ILLUSTRATIVE: STONES.
38. There are no natural objects out of which more can be learned than
out of stones. They seem to have been created especially to reward a
patient observer. Nearly all other objects in nature can be seen to
some extent without patience, and are pleasant even in being half
seen. Trees, clouds, and rivers are enjoyable even by the careless;
but the stone under his foot has, for carelessness, nothing in it but
stumbling; no pleasure is languidly to be had out of it, nor food, nor
good of any kind; nothing but symbolism of the hard heart, and the
unfatherly gift. And yet, do but give it some reverence and
watchfulness, and there is bread of thought in it, more than in any
other lowly feature of all the landscape. For a stone, when it is
examined, will be found a mountain in miniature. The fineness of
Nature's work is so great, that into a single block, a foot or two in
diameter, she can compress as many changes of form and structure, on a
small scale, as she needs for her mountains on a large one; and taking
moss for forests, and grains of crystal for crags, the surface of a
stone in by far the plurality of instances is more interesting than
the surface of an ordinary hill; more fantastic in form, and
incomparably richer in colour.
39. On a Highland hillside are multitudinous clusters of fern and
heather; on an Alpine one, multitudinous groves of chestnut and pine.
The number of the things may be the same, but the sense of infinity is
in the latter case far greater, because the number is of nobler
things. Indeed, so far as mere magnitude of space occupied on the
field of the horizon is the measure of objects, a bank of earth ten
feet high may, if we stoop to the foot of it, be made to occupy just
as much of the sky as that bank of mountain at Villeneuve; nay, in
many respects, its little ravines and escarpments, watched with some
help of imagination, may become very sufficiently representative to us
of those of the great mountain; and in classing all water-worn
mountain ground under the general and humble term of Banks, I mean to
imply this relationship of structure between the smallest eminences
and the highest. But in this matter of superimposed _quantity_, the
distinctions of rank are at once fixed. The heap of earth bears its
few tufts of moss, or knots of grass; the Highland or Cumberland
mountain, its honeyed heathers or scented ferns; but the mass of the
bank at Martigny or Villeneuve has a vineyard in every cranny of its
rocks, and a chestnut grove on every crest of them.... The minute
mounds and furrows scattered up the side of that great promontory,
when they are actually approached after three or four hours' climbing,
turn into independent hills, with true _parks_ of lovely pasture-land
enclosed among them, and avenue after avenue of chestnuts, walnuts,
and pines bending round their bases; while in the deeper dingles,
populous villages, literally bound down to the rock by enormous trunks
of vine, which, first trained lightly over the loose stone roofs, have
in process of years cast their fruitful net over the whole village,
and fastened it to the ground under their purple weight and wayward
coils as securely as ever human heart was fastened to earth by the net
of the Flatterer.
40. When a rock of any kind has lain for some time exposed to the
weather, Nature finishes it in her own way. First she takes wonderful
pains about its forms, sculpturing it into exquisite variety of dent
and dimple, and rounding or hollowing it into contours which for
fineness no human hand can follow; then she colours it; and every one
of her touches of colour, instead of being a powder mixed with oil, is
a minute forest of living trees, glorious in strength and beauty, and
concealing wonders of structure.
41. On the broken rocks in the foreground in the crystalline groups,
the mosses seem to set themselves consentfully and deliberately to the
task of producing the most exquisite harmonies of colour in their
power. They will not conceal the form of the rock, but will gather
over it in little brown bosses, like small cushions of velvet, made of
mixed threads of dark ruby silk and gold, rounded over more subdued
films of white and grey, with lightly crisped and curled edges like
hoar frost on fallen leaves, and minute clusters of upright orange
stalks with pointed caps, and fibres of deep green, and gold, and
faint purple passing into black, all woven together, and following
with unimaginable fineness of gentle growth the undulation of the
stone they cherish, until it is charged with colour so that it can
receive no more; and instead of looking rugged, or cold, or stern, or
anything that a rock is held to be at heart, it seems to be clothed
with a soft dark leopard's skin, embroidered with arabesque of purple
and silver.
42. The colour of the white varieties of marble is of exquisite
delicacy, owing to the partial translucency of the pure rock; and it
has always appeared to me a most wonderful ordinance--one of the most
_marked_ pieces of purpose in the creation--that all the variegated
kinds should be comparatively opaque, so as to set off the colour on
the surface, while the white, which, if it had been opaque, would have
looked somewhat coarse, (as for instance common chalk does,) is
rendered just translucent enough to give an impression of extreme
purity, but not so translucent as to interfere in the least with the
distinctness of any forms into which it is wrought. The colours of
variegated marbles are also for the most part very beautiful,
especially those composed of purple, amber, and green, with white; and
there seems something notably attractive to the human mind in the
_vague_ and veined labyrinths of their arrangements.
43. I have often had occasion to allude to the apparent connection of
brilliancy of colour with vigour of life or purity of substance. This
is pre-eminently the case in the mineral kingdom. The perfection with
which the particles of any substance unite in crystallization,
corresponds in that kingdom to the vital power in organic nature; and
it is a universal law, that according to the purity of any substance,
and according to the energy of its crystallization, is its beauty or
brightness. Pure earths are white when in powder; and the same earths,
which are the constituents of clay and sand, form, when crystallized,
the emerald, ruby, sapphire, amethyst, and opal.
44. As we pass between the hills which have been shaken by earthquake
and torn by convulsion, we find that periods of perfect repose succeed
those of destruction. The pools of calm water lie clear beneath their
fallen rocks, the water-lilies gleam, and the reeds whisper among
their shadows; the village rises again over the forgotten graves, and
its church tower, white through the storm-light, proclaims a renewed
appeal to His protection in whose hand "are all the corners of the
earth, and the strength of the hills is His also." There is no
loveliness of Alpine valley that does not teach the same lesson. It is
just where "the mountain falling cometh to nought, and the rock is
removed out of his place," that in process of years the fairest
meadows bloom between the fragments, the clearest rivulets murmur from
between their crevices among the flowers, and the clustered cottages,
each sheltered beneath some strength of mossy stone, now to be removed
no more, and with their pastured flocks around them, safe from the
eagle's stoop and the wolf's ravin, have written upon their fronts, in
simple words, the mountaineer's faith in the ancient
promise,--"Neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction, when it
cometh; for thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field, and
the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee."