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THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
JOHN RUSKIN
VOLUME XXIV
OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US
STORM-CLOUD OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
HORTUS INCLUSUS
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THE STORM-CLOUD OF THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY.
TWO LECTURES
DELIVERED AT THE LONDON INSTITUTION
FEBRUARY 4TH AND 11TH, 1884.
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CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREFACE iii
LECTURE I. (FEBRUARY 4) 1
LECTURE II. (FEBRUARY 11) 31
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PREFACE.
The following lectures, drawn up under the pressure of more
imperative and quite otherwise directed work, contain many passages
which stand in need of support, and some, I do not doubt, more or
less of correction, which I always prefer to receive openly from
the better knowledge of friends, after setting down my own
impressions of the matter in clearness as far as they reach, than
to guard myself against by submitting my manuscript, before
publication, to annotators whose stricture or suggestion I might
often feel pain in refusing, yet hesitation in admitting.
But though thus hastily, and to some extent incautiously, thrown
into form, the statements in the text are founded on patient and,
in all essential particulars, accurately recorded observations of
the sky, during fifty years of a life of solitude and leisure; and
in all they contain of what may seem to the reader questionable, or
astonishing, are guardedly and absolutely true.
In many of the reports given by the daily press, my assertion of
radical change, during recent years, in weather aspect was scouted
as imaginary, or insane. I am indeed, every day of my yet spared
life, more and more grateful that my mind is capable of imaginative
vision, and liable to the noble dangers of delusion which separate
the speculative intellect of humanity from the dreamless instinct
of brutes: but I have been able, during all active work, to use or
refuse my power of contemplative imagination, with as easy command
of it as a physicist's of his telescope: the times of morbid are
just as easily distinguished by me from those of healthy vision, as
by men of ordinary faculty, dream from waking; nor is there a
single fact stated in the following pages which I have not
verified with a chemist's analysis, and a geometer's precision.
The first lecture is printed, with only addition here and there of
an elucidatory word or phrase, precisely as it was given on the 4th
February. In repeating it on the 11th, I amplified several
passages, and substituted for the concluding one, which had been
printed with accuracy in most of the leading journals, some
observations which I thought calculated to be of more general
interest. To these, with the additions in the first text, I have
now prefixed a few explanatory notes, to which numeral references
are given in the pages they explain, and have arranged the
fragments in connection clear enough to allow of their being read
with ease as a second Lecture.
HERNE HILL, _12th March, 1884_.
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THE STORM-CLOUD OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
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THE STORM-CLOUD OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
Let me first assure my audience that I have no _arrière pensée_ in
the title chosen for this lecture. I might, indeed, have meant, and
it would have been only too like me to mean, any number of things
by such a title;--but, to-night, I mean simply what I have said,
and propose to bring to your notice a series of cloud phenomena,
which, so far as I can weigh existing evidence, are peculiar to our
own times; yet which have not hitherto received any special notice
or description from meteorologists.
So far as the existing evidence, I say, of former literature can be
interpreted, the storm-cloud--or more accurately plague-cloud, for
it is not always stormy--which I am about to describe to you, never
was seen but by now living, or _lately_ living eyes. It is not yet
twenty years that this--I may well call it, wonderful, cloud has
been, in its essence, recognizable. There is no description of it,
so far as I have read, by any ancient observer. Neither Homer nor
Virgil, neither Aristophanes nor Horace, acknowledge any such
clouds among those compelled by Jove. Chaucer has no word of them,
nor Dante;[1] Milton none, nor Thomson. In modern times, Scott,
Wordsworth and Byron are alike unconscious of them; and the most
observant and descriptive of scientific men, De Saussure, is
utterly silent concerning them. Taking up the traditions of air
from the year before Scott's death, I am able, by my own constant
and close observation, to certify you that in the forty following
years (1831 to 1871 approximately--for the phenomena in question
came on gradually)--no such clouds as these are, and are now often
for months without intermission, were ever seen in the skies of
England, France, or Italy.
In those old days, when weather was fine, it was luxuriously fine;
when it was bad--it was often abominably bad, but it had its fit of
temper and was done with it--it didn't sulk for three months
without letting you see the sun,--nor send you one cyclone inside
out, every Saturday afternoon, and another outside in, every Monday
morning.
In fine weather the sky was either blue or clear in its light; the
clouds, either white or golden, adding to, not abating, the luster
of the sky. In wet weather, there were two different species of
clouds,--those of beneficent rain, which for distinction's sake I
will call the non-electric rain-cloud, and those of storm, usually
charged highly with electricity. The beneficent rain-cloud was
indeed often extremely dull and gray for days together, but
gracious nevertheless, felt to be doing good, and often to be
delightful after drought; capable also of the most exquisite
coloring, under certain conditions;[2] and continually traversed in
clearing by the rainbow:--and, secondly, the storm-cloud, always
majestic, often dazzlingly beautiful, and felt also to be
beneficent in its own way, affecting the mass of the air with vital
agitation, and purging it from the impurity of all morbific
elements.
