felt, and just now endeavored to enforce, that the mountains of the
earth are its natural cathedrals, or natural altars, overlaid with gold,
and bright with broidered work of flowers, and with their clouds resting
on them as the smoke of a continual sacrifice, it may surely be a
question with some of us, whether the tables of the moneychanger,
however fit and commendable they may be as furniture in other places,
are precisely the thing which it is the whole duty of man to get well
set up in the mountain temple.
Sec. 44. And perhaps it may help to the better determination of this
question, if we endeavor, for a few patient moments, to bear with that
weakness of our forefathers in feeling an awe for the hills; and,
divesting ourselves, as far as may be, of our modern experimental or
exploring activity, and habit of regarding mountains chiefly as places
for gymnastic exercise, try to understand the temper, not indeed
altogether exemplary, but yet having certain truths and dignities in
it, to which we owe the founding of the Benedictine and Carthusian
cloisters in the thin Alpine air. And this monkish temper we may, I
suppose, best understand by considering the aspect under which mountains
are represented in the Monk's book. I found that in my late lectures, at
Edinburgh, I gave great offence by supposing, or implying, that
scriptural expressions could have any force as bearing upon modern
practical questions; so that I do not now, nor shall I any more, allude
to such expressions as in any wise necessarily bearing on the worldly
business of the practical Protestant, but only as necessary to be
glanced at in order to understand the temper of those old monks, who had
the awkward habit of understanding the Bible literally; and to get any
little good which momentary sympathy with the hearts of a large and
earnest class of men may surely bring to us.
Sec. 45. The monkish view of mountains, then, already alluded to,[118] was
derived wholly from that Latin Vulgate of theirs; and, speaking as a
monk, it may perhaps be permitted me to mark the significance of the
earliest mention of mountains in the Mosaic books; at least, of those in
which some Divine appointment or command is stated respecting them. They
are first brought before us as refuges for God's people from the two
judgments of water and fire. The ark _rests_ upon the "mountains of
Ararat;" and man, having passed through that great baptism unto death,
kneels upon the earth first where it is nearest heaven, and mingles with
the mountain clouds the smoke of his sacrifice of thanksgiving. Again:
from the midst of the first judgment by fire, the command of the Deity
to His servant is, "Escape to the mountain;" and the morbid fear of the
hills, which fills any human mind after long stay in places of luxury
and sin, is strangely marked in Lot's complaining reply: "I cannot
escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me." The third mention, in
way of ordinance, is a far more solemn one: "Abraham lifted up his eyes,
and saw the place afar off." "The Place," the Mountain of Myrrh, or of
bitterness, chosen to fulfil to all the seed of Abraham, far off and
near, the inner meaning of promise regarded in that vow: "I will lift up
mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh mine help."
And the fourth is the delivery of the law on Sinai.
Sec. 46. It seemed, then, to the monks, that the mountains were appointed
by their Maker to be to man, refuges from Judgment, signs of Redemption,
and altars of Sanctification and obedience; and they saw them afterwards
connected, in the manner the most touching and gracious, with the death,
after his task had been accomplished, of the first anointed Priest; the
death, in like manner, of the first inspired Lawgiver; and, lastly, with
the assumption of his office by the Eternal Priest, Lawgiver, and
Saviour.
Observe the connection of these three events. Although the _time_ of the
deaths of Aaron and Moses was hastened by God's displeasure, we have
not, it seems to me, the slightest warrant for concluding that the
_manner_ of their deaths was intended to be grievous or dishonorable to
them. Far from this: it cannot, I think, be doubted that in the denial
of the permission to enter the Promised Land, the whole punishment of
their sin was included; and that as far as regarded the manner of their
deaths, it must have been appointed for them by their Master in all
tenderness and love; and with full purpose of ennobling the close of
their service upon the earth. It might have seemed to us more honorable
that both should have been permitted to die beneath the shadow of the
Tabernacle, the congregation of Israel watching by their side; and all
whom they loved gathered together to receive the last message from the
lips of the meek lawgiver, and the last blessing from the prayer of the
anointed priest. But it was not thus they were permitted to die. Try to
realize that going forth of Aaron from the midst of the congregation. He
who had so often done sacrifice for their sin, going forth now to offer
up his own spirit. He who had stood, among them, between the dead and
the living, and had seen the eyes of all that great multitude turned to
him, that by his intercession their breath might yet be drawn a moment
more, going forth now to meet the Angel of Death face to face, and
deliver himself into his hand. Try if you cannot walk, in thought, with
those two brothers, and the son, as they passed the outmost tents of
Israel, and turned, while yet the dew lay round about the camp, towards
the slopes of Mount Hor; talking together for the last time, as step by
step, they felt the steeper rising of the rocks, and hour after hour,
beneath the ascending sun, the horizon grew broader as they climbed, and
all the folded hills of Idumea, one by one subdued, showed amidst their
hollows in the haze of noon, the windings of that long desert journey,
now at last to close. But who shall enter into the thoughts of the High
Priest, as his eye followed those paths of ancient pilgrimage; and,
through the silence of the arid and endless hills, stretching even to
the dim peak of Sinai, the whole history of those forty years was
unfolded before him, and the mystery of his own ministries revealed to
him; and that other Holy of Holies, of which the mountain peaks were the
altars, and the mountain clouds the veil, the firmament of his Father's
dwelling, opened to him still more brightly and infinitely as he drew
nearer his death; until at last, on the shadeless summit,--from him on
whom sin was to be laid no more--from him, on whose heart the names of
sinful nations were to press their graven fire no longer,--the brother
and the son took breastplate and ephod, and left him to his rest.
Sec. 47. There is indeed a secretness in this calm faith and deep restraint
of sorrow, into which it is difficult for us to enter; but the death of
Moses himself is more easily to be conceived, and had in it
circumstances still more touching, as far as regards the influence of
the external scene. For forty years Moses had not been alone. The care
and burden of all the people, the weight of their woe, and guilt, and
death, had been upon him continually. The multitude had been laid upon
him as if he had conceived them; their tears had been his meat, night
and day, until he had felt as if God had withdrawn His favor from him,
and he had prayed that he might be slain, and not see his
wretchedness.[119] And now, at last, the command came, "Get thee up into
this mountain." The weary hands that had been so long stayed up against
the enemies of Israel, might lean again upon the shepherd's staff, and
fold themselves for the shepherd's prayer--for the shepherd's slumber.
