its will, and pouring fresh sand over
the cultivated fields. Accordingly, at the mouth of every large ravine
in the Alps, where the peasants know how to live and how to work, the
stream is artificially embanked, and compelled as far as possible to
follow the central line down the cone. Hence, when the traveller passes
along any great valley,--as that of the Rhone or Arve,--into which
minor torrents are poured by lateral ravines, he will find himself every
now and then ascending a hill of moderate slope, at the _top_ of which
he will cross a torrent, or its bed, and descend by another gradual
slope to the usual level of the valley. In every such case, his road has
ascended a tongue of debris, and has crossed the embanked torrent
carried by force along its centre.
Under such circumstances, the entire tongue or heap of land ceases of
course to increase, until the bed of the confined torrent is partially
choked by its perpetual deposit. Then in some day of violent rain the
waves burst their fetters, branch at their own will, cover the fields of
some unfortunate farmer with stones and slime, according to the
torrent's own idea of the new form which it has become time to give to
the great tongue of land, carry away the road and the bridge together,
and arrange everything to their own liking. But the road is again
painfully traced among the newly fallen debris; the embankment and
bridge again built for the stream, now satisfied with its outbreak; and
the tongue of land submitted to new processes of cultivation for a
certain series of years. When, however, the torrent is exceedingly
savage, and generally of a republican temper, the outbreaks are too
frequent and too violent to admit of any cultivation of the tongue of
land. A few straggling alder or thorn bushes, their roots buried in
shingle, and their lower branches fouled with slime, alone relieve with
ragged spots of green the broad waste of stones and dust. The utmost
that can be done is to keep the furious stream from choosing a new
channel in every one of its fits of passion, and remaining in it
afterwards, thus extending its devastation in entirely unforeseen
directions. The land which it has brought down must be left a perpetual
sacrifice to its rage; but in the moment of its lassitude it is brought
back to its central course, and compelled to forego for a few weeks or
months the luxury of deviation.
Sec. 29. On the other hand, when, owing to the nature of the valley above,
the stream is gentle, and the sediment which it brings down small in
quantity, it may be retained for long years in its constant path, while
the sides of the bank of earth it has borne down are clothed with
pasture and forest, seen in the distance of the great valley as a
promontory of sweet verdure, along which the central stream passes with
an influence of blessing, submitting itself to the will of the
husbandman for irrigation, and of the mechanist for toil; now nourishing
the pasture, and now grinding the corn, of the land which it has first
formed, and now waters.
Sec. 30. I have etched above, Plate +35+, a portion of the flank of the
valley of Chamouni, which presents nearly every class of line under
discussion, and will enable the reader to understand their relations at
once. It represents, as was before stated, the crests of the Montagnes
de la Cote and Taconay, shown from base to summit, with the Glacier des
Bossons and its moraine. The reference figure given at p. 212 will
enable the reader to distinguish its several orders of curves, as
follows:
_h r_. Aqueous curves of fall, at the base of the Tapia; very
characteristic. Similar curves are seen in multitude on the two
crests beyond as _b c_, _c_ B.
_d e_. First lines of projection. The debris falling from the glacier
and the heights above.
_k_, _l_, _n_.Three lines of escape. A considerable torrent (one of whose
falls is the well-known Cascade des Pelerins[91]) descends from
behind the promontory _h_: its natural or proper course would be
to dash straight forward down the line _f g_, and part of it does
so; but erratic branches of it slide away round the promontory,
in the lines of escape, _k_, _l_, &c. Each row of trees marks,
therefore, an old torrent bed, for the torrent always throws
heaps of stones up along its banks, on which the pines, growing
higher than on the neighboring ground, indicate its course by
their supremacy. When the escaped stream is feeble, it steals
quietly away down the steepest part of the slope; that is to say,
close under the promontory, at _i_. If it is stronger, the
impetus from the hill above shoots it farther out, in the line
_k_; if stronger still, at _l_; in each case it curves gradually
round as it loses its onward force, and falls more and more
languidly to leeward, down the slope of the debris.
_r s_. A line which, perhaps, would be more properly termed of
limitation than of escape, being that of the base or termination
of the heap of torrent debris, which in shape corresponds exactly
to the curved lip of a wave, after it has broken, as it slowly
stops upon a shallow shore. Within this line the ground is
entirely composed of heaps of stones, cemented by granite dust
and cushioned with moss, while outside of it, all is smooth
pasture. The pines enjoy the stony ground particularly, and hold
large meetings upon it, but the alders are shy of it; and, when
it has come to an end, form a triumphal procession all round its
edge, following the concave line. The correspondent curves above
are caused by similar lines in which the debris has formerly
stopped.
[Illustration: 45. Debris Curvature.]