In the entire system of the Firmament, thus seen and understood,
there appeared to be, to all the thinkers of those ages, the
incontrovertible and unmistakable evidence of a Divine Power in
creation, which had fitted, as the air for human breath, so the
clouds for human sight and nourishment;--the Father who was in
heaven feeding day by day the souls of His children with marvels,
and satisfying them with bread, and so filling their hearts with
food and gladness.
Their _hearts_, you will observe, it is said, not merely their
bellies,--or indeed not at all, in this sense, their bellies--but
the heart itself, with its blood for this life, and its faith for
the next. The opposition between this idea and the notions of our
own time may be more accurately expressed by modification of the
Greek than of the English sentence. The old Greek is--
[Greek: empiplôn trophês kai euphrosynês
tas kardias hêmôn.]
filling with meat, and cheerfulness, our hearts. The modern Greek
should be--
[Greek: empiplôn anemou kai aphrosynês
tas gasteras hêmôn.]
filling with wind, and foolishness, our stomachs.
You will not think I waste your time in giving you two cardinal
examples of the sort of evidence which the higher forms of
literature furnish respecting the cloud-phenomena of former times.
When, in the close of my lecture on landscape last year at Oxford,
I spoke of stationary clouds as distinguished from passing ones,
some blockheads wrote to the papers to say that clouds never were
stationary. Those foolish letters were so far useful in causing a
friend to write me the pretty one I am about to read to you,
quoting a passage about clouds in Homer which I had myself never
noticed, though perhaps the most beautiful of its kind in the
Iliad. In the fifth book, after the truce is broken, and the
aggressor Trojans are rushing to the onset in a tumult of clamor
and charge, Homer says that the Greeks, abiding them "stood like
clouds." My correspondent, giving the passage, writes as follows:--
"SIR,--Last winter when I was at Ajaccio, I was one day reading
Homer by the open window, and came upon the lines--
[Greek: All' emenon, nephelêsin eoikotes has te Kroniôn
Nênemiês estêsen ep' akropoloisin oressin,
Atremas, ophr' heudêsi menos Boreao kai allôn
Zachreiôn anemôn, hoite nephea skioenta
Pnoiêsin lygyrêsi diaskidnasin aentes;
Hôs Danaoi Trôas menon empedon, oud' ephebonto.]
'But they stood, like the clouds which the Son of Kronos stablishes
in calm upon the mountains, motionless, when the rage of the North
and of all the fiery winds is asleep.' As I finished these lines, I
raised my eyes, and looking across the gulf, saw a long line of
clouds resting on the top of its hills. The day was windless, and
there they stayed, hour after hour, without any stir or motion. I
remember how I was delighted at the time, and have often since that
day thought on the beauty and the truthfulness of Homer's simile.
"Perhaps this little fact may interest you, at a time when you are
attacked for your description of clouds.
"I am, sir, yours faithfully,
G. B. HILL."
With this bit of noonday from Homer, I will read you a sunset and a
sunrise from Byron. That will enough express to you the scope and
sweep of all glorious literature, from the orient of Greece herself
to the death of the last Englishman who loved her.[3] I will read
you from 'Sardanapalus' the address of the Chaldean priest Beleses
to the sunset, and of the Greek slave, Myrrha, to the morning.
"The sun goes down: methinks he sets more slowly,
Taking his last look of Assyria's empire.
How red he glares amongst those deepening clouds,[4]
Like the blood he predicts.[5] If not in vain,
Thou sun that sinkest, and ye stars which rise,
I have outwatch'd ye, reading ray by ray
The edicts of your orbs, which make Time tremble
For what he brings the nations, 't is the furthest
Hour of Assyria's years. And yet how calm!
An earthquake should announce so great a fall--
A summer's sun discloses it. Yon disk
To the star-read Chaldean, bears upon
Its everlasting page the end of what
Seem'd everlasting; but oh! thou TRUE sun!
_The burning oracle of all that live_,
_As fountain of all life_, and _symbol of
Him who bestows it_, wherefore dost thou limit
Thy lore unto calamity?[6] Why not
Unfold the rise of days more worthy thine
All-glorious burst from ocean? why not dart
A beam of hope athwart the future years,
As of wrath to its days? Hear me! oh, hear me!
I am thy worshiper, thy priest, thy servant--
I have gazed on thee at thy rise and fall,
And bow'd my head beneath thy mid-day beams,
When my eye dared not meet thee. I have watch'd
For thee, and after thee, and pray'd to thee,
And sacrificed to thee, and read, and fear'd thee,
And ask'd of thee, and thou hast answer'd--but
Only to thus much. While I speak, he sinks--
Is gone--and leaves his beauty, not his knowledge,
To the delighted west, which revels in
Its hues of dying glory. Yet what is
Death, so it be but glorious? 'T is a sunset;
And mortals may be happy to resemble
The gods but in decay."
Thus the Chaldean priest, to the brightness of the setting sun.
Hear now the Greek girl, Myrrha, of his rising.
"The day at last has broken. What a night
Hath usher'd it! How beautiful in heaven!
Though varied with a transitory storm,
More beautiful in that variety:[7]
How hideous upon earth! where peace, and hope,
And love, and revel, in an hour were trampled
By human passions to a human chaos,
Not yet resolved to separate elements:--
'T is warring still! And can the sun so rise,
So bright, so rolling back the clouds into
_Vapors more lovely than the unclouded sky_,
With golden pinnacles, and snowy mountains,
And billows purpler than the ocean's, making
In heaven a glorious mockery of the earth,
So like,--we almost deem it permanent;
So fleeting,--we can scarcely call it aught
Beyond a vision, 't is so transiently
Scatter'd along the eternal vault: and yet
It dwells upon the soul, and soothes the soul,
And blends itself into the soul, until
Sunrise and sunset form the haunted epoch
Of sorrow and of love."
How often _now_--young maids of London,--do you make _sunrise_ the
'haunted epoch' of either?
Thus much, then, of the skies that used to be, and clouds "more
lovely than the unclouded sky," and of the temper of their
observers. I pass to the account of clouds that _are_, and--I say
it with sorrow--of the _dis_temper of _their_ observers.
But the general division which I have instituted between
bad-weather and fair-weather clouds must be more carefully carried
out in the sub-species, before we can reason of it farther: and
before we begin talk either of the sub-genera and sub-species, or
super-genera and super-species of cloud, perhaps we had better
define what _every_ cloud is, and must be, to begin with.
Every cloud that can be, is thus primarily definable: "Visible
vapor of water floating at a certain height in the air." The second
clause of this definition, you see, at once implies that there is
such a thing as visible vapor of water which does _not_ float at a
certain height in the air. You are all familiar with one extremely
cognizable variety of that sort of vapor--London Particular; but
that especial blessing of metropolitan society is only a
strongly-developed and highly-seasoned condition of a form of
watery vapor which exists just as generally and widely at the
bottom of the air, as the clouds do--on what, for convenience'
sake, we may call the top of it;--only as yet, thanks to the
sagacity of scientific men, we have got no general name for the
bottom cloud, though the whole question of cloud nature begins in
this broad fact, that you have one kind of vapor that lies to a
certain depth on the ground, and another that floats at a certain
height in the sky. Perfectly definite, in both cases, the surface
level of the earthly vapor, and the roof level of the heavenly
vapor, are each of them drawn within the depth of a fathom. Under
_their_ line, drawn for the day and for the hour, the clouds will
not stoop, and above _theirs,_ the mists will not rise. Each in
their own region, high or deep, may expatiate at their pleasure;
within that, they climb, or decline,--within that they congeal or
melt away; but below their assigned horizon the surges of the cloud
sea may not sink, and the floods of the mist lagoon may not be
swollen.
That is the first idea you have to get well into your minds
concerning the abodes of this visible vapor; next, you have to
consider the manner of its visibility. Is it, you have to ask, with
cloud vapor, as with most other things, that they are seen when
they are there, and not seen when they are not there? or has cloud
vapor so much of the ghost in it, that it can be visible or
invisible as it likes, and may perhaps be all unpleasantly and
malignantly there, just as much when we don't see it, as when we
do? To which I answer, comfortably and generally, that, on the
whole, a cloud is where you see it, and isn't where you don't;
that, when there's an evident and honest thundercloud in the
northeast, you needn't suppose there's a surreptitious and slinking
one in the northwest;--when there's a visible fog at Bermondsey, it
doesn't follow there's a spiritual one, more than usual, at the
West End: and when you get up to the clouds, and can walk into them
or out of them, as you like, you find when you're in them they wet
your whiskers, or take out your curls, and when you're out of them,
they don't; and therefore you may with probability assume--not with
certainty, observe, but with probability--that there's more water
in the air where it damps your curls than where it doesn't. If it
gets much denser than that, it will begin to rain; and then you
may assert, certainly with safety, that there is a shower in one
place, and not in another; and not allow the scientific people to
tell you that the rain is everywhere, but palpable in Tooley
Street, and impalpable in Grosvenor Square.
That, I say, is broadly and comfortably so on the whole,--and yet
with this kind of qualification and farther condition in the
matter. If you watch the steam coming strongly out of an
engine-funnel,[8]--at the top of the funnel it is transparent,--you
can't see it, though it is more densely and intensely there
than anywhere else. Six inches out of the funnel it becomes
snow-white,--you see it, and you see it, observe, exactly where it
is,--it is then a real and proper cloud. Twenty yards off the
funnel it scatters and melts away; a little of it sprinkles you
with rain if you are underneath it, but the rest disappears; yet it
is still there;--the surrounding air does not absorb it all into
space in a moment; there is a gradually diffusing current of
invisible moisture at the end of the visible stream--an invisible,
yet quite substantial, vapor; but not, according to our definition,
a cloud, for a cloud is vapor _visible_.
Then the next bit of the question, of course, is, What makes the
vapor visible, when it is so? Why is the compressed steam
transparent, the loose steam white, the dissolved steam transparent
again?
The scientific people tell you that the vapor becomes visible, and
chilled, as it expands. Many thanks to them; but can they show us
any reason why particles of water should be more opaque when they
are separated than when they are close together, or give us any
idea of the difference of the state of a particle of water, which
won't _sink_ in the air, from that of one that won't _rise_ in
it?[9]
And here I must parenthetically give you a little word of, I will
venture to say, extremely useful, advice about scientific people in
general. Their first business is, of course, to tell you things
that are so, and do happen,--as that, if you warm water, it will
boil; if you cool it, it will freeze; and if you put a candle to a
cask of gunpowder, it will blow you up. Their second, and far more
important business, is to tell you what you had best do under the
circumstances,--put the kettle on in time for tea; powder your ice
and salt, if you have a mind for ices; and obviate the chance of
explosion by not making the gunpowder. But if, beyond this safe and
beneficial business, they ever try to _explain_ anything to you,
you may be confident of one of two things,--either that they know
nothing (to speak of) about it, or that they have only seen one
side of it--and not only haven't seen, but usually have no mind to
see, the other. When, for instance, Professor Tyndall explains the
twisted beds of the Jungfrau to you by intimating that the
Matterhorn is growing flat;[10] or the clouds on the lee side of
the Matterhorn by the wind's rubbing against the windward side of
it,[11]--you may be pretty sure the scientific people don't know
much (to speak of) yet, either about rock-beds, or cloud-beds. And
even if the explanation, so to call it, be sound on one side,
windward or lee, you may, as I said, be nearly certain it won't do
on the other. Take the very top and center of scientific
interpretation by the greatest of its masters: Newton explained to
you--or at least was once supposed to have explained--why an apple
fell; but he never thought of explaining the exactly correlative,
but infinitely more difficult question, how the apple got up there!
You will not, therefore, so please you, expect me to explain
anything to you,--I have come solely and simply to put before you a
few facts, which you can't see by candlelight, or in railroad
tunnels, but which are making themselves now so very distinctly
felt as well as seen, that you may perhaps have to roof, if not
wall, half London afresh before we are many years older.
I go back to my point--the way in which clouds, as a matter of
fact, become visible. I have defined the floating or sky cloud, and
defined the falling, or earth cloud. But there's a sort of thing
between the two, which needs a third definition: namely, Mist. In
the 22d page of his 'Glaciers of the Alps,' Professor Tyndall says
that "the marvelous blueness of the sky in the earlier part of the
day indicated that the air was charged, almost to saturation, with
transparent aqueous vapor." Well, in certain weather that is true.
You all know the peculiar clearness which precedes rain,--when the
distant hills are looking nigh. I take it on trust from the
scientific people that there is then a quantity--almost to
saturation--of aqueous vapor in the air, but it is aqueous vapor in
a state which makes the air more transparent than it would be
without it. What state of aqueous molecule is that, absolutely
unreflective[12] of light--perfectly transmissive of light, and
showing at once the color of blue water and blue air on the distant
hills?
I put the question--and pass round to the other side. Such a
clearness, though a certain forerunner of rain, is not always its
forerunner. Far the contrary. Thick air is a much more frequent
forerunner of rain than clear air. In cool weather, you will often
get the transparent prophecy: but in hot weather, or in certain not
hitherto defined states of atmosphere, the forerunner of rain is
mist. In a general way, after you have had two or three days of
rain, the air and sky are healthily clear, and the sun bright. If
it is hot also, the next day is a little mistier--the next misty
and sultry,--and the next and the next, getting thicker and
thicker--end in another storm, or period of rain.
I suppose the thick air, as well as the transparent, is in both
cases saturated with aqueous vapor;--but also in both, observe,
vapor that floats everywhere, as if you mixed mud with the sea; and
it takes no shape anywhere: you may have it with calm, or with
wind, it makes no difference to it. You have a nasty haze with a
bitter east wind, or a nasty haze with not a leaf stirring, and you
may have the clear blue vapor with a fresh rainy breeze, or the
clear blue vapor as still as the sky above. What difference is
there between _these_ aqueous molecules that are clear, and those
that are muddy, _these_ that must sink or rise, and those that must
stay where they are, _these_ that have form and stature, that are
bellied like whales and backed like weasels, and those that have
neither backs nor fronts, nor feet nor faces, but are a mist--and
no more--over two or three thousand square miles?
I again leave the questions with you, and pass on.
Hitherto I have spoken of all aqueous vapor as if it were either
transparent or white--visible by becoming opaque like snow, but not
by any accession of color. But even those of us who are least
observant of skies, know that, irrespective of all supervening
colors from the sun, there are white clouds, brown clouds, gray
clouds, and black clouds. Are these indeed--what they appear to
be--entirely distinct monastic disciplines of cloud: Black Friars,
and White Friars, and Friars of Orders Gray? Or is it only their
various nearness to us, their denseness, and the failing of the
light upon them, that makes some clouds look black[13] and others
snowy?
I can only give you qualified and cautious answer. There are, by
differences in their own character, Dominican clouds, and there are
Franciscan;--there are the Black Hussars of the Bandiera della
Morte, and there are the Scots Grays whose horses can run upon the
rock. But if you ask me, as I would have you ask me, why argent and
why sable, how baptized in white like a bride or a novice, and how
hooded with blackness like a Judge of the Vehmgericht Tribunal,--I
leave these questions with you, and pass on.
Admitting degrees of darkness, we have next to ask what color, from
sunshine can the white cloud receive, and what the black?
You won't expect me to tell you all that, or even the little that
is accurately known about that, in a quarter of an hour; yet note
these main facts on the matter.
On any pure white, and practically opaque, cloud, or thing like a
cloud, as an Alp, or Milan Cathedral, you can have cast by rising
or setting sunlight, any tints of amber, orange, or moderately deep
rose--you can't have lemon yellows, or any kind of green except in
negative hue by opposition; and though by stormlight you may
sometimes get the reds cast very deep, beyond a certain limit you
cannot go,--the Alps are never vermilion color, nor flamingo
color, nor canary color; nor did you ever see a full scarlet
cumulus of thundercloud.
On opaque white vapor, then, remember, you can get a glow or a
blush of color, never a flame of it.
But when the cloud is transparent as well as pure, and can be
filled with light through all the body of it, you then can have by
the light reflected[14] from its atoms any force conceivable by
human mind of the entire group of the golden and ruby colors, from
intensely burnished gold color, through a scarlet for whose
brightness there are no words, into any depth and any hue of Tyrian
crimson and Byzantine purple. These with full blue breathed between
them at the zenith, and green blue nearer the horizon, form the
scales and chords of color possible to the morning and evening sky
in pure and fine weather; the keynote of the opposition being
vermilion against green blue, both of equal tone, and at such a
height and acme of brilliancy that you cannot see the line where
their edges pass into each other.
No colors that can be fixed in earth can ever represent to you the
luster of these cloudy ones. But the actual tints may be shown you
in a lower key, and to a certain extent their power and relation to
each other.
I have painted the diagram here shown you with colors prepared for
me lately by Messrs. Newman, which I find brilliant to the height
that pigments can be; and the ready kindness of Mr. Wilson Barrett
enables me to show you their effect by a white light as pure as
that of the day. The diagram is enlarged from my careful sketch of
the sunset of 1st October, 1868, at Abbeville, which was a
beautiful example of what, in fine weather about to pass into
storm, a sunset could then be, in the districts of Kent and Picardy
unaffected by smoke. In reality, the ruby and vermilion clouds
were, by myriads, more numerous than I have had time to paint: but
the general character of their grouping is well enough expressed.
All the illumined clouds are high in the air, and nearly
motionless; beneath them, electric storm-cloud rises in a
threatening cumulus on the right, and drifts in dark flakes across
the horizon, casting from its broken masses radiating shadows on
the upper clouds. These shadows are traced, in the first place by
making the misty blue of the open sky more transparent, and
therefore darker; and secondly, by entirely intercepting the
sunbeams on the bars of cloud, which, within the shadowed spaces,
show dark on the blue instead of light.
But, mind, all that is done by reflected light--and in that light
you never get a _green_ ray from the reflecting cloud; there is no
such thing in nature as a green lighted cloud relieved from a red
sky,--the cloud is always red, and the sky green, and green,
observe, by transmitted, not reflected light.
But now note, there is another kind of cloud, pure white, and
exquisitely delicate; which acts not by reflecting, nor by
refracting, but, as it is now called, _dif_fracting, the sun's
rays. The particles of this cloud are said--with what truth I know
not[15]--to send the sunbeams round them instead of through them;
somehow or other, at any rate, they resolve them into their
prismatic elements; and then you have literally a kaleidoscope in
the sky, with every color of the prism in absolute purity; but
above all in force, now, the ruby red and the _green_,--with
purple, and violet-blue, in a virtual equality, more definite than
that of the rainbow. The red in the rainbow is mostly brick red,
the violet, though beautiful, often lost at the edge; but in the
prismatic cloud the violet, the green, and the ruby are all more
lovely than in any precious stones, and they are varied as in a
bird's breast, changing their places, depths, and extent at every
instant.
The main cause of this change being, that the prismatic cloud
itself is always in rapid, and generally in fluctuating motion. "A
light veil of clouds had drawn itself," says Professor Tyndall, in
describing his solitary ascent of Monte Rosa, "between me and the
sun, and this was flooded with the most brilliant dyes. Orange,
red, green, blue--all the hues produced by diffraction--were
exhibited in the utmost splendor.
"Three times during my ascent (the short ascent of the last peak)
similar veils drew themselves across the sun, and at each passage
the splendid phenomena were renewed. There seemed a tendency to
form circular zones of color round the sun; but the clouds were not
sufficiently uniform to permit of this, and they were consequently
broken into spaces, each steeped with the color due to the
condition of the cloud at the place."
Three times, you observe, the veil passed, and three times another
came, or the first faded and another formed; and so it is always,
as far as I have registered prismatic cloud: and the most beautiful
colors I ever saw were on those that flew fastest.
This second diagram is enlarged admirably by Mr. Arthur Severn from
my sketch of the sky in the afternoon of the 6th of August, 1880,
at Brantwood, two hours before sunset. You are looking west by
north, straight towards the sun, and nearly straight towards the
wind. From the west the wind blows fiercely towards you out of the
blue sky. Under the blue space is a flattened dome of earth-cloud
clinging to, and altogether masking the form of, the mountain,
known as the Old Man of Coniston.
The top of that dome of cloud is two thousand eight hundred feet
above the sea, the mountain two thousand six hundred, the cloud
lying two hundred feet deep on it. Behind it, westward and seaward,
all's clear; but when the wind out of that blue clearness comes
over the ridge of the earth-cloud, at that moment and that line, its
own moisture congeals into these white--I believe, _ice_-clouds;
threads, and meshes, and tresses, and tapestries, flying, failing,
melting, reappearing; spinning and unspinning themselves, coiling and
uncoiling, winding and unwinding, faster than eye or thought can
follow: and through all their dazzling maze of frosty filaments shines
a painted window in palpitation; its pulses of color interwoven in
motion, intermittent in fire,--emerald and ruby and pale purple and
violet melting into a blue that is not of the sky, but of the
sunbeam;--purer than the crystal, softer than the rainbow, and
brighter than the snow.
But you must please here observe that while my first diagram did
with some adequateness represent to you the color facts there
spoken of, the present diagram can only _explain_, not reproduce
them. The bright reflected colors of clouds _can_ be represented in
painting, because they are relieved against darker colors, or, in
many cases, _are_ dark colors, the vermilion and ruby clouds being
often much darker than the green or blue sky beyond them. But in
the case of the phenomena now under your attention, the colors are
all _brighter than pure white_,--the entire body of the cloud in
which they show themselves being white by transmitted light, so
that I can only show you what the colors are, and where they
are,--but leaving them dark on the white ground. Only artificial,
and very high illumination would give the real effect of
them,--painting cannot.
Enough, however, is here done to fix in your minds the distinction
between those two species of cloud,--one, either stationary,[16] or
slow in motion, _reflecting unresolved_ light; the other,
fast-flying, and _transmitting resolved_ light. What difference is
there in the nature of the atoms, between those two kinds of
clouds? I leave the question with you for to-day, merely hinting to
you my suspicion that the prismatic cloud is of finely-comminuted
water, or ice,[17] instead of aqueous vapor; but the only clue I
have to this idea is in the purity of the rainbow formed in frost
mist, lying close to water surfaces. Such mist, however, only
becomes prismatic as common rain does, when the sun is behind the
spectator, while prismatic clouds are, on the contrary, always
between the spectator and the sun.
The main reason, however, why I can tell you nothing yet about
these colors of diffraction or interference, is that, whenever I
try to find anything firm for you to depend on, I am stopped by the
quite frightful inaccuracy of the scientific people's terms, which
is the consequence of their always trying to write mixed Latin and
English, so losing the grace of the one and the sense of the other.
And, in this point of the diffraction of light I am stopped dead by
their confusion of idea also, in using the words undulation and
vibration as synonyms. "When," says Professor Tyndall, "you are
told that the atoms of the sun _vibrate_ at different rates, and
produce _waves_ of different sizes,--your experience of water-waves
will enable you to form a tolerably clear notion of what is meant."
'Tolerably clear'!--your toleration must be considerable, then. Do
you suppose a water-wave is like a harp-string? Vibration is the
movement of a body in a state of tension,--undulation, that of a
body absolutely lax. In vibration, not an atom of the body changes
its place in relation to another,--in undulation, not an atom of
the body remains in the same place with regard to another. In
vibration, every particle of the body ignores gravitation, or
defies it,--in undulation, every particle of the body is slavishly
submitted to it. In undulation, not one wave is like another; in
vibration, every pulse is alike. And of undulation itself, there
are all manner of visible conditions, which are not true
conditions. A flag ripples in the wind, but it does not undulate as
the sea does,--for in the sea, the water is taken from the trough
to put on to the ridge, but in the flag, though the motion is
progressive, the bits of bunting keep their place. You see a field
of corn undulating as if it was water,--it is different from the
flag, for the ears of corn bow out of their places and return to
them,--and yet, it is no more like the undulation of the sea, than
the shaking of an aspen leaf in a storm, or the lowering of the
lances in a battle.
And the best of the jest is, that after mixing up these two notions
in their heads inextricably, the scientific people apply both when
neither will fit; and when all undulation known to us presumes
weight, and all vibration, impact,--the undulating theory of light
is proposed to you concerning a medium which you can neither weigh
nor touch!
All _communicable_ vibration--of course I mean--and in dead matter:
_You_ may fall a shivering on your own account, if you like, but
you can't get a billiard-ball to fall a shivering on _its_ own
account.[18]
Yet observe that in thus signalizing the inaccuracy of the terms in
which they are taught, I neither accept, nor assail, the
conclusions respecting the oscillatory states of light, heat, and
sound, which have resulted from the postulate of an elastic, though
impalpable and imponderable ether, possessing the elasticity of
air. This only I desire you to mark with attention,--that both
light and sound are _sensations_ of the animal frame, which remain,
and must remain, wholly inexplicable, whatever manner of force,
pulse, or palpitation may be instrumental in producing them: nor
does any such force _become_ light or sound, except in its
rencontre with an animal. The leaf hears no murmur in the wind to
which it wavers on the branches, nor can the clay discern the
vibration by which it is thrilled into a ruby. The Eye and the Ear
are the creators alike of the ray and the tone; and the conclusion
follows logically from the right conception of their living
power,--"He that planted the Ear, shall He not hear? He that formed
the Eye, shall not He see?"