Not strange to his feet, though forty years unknown, the roughness of
the bare mountain-path, as he climbed from ledge to ledge of Abarim; not
strange to his aged eyes the scattered clusters of the mountain
herbage, and the broken shadows of the cliffs, indented far across the
silence of uninhabited ravines; scenes such as those among which, with
none, as now, beside him but God, he had led his flocks so often; and
which he had left, how painfully! taking upon him the appointed power,
to make of the fenced city a wilderness, and to fill the desert with
songs of deliverance. It was not to embitter the last hours of his life
that God restored to him, for a day, the beloved solitudes he had lost;
and breathed the peace of the perpetual hills around him, and cast the
world in which he had labored and sinned far beneath his feet, in that
mist of dying blue;--all sin, all wandering, soon to be forgotten for
ever; the Dead Sea--a type of God's anger understood by him, of all men,
most clearly, who had seen the earth open her mouth, and the sea his
depth, to overwhelm the companies of those who contended with his
Master--laid waveless beneath him; and beyond it, the fair hills of
Judah, and the soft plains and banks of Jordan, purple in the evening
light as with the blood of redemption, and fading in their distant
fulness into mysteries of promise and of love. There, with his unabated
strength, his undimmed glance, lying down upon the utmost rocks, with
angels waiting near to contend for the spoils of his spirit, he put off
his earthly armor. We do deep reverence to his companion prophet, for
whom the chariot of fire came down from heaven; but was his death less
noble, whom his Lord Himself buried in the vales of Moab, keeping, in
the secrets of the eternal counsels, the knowledge of a sepulchre, from
which he was to be called, in the fulness of time, to talk with that
Lord, upon Hermon, of the death that He should accomplish at Jerusalem?
And lastly, let us turn our thoughts for a few moments to the cause of
the resurrection of these two prophets. We are all of us too much in the
habit of passing it by, as a thing mystical and inconceivable, taking
place in the life of Christ for some purpose not by us to be understood,
or, at the best, merely as a manifestation of His divinity by brightness
of heavenly light, and the ministering of the spirits of the dead,
intended to strengthen the faith of His three chosen apostles. And in
this, as in many other events recorded by the Evangelists, we lose half
the meaning and evade the practical power upon ourselves, by never
accepting in its fulness the idea that our Lord was "perfect man,"
"tempted in all things like as we are." Our preachers are continually
trying, in all manner of subtle ways, to explain the union of the
Divinity with the Manhood, an explanation which certainly involves first
their being able to describe the nature of Deity itself, or, in plain
words, to comprehend God. They never can explain, in any one particular,
the union of the natures; they only succeed in weakening the faith of
their hearers as to the entireness of either. The thing they have to do
is precisely the contrary of this--to insist upon the _entireness_ of
both. We never think of Christ enough as God, never enough as Man; the
instinctive habit of our minds being always to miss of the Divinity, and
the reasoning and enforced habit to miss of the Humanity. We are afraid
to harbor in our own hearts, or to utter in the hearing of others, any
thought of our Lord, as hungering, tired, sorrowful, having a human
soul, a human will, and affected by events of human life as a finite
creature is; and yet one half of the efficiency of His atonement, and
the whole of the efficiency of His example, depend on His having been
this to the full.
Sec. 48. Consider, therefore, the Transfiguration as it relates to the
human feelings of our Lord. It was the first definite preparation for
His death. He had foretold it to His disciples six days before; then
takes with Him the three chosen ones into "an high mountain apart." From
an exceeding high mountain, at the first taking on Him the ministry of
life, He had beheld, and rejected the kingdoms of the earth, and their
glory: now, on a high mountain, He takes upon Him the ministry of death.
Peter and they that were with him, as in Gethsemane, were heavy with
sleep. Christ's work had to be done alone.
The tradition is, that the Mount of Transfiguration was the summit of
Tabor; but Tabor is neither a high mountain, nor was it in any sense a
mountain "_apart_;" being in those years both inhabited and fortified.
All the immediately preceding ministries of Christ had been at Cesarea
Philippi. There is no mention of travel southward in the six days that
intervened between the warning given to His disciples, and the going up
into the hill. What other hill could it be than the southward slope of
that goodly mountain, Hermon, which is indeed the centre of all the
Promised Land, from the entering in of Hamath unto the river of Egypt;
the mount of fruitfulness, from which the springs of Jordan descended to
the valleys of Israel. Along its mighty forest avenues, until the grass
grew fair with the mountain lilies, His feet dashed in the dew of
Hermon, He must have gone to pray His first recorded prayer about death;
and from the steep of it, before He knelt, could see to the south all
the dwelling-place of the people that had sat in darkness, and seen the
great light, the land of Zabulon and of Naphtali, Galilee of the
nations;--could see, even with His human sight, the gleam of that lake
by Capernaum and Chorazin, and many a place loved by Him, and vainly
ministered to, whose house was now left unto them desolate; and, chief
of all, far in the utmost blue, the hills above Nazareth, sloping down
to His old home: hills on which yet the stones lay loose, that had been
taken up to cast at Him, when He left them for ever.
Sec. 49. "And as he prayed, two men stood by him." Among the many ways in
which we miss the help and hold of Scripture, none is more subtle than
our habit of supposing that, even as man, Christ was free from the Fear
of Death. How could He then have been tempted as we are? since among all
the trials of the earth, none spring from the dust more terrible than
that Fear. It had to be borne by Him, indeed, in a unity, which we can
never comprehend, with the foreknowledge of victory,--as His sorrow for
Lazarus, with the consciousness of the power to restore him; but it
_had_ to be borne, and that in its full earthly terror; and the presence
of it is surely marked for us enough by the rising of those two at His
side. When, in the desert, He was girding Himself for the work of life,
angels of life came and ministered unto Him; now, in the fair world,
when He is girding Himself for the work of death, the ministrants come
to Him from the grave.
But from the grave conquered. One, from that tomb under Abarim, which
His own hand had sealed so long ago; the other from the rest into which
he had entered, without seeing corruption. There stood by Him Moses and
Elias, and spake of His decease.
Then, when the prayer is ended, the task accepted, first, since the
star paused over Him at Bethlehem, the full glory falls upon Him from
heaven, and the testimony is borne to his everlasting Sonship and power.
"Hear ye him."
If, in their remembrance of these things, and in their endeavor to
follow in the footsteps of their Master, religious men of by-gone days,
closing themselves in the hill solitudes, forgot sometimes, and
sometimes feared, the duties they owed to the active world, we may
perhaps pardon them more easily than we ought to pardon ourselves, if we
neither seek any influence for good nor submit to it unsought, in scenes
to which thus all the men whose writings we receive as inspired,
together with their Lord, retired whenever they had any task or trial
laid upon them needing more than their usual strength of spirit. Nor,
perhaps, should we have unprofitably entered into the mind of the
earlier ages, if among our other thoughts, as we watch the chains of the
snowy mountains rise on the horizon, we should sometimes admit the
memory of the hour in which their Creator, among their solitudes,
entered on His travail for the salvation of our race; and indulge the
dream, that as the flaming and trembling mountains of the earth seem to
be the monuments of the manifesting of His terror on Sinai,--these pure
and white hills, near to the heaven, and sources of all good to the
earth, are the appointed memorials of that Light of His Mercy, that
fell, snow-like, on the Mount of Transfiguration.
FOOTNOTES
[106] In tracing the _whole_ of the deep enjoyment to mountain
association, I of course except whatever feelings are connected with
the observance of rural life, or with that of architecture. None of
these feelings arise out of the landscape, properly so-called: the
pleasure with which we see a peasant's garden fairly kept, or a
ploughman doing his work well, or a group of children playing at a
cottage door, being wholly separate from that which we find in the
fields or commons around them; and the beauty of architecture, or
the associations connected with it, in like manner often ennobling
the most tame scenery;--yet not so but that we may always
distinguish between the abstract character of the unassisted
landscape, and the charm which it derives from the architecture.