Sec. 31. I found it a matter of the greatest difficulty to investigate the
picturesque characters of these lines of projection and escape, because,
as presented to the eye, they are always modified by perspective; and
it is almost a physical impossibility to get a true profile of any of
the slopes, they round and melt so constantly into one another. Many of
them, roughly measured, are nearly circular in tendency;[92] but I
believe they are all portions of infinite curves either modified by the
concealment or destruction of the lower lips of debris, or by their
junction with straight lines of slope above, throwing the longest limb
of the curve upwards. Fig. 1, in Plate +45+ opposite, is a simple but
complete example from Chamouni; the various overlapping and concave
lines at the bottom being the limits of the mass at various periods,
more or less broken afterwards by the peasants, either by removing
stones for building, or throwing them back at the edges here and there,
out of the way of the plough; but even with all these breaks, their
natural unity is so sweet and perfect, that, if the reader will turn the
plate upside down, he will see I have no difficulty (merely adding a
quill or two) in turning them into a bird's wing (Fig. 2), a little
ruffled indeed, but still graceful, and not of such a form as one would
have supposed likely to be designed and drawn, as indeed it was, by the
rage of a torrent.
But we saw in Chap. VII. Sec. 10 that this very rage was, in fact, a
beneficent power,--creative, not destructive; and as all its apparent
cruelty is overruled by the law of love, so all its apparent disorder is
overruled by the law of loveliness: the hand of God, leading the wrath
of the torrent to minister to the life of mankind, guides also its grim
surges by the laws of their delight; and bridles the bounding rocks, and
appeases the flying foam, till they lie down in the same lines that lead
forth the fibres of the down on a cygnet's breast.
Sec. 32. The straight slopes with which these curves unite themselves
below, in Plate +33+ (_f g_ in reference figure), are those spoken of
in the outset as lines of rest. But I defer to the next chapter the
examination of these, which are a separate family of lines (not curves
at all), in order to reassemble the conclusions we have now obtained
respecting _curvature_ in mountains, and apply them to questions of art.
And, first, it is of course not to be supposed that these symmetrical
laws are so manifest in their operation as to force themselves on the
observance of men in general. They are interrupted, necessarily, by
every fantastic accident in the original conformation of the hills,
which, according to the hardness of their rocks, more or less accept or
refuse the authority of general law. Still, the farther we extend our
observance of hills, the more we shall be struck by the continual
roundness and softness which it seems the object of nature to give to
every form; so that, when crags look sharp and distorted, it is not so
much that they are unrounded, as that the various curves are more subtly
accommodated to the angles, and that, instead of being worn into one
sweeping and smooth descent, like the surface of a knoll or down, the
rock is wrought into innumerable minor undulations, its own fine anatomy
showing through all.
[Illustration: J. Ruskin. J. H. Le Keux.
46. The Buttresses of an Alp.]
Sec. 33. Perhaps the mountain which I have drawn on the opposite page
(Plate +46+[93]) is, in its original sternness of mass, and in the
complexity of lines into which it has been chiselled, as characteristic
an instance as could be given by way of general type. It is one of no
name or popular interest, but of singular importance in the geography of
Switzerland, being the angle buttress of the great northern chain of the
Alps (the chain of the Jungfrau and Gemmi), and forming the promontory
round which the Rhone turns to the north-west, at Martigny. It is
composed of an intensely hard gneiss (slaty crystalline), in which the
plates of mica are set for the most part against the angle, running
nearly north and south, as in Fig. 105, and giving the point, therefore,
the utmost possible strength, which, however, cannot prevent it from
being rent gradually by enormous curved fissures, and separated into
huge vertical flakes and chasms, just at the lower promontory, as seen
in Plate +46+, and (in plan) in Fig. 105. The whole of the upper
surface of the promontory is wrought by the old glaciers into furrows
and striae more notable than any I ever saw in the Alps.
Sec. 34. Now observe, we have here a piece of Nature's work which she has
assuredly been long in executing, and which is in peculiarly firm and
stable material. It is in her best rock (slaty crystalline), at a point
important for all her geographical purposes, and at the degree of
mountain elevation especially adapted to the observation of mankind. We
shall therefore probably ascertain as much of Nature's mind about these
things in this piece of work as she usually allows us to see all at
once.
[Illustration: FIG. 105.]
Sec. 35. If the reader will take a pencil, and, laying tracing paper over
the plate, follow a few of its lines, he will (unless before accustomed
to accurate mountain-drawing) be soon amazed by the complexity,
endlessness, and harmony of the curvatures. He will find that there is
not one line in all that rock which is not an infinite curve, and united
in some intricate way with others, and suggesting others unseen; and if
it were the reality, instead of my drawing, which he had to deal with,
he would find the infinity, in a little while, altogether overwhelm him.
But even in this imperfect sketch, as he traces the multitudinous
involution of flowing line, passing from swift to slight curvature, or
slight to swift, at every instant, he will, I think, find enough to
convince him of the truth of what has been advanced respecting the
natural appointment of curvature as the first element of all loveliness
in form.
Sec. 36. "Nay, but there are hard and straight lines mingled with those
curves continually." True, as we have said so often, just as shade is
mixed with light. Angles and undulations may rise and flow continually,
one through or over the other; but the opposition is in quantity nearly
always the same, if the mass is to be pleasant to the eye. In the
example previously given (Plate +40+), the limestone bank above
Villeneuve, it is managed in a different way, but is equal in degree;
the lower portion of the hill is of soft rock in thin laminae; the upper
mass is a solid and firm bed, yet not so hard as to stand all weathers.
