ILLUSTRATIVE: PLANTS AND FLOWERS.
45. Wonderful, in universal adaptation to man's need, desire, and
discipline, God's daily preparation of the earth for him, with
beautiful means of life. First, a carpet, to make it soft for him;
then a coloured fantasy of embroidery thereon; then, tall spreading of
foliage to shade him from sun-heat, and shade also the fallen rain,
that it may not dry quickly back into the clouds, but stay to nourish
the springs among the moss. Stout wood to bear this leafage; easily to
be cut, yet tough and light, to make houses for him, or instruments
(lance-shaft, or plough-handle, according to his temper); useless it
had been if harder; useless if less fibrous; useless if less elastic.
Winter comes, and the shade of leafage falls away, to let the sun warm
the earth; the strong boughs remain, breaking the strength of winter
winds. The seeds which are to prolong the race, innumerable according
to the need, are made beautiful and palatable, varied into infinitude
of appeal to the fancy of man, or provision for his service; cold
juice, or flowing spice, or balm, or incense, softening oil,
preserving resin, medicine of styptic, febrifuge, or lulling charm;
and all these presented in forms of endless change. Fragility or
force, softness and strength, in all degrees and aspects; unerring
uprightness, as of temple pillars, or unguided wandering of feeble
tendrils on the ground; mighty resistances of rigid arm and limb to
the storms of ages, or wavings to and fro with faintest pulse of
summer streamlet; roots cleaving the strength of rock, or binding the
transience of the sand; crests basking in sunshine of the desert, or
hiding by dripping spring and lightless cave; foliage far tossing in
entangled fields beneath every wave of ocean--clothing with
variegated, everlasting films the peaks of the trackless mountains, or
ministering, at cottage doors, to every gentlest passion and simplest
joy of humanity.
46. If ever in autumn a pensiveness falls upon us, as the leaves drift
by in their fading, may we not wisely look up in hope to their mighty
monuments? Behold how fair, how far prolonged in arch and aisle, the
avenues of the valleys, the fringes of the hills! so stately,--so
eternal; the joy of man, the comfort of all living creatures, the
glory of the earth,--they are but the monuments of those poor leaves
that flit faintly past us to die. Let them not pass, without our
understanding their last counsel and example: that we also, careless
of monument by the grave, may build it in the world--monument by which
men may be taught to remember, not where we died, but where we lived.
47. The Pine. Magnificent! nay, sometimes almost terrible. Other
trees, tufting crag or hill, yield to the form and sway of the ground,
clothe it with soft compliance, are partly its subjects, partly its
flatterers, partly its comforters. But the pine rises in serene
resistance, self-contained; nor can I ever without awe stay long under
a great Alpine cliff, far from all house or work of men, looking up to
its companies of pines, as they stand on the inaccessible juts and
perilous ledges of the enormous wall, in quiet multitudes, each like
the shadow of the one beside it--upright, fixed, spectral, as troops
of ghosts standing on the walls of Hades, not knowing each other, dumb
for ever. You cannot reach them, cannot cry to them: those trees never
heard human voice; they are far above all sound but of the winds. No
foot ever stirred fallen leaf of theirs: all comfortless they stand,
between the two eternities of the Vacancy and the Rock; yet with such
iron will, that the rock itself looks bent and shattered beside
them,--fragile, weak, inconsistent, compared to their dark energy of
delicate life, and monotony of enchanted pride--unnumbered,
unconquerable.
Then note farther their perfectness. The impression on most people's
minds must have been received more from pictures than reality, so far
as I can judge, so ragged they think the pine; whereas its chief
character in health is green and full _roundness_. It stands compact,
like one of its own cones, slightly curved on its sides, finished and
quaint as a carved tree in some Elizabethan garden; and instead of
being wild in expression, forms the softest of all forest scenery, for
other trees show their trunks and twisting boughs; but the pine,
growing either in luxuriant mass, or in happy isolation, allows no
branch to be seen. Summit behind summit rise its pyramidal ranges, or
down to the very grass sweep the circlets of its boughs; so that there
is nothing but green cone, and green carpet. Nor is it only softer,
but in one sense more cheerful than other foliage, for it casts only a
pyramidal shadow. Lowland forest arches overhead, and chequers the
ground with darkness; but the pine, growing in scattered groups,
leaves the glades between emerald-bright. Its gloom is all its own;
narrowing into the sky, it lets the sunshine strike down to the dew.