Much of the majesty of French landscape consists in its grand and
grey village churches and turreted farmhouses, not to speak of its
cathedrals, castles, and beautifully placed cities.
[107] One of the principal reasons for the false supposition that
Switzerland is not picturesque, is the error of most sketchers and
painters in representing pine forest in middle distance as dark
_green_, or grey green, whereas its true color is always purple, at
distances of even two or three miles. Let any traveller coming down
the Montanvert look for an aperture, three or four inches wide,
between the near pine branches, through which, standing eight or ten
feet from it, he can see the opposite forests on the Breven or
Flegere. Those forests are not above two or two and a half miles
from him; but he will find the aperture is filled by a tint of
nearly pure azure or purple, not by green.
[108] The Savoyard's name for its flower, "Pain du Bon Dieu," is
very beautiful; from, I believe, the supposed resemblance of its
white and scattered blossom to the fallen manna.
[109] See reference to his painting of stones in the last note to Sec.
28 of the chapter on Imagination Penetrative, Vol. II.
[110] In saying this I do not, of course, forget the influence of
the sea on the Pisans and Venetians; but that is a separate subject,
and must be examined in the next volume.
[111] "With fairest flowers
While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,
I'll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack
The flower that's like thy face--pale primrose, nor
The azured harebell--like thy veins; no, nor
The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander,
Outsweetened not thy breath. The ruddock would
With charitable bill bring thee all this;
Yea, and furred moss besides, when flowers are none,
To winter-ground thy corse.
_Gui._ Prithee, have done,
And do not play in wench-like words with that
Which is so serious."
Imogen herself, afterwards in deeper passion, will give weeds--not
flowers--and something more:
"And when
With wildwood leaves, and weeds, I have strewed his grave,
And on it said a century of prayers,
Such as I can, twice o'er, I'll weep, and sigh,
And, leaving so his service, follow you."
[112] If the reader thinks that in Henry the Fifth's time the
Elizabethan temper might already have been manifesting itself, let
him compare the English herald's speech, act 2, scene 2, of King
John; and by way of specimen of Shakespere's historical care, or
regard of mediaeval character, the large use of _artillery_ in the
previous scene.
[113] The last bishop.
[114] His favorite son; nominally his nephew.
[115] "Nero Antico" is more familiar to our ears; but Browning does
right in translating it; as afterwards "cipollino" into
"onion-stone." Our stupid habit of using foreign words without
translation is continually losing us half the force of the foreign
language. How many travellers hearing the term "cipollino" recognize
the intended sense of a stone splitting into concentric coats, like
an onion?
[116] I mean that Shakespere almost always implies a total
difference in _nature_ between one human being and another; one
being from the birth, pure and affectionate, another base and cruel;
and he displays each, in its sphere, as having the nature of dove,
wolf, or lion, never much implying the government or change of
nature by any external principle. There can be no question that in
the main he is right in this view of human nature; still, the other
form of virtue does exist occasionally, and was never, as far as I
recollect, taken much note of by him. And with this stern view of
humanity, Shakespere joined a sorrowful view of Fate, closely
resembling that of the ancients. He is distinguished from Dante
eminently by his always dwelling on last causes instead of first
causes. Dante invariably points to the moment of the soul's choice
which fixed its fate, to the instant of the day when it read no
farther, or determined to give bad advice about Penestrino. But
Shakespere always leans on the force of Fate, as it urges the final
evil; and dwells with infinite bitterness on the power of the
wicked, and the infinitude of result dependent seemingly on little
things. A fool brings the last piece of news from Verona, and the
dearest lives of its noble houses are lost; they might have been
saved if the sacristan had not stumbled as he walked. Othello
mislays his handkerchief, and there remains nothing for him but
death. Hamlet gets hold of the wrong foil, and the rest is silence.
Edmund's runner is a moment too late at the prison, and the feather
will not move at Cordelia's lips. Salisbury a moment too late at the
tower, and Arthur lies on the stones dead. Goneril and Iago have on
the whole, in this world, Shakespere sees, much of their own way,
though they come to a bad end. It is a pin that Death pierces the
king's fortress wall with; and Carelessness and Folly sit sceptred
and dreadful, side by side with the pin-armed skeleton.
[117] Not the old hospitable innkeeper, who honored his guests and
was honored by them, than whom I do not know a more useful or worthy
character; but the modern innkeeper, proprietor of a building in the
shape of a factory, making up three hundred beds; who necessarily
regards his guests in the light of Numbers 1, 2, 3-300, and is too
often felt or apprehended by them only as a presiding influence of
extortion.
[118] Vol III. Chap. XIV. Sec. 10.
[119] Numbers, xi. 12, 15.
APPENDIX.
I. MODERN GROTESQUE.
The reader may perhaps be somewhat confused by the different tone with
which, in various passages of these volumes, I have spoken of the
dignity of Expression. He must remember that there are three distinct
schools of expression, and that it is impossible, on every occasion when
the term is used, to repeat the definition of the three, and distinguish
the school spoken of.
There is, first, the Great Expressional School, consisting of the
sincerely thoughtful and affectionate painters of early times, masters
of their art, as far as it was known in their days. Orcagna, John
Bellini, Perugino, and Angelico, are its leading masters. All the men
who compose it are, without exception, _colorists_. The modern
Pre-Raphaelites belong to it.
Secondly, the Pseudo-Expressional School, wholly of modern development,
consisting of men who have never mastered their art, and are probably
incapable of mastering it, but who hope to substitute sentiment for good
painting. It is eminently characterized by its contempt of color, and
may be most definitely distinguished as the School of Clay.
Thirdly, the Grotesque Expressional School, consisting of men who,
having peculiar powers of observation for the stronger signs of
character in anything, and sincerely delighting in them, lose sight of
the associated refinements or beauties. This school is apt, more or
less, to catch at faults or strangenesses; and, associating its powers
of observation with wit or malice, produces the wild, gay, or satirical
grotesque in early sculpture, and in modern times, our rich and various
popular caricature.
I took no note of this branch of art in the chapter on the Grotesque
Ideal; partly because I did not wish to disturb the reader's mind in our
examination of the great imaginative grotesque, and also because I did
not feel able to give a distinct account of this branch, having never
thoroughly considered the powers of eye and hand involved in its finer
examples. But assuredly men of strong intellect and fine sense are found
among the caricaturists, and it is to them that I allude in saying that
the most subtle expression is often attained by "slight studies;" while
it is of the pseudo-expressionalist, or "high art" school that I am
speaking, when I say that expression may "sometimes be elaborated by the
toil of the dull;" in neither case meaning to depreciate the work,
wholly different in every way, of the great expressional schools.