The lower portion, therefore, is rounded into almost unbroken softness
of bank; the upper surmounts it as a rugged wall, and the opposition of
the curve and angle is just as complete as in the first example, in
which one was continually mingled with the other.
Sec. 37. Next, note the _quantity_ in these hills. It is an element on
which I shall have to insist more in speaking of vegetation; but I must
not pass it by, here, since, in fact, it constitutes one of the
essential differences between hills of first-rate magnificence, and
inferior ones. Not that there is want of quantity even in the lower
ranges, but it is a quantity of inferior things, and therefore more
easily represented or suggested. On a Highland hill side are
multitudinous clusters of fern and heather; on an Alpine one,
multitudinous groves of chestnut and pine. The number of the things may
be the same, but the sense of infinity is in the latter case far
greater, because the number is of nobler things. Indeed, so far as mere
magnitude of space occupied on the field of the horizon is the measure
of objects, a bank of earth ten feet high may, if we stoop to the foot
of it, be made to occupy just as much of the sky as that bank of
mountain at Villeneuve; nay, in many respects its little ravines and
escarpments, watched with some help of imagination, may become very
sufficiently representative to us of those of the great mountain; and in
classing all water-worn mountain-ground under the general and humble
term of Banks, I mean to imply this relationship of structure between
the smallest eminences and the highest. But in this matter of
superimposed _quantity_ the distinctions of rank are at once fixed. The
heap of earth bears its few tufts of moss or knots of grass; the
Highland or Cumberland mountain its honeyed heathers or scented ferns;
but the mass of the bank at Martigny or Villeneuve has a vineyard in
every cranny of its rocks, and a chestnut grove on every crest of them.
Sec. 38. This is no poetical exaggeration. Look close into that plate
(+46+). Every little circular stroke in it among the rocks means, not a
clump of copse nor wreath of fern, but a walnut tree, or a Spanish
chestnut, fifty or sixty feet high. Nor are the little curves, thus
significative of trees, laid on at random. They are not indeed counted,
tree by tree, but they are most carefully distributed in the true
proportion and quantity; or if I have erred at all, it was, from mere
fatigue, on the side of sparingness. The minute mounds and furrows
scattered up the side of that great promontory, when they are actually
approached, after three or four hours' climbing, turn into independent
hills with true _parks_ of lovely pasture land enclosed among them, and
avenue after avenue of chestnuts, walnuts, and pines bending round their
bases; while in the deeper dingles, unseen in the drawing, nestle
populous villages, literally bound down to the rock by enormous trunks
of vine, which, first trained lightly over the loose stone roofs, have
in process of years cast their fruitful net over the whole village, and
fastened it to the ground under their purple weight and wayward coils,
as securely as ever human heart was fastened to earth by the net of the
Flatterer.
Sec. 39. And it is this very richness of incident and detail which renders
Switzerland so little attractive in its subjects to the ordinary artist.
Observe, this study of mine in Plate +46+ does not profess to be a
_picture_ at all. It is a mere sketch or catalogue of all that there is
on the mountain side, faithfully written out, but no more than should be
put down by any conscientious painter for mere guidance, before he
begins his work, properly so called; and in finishing such a subject no
trickery nor shorthand is of any avail whatsoever; there are a certain
number of trees to be drawn; and drawn they must be, or the place will
not bear its proper character. They are not misty wreaths of soft wood
suggestible by a sweep or two of the brush; but arranged and lovely
clusters of trees, clear in the mountain sunlight, each specially
grouped and as little admitting any carelessness of treatment, though
five miles distant, as if they were within a few yards of us; the whole
meaning and power of the scene being involved in that one fact of
quantity. It is not large merely by multitudes of tons of rock,--the
number of tons is not measurable; it is not large by elevation of angle
on the horizon,--a house-roof near us rises higher; it is not large by
faintness of aerial perspective,--in a clear day it often looks as if we
could touch the summit with the hand. But it is large by this one
unescapable fact that, from the summit to the base of it, there are of
timber trees so many countable thousands. The scene differs from
subjects not Swiss by including hundreds of other scenes within itself,
and is mighty, not by scale, but by aggregation.
Sec. 40. And this is more especially and humiliatingly true of pine forest.
Nearly all other kinds of wood may be reduced, over large spaces, to
undetailed masses; but there is nothing but patience for pines; and this
has been one of the principal reasons why artists call Switzerland
"unpicturesque." There may perhaps be, in the space of a Swiss valley
which comes into a picture, from five to ten millions of well grown
pines.[94] Every one of these pines must be drawn before the scene can
be. And a pine cannot be represented by a round stroke, nor by an
upright one, nor even by an angular one; no conventionalism will express
a pine; it must be legitimately drawn, with a light side and a dark
side, and a soft gradation from the top downwards, or it does not look
like a pine at all. Most artists think it not desirable to choose a
subject which involves the drawing of ten millions of trees; because,
supposing they could even do four or five in a minute, and worked for
ten hours a day, their picture would still take them ten years before
they had finished its pine forests. For this, and other similar reasons,
it is declared usually that Switzerland is ugly and unpicturesque; but
that is not so; it is only that _we_ cannot paint it. If we could, it
would be as interesting on the canvas as it is in reality; and a painter
of fruit and flowers might just as well call a human figure
unpicturesque, because it was to him unmanageable, as the ordinary
landscape-effect painter speak in depreciation of the Alps.