And if ever a superstitious feeling comes over me among the pine
glades, it is never tainted with the old German forest fear, but it is
only a more solemn tone of the fairy enchantment that haunts our
English meadows; so that I have always called the prettiest pine-glade
in Chamouni, "Fairies' Hollow." It is in the glen beneath the steep
ascent above Pont Pelissier, and may be reached by a little winding
path which goes down from the top of the hill[27]--being indeed not
truly a glen, but a broad ledge of moss and turf, leaning in a
formidable precipice (which, however, the gentle branches hide) over
the Arve. An almost isolated rock promontory, many coloured, rises at
the end of it. On the other sides it is bordered by cliffs, from which
a little cascade falls, literally, down among the pines, for it is so
light, shaking itself into mere showers of seed pearl in the sun, that
the pines don't know it from mist, and grow through it without
minding. Underneath, there is only the mossy silence; and above, for
ever, the snow of the nameless Aiguille.
[27] The new road to Chamouni has been carried right through it. A
cascade on the right, as you ascend, marks the place spoken of in the
text,--once as lonely as Corrie-nan-shian.
Other trees rise against the sky in dots and knots, but this, in
fringes. You never see the edges of it, so subtle are they; and for
this reason,--it alone of trees, so far as I know, is capable of the
fiery change which has been noticed by Shakespeare. When the sun rises
behind a ridge crested with pine, provided the ridge be at a distance
of about two miles, and seen clear, all the trees, for about three or
four degrees on each side of the sun, become trees of light, seen in
clear flame against the darker sky, and dazzling as the sun itself. I
thought at first this was owing to the actual lustre of the leaves;
but I believe now it is caused by the cloud-dew upon them--every
minutest leaf carrying its diamond. It seems as if these trees, living
always among the clouds, had caught part of their glory from them; and
themselves, the darkest of vegetation, could yet add splendour to the
sun itself.
48. The Swiss have certainly no feelings respecting their mountains in
anywise correspondent with ours. It was rather as fortresses of
defence, than as spectacles of splendour, that the cliffs of the
Rothslock bare rule over the destinies of those who dwelt at their
feet; and the training for which the mountain children had to thank
the slopes of the Muotta-Thal, was in soundness of breath, and
steadiness of limb, far more than in elevation of idea. But the point
which I desire the reader to note is, that the character of the scene
which, if any, appears to have been impressive to the inhabitant, is
not that which we ourselves feel when we enter the district. It was
not from their lakes, nor their cliffs, nor their glaciers--though
these were all peculiarly their possessions--that the three venerable
cantons received their name. They were not called the States of the
Rock, nor the States of the Lake, but the States of the _Forest_. And
the one of the three which contains the most touching record of the
spiritual power of Swiss religion, in the name of the convent of the
'Hill of Angels,' has, for its own, none but the sweet childish name
of 'Under the Woods.'
And indeed you may pass under them if, leaving the most sacred spot in
Swiss history, the Meadow of the Three Fountains, you bid the boatman
row southward a little way by the shore of the Bay of Uri. Steepest
there on its western side, the walls of its rocks ascend to heaven.
Far in the blue of evening, like a great cathedral pavement, lies the
lake in its darkness; and you may hear the whisper of innumerable
falling waters return from the hollows of the cliff, like the voices
of a multitude praying under their breath. From time to time the beat
of a wave, slow lifted where the rocks lean over the black depth, dies
heavily as the last note of a requiem. Opposite, green with steep
grass, and set with chalet villages, the Fron-Alp rises in one solemn
glow of pastoral light and peace; and above, against the clouds of
twilight, ghostly on the gray precipice, stand, myriad by myriad, the
shadowy armies of the Unterwalden pine.