For security, therefore, and simplicity of definition of light, you
will find no possibility of advancing beyond Plato's "the power
that through the eye manifests color," but on that definition, you
will find, alike by Plato and all great subsequent thinkers, a
_moral_ Science of Light founded, far and away more important to
you than all the physical laws ever learned by vitreous revelation.
Concerning which I will refer you to the sixth lecture which I gave
at Oxford in 1872, on the relation of Art to the Science of Light
('The Eagle's Nest'), reading now only the sentence introducing its
subject:--"The 'Fiat lux' of creation is therefore, in the deep
sense, 'fiat anima,' and is as much, when you understand it, the
ordering of Intelligence as the ordering of Vision. It is the
appointment of change of what had been else only a mechanical
effluence from things unseen to things unseeing,--from Stars, that
did not shine, to Earth, that did not perceive,--the change, I say,
of that blind vibration into the glory of the Sun and Moon for
human eyes: so making possible the communication out of the
unfathomable truth of that portion of truth which is good for us,
and animating to us, and is set to rule over the day and over the
night of our joy and our sorrow."
Returning now to our subject at the point from which I permitted
myself, I trust not without your pardon, to diverge; you may
incidentally, but carefully, observe, that the effect of such a sky
as that represented in the second diagram, so far as it can be
abstracted or conveyed by painting at all, implies the total
absence of any pervading warmth of tint, such as artists usually
call 'tone.' Every tint must be the purest possible, and above all
the white. Partly, lest you should think, from my treatment of
these two phases of effect, that I am insensible to the quality of
tone,--and partly to complete the representation of states of
weather undefiled by plague-cloud, yet capable of the most solemn
dignity in saddening color, I show you, Diagram 3, the record of an
autumn twilight of the year 1845,--sketched while I was changing
horses between Verona and Brescia. The distant sky in this drawing
is in the glowing calm which is always taken by the great Italian
painters for the background of their sacred pictures; a broad field
of cloud is advancing upon it overhead, and meeting others
enlarging in the distance; these are rain-clouds, which will
certainly close over the clear sky, and bring on rain before
midnight: but there is no power in them to pollute the sky beyond
and above them: they do not darken the air, nor defile it, nor in
any way mingle with it; their edges are burnished by the sun like
the edges of golden shields, and their advancing march is as
deliberate and majestic as the fading of the twilight itself into a
darkness full of stars.
These three instances are all I have time to give of the former
conditions of serene weather, and of non-electric rain-cloud. But I
must yet, to complete the sequence of my subject, show you one
example of a good, old-fashioned, healthy, and mighty, storm.
In Diagram 4, Mr. Severn has beautifully enlarged my sketch of a
July thundercloud of the year 1858, on the Alps of the Val
d'Aosta, seen from Turin, that is to say, some twenty-five or
thirty miles distant. You see that no mistake is possible here
about what is good weather and what bad, or which is cloud and
which is sky; but I show you this sketch especially to give you the
scale of heights for such clouds in the atmosphere. These thunder
cumuli entirely _hide_ the higher Alps. It does not, however,
follow that they have buried them, for most of their own aspect of
height is owing to the approach of their nearer masses; but at all
events, you have cumulus there rising from its base, at about three
thousand feet above the plain, to a good ten thousand in the air.
White cirri, in reality parallel, but by perspective radiating,
catch the sunshine above, at a height of from fifteen to twenty
thousand feet; but the storm on the mountains gathers itself into a
full mile's depth of massy cloud, every fold of it involved with
thunder, but every form of it, every action, every color,
magnificent:--doing its mighty work in its own hour and its own
dominion, nor snatching from you for an instant, nor defiling with
a stain, the abiding blue of the transcendent sky, or the fretted
silver of its passionless clouds.
We so rarely now see cumulus cloud of this grand kind, that I will
yet delay you by reading the description of its nearer aspect, in
the 'Eagle's Nest.'
"The rain which flooded our fields the Sunday before last, was
followed, as you will remember, by bright days, of which Tuesday
the 20th (February, 1872) was, in London, notable for the splendor,
towards the afternoon, of its white cumulus clouds. There has been
so much black east wind lately, and so much fog and artificial
gloom, besides, that I find it is actually some two years since I
last saw a noble cumulus cloud under full light. I chanced to be
standing under the Victoria Tower at Westminster, when the largest
mass of them floated past, that day, from the northwest; and I was
more impressed than ever yet by the awfulness of the cloud-form,
and its unaccountableness, in the present state of our knowledge.
The Victoria Tower, seen against it, had no magnitude: it was like
looking at Mont Blanc over a lamp-post. The domes of cloud-snow
were heaped as definitely: their broken flanks were as gray and
firm as rocks, and the whole mountain, of a compass and height in
heaven which only became more and more inconceivable as the eye
strove to ascend it, was passing behind the tower with a steady
march, whose swiftness must in reality have been that of a tempest:
yet, along all the ravines of vapor, precipice kept pace with
precipice, and not one thrust another.
"What is it that hews them out? Why is the blue sky pure
there,--the cloud solid here; and edged like marble: and why does
the state of the blue sky pass into the state of cloud, in that
calm advance?
"It is true that you can more or less imitate the forms of cloud
with explosive vapor or steam; but the steam melts instantly, and
the explosive vapor dissipates itself. The cloud, of perfect form,
proceeds unchanged. It is not an explosion, but an enduring and
advancing presence. The more you think of it, the less explicable
it will become to you."
Thus far then of clouds that were once familiar; now at last,
entering on my immediate subject, I shall best introduce it to you
by reading an entry in my diary which gives progressive description
of the most gentle aspect of the modern plague-cloud.
"_Bolton Abbey, 4th July, 1875._
Half-past eight, morning; the first bright morning for the last
fortnight.
At half-past five it was entirely clear, and entirely calm; the
moorlands glowing, and the Wharfe glittering in sacred light, and
even the thin-stemmed field-flowers quiet as stars, in the peace in
which--
'All trees and simples, great and small,
That balmy leaf do bear,
Than they were painted on a wall,
No more do move, nor steir.'
But, an hour ago, the leaves at my window first shook slightly.
They are now trembling _continuously_, as those of all the trees,
under a gradually rising wind, of which the tremulous action
scarcely permits the direction to be defined,--but which falls and
returns in fits of varying force, like those which precede a
thunderstorm--never wholly ceasing: the direction of its upper
current is shown by a few ragged white clouds, moving fast from the
north, which rose, at the time of the first leaf-shaking, behind
the edge of the moors in the east.
This wind is the plague-wind of the eighth decade of years in the
nineteenth century; a period which will assuredly be recognized in
future meteorological history as one of phenomena hitherto unrecorded
in the courses of nature, and characterized pre-eminently by the
almost ceaseless action of this calamitous wind. While I have been
writing these sentences, the white clouds above specified have
increased to twice the size they had when I began to write; and in
about two hours from this time--say by eleven o'clock, if the wind
continue,--the whole sky will be dark with them, as it was yesterday,
and has been through prolonged periods during the last five years. I
first noticed the definite character of this wind, and of the clouds
it brings with it, in the year 1871, describing it then in the July
number of 'Fors Clavigera'; but little, at that time, apprehending
either its universality, or any probability of its annual continuance.
I am able now to state positively that its range of power extends from
the North of England to Sicily; and that it blows more or less during
the whole of the year, except the early autumn. This autumnal
abdication is, I hope, beginning: it blew but feebly yesterday, though
without intermission, from the north, making every shady place cold,
while the sun was burning; its effect on the sky being only to dim the
blue of it between masses of ragged cumulus. To-day it has entirely
fallen; and there seems hope of bright weather, the first for me since
the end of May, when I had two fine days at Aylesbury; the third,
May 28th, being black again from morning to evening. There seems to be
some reference to the blackness caused by the prevalence of this wind
in the old French name of Bise, '_gray_ wind'; and, indeed, one of the
darkest and bitterest days of it I ever saw was at Vevay in 1872."
* * * * *
The first time I recognized the clouds brought by the plague-wind
as distinct in character was in walking back from Oxford, after a
hard day's work, to Abingdon, in the early spring of 1871: it would
take too long to give you any account this evening of the
particulars which drew my attention to them; but during the
following months I had too frequent opportunities of verifying my
first thoughts of them, and on the first of July in that year wrote
the description of them which begins the 'Fors Clavigera' of
August, thus:--
"It is the first of July, and I sit down to write by the dismalest
light that ever yet I wrote by; namely, the light of this midsummer
morning, in mid-England, (Matlock, Derbyshire), in the year 1871.
"For the sky is covered with gray cloud;--not rain-cloud, but a dry
black veil, which no ray of sunshine can pierce; partly diffused in
mist, feeble mist, enough to make distant objects unintelligible,
yet without any substance, or wreathing, or color of its own. And
everywhere the leaves of the trees are shaking fitfully, as they do
before a thunder-storm; only not violently, but enough to show the
passing to and fro of a strange, bitter, blighting wind. Dismal
enough, had it been the first morning of its kind that summer had
sent. But during all this spring, in London, and at Oxford, through
meager March, through changelessly sullen April, through
despondent May, and darkened June, morning after morning has
come gray-shrouded thus.
"And it is a new thing to me, and a very dreadful one. I am fifty
years old, and more; and since I was five, have gleaned the best
hours of my life in the sun of spring and summer mornings; and I
never saw such as these, till now.
"And the scientific men are busy as ants, examining the sun, and
the moon, and the seven stars, and can tell me all about _them_, I
believe, by this time; and how they move, and what they are made
of.
"And I do not care, for my part, two copper spangles how they move,
nor what they are made of. I can't move them any other way than
they go, nor make them of anything else, better than they are made.
But I would care much and give much, if I could be told where this
bitter wind comes from, and what _it_ is made of.
"For, perhaps, with forethought, and fine laboratory science, one
might make it of something else.
"It looks partly as if it were made of poisonous smoke; very
possibly it may be: there are at least two hundred furnace chimneys
in a square of two miles on every side of me. But mere smoke would
not blow to and fro in that wild way. It looks more to me as if it
were made of dead men's souls--such of them as are not gone yet
where they have to go, and may be flitting hither and thither,
doubting, themselves, of the fittest place for them.