Sec. 41. It is not probable that any subjects such as we have just been
describing, involving a necessity of ten years' labor, will be executed
by the modern landscape school,--at least, until its Pre-Raphaelitic
tendencies become much more developed than they are yet; nor was it
desirable that they should have been by Turner, whose fruitful invention
would have been unwisely arrested for a length of time on any single
subject, however beautiful. But with his usual certainty of perception,
he fastened at once on this character of "quantity," as the thing to be
expressed, in one way or another, in all grand mountain-drawing; and the
subjects of his on which I have chiefly dwelt in the First Volume
(chapter on the Inferior Mountains, Sec. 16, &c.) are distinguished from
the work of other painters in nothing so much as in this redundance.
Beautiful as they are in color, graceful in fancy, powerful in
execution,--in none of these things do they stand so much alone as in
plain, calculable quantity; he having always on the average twenty trees
or rocks where other people have only one, and winning his victories not
more by skill of generalship than by overwhelming numerical superiority.
Sec. 42. I say his works are distinguished in this more than in anything
else, not because this is their highest quality, but because it is
peculiar to them. Invention, color, grace of arrangement, we may find in
Tintoret and Veronese in various manifestation; but the expression of
the infinite redundance of natural landscape had never been attempted
until Turner's time; and the treatment of the masses of mountain in the
Daphne and Leucippus, Golden Bough, and Modern Italy, is wholly without
precursorship in art.
Nor, observe, do I insist upon this quantity _merely_ as arithmetical,
or as if it were producible by repetition of similar things. It would be
easy to be redundant, if multiplication of the same idea constituted
fulness; and since Turner first introduced these types of landscape,
myriads of vulgar imitations of them have been produced, whose
perpetrators have supposed themselves disciples or rivals of Turner, in
covering their hills with white dots for forest, and their foregrounds
with yellow sparklings for herbage. But the Turnerian redundance is
never monotonous. Of the thousands of groups of touches which, with him,
are necessary to constitute a single bank of hill, not one but has some
special character, and is as much a separate invention as the whole plan
of the picture. Perhaps this may be sufficiently understood by an
attentive examination of the detail introduced by him in his St. Gothard
subject, as shown in Plate +37+.
Sec. 43. I do not, indeed, know if the examples I have given from natural
scenes, though they are as characteristic as I could well choose, are
enough to accustom the reader to the character of true mountain lines,
and to enable him to recognize such lines in other instances; but if
not, at all events they may serve to elucidate the main points, and
guide to more complete examination of the subject, if it interests him,
among the hills themselves. And if, after he has pursued the inquiry
long enough to feel the certitude of the laws which I have been
endeavoring to illustrate, he turns back again to art, I am well assured
it will be with a strange recognition of unconceived excellence, and a
newly quickened pleasure in the unforeseen fidelity, that he will trace
the pencilling of Turner upon his hill drawings. I do not choose to
spend, in this work, the labor and time which would be necessary to
analyze, as I have done the drawing of the St. Gothard, any other of
Turner's important mountain designs; for the reader must feel the
disadvantage they are under in being either reduced in scale, or divided
into fragments: and therefore these chapters are always to be considered
merely as memoranda for reference before the pictures which the reader
may have it in his power to examine. But this one drawing of the St.
Gothard, as it has already elucidated for us Turner's knowledge of crest
structure, will be found no less wonderful in the fulness with which it
illustrates his perception of the lower aqueous and other curvatures. If
the reader will look back to the etching of the entire subject, Plate
+21+, he will now discern, I believe, without the necessity of my
lettering them for him, the lines of fall, rounded down from the crests
until they plunge into the overhanging precipices; the lines of
projection, where the fallen stones extend the long concave sweep from
the couloir, pushing the torrent against the bank on the other side; in
the opening of the ravine he will perceive the oblique and parallel
inclination of its sides, following the cleavage of the beds in the
diagonal line A B of the reference figure; and, finally, in the great
slope and precipice on the right of it, he will recognize one of the
grandest types of the peculiar mountain mass which Turner always chose
by preference to illustrate, the "slope above wall" of _d_ in Fig. 13,
p. 148; compare also the last chapter, Sec.Sec. 26, 27. It will be seen, by
reference to my sketch of the spot, Plate +20+, that this conformation
does actually exist there with great definiteness: Turner has only
enlarged and thrown it into more numerous alternations of light and
shade. As these could not be shown in the etching, I have given, in the
frontispiece, this passage nearly of its real size: the exquisite greys
and blues by which Turner has rounded and thrown it back are necessarily
lost in the plate; but the grandeur of his simple cliff and soft curves
of sloping bank above is in some degree rendered.
We must yet dwell for a moment on the detail of the rocks on the left in
Plate +37+, as they approach nearer the eye, turning at the same time
from the light. It cost me trouble to etch this passage, and yet half
its refinements are still missed; for Turner has put his whole strength
into it, and wrought out the curving of the gneiss beds with a subtlety
which could not be at all approached in the time I had to spare for this
plate. Enough, however, is expressed to illustrate the points in
question.