I regret that I have not been able, as yet, to examine with care the
powers of mind involved in modern caricature. They are, however, always
partial and imperfect; for the very habit of looking for the leading
lines by the smallest possible number of which the expression may be
attained, warps the power of _general_ attention, and blunts the
perception of the delicacies of the entire form and color. Not that
caricature, or exaggeration of points of character, may not be
occasionally indulged in by the greatest men--as constantly by Leonardo;
but then it will be found that the caricature consists, not in imperfect
or violent _drawing_, but in delicate and perfect drawing of strange and
exaggerated forms quaintly combined: and even thus, I believe, the habit
of looking for such conditions will be found injurious; I strongly
suspect its operation on Leonardo to have been the increase of his
non-natural tendencies in his higher works. A certain acknowledgment of
the ludicrous element is admitted in corners of the pictures of
Veronese--in dwarfs or monkeys; but it is _never_ caricatured or
exaggerated. Tintoret and Titian hardly admit the element at all. They
admit the noble grotesque to the full, in all its quaintness,
brilliancy, and awe; but never any form of it depending on exaggeration,
partiality, or fallacy.[120]
I believe, therefore, whatever wit, delicate appreciation of ordinary
character, or other intellectual power may belong to the modern masters
of caricature, their method of study for ever incapacitates them from
passing beyond a certain point, and either reaching any of the perfect
forms of art themselves, or understanding them in others. Generally
speaking, their power is limited to the use of the pen or pencil--they
cannot touch color without discomfiture; and even those whose work is of
higher aim, and wrought habitually in color, are prevented by their
pursuit of _piquant_ expression from understanding noble expression.
Leslie furnishes several curious examples of this defect of perception
in his late work on Art;--talking, for instance, of the "insipid faces
of Francia."
On the other hand, all the real masters of caricature deserve honor in
this respect, that their gift is peculiarly their own--innate and
incommunicable. No teaching, no hard study, will ever enable other
people to equal, in their several ways, the works of Leech or
Cruikshank; whereas, the power of pure drawing is communicable, within
certain limits, to every one who has good sight and industry. I do not,
indeed, know how far, by devoting the attention to points of character,
caricaturist skill may be laboriously attained; but certainly the power
is, in the masters of the school, innate from their childhood.
Farther. It is evident that many subjects of thought may be dealt with
by this kind of art which are inapproachable by any other, and that its
influence over the popular mind must always be great; hence it may often
happen that men of strong purpose may rather express themselves in this
way (and continue to make such expression a matter of earnest study),
than turn to any less influential, though more dignified, or even more
intrinsically meritorious, branch of art. And when the powers of quaint
fancy are associated (as is frequently the case) with stern
understanding of the nature of evil, and tender human sympathy, there
results a bitter, or pathetic spirit of grotesque, to which mankind at
the present day owe more thorough moral teaching than to any branch of
art whatsoever.
In poetry, the temper is seen, in perfect manifestation, in the works of
Thomas Hood; in art, it is found both in various works of the
Germans,--their finest, and their least thought of; and more or less in
the works of George Cruikshank,[121] and in many of the illustrations
of our popular journals. On the whole, the most impressive examples of
it, in poetry and in art, which I remember, are the Song of the Shirt,
and the woodcuts of Alfred Rethel, before spoken of. A correspondent,
though coarser work appeared some little time back in Punch, namely, the
"General Fevrier turned Traitor."
The reception of the woodcut last named was in several respects a
curious test of modern feeling. For the sake of the general reader, it
may be well to state the occasion and character of it. It will be
remembered by all that early in the winter of 1854-5, so fatal by its
inclemency, and by our own improvidence, to our army in the Crimea, the
late Emperor of Russia said, or was reported to have said, that "his
best commanders, General January and General February, were not yet
come." The word, if ever spoken, was at once base, cruel, and
blasphemous; base, in precisely reversing the temper of all true
soldiers, so nobly instanced by the son of Saladin, when he sent, at the
very instant of the discomfiture of his own army, two horses to Coeur
de Lion, whose horse had been killed under him in the melee; cruel,
inasmuch as he ought not to have exulted in the thought of the death, by
slow suffering, of brave men; blasphemous, inasmuch as it contained an
appeal to Heaven of which he knew the hypocrisy. He himself died in
February; and the woodcut of which I speak represented a skeleton in
soldier's armor, entering his chamber, the driven sleet white on its
cloak and crest; laying its hand on his heart as he lay dead.
There were some points to be regretted in the execution of the design,
but the thought was a grand one; the memory of the word spoken, and of
its answer, could hardly in any more impressive way have been recorded
for the people; and I believe that to all persons accustomed to the
earnest forms of art, it contained a profound and touching lesson. The
notable thing was, however, that it offended all persons _not_ in
earnest, and was loudly cried out against by the polite formalism of
society. This fate is, I believe, the almost inevitable one of
thoroughly genuine work, in these days, whether poetry or painting; but
what added to the singularity in this ease was that _coarse_
heartlessness was even more offended than polite heartlessness. Thus,
Blackwood's Magazine,--which from the time that, with grace, judgment,
and tenderness peculiarly its own, it bid the dying Keats "back to his
gallipots,"[122] to that in which it partly arrested the last efforts,
and shortened the life of Turner, had with an infallible instinct for
the wrong, given what pain it could, and withered what strength it
could, in every great mind that was in anywise within its reach; and had
made itself, to the utmost of its power, frost and disease of the heart
to the most noble spirits of England,--took upon itself to be generously
offended at this triumphing over the death of England's enemy, because,
"by proving that he is obliged to undergo the common lot of all, his
brotherhood is at once reasserted."[123] He was not, then, a brother
while he was alive? or is our brother's blood in general not to be
acknowledged by us till it rushes up against us from the ground? I know
that this is a common creed, whether a peculiarly wise or Christian one
may be doubted. It may not, indeed, be well to triumph over the dead,
but perhaps it is less well that the world so often tries to triumph
over the living. And as for exultation over a fallen foe (though there
was _none_ in the mind of the man who drew that monarch dead), it may be
remembered that there have been worthy persons, before now, guilty of
this great wickedness,--nay, who have even fitted the words of their
exultation to timbrels, and gone forth to sing them in dances. There
have even been those--women, too,--who could make a mock at the agony of
a mother weeping over her lost son, when that son had been the enemy of
their country; and their mock has been preserved, as worthy to be read
by human eyes. "The mother of Sisera looked out at a window. 'Hath he
not sped?'" I do not say this was right, still less that it was wrong;
but only that it would be well for us if we could quit our habit of
thinking that what we say of the dead is of more weight than what we say
of the living. The dead either know nothing, or know enough to despise
both us and our insults, or adulation.
"Well, but," it is answered, "there will always be this weakness in our
human nature; we shall for ever, in spite of reason, take pleasure in
doing funereal honor to the corpse, and writing sacredness to memory
upon marble." Then, if you are to do this,--if you are to put off your
kindness until death,--why not, in God's name, put off also your enmity?
and if you choose to write your lingering affections upon stones, wreak
also your delayed anger upon clay. This would be just, and, in the last
case, little as you think it, generous. The true baseness is in the
bitter reverse--the strange iniquity of our folly. Is a man to be
praised, honored, pleaded for? It might do harm to praise or plead for
him while he lived. Wait till he is dead. Is he to be maligned,
dishonored, and discomforted? See that you do it while he is alive. It
would be too ungenerous to slander him when he could feel malice no
more; too contemptible to try to hurt him when he was past anguish. Make
yourselves busy, ye unjust, ye lying, ye hungry for pain! Death is near.
This is your hour, and the power of darkness. Wait, ye just, ye
merciful, ye faithful in love! Wait but for a little while, for this is
not your rest.
"Well, but," it is still answered, "is it not, indeed, ungenerous to
speak ill of the dead, since they cannot defend themselves?"