49. It had been wild weather when I left Rome, and all across the
Campagna the clouds were sweeping in sulphurous blue, with a clap of
thunder or two, and breaking gleams of sun along the Claudian
aqueduct, lighting up the infinity of its arches, like the bridge of
Chaos. But as I climbed the long slope of the Alban Mount, the storm
swept finally to the north, and the noble outline of the domes of
Albano, and graceful darkness of its ilex grove, rose against pure
streaks of alternate blue and amber, the upper sky gradually flushing
through the last fragments of rain-cloud in deep palpitating azure,
half aether and half dew. The noonday sun came slanting down the rocky
slopes of La Riccia, and their masses of entangled and tall foliage,
whose autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure of a thousand
evergreens, were penetrated with it, as with rain. I cannot call it
colour,--it was conflagration. Purple, and crimson, and scarlet, like
the curtains of God's Tabernacle, the rejoicing trees sank into the
valley in showers of light, every separate leaf quivering with buoyant
and burning life; each, as it turned to reflect, or to transmit the
sunbeam, first a torch and then an emerald. Far up into the recesses
of the valley the green vistas arched like the hollows of mighty waves
of some crystalline sea, with the arbutus flowers dashed along their
banks for foam, and silver flakes of orange spray tossed into the air
around them, breaking over the grey walls of rock into a thousand
separate stars, fading and kindling alternately as the weak wind
lifted and let them fall. Every glade of grass burned like the golden
floor of heaven, opening in sudden gleams as the foliage broke, and
closed above it, as sheet-lightning opens in a cloud at sunset; the
motionless masses of dark rock, dark though flushed with scarlet
lichen, casting their quiet shadows across its restless radiance, the
fountain underneath them filling its marble hollow with blue mist and
fitful sound; and, over all, the multitudinous bars of amber and
rose--the sacred clouds that have no darkness, and only exist to
illumine--were seen in fathomless intervals between the solemn and
orbed repose of the stone pines, passing to lose themselves in the
last, white, blinding lustre of the measureless line where the
Campagna melted into the blaze of the sea.
50. Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity:
children love them; quiet, contented, ordinary people love them as
they grow; luxurious and disorderly people rejoice in them gathered;
they are the cottager's treasure; and in the crowded town, mark, as
with a little broken fragment of rainbow, the windows of the workers
in whose hearts rests the covenant of peace.
51. Yet few people really care about flowers. Many, indeed, are fond
of finding a new shape of blossom, caring for it as a child cares
about a kaleidoscope. Many, also, like a fair service of flowers in
the greenhouse, as a fair service of plate on the table. Many are
scientifically interested in them, though even these in the
nomenclature, rather than the flowers; and a few enjoy their
gardens.... But, the blossoming time of the year being principally
spring, I perceive it to be the mind of most people, during that
period, to stay in towns. A year or two ago a keen-sighted and
eccentrically-minded friend of mine, having taken it into his head to
violate this national custom, and go to the Tyrol in spring, was
passing through a valley near Landech with several similarly
headstrong companions. A strange mountain appeared in the distance,
belted about its breast with a zone of blue, like our English Queen.
Was it a blue cloud, a blue horizontal bar of the air that Titian
breathed in youth, seen now far away, which mortal might never breathe
again? Was it a mirage--a meteor? Would it stay to be
approached?--(ten miles of winding road yet between them and the foot
of the mountain)--such questioning had they concerning it. My
keen-sighted friend, alone, maintained it to be substantial;--whatever
it might be, it was not air, and would not vanish. The ten miles of
road were overpast, the carriage left, the mountain climbed. It stayed
patiently, expanding still into richer breath and heavenlier glow--a
belt of gentians. Such things may verily be seen among the Alps in
spring, and in spring only; which being so, I observe most people
prefer going in autumn.
52. Perhaps few people have ever asked themselves why they admire a
rose so much more than all other flowers. If they consider, they will
find, first, that red is, in a delicately gradated state, the
loveliest of all pure colours; and, secondly, that in the rose there
is _no shadow_, except what is composed of colour. All its shadows are
fuller in colour than its lights, owing to the translucency and
reflective power of the leaves.
53. Has the reader ever considered the relations of commonest forms of
volatile substance? The invisible particles which cause the scent of a
rose-leaf, how minute, how multitudinous, passing richly away into the
air continually!
54. In the range of inorganic nature I doubt if any object can be
found more perfectly beautiful, than a fresh, deep snow-drift, seen
under warm light. Its curves are of inconceivable perfection and
changefulness; its surface and transparency alike exquisite; its light
and shade of inexhaustible variety and inimitable finish,--the shadows
sharp, pale, and of heavenly colour, the reflected lights intense and
multitudinous, and mingled with the sweet occurrences of transmitted
light.... If, passing to the edge of a sheet of it upon the lower
Alps, early in May, we find, as we are nearly sure to find, two or
three little round openings pierced in it; and through these,
emergent, a slender, pensive, fragile flower,[28] whose small, dark,
purple-fringed bell hangs down and shudders over the icy cleft that it
has cloven, as if partly wondering at its own recent grave, and partly
dying of very fatigue after its hard-won victory; we shall be, or we
ought to be, moved by a totally different impression of loveliness
from that which we receive among the dead ice and the idle clouds:
there is now uttered to us a call for sympathy, now offered to us an
image of moral purpose and achievement, which, however unconscious or
senseless the creature may indeed be that so seems to call, cannot be
heard without affection, nor contemplated without worship, by any of
us whose heart is rightly turned, or whose mind is clearly and surely
sighted.