Sec. 44. We have first, observe, a rounded bank, broken, at its edges, into
cleavages by inclined beds. I thought it would be well, lest the reader
should think I dwelt too much on this particular scene, to give an
instance of similar structure from another spot; and therefore I
daguerreotyped the cleavages of a slope of gneiss just above the Cascade
des Pelerins, Chamouni, corresponding in position to this bank of
Turner's. Plate +48+ (facing p. 303), copied by Mr. Armytage from the
daguerreotype, represents, necessarily in a quite unprejudiced and
impartial way, the structure at present in question; and the reader may
form a sufficient idea, from this plate, of the complexity of descending
curve and foliated rent, in even a small piece of mountain
foreground,[95] where the gneiss beds are tolerably continuous. But
Turner had to add to such general complexity the expression of a more
than ordinary undulation in the beds of the St. Gothard gneiss.
Sec. 45. If the reader will look back to Chapter II. Sec. 13, he will find it
stated that this scene is approached out of the defile of Dazio Grande,
of which the impression was still strong on Turner's mind, and where
only he could see, close at hand, the nature of the rocks in a good
section. It most luckily happens that De Saussure was interested by the
rocks at the same spot, and has given the following account of them,
Voyages, Sec.Sec. 1801, 1802:--
"A une lieue de Faido, l'on passe le Tesin pour le repasser bientot
apres [see the old bridge in Turner's view, carried away in mine], et
l'on trouve sur sa rive droite des couches d'une roche feuilletee, qui
montent du Cote du Nord.
"On voit clairement que depuis que les granits veines ont ete remplaces
par des pierres moins solides, tantot les rochers se sont eboules et ont
ete recouverts par la terre vegetale, tantot leur situation primitive a
subi des changements irreguliers.
"Sec. 1802. Mais bientot apres, _on monte par un chemin en corniche au
dessus du Tesin, qui se precipite entre des rochers avec la plus grande
violence_. Ces rochers sont la si serres, qu'il n'y a de place que pour
la riviere et pour le chemin, et meme en quelques endroits, celui-ci est
entierement pris sur le roc. Je fis a pied cette montee, pour examiner
avec soin ces beaux rochers, _dignes de toute l'attention d'un amateur_.
"Les veines de ce granit forment en plusieurs endroits des _zigzags
redoubles_, precisement comme ces anciennes tapisseries, connues sous le
nom de points d'Hongrie; et la, on ne peut pas prononcer, si les veines
de la pierre, sont ou ne sont pas paralleles a ses couches. Cependant
ces veines reprennent aussi dans quelques places, une direction
constante, et cette direction est bien la meme que celle des couches. Il
paroit meme qu'en divers endroits, ou ces veines ont la forme d'un
_sigma_ ou d'une M couchee M, ce sont les grandes jambes du _sigma_, qui
ont la direction des couches. Enfin, j'observai plusieurs couches, qui
dans le milieu de leur epaisseur paroissoient remplies de ces veines en
zigzag, tandis qu'aupres de leurs bords, on les voyoit toutes en lignes
droites."
Sec. 46. If the reader will now examine Turner's work at the point _x_ in
the reference figure, and again on the stones in the foreground,
comparing it finally with the fragment of the rocks which happened
fortunately to come into my foreground in Plate +20+, rising towards the
left, and of which I have etched the structure with some care, though at
the time I had quite forgotten Saussure's notice of the peculiar
M-shaped zigzags of the gneiss at the spot, I believe he will have
enough evidence before him, taken all in all, to convince him of
Turner's inevitable perception, and of the entire supremacy of his
mountain drawing over all that had previously existed. And if he is able
to refer, even to the engravings (though I desire always that what I
state should be _tested_ by the drawings only) of any others of his
elaborate hill-subjects, and will examine their details with careful
reference to the laws explained in this chapter, he will find that the
Turnerian promontories and banks are always simply _right_, and that in
all respects; that their gradated curvatures, and nodding cliffs, and
redundant sequence of folded glen and feathery glade, are, in all their
seemingly fanciful beauty, literally the most downright plain speaking
that has as yet been uttered about hills; and differ from all antecedent
work, not in being ideal, but in being, so to speak, pictorial _casts_
of the ground. Such a drawing as that of the Yorkshire Richmond, looking
down the river, in the England Series, is even better than a model of
the ground, because it gives the aerial perspective, and is better than
a photograph of the ground, because it exaggerates no shadows, while it
unites the veracities both of model and photograph.
Sec. 47. Nor let it be thought that it was an easy or creditable thing to
treat mountain ground with this faithfulness in the days when Turner
executed those drawings. In the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Edinburgh,
1797), under article "Drawing," the following are the directions given
for the production of a landscape:--
"If he is to draw a landscape from nature, let him take his station on a
rising ground, where he will have a large horizon, and mark his tablet
into three divisions, downwards from top to the bottom; and divide in
his own mind the landscape he is to take into three divisions also. Then
let him turn his face directly opposite to the midst of the horizon,
keeping his body fixed, and draw what is directly before his eyes upon
the middle division of the tablet: then _turn his head, but not his
body_,[96] to the left hand and delineate what he views there, joining
it properly to what he had done before; and, lastly, do the same by
what is to be seen upon his right hand, laying down everything exactly,
both with respect to distance and proportion. One example is given in
plate clxviii.
"The best artists of late, in drawing their landscapes, make them shoot
away, one part lower than another. Those who make their landscapes mount
up higher and higher, as if they stood at the bottom of a hill to take
the prospect, commit a great error; the best way is to get upon a rising
ground, make the nearest objects in the piece the highest, and those
that are farther off to shoot away lower and lower till they come almost
level with the line of the horizon, lessening everything proportionably
to its distance, and observing also to make the objects fainter and less
distinct the farther they are removed from the eye. He must make all his
lights and shades fall one way, and let every thing have its proper
motion: as trees shaken by the wind, the small boughs bending more and
the large ones less; water agitated by the wind, and dashing against
ships or boats, or falling from a precipice upon rocks and stones, and
spirting up again into the air, and sprinkling all about; clouds also in
the air now gathered with the winds; now violently condensed into hail,
rain, and the like,--always remembering, that whatever motions are
caused by the wind must be made all to move the same way, because the
wind can blow but one way at once."
Such was the state of the public mind, and of public instruction, at the
time when Claude, Poussin, and Salvator were in the zenith of their
reputation; such were the precepts which, even to the close of the
century, it was necessary for a young painter to comply with during the
best part of the years he gave to study. Take up one of Turner's views
of our Yorkshire dells, seen from about a hawk's height of pause above
the sweep of its river, and with it in your hand, side by side with the
old Encyclopaedia paragraph, consider what must have been the man's
strength, who, on a sudden, passed from such precept to such practice.
Sec. 48. On a sudden it was; for, even yet a youth, and retaining profound
respect for all older artist's ways of _work_, he followed his own will
fearlessly in choice of _scene_; and already in the earliest of his
coast drawings there are as daring and strange decisions touching the
site of the spectator as in his latest works; lookings down and up into
coves and clouds, as defiant of all former theories touching possible
perspective, or graceful componence of subject, as, a few years later,
his system of color was of the theory of the brown tree. Nor was the
step remarkable merely for its magnitude,--for the amount of progress
made in a few years. It was much more notable by its direction. The
discovery of the true structure of hill banks had to be made by Turner,
not merely in _advance_ of the men of his day, but in _contradiction_ to
them. Examine the works of contemporary and preceding landscapists, and
it will be found that the universal practice is to make the tops of all
cliffs broken and rugged, their bases smooth and soft, or concealed with
wood. No one had ever observed the contrary structure, the bank rounded
at the top, and broken on the flank. And yet all the hills of any
importance which are met with throughout Lowland Europe are, properly
speaking, high banks, for the most part following the courses of rivers,
and forming a step from the high ground, of which the country generally
consists, to the river level. Thus almost the whole of France, though,
on the face of it, flat, is raised from 300 to 500 feet above the level
of the sea, and is traversed by valleys either formed by, or directing,
the course of its great rivers. In these valleys lie all its principal
towns, surrounded, almost without exception, by ranges of hills covered
with wood or vineyard. Ascending these hills, we find ourselves at once
in an elevated plain, covered with corn and lines of apple trees,
extending to the next river side, where we come to the brow of another
hill, and descend to the city and valley beneath it. Our own valleys in
Northumberland, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and Devonshire, are cut in the
same manner through vast extents of elevated land; the scenery which
interests the traveller chiefly, as he passes through even the most
broken parts of those counties, being simply that of the high _banks_
which rise from the shores of the Dart or the Derwent, the Wharfe or the
Tees. In all cases, when these banks are surmounted, the sensation is
one of disappointment, as the adventurer finds himself, the moment he
has left the edge of the ravine, in a waste of softly undulating moor or
arable land, hardly deserving the title of hill country. As we advance
into the upper districts the fact remains still the same, although the
banks to be climbed are higher, the ravines grander, and the
intermediate land more broken. The majesty of an isolated peak is still
comparatively rare, and nearly all the most interesting pieces of
scenery are glens or passes, which, if seen from a height great enough
to command them in all their relations, would be found in reality little
more than trenches excavated through broad masses of elevated land, and
expanding at intervals into the wide basins which are occupied by the
glittering lake or smiling plain.
[Illustration: FIG. 106.]
[Illustration: J. Ruskin. J. H. Le Keux.
47. The Quarries of Carrara.]
Sec. 49. All these facts had been entirely ignored by artists; nay, almost
by geologists, before Turner's time. He saw them at once; fathomed them
to the uttermost, and, partly owing to early association, partly,
perhaps, to the natural pleasure of working a new mine discovered by
himself, devoted his best powers to their illustration, passing by with
somewhat less attention the conditions of broken-summited rock, which
had previously been the only ones known. And if we now look back to his
treatment of the crest of Mont Pilate, in the figure given at the close
of the last chapter, we shall understand better the nature and strength
of the instinct which compelled him to sacrifice the peaked summit, and
to bring the whole mountain within a lower enclosing line. In that
figure, however, the dotted peak interferes with the perception of the
form finally determined upon, which therefore I repeat here (Fig. 106),
as Turner gave it in color. The eye may not at first detect the law of
ascent in the peaks, but if the height of any one of them were altered,
the general form would instantly be perceived to be less agreeable. Fig.
107 shows that they are disposed within an infinite curve, A _c_, from
which the last crag falls a little to conceal the law, while the
terminal line at the other extremity, A _b_, is a minor echo of the
whole contour.
[Illustration: FIG. 107.]
Sec. 50. I must pause to make one exception to my general statement that
this structure had been entirely ignored. The reader was, perhaps,
surprised by the importance I attached to the fragment of mountain
background by Masaccio, given in Plate +13+ of the third volume. If he
looks back to it now, his surprise will be less. It was a complete
recognition of the laws of the lines of aqueous sculpture, asserted as
Turner's was, in the boldest opposition to the principles of rock
drawing of the time. It presents even smoother and broader masses than
any which I have shown as types of hill form; but it must be remembered
that Masaccio had seen only the softer contours of the Apennine
limestone. I have no memorandum by me of the hill lines near Florence;
but Plate +47+ shows the development of limestone structure, at a spot
which has, I think, the best right to be given as an example of the
Italian hills, the head of the valley of Carrara. The white scar on the
hill side is the principal quarry; and the peaks above deserve
observation, not so much for anything in their forms, as for the
singular barrenness which was noted in the fifteenth chapter of the last
volume (Sec. 8) as too often occurring in the Apennines. Compare this plate
with the previous one. The peak drawn in Plate +46+ rises at least 7500
feet above the sea,--yet is wooded to its top; this Carrara crag not
above 5000,[97]--yet it is wholly barren.
Sec. 51. Masaccio, however, as we saw, was taken away by death before he
could give any one of his thoughts complete expression. Turner was
spared to do _his_ work, in this respect at least, completely. It might
be thought that, having had such adverse influence to struggle with, he
would prevail against it but in part; and, though showing the way to
much that was new, retain of necessity some old prejudices, and leave
his successors to pursue in purer liberty, and with happier power, the
path he had pointed out. But it was not so: he did the work so
completely on the ground which he chose to illustrate, that nothing is
left for future artists to accomplish in that kind. Some classes of
scenery, as often pointed out in the preceding pages, he was unfamiliar
with, or held in little affection, and out of that scenery, untouched by
him, new motives may be obtained; but of such landscape as his favorite
Yorkshire Wolds, and banks of Rhenish and French hill, and rocky
mountains of Switzerland, like the St. Gothard, already so long dwelt
upon, he has expressed the power in what I believe to be for ever a
central and unmatchable way. I do not say this with positiveness,
because it is not demonstrable. Turner may be beaten on his own
ground--so may Tintoret, so may Shakespeare, Dante, or Homer: but my
_belief_ is that all these first-rate men are lonely men; that the
particular work they did was by them done for ever in the best way; and
that this work done by Turner among the hills, joining the most intense
appreciation of all tenderness with delight in all magnitude, and memory
for all detail, is never to be rivalled, or looked upon in similitude
again.
FOOTNOTES
[88] _Quantity_ of curvature is as measurable as quantity of
anything else; only observe that it depends on the nature of the
line, not on its magnitude; thus, in simple circular curvature, _a
b_, Fig. 96, being the fourth of a large circle, and _b c_ the half
of a smaller one, the quantity of the element of circular curvature
in the entire line _a c_ is three fourths of that in _any_
circle,--the the same as the quantity in the line _e f_.
[Illustration: FIG 96.]
[89] The catenary is not properly a curve capable of infinity, if
its direction does not alter with its length; but it is capable of
infinity, implying such alteration by the infinite removal of the
points of suspension. It entirely corresponds in its effect on the
eye and mind to the infinite curves. I do not know the exact nature
of the apparent curves of suspension formed by a high and weighty
waterfall; they are dependent on the gain in rapidity of descent by
the central current, where its greater body is less arrested by the
air; and I apprehend, are catenary in character, though not in
cause.
[90] I am afraid of becoming tiresome by going too far into the
intricacies of this most difficult subject; but I say "_towards_ the
bottom of the hill," because, when a certain degree of verticality
is reached, a counter protective influence begins to establish
itself, the stones and waterfalls bounding away from the brow of the
precipice into the air, and wearing it at the top only. Also it is
evident that when the curvature falls into a vertical cliff, as
often happens, the maximum of curvature must be somewhere _above_
the brow of the cliff, as in the cliff itself it has again died into
a straight line.
[91] The following extract from my private diary, giving an account
of the destruction of the beauty of this waterfall in the year 1849,
which I happened to witness, may be interesting to those travellers
who remember it before that period. The house spoken of as
"Joseph's," is that of the guide Joseph Coutet, in a village about a
mile below the cascade, between it and the Arve: that noticed as of
the "old avalanche" is a hollow in the forest, cleft by a great
avalanche which fell from the Aiguille du Midi in the spring of
1844. It struck down about a thousand full-grown pines, and left an
open track in the midst of the wood, from the cascade nearly down to
the village.