Why should they? If you speak ill of them falsely, it concerns you, not
them. Those lies of thine will "hurt a man as thou art," assuredly they
will hurt thyself; but that clay, or the delivered soul of it, in no
wise. Ajacean shield, seven-folded, never stayed lance-thrust as that
turf will, with daisies pied. What you say of those quiet ones is wholly
and utterly the world's affair and yours. The lie will, indeed, cost its
proper price and work its appointed work; you may ruin living myriads by
it,--you may stop the progress of centuries by it,--you may have to pay
your own soul for it,--but as for ruffling one corner of the folded
shroud by it, think it not. The dead have none to defend them! Nay, they
have two defenders, strong enough for the need--God, and the worm.
II. ROCK CLEAVAGE.
I am well aware how insufficient, and, in some measure, how disputable,
the account given in the preceding chapters of the cleavages of the
slaty crystallines must appear to geologists. But I had several reasons,
good or bad as they may be, for treating the subject in such a manner.
The first was, that considering the science of the artist as eminently
the science of _aspects_ (see Vol. III. Chap. XVII. Sec. 43), I kept myself
in all my investigations of natural objects as much as possible in the
state of an uninformed spectator of the outside of things, receiving
simply what impressions the external phenomena first induce. For the
natural tendency of accurate science is to make the possessor of it look
for, and eminently see, the things connected with his special pieces of
knowledge; and as all accurate science must be sternly limited, his
sight of nature gets limited accordingly. I observed that all our young
figure-painters were rendered, to all intents and purposes, _blind_ by
their knowledge of anatomy. They saw only certain muscles and bones, of
which they had learned the positions by rote, but could not, on account
of the very prominence in their minds of these bits of fragmentary
knowledge, see the real movement, color, rounding, or any other subtle
quality of the human form. And I was quite sure that if I examined the
mountain anatomy scientifically, I should go wrong, in like manner,
touching the external aspects. Therefore in beginning the inquiries of
which the results are given in the preceding pages, I closed all
geological books, and set myself, as far as I could, to see the Alps in
a simple, thoughtless, and untheorizing manner; but to _see_ them, if it
might be, thoroughly. If I am wrong in any of the statements made after
this kind of examination, the very fact of this error is an interesting
one, as showing the kind of deception which the external aspects of
hills are calculated to induce in an unprejudiced observer; but, whether
wrong or right, I believe the results I have given are those which
naturally would strike an artist, and _ought_ to strike him, just as the
apparently domical form of the sky, and radiation of the sun's light,
ought to be marked by him as pictorial phenomena, though the sky is not
domical, and though the radiation of sunbeams is a perspective
deception. There are, however, one or two points on which my opinions
might seem more adverse to the usual positions of geologists than they
really are, owing to my having left out many _qualifying_ statements for
fear of confusing the reader. These I must here briefly touch upon. And,
first, I know that I shall be questioned for not having sufficiently
dwelt upon slaty cleavages running transversely across series of beds,
and for generally speaking as if the slaty crystalline rocks were merely
dried beds of micaceous sand, in which the flakes of mica naturally lay
parallel with the beds, or only at such an angle to them as is
constantly assumed by particles of drift. Now the reason of this is
simply that my own mountain experience has led me _always_ among rocks
which induced such an impression; that, in general, artists seeking for
the noblest hill scenery, will also get among such rocks, and that
therefore I judged it best to explain their structure completely, merely
alluding (in Chap. X. Sec. 7) to the curious results of cross cleavage
among the softer slates, and leaving the reader to pursue the inquiry,
if he cared to do so; although, in reality, it matters very little to
the artist whether the slaty cleavage be across the beds or not, for to
him the cleavage itself is always the important matter, and the
stratification, if contrary to it, is usually so obscure as to be
naturally, and therefore properly, lost sight of. And touching the
disputed question whether the micaceous arrangements of metamorphic
rocks are the results of subsequent crystallization, or of aqueous
deposition, I had no special call to speak: the whole subject appeared
to me only more mysterious the more I examined it; but my own
impressions were always strongly for the aqueous deposition; nor in such
cases as that of the beds of the Matterhorn (drawn in Plate +39+),
respecting which, somewhat exceptionally, I have allowed myself to
theorize a little, does the matter appear to me disputable.
And I was confirmed in this feeling by De Saussure; the only writer
whose help I did not refuse in the course of these inquiries. _His_ I
received for this reason,--all other geological writers whose works I
had examined were engaged in the maintenance of some theory or other,
and always gathering materials to support it. But I found Saussure had
gone to the Alps as I desired to go myself, only to _look_ at them, and
describe them as they were, loving them heartily--loving them, the
positive Alps, more than himself, or than science, or than any theories
of science; and I found his descriptions, therefore, clear, and
trustworthy; and that when I had not visited any place myself,
Saussure's report upon it might always be received without question.
Not but that Saussure himself has a pet theory, like other human beings;
only it is quite subordinate to his love of the Alps: He is a steady
advocate of the aqueous crystallization of rocks, and never loses a fair
opportunity of a blow at the Huttonians; but his opportunities are
always _fair_, his description of what he sees is wholly impartial; it
is only when he gets home and arranges his papers that he puts in the
little aqueously inclined paragraphs, and never a paragraph without just
cause. He may, perhaps, overlook the evidence on the opposite side; but
in the Alps the igneous alteration of the rocks, and the modes of their
upheaval, seem to me subjects of intense difficulty and mystery, and as
such Saussure always treats them; the evidence for the original
_deposition_ by water of the slaty crystallines appears to him, as it
does to me, often perfectly distinct.
Now, Saussure's universal principle was exactly the one on which I have
founded my account of the slaty crystallines:--"Fidele a mon principle,
de ne regarder comme des couches, dans les montagnes schisteuses, que
les divisions paralleles aux feuillets des schistes dont elles sont
composees."--_Voyages_, Sec. 1747. I know that this is an arbitrary, and in
some cases an assuredly false, principle; but the assumption of it by De
Saussure proves all that I want to prove,--namely, that the beds of the
slaty crystallines are in the Alps in so large a plurality of instances
correspondent in direction to their folia, as to induce even a cautious
reasoner to assume such correspondence to be universal.
The next point, however, on which I shall be opposed, is one on which I
speak with far less confidence, for in this Saussure himself is against
me,--namely, the parallelism of the beds sloping under the Mont Blanc.
Saussure states twice, Sec.Sec. 656, 677, that they are arranged in the form
of a fan. I can only repeat that every measurement and every drawing I
made in Chamouni led me to the conclusions stated in the text, and so I
leave the subject to better investigators; this one fact being
indisputable, and the only one on which for my purpose it is necessary
to insist, that, whether in Chamouni the beds be radiant or not, to an
artist's eye they are usually parallel; and throughout the Alps no
phenomenon is more constant than the rounding of surfaces across the
extremities of beds sloping outwards, as seen in my plates +37+, +40+,
and +48+, and this especially in the most majestic mountain masses.
Compare De Saussure of the Grimsel, Sec. 1712: "Toujours il est bien
remarquable que ces feuillets, verticaux au sommet, s'inclinent ensuite,
comme a Chamouni, contre le dehors de la montagne:" and again of the
granite at Guttannen, Sec. 1679: "Ces couches ne sont pas tout-a-fait
verticales; elles s'appuyent un peu contre le Nord-Est, ou, comme a
Chamouni, contre le dehors de la montagne." Again, of the "quartz
micace" of Zumloch, Sec. 1723: "Ces rochers sont en couches a peu pres
verticales, dont les plans courent du Nord-Est au Sud-Ouest, en
s'appuyant, _suivant l'usage_, contre l'exterieur de la montagne, ou
contre la vallee." Again, on the Pass of the Gries, Sec. 1738: "Le rocher
presente des couches d'un schiste micace raye comme une etoffe; comme de
l'autre cote ils surplombent vers le dehors de la montagne." Without
referring to other passages I think Saussure's simple words, "suivant
l'usage," are enough to justify my statement in Chap. XIV. Sec. 3; only
the reader must of course always remember that every conceivable
position of beds takes place in the Alps, and all I mean to assert
generally is, that where the masses are most enormous and impressive,
and formed of slaty crystalline rocks, there the run of the beds up, as
it were, from within the mountain to its surface, will, in all
probability, become a notable feature in the scene as regarded by an
artist. One somewhat unusual form assumed by horizontal beds of slaty
crystallines, or of granite, is described by Saussure with unusual
admiration; and the passage is worth extracting, as bearing on the
terraced ideal of rocks in the middle ages. The scene is in the Val
Formazza.
"Independamment de l'interet que ces couches presentent au geologiste
sous un nombre de rapports qu'il seroit trop long et peut-etre inutile
de detailler, elles presentent meme pour le peintre, un superbe tableau.
Je n'ai jamais vu de plus beaux rochers et distribues en plus grandes
masses; ici, blancs; la, noircis par les lichens; la, peints de ces
belles couleurs variees, que nous admirions au Grimsel, et entremeles
d'arbres, dont les uns couronnent le faite de la montagne, et d'autres
sont inegalement jetes sur les corniches qui en separent les couches.
Vers le bas de la montagne l'oeil se repose sur de beaux vergers, dans
des prairies dont le terrein est inegal et varie, et sur de magnifiques
chataigniers, dont les branches etendues ombragent les rochers contre
lesquels ils croissent. En general, ces granits en couches horizontals
redent ce pays charmant; car, quoiqu'il y ait, comme je l'ai dit, des
couches qui forment des saillies, cependant elles sont pour l'ordinaire
arrangees en gradins, ou en grandes assises posees en reculement les
unes derriere les autres, et les bords de ces gradins sont couverts de
la plus belle verdure, et d'arbres distribues de la maniere la plus
pittoresque. On voit e mme des montagnes tres-elevees, qui out la forme
de pain de sucre, et qui sont entourees et couronnees jusqu'a leur
sommet, de guirlandes d'arbres assis sur les intervalles des couches, et
qui forment l'effet du monde le plus singulier."-_Voyages_, Sec. 1758.
Another statement, which I made generally, referring, for those
qualifications which it is so difficult to give without confusing the
reader, to this appendix, was that of the usually greater hardness of
the tops of mountains as compared with their flanks. My own experience
among the Alps has furnished me with few exceptions to this law; but
there is a very interesting one, according to Saussure, in the range of
the Furca del Bosco. (Voyages, Sec. 1779.)
Lastly, at page 186 of this volume, I have alluded to the various
cleavages of the aiguilles, out of which one only has been explained and
illustrated. I had not intended to treat the subject so partially; and
had actually prepared a long chapter, explaining the relations of five
different and important systems of cleavage in the Chamouni aiguilles.
When it was written, however, I found it looked so repulsive to readers
in general, and proved so little that was of interest even to readers in
particular, that I cancelled it, leaving only the account of what I
might, perhaps, not unjustifiably (from the first representation of it
in the Liber Studiorum) call Turner's cleavage. The following passage,
which was the introduction to the chapter, may serve to show that I have
not ignored the others, though I found, after long examination, that
Turner's was the principal one:--
"One of the principal distinctions between these crystalline masses and
stratified rocks, with respect to their outwardly apparent structure, is
the subtle complexity and number of _ranks_ in their crystalline
cleavages. The stratified masses have always a simple intelligible
organization; their beds lie in one direction, and certain fissures and
fractures of those beds lie in other clearly ascertainable directions;
seldom more than two or three _distinct_ directions of these fractures
being admitted. But if the traveller will set himself deliberately to
watch the shadows on the aiguilles of Chamouni as the sun moves round
them, he will find that nearly every quarter of an hour a new _set_ of
cleavages becomes visible, not confused and orderless, but a series of
lines inclining in some one definite direction, and that so positively,
that if he had only seen the aiguille at that moment, he would assuredly
have supposed its internal structure to be altogether regulated by the
lines of bed or cleavage then in sight. Let him, however, wait for
another quarter of an hour, and he will see those lines fade entirely
away as the sun rounds them; and another set, perhaps quite adverse to
them and assuredly lying in another direction, will as gradually become
visible, to die away in their turn, and be succeeded by a third scheme
of structure.
"These 'dissolving views' of the geology of the aiguilles have often
thrown me into despair of ever being able to give any account of their
formation; but just in proportion as I became aware of the infinite
complexity of their framework, the one great fact rose into more
prominent and wonderful relief,--that through this inextricable
complexity there was always manifested _some_ authoritative principle.
It mattered not at what hour of the day the aiguilles were examined, at
that hour they had a system of structure belonging to the moment. No
confusion nor anarchy ever appeared amidst their strength, but an
ineffable order, only the more perfect because incomprehensible. They
differed from lower mountains, not merely in being more compact, but in
being more disciplined.
"For, observe, the lines which cause these far-away effects of shadow,
are not, as often in less noble rocks, caused by real cracks through the
body of the mountain; for, were this so, it would follow, from what has
just been stated, that these aiguilles were cracked through and through
in every direction, and therefore actually weaker, instead of stronger,
than other rocks. But the appearance of fracture is entirely external,
and the sympathy or parallelism of the lines indicates, not an actual
splitting through the rock, but a mere disposition in the rock to split
harmoniously when it is compelled to do so. Thus, in the shell-like
fractures on the flank of the Aiguille Blaitiere, the rock is not
actually divided, as it appears to be, into successive hollow plates. Go
up close to the inner angle between one bed of rock and the next, and
the whole mass will be found as firmly united as a piece of glass. There
is absolutely no crack between the beds,--no, not so much as would allow
the blade of a penknife to enter for a quarter of an inch;[124] but such
a subtle disposition to symmetry of fracture in the heart of the solid
rock, that the next thunderbolt which strikes on that edge of it will
rend away a shell-shaped fragment or series of fragments; and will
either break it so as to continue the line of one of the existing sides,
or in some other line parallel to that. And yet this resolvedness to
break into shell-shaped fragments running north and south is only
characteristic of the rock at this spot, and at certain other spots
where similar circumstances have brought out this peculiar humor. Forty
yards farther on it will be equally determined to break in another
direction, and nothing will persuade it to the contrary. Forty yards
farther it will change its mind again, and face its beds round to
another quarter of the compass; and yet all these alternating caprices
are each parts of one mighty continuous caprice, which is only masked
for a time, as threads of one color are in a patterned stuff by threads
of another; and thus from a distance, precisely the same cleavage is
seen repeated again and again in different places, forming a systematic
structure; while other groups of cleavages will become visible in their
turn, either as we change our place of observation, or as the sunlight
changes the direction of its fall."
One part of these rocks, I think, no geologist interested in this
subject should pass without examination; viz., the little spur of
Blaitiere drawn in Plate +29+, Fig. 3. It is seen, as there shown, from
the moraine of the Charmoz glacier, its summit bearing S. 40 deg. W.; and
its cleavage bed leaning to the left or S.E., against the aiguille
Blaitiere. If, however, we go down to the extremity of the rocks
themselves, on the right, we shall find that all those thick beams of
rock are actually _sawn into vertical timbers_ by other cleavage,
sometimes so fine as to look almost slaty, directed straight S.E.,
against the aiguille, as if, continued, it would saw it through and
through; finally, cross the spur and go down to the glacier below,
between it and the Aiguille du Plan, and the bottom of the spur will be
found presenting the most splendid mossy surfaces, through which the
true gneissitic cleavage is faintly traceable, dipping _at right angles_
to the beds in Fig. 3, or under the Aiguille Blaitiere, thus concurring
with the beds of La Cote.
I forgot to note that the view of this Aiguille Blaitiere, given in
Plate +39+, was taken from the station marked _q_ in the reference
figure, p. 163; and the sketch of the Aiguille du Plan at p. 187, from
the station marked _r_ in the same figure, a highly interesting point of
observation in many respects; while the course of transition from the
protogine into gneiss presents more remarkable phenomena on the descents
from that point _r_ to the Tapia, T, than at any other easily accessible
spot.
Various interesting descriptions of granite cleavage will be found in De
Saussure, chiefly in his accounts of the Grimsel and St. Gothard. The
following summary of his observations on their positions of beds (1774),
may serve to show the reader how long I should have detained him if I
had endeavored to give a description of all the attendant phenomena:--
"Il est aussi bien curieux de voir ces gneiss, et ces granits veines, en
couches verticales a Guttannen; melangees d'horizontals et de verticales
au Lauteraar; toutes verticales au Grimsel et au Gries; toutes
horizontales dans le Val Formazza, et enfin pour la troisieme fois
verticales a la sortie des Alpes a l'entree du Lac Majeur."
III. LOGICAL EDUCATION.
In the Preface to the third volume I alluded to the conviction, daily
gaining ground upon me, of the need of a more accurately logical
education of our youth. Truly among the most pitiable and practically
hurtful weaknesses of the modern English mind, its usual inability to
grasp the connection between any two ideas which have elements of
opposition in them, as well as of connection, is perhaps the chief. It
is shown with singular fatality in the vague efforts made by our divines
to meet the objections raised by free-thinkers, bearing on the nature
and origin of evil; but there is hardly a sentence written on any matter
requiring careful analysis, by writers who have not yet begun to
perceive the influence of their own vanity (and there are too many such
among divines), which will not involve some half-lamentable,
half-ludicrous, logical flaw,--such flaws being the invariable
consequence of a man's straining to say anything in a learned instead of
an intelligible manner.
Take a sentence, for example, from J. A. James's "Anxious
Inquirer:"--"It is a great principle that _subjective religion_, _or in
other words_, religion _in us_, is produced and sustained by fixing the
mind on _objective religion_, _or_ the facts and doctrines of the Word
of God."
Cut entirely out the words I have put in italics, and the sentence has a
meaning (though not by any means an important one). But by its
verbosities it is extended into pure nonsense; for "facts" are neither
"objective" nor "subjective"[125] religion; they are not religion at
all. The belief of them, attended with certain feelings, is religion;
and it must always be religion "in us," for in whom else should it be
(unless in angels; which would not make it less "subjective"). It is
just as rational to call doctrines "objective religion," as to call
entreaties "objective compassion;" and the only real fact of any
notability deducible from the sentence is, that the writer desired
earnestly to say something profound, and had nothing profound to say.
To this same defect of intellect must, in charity, be attributed many of
the wretched cases of special pleading which we continually hear from
the pulpit. In the year 1853, I heard, in Edinburgh, a sermon from a
leading and excellent Presbyterian clergyman, on a subject generally
grateful to Protestant audiences, namely the impropriety and wickedness
of fasting. The preacher entirely denied that there was any authority
for fasting in the New Testament; declared that there were many feasts
appointed, but no fasts; insisted with great energy on the words
"forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats," &c., as
descriptive of Romanism, and _never once_, throughout a long sermon,
ventured so much as a single syllable that might recall to his
audience's recollection the existence of such texts as Matthew iv. 2 and
vi. 16, or Mark ix. 29. I have heard many sermons from Roman Catholic
priests, but I never yet heard, in the strongest holds of Romanism, any
so monstrous an instance of special pleading; in fact, it never could
have occurred in a sermon by any respectable Roman Catholic divine; for
the Romanists are trained to argument from their youth, and are always
to some extent plausible.
It is of course impossible to determine, in such cases, how far the
preacher, having conscientiously made up his mind on the subject by
foregoing thought, and honestly desiring to impress his conclusion on
his congregation, may think his object will be best, and even
justifiably attained, by insisting on all that is in favor of his
position, and trusting to the weak heads of his hearers not to find out
the arguments for the contrary; fearing that if he stated, in any
proportionate measure, the considerations on the other side, he might
not be able, in the time allotted to him, to bring out his conclusion
fairly. This, though I hold it an entirely false view, is nevertheless a
comprehensible and pardonable one, especially in a man familiar with the
reasoning capacities of the public; though those capacities themselves
owe half their shortcomings to being so unworthily treated. But, on the
whole, and looking broadly at the way the speakers and teachers of the
nation set about their business, there is an almost fathomless failure
in the results, owing to the general admission of special pleading as an
_art to be taught_ to youth. The main thing which we ought to teach our
youth is to _see_ something,--all that the eyes which God has given them
are capable of seeing. The sum of what we _do_ teach them is to _say_
something. As far as I have experience of instruction, no man ever
dreams of teaching a boy to get to the root of a matter; to think it
out; to get quit of passion and desire in the process of thinking; or to
fear no face of man in plainly asserting the ascertained result. But to
_say_ anything in a glib and graceful manner,--to give an epigrammatic
turn to nothing,--to quench the dim perceptions of a feeble adversary,
and parry cunningly the home thrusts of a strong one,--to invent
blanknesses in speech for breathing time, and slipperinesses in speech
for hiding time,--to polish malice to the deadliest edge, shape
profession to the seemliest shadow, and mask self-interest under the
fairest pretext,--all these skills we teach definitely, as the main arts
of business and life. There is a strange significance in the admission
of Aristotle's Rhetoric at our universities as a class-book. Cheating at
cards is a base profession enough, but truly it would be wiser to print
a code of gambler's legerdemain, and give _that_ for a class-book, than
to make the legerdemain of human speech, and the clever shuffling of the
black spots in the human heart, the first study of our politic youth.
Again, the Ethics of Aristotle, though containing some shrewd talk,
interesting for an _old_ reader, are yet so absurdly illogical and
sophistical, that if a young man has once read them with any faith, it
must take years before he recovers from the induced confusions of
thought and false habits of argument. If there were the slightest
dexterity or ingenuity in maintaining the false theory, there might be
some excuse for retaining the Ethics as a school-book, provided only the
tutor were careful to point out, on first opening it, that the Christian
virtues,--namely, to love with all the heart, soul, and strength; to
fight, not as one that beateth the air; and to do with _might_
whatsoever the hand findeth to do,--could not in anywise be defined as
"habits of choice in moderation." But the Aristotelian quibbles are so
shallow, that I look upon the retention of the book as a confession by
our universities that they consider practice in shallow quibbling one of
the essential disciplines of youth. Take, for instance, the distinction
made between "Envy" and "Rejoicing at Evil" ([Greek: phthonos] and
[Greek: epichairekakia]), in the second book of the Ethics, viz., that
envy is grieved when any one meets with good-fortune; but "the rejoicer
at evil so far misses of grieving, as even to rejoice" (the distinction
between the _good_ and _evil_, as subjects of the emotion, being thus
omitted, and merely the verbal opposition of grief and joy caught at);
and conceive the result, in the minds of most youths, of being forced to
take tricks of words such as this (and there are too many of them in
even the best Greek writers) for subjects of daily study and
admiration; the theory of the Ethics being, besides, so hopelessly
untenable, that even quibbling will not always face it out,--nay, will
not help it in exactly the first and most important example of virtue
which Aristotle has to give, and the very one which we might have
thought his theory would have fitted most neatly; for defining
"temperance" as a mean, and intemperance as one relative extreme, not
being able to find an opposite extreme, he escapes with the apology that
the kind of person who sins in the other extreme "has no precise name;
because, on the whole, he does not exist!"
I know well the common censure by which objections to such futilities of
so-called education are met, by the men who have been ruined by
them,--the common plea that anything does to "exercise the mind upon."
It is an utterly false one. The human soul, in youth, is _not_ a machine
of which you can polish the cogs with any kelp or brickdust near at
hand; and, having got it into working order, and good, empty, and oiled
serviceableness, start your immortal locomotive at twenty-five years old
or thirty, express from the Strait Gate, on the Narrow Road. The whole
period of youth is one essentially of formation, edification,
instruction, I use the words with their weight in them; intaking of
stores, establishment in vital habits, hopes and faiths. There is not an
hour of it but is trembling with destinies,--not a moment of which, once
past, the appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow
struck on the cold iron. Take your vase of Venice glass out of the
furnace, and strew chaff over it in its transparent heat, and recover
_that_ to its clearness and rubied glory when the north wind has blown
upon it; but do not think to strew chaff over the child fresh from God's
presence, and to bring the heavenly colors back to him--at least in this
world.
FOOTNOTES
[120] Compare Stones of Venice, vol. iii. chap. iii. Sec. 74.
[121] Taken all in all, the works of Cruikshank have the most
sterling value of any belonging to this class, produced in England.
[122] "The notice in Blackwood is still more scurrilous; the
circumstance of Keats having been brought up a surgeon is the staple
of the jokes of the piece. He is told 'it is a better and wiser
thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet.'"--_Milnes'
Life of Keats_, vol. i. p. 200, and compare pp. 193, 194. It may
perhaps be said that I attach too much importance to the evil of
base criticism; but those who think so have never rightly understood
its scope, nor the reach of that stern saying of Johnson's (Idler,
No. 3, April 29, 1758): "Little does he (who assumes the character
of a critic) think how many harmless men he involves in his own
guilt, by teaching them to be noxious without malignity, and to
repeat objections which they do not understand." And truly, not in
this kind only, but in all things whatsoever, there is not, to my
mind, a more woful or wonderful matter of thought than the power of
a fool. In the world's affairs there is no design so great or good
but it will take twenty wise men to help it forward a few inches,
and a single fool can stop it; there is no evil so great or so
terrible but that, after a multitude of counsellors have taken means
to avert it, a single fool will bring it down. Pestilence, famine,
and the sword, are given into the fool's hand as the arrows into the
hand of the giant: and if he were fairly set forth in the right
motley, the web of it should be sackcloth and sable; the bells on
his cap, passing balls; his badge, a bear robbed of her whelps; and
his bauble, a sexton's spade.
[123] By the way, this doubt of the possibility of an emperor's
death till he _proves_ it, is a curious fact in the history of
Scottish metaphysics in the nineteenth century.
[124] The following extract from my diary refers to the only
instance in which I remember any appearance of a spring, or welling
of water through inner fissures, in the aiguilles.
"20th August. Ascended the moraine till I reached the base of
Blaitiere; the upper part of the moraine excessively loose and edgy;
covered with fresh snow: the rocks were wreathed in mist, and a
light sleet, composed of small grains of kneaded snow, kept beating
in my face; it was bitter cold too, though the thermometer was at
43 deg., but the wind was like that of an English December thaw. I got
to the base of the aiguille, however, one of the most grand and
sweeping bits of granite I have ever seen; a small gurgling
streamlet, escaping from a fissure not wide enough to let in my
hand, made a strange hollow ringing in the compact rock, and came
welling out over its ledges with the sound, and successive wave, of
water out of a narrow-necked bottle, covering the rock with ice
(which must have been frozen there last night) two inches thick. I
levelled the Breven top, and found it a little beneath me; the
Charmoz glacier on the left, sank from the moraine in broken
fragments of neve, and swept back under the dark walls of the
Charmoz, lost in cloud."
[125] If these two unlucky words get much more hold in the language,
we shall soon have our philosophers refusing to call their dinner
"dinner," but speaking of it always as their "objective appetite."
END OF THE FOURTH VOLUME.
* * * * *
CORRECTIONS MADE TO THE ORIGINAL TEXT.
Page 31: 'his insistence upon this' corrected from 'insistance.'
Page 45: 'for in utter darkness the distinction is not visible' changed
from 'darknes.'
Page 52: 'sharks, slugs, bones, fungi, frogs' originally 'fogs.'
Page 60: 'sitting about three yards from a bookcase' changed from 'yard.'
Page 89: 'We imagine the Deity in like manner' originally 'maner.'
Page 143: 'whatever their material may be,--tilted slightly up' changed
from 'tited.'
Page 155: 'action actually taking place' corrected from 'palce.'
Page 185: 'which in its beautifully curved outline)' extra ')' removed.
Page 261: 'it seems partly to rebuke, and partly to guard'corrected from
'and party.'
Page 279: 'partly of their own own gravity' removed duplicate 'own.'
Page 284: (footnote [91]) 'Ce n'est pas c'a' changed to 'Ce n'est pas
ca.'
Page 291: 'are distinguished from the work of other painters' from
'distingushd.'
Page 300: 'Shakespere' changed to 'Shakespeare.'
Page 317: CHAPTER XIX start added '1' after the Sec..
Page 352: 'its direction is illegitimate' from 'illegitmate.'
Page 356: 'Celui qui boira' corrected from 'doira.'
Page 358: 'all its peculiarities are mannerisms' changed from
'peculiarites.'
End of Project Gutenberg's Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V), by John Ruskin