"Evening, Thursday, June 28th. I set out for the Cascade des
Pelerins as usual; when we reached Joseph's house, we heard a sound
from the torrent like low thunder, or like that of a more distant
and heavier fall. A peasant said something to Joseph, who stopped to
listen, then nodded, and said to me, 'La cascade vient de se
deborder.' Thinking there would be time enough afterwards to ask for
explanations, I pushed up the hill almost without asking a question.
When we reached the place of the old avalanche, Joseph called to me
to stop and see the torrent increase. There was at this time a dark
cloud on the Aiguille du Midi, down to its base; the upper part of
the torrent was brown, the lower white, not larger than usual. The
brown part came down, I thought, with exceeding slowness, reaching
the cascade gradually; as it did so, the fall rose to about once and
a half its usual height, and in the five minutes' time that I paused
(it could not be more) turned to the color of slate. I then pushed
on as hard as I could. When I reached the last ascent I was obliged
to stop for breath, but got up before the fall could sensibly have
diminished in body of water. It was then nearly twice as far cast
out from the rock as last night, and the water nearly black in
color; and it had the appearance, as it broke and separated at the
outer part of the fall, of a shower of fragments of flat slate. The
reason of this appearance I could not comprehend, unless the water
was so mixed with mud that it drew out flat and unctuously when it
broke; but so it was: instead of spray it looked like a shower of
dirty flat bits of slate--only with a lustre, as if they had been
wet first. This, however, was the least of it, for the torrent
carried with it nearly as much weight of stone as water; the stones
varying in size, the average being, I suppose, about that of a hen's
egg; but I do not suppose that at any instant the arch of water was
without four or five as large as a man's fist, and often came larger
ones,--all vomited forth with the explosive power of a small
volcano, and falling in a continual shower as thick, constant, and,
had it not been mixed with the crash of the fall, as loud as a heavy
fire of infantry; they bounded and leaped in the basin of the fall
like hailstones in a thunder-shower. As we watched the fall it
seemed convulsively to diminish, and suddenly showed, as it
shortened, the rock underneath it, which I could hardly see
yesterday: as I cried out to Joseph it rose again, higher than ever,
and continued to rise, till it all but reached the snow on the rock
opposite. It then became very fantastic and variable, increasing and
diminishing in the space of two or three seconds, and partially
changing its direction. After watching it for half an hour or so, I
determined to try and make some memoranda. Coutet brought me up a
jug of water: I stooped to dip my brush, when Coutet caught my arm,
saying, 'Tenez;' at the same instant I heard a blow, like the going
off of a heavy gun, two or three miles away; I looked up, and as I
did, the cascade sank before my eyes, and fell back to the rock.
Neither of us spoke for an instant or two; then Coutet said, 'C'est
une pierre, qui est logee dans le creux,' or words to that effect:
in fact, he had seen the stone come down as he called to me. I
thought also that nothing more had happened, and watched the
destroyed fall only with interest, until, as suddenly as it had
fallen, it rose again, though not to its former height; and Coutet,
stooping down, exclaimed, 'Ce n'est pas ca, le roc est perce;' in
effect, a hole was now distinctly visible in the cup which turned
the stream, through which the water whizzed as from a burst pipe.
The cascade, however, continued to increase, until this new channel
was concealed, and I was maintaining to Coutet that he must have
been mistaken (and that the water only _struck_ on the outer rock,
having changed its mode of fall above), when again it fell; and the
two girls, who had come up from the chalet, expressed their opinion
at once, that the 'cascade est finie.' This time all was plain; the
water gushed in a violent jet d'eau through the new aperture, hardly
any of it escaping above. It rose again gradually, as the hole was
choked with stones, and again fell; but presently sprang out almost
to its first elevation (the water being by this time in much less
body), and retained very nearly the form it had yesterday, until I
got tired of looking at it, and went down to the little chalet, and
sat down before its door. I had not been there five minutes before
the cascade fell, and rose no more."
[92] It might be thought at first that the line to which such curves
would approximate would be the cycloid, as the line of quickest
descent. But in reality the contour is modified by perpetual sliding
of the debris under the influence of rain; and by the bounding of
detached fragments with continually increased momentum. I was quite
unable to get at anything like the expression of a constant law
among the examples I studied in the Alps, except only the great laws
of delicacy and changefulness in all curves whatsoever.
[93] I owe Mr. Le Keux sincere thanks, and not a little admiration,
for the care and skill with which he has followed, on a much reduced
scale, the detail of this drawing.
[94] Allow ten feet square for average space to each pine; suppose
the valley seen only for five miles of its length, and the pine
district two miles broad on each side--a low estimate of breadth
also: this would give five millions.
[95] The white spots on the brow of the little cliff are lichens,
only four or five inches broad.
[96] What a _comfortable_, as well as intelligent, operation,
sketching from nature must have been in those days!
[97] It is not one of the highest points of the Carrara chain. The
chief summits are much more jagged, and very noble. See Chap. XX. Sec.
20.