[28] Soldanella Alpina. I think it is the only Alpine flower which
actually pierces snow, though I have seen gentians filling thawed
hoof-prints. Crocuses are languid till they have had sun for a day or
two. But the soldanella enjoys its snow, at first, and afterwards its
fields. I have seen it make a pasture look like a large lilac silk gown.
55. It has been well shown by Dr. Herbert, that many plants are found
alone on a certain soil or sub-soil in a wild state, not because such
soil is favourable to them, but because they alone are capable of
existing on it, and because all dangerous rivals are by its
inhospitality removed. Now if we withdraw the plant from this
position, which it hardly endures, and supply it with the earth and
maintain about it the temperature that it delights in; withdrawing
from it, at the same time, all rivals, which in such conditions Nature
would have thrust upon it, we shall indeed obtain a magnificently
developed example of the plant, colossal in size, and splendid in
organization; but we shall utterly lose in it that moral ideal which
is dependent on its right fulfilment of its appointed functions. It
was intended and created by the Deity for the covering of those lonely
spots where no other plant could live. It has been thereto endowed
with courage and strength, and capacities of endurance; its character
and glory are not therefore in the gluttonous and idle feeding of its
own over luxuriance, at the expense of other creatures utterly
destroyed and rooted out for its good alone; but in its right doing of
its hard duty, and forward climbing into those spots of forlorn hope
where it alone can bear witness to the kindness and presence of the
Spirit that cutteth out rivers among the rocks, as He covers the
valleys with corn; and there, in its vanward place, and only there,
where nothing is withdrawn for it, nor hurt by it, and where nothing
can take part of its honour, nor usurp its throne, are its strength
and fairness, and price, and goodness in the sight of God to be truly
esteemed. The first time I saw the Soldanella Alpina, before spoken
of, it was growing of magnificent size on a sunny Alpine pasture,
among bleating of sheep, and lowing of cattle, associated with a
profusion of Geum Montanum, and Ranunculus Pyrenaeus. I noticed it only
because new to me--nor perceived any peculiar beauty in its cloven
flower. Some days after, I found it alone, among the rack of the
higher clouds, and howling of glacier winds; and, as I described it,
piercing through an edge of avalanche which in its retiring had left
the new ground brown and lifeless, and as if burnt by recent fire. The
plant was poor and feeble, and seemingly exhausted with its
efforts,--but it was then that I comprehended its ideal character, and
saw its noble function and order of glory among the constellations of
the earth.
56. GRASSES.--Minute, granular, feathery, or downy seed-vessels,
mingling quaint brown punctuation, and dusty tremors of dancing grain,
with the bloom of the nearer fields; and casting a gossamered grayness
and softness of plumy mist along their surfaces far away; mysterious
evermore, not only with dew in the morning, or mirage at noon, but
with the shaking threads of fine arborescence, each a little belfry of
grainbells, all a-chime.
57. Gather a single blade of grass, and examine for a minute quietly
its narrow sword-shaped strip of fluted green. Nothing, as it seems,
there of notable goodness or beauty. A very little strength and a very
little tallness, and a few delicate long lines meeting in a
point,--not a perfect point neither, but blunt and unfinished, by no
means a creditable or apparently much-cared-for example of Nature's
workmanship, made, only to be trodden on to-day, and to-morrow to be
cast into the oven,--and a little pale and hollow stalk, feeble and
flaccid, leading down to the dull brown fibres of roots. And yet,
think of it well, and judge whether, of all the gorgeous flowers that
beam in summer air, and of all strong and goodly trees, pleasant to
the eyes, or good for food,--stately palm and pine, strong ash and
oak, scented citron, burdened vine--there be any by man so deeply
loved, by God so highly graced, as that narrow point of feeble green.
And well does it fulfil its mission. Consider what we owe merely to
the meadow grass, to the covering of the dark ground by that glorious
enamel, by the companies of those soft, and countless, and peaceful
spears. The fields! Follow forth but for a little time the thoughts of
all that we ought to recognise in these words. All spring and summer
is in them--the walks by silent, scented paths--the rests in noonday
heat,--the joy of herds and flocks,--the power of all shepherd life
and meditation,--the life of sunlight upon the world falling in
emerald streaks, and falling in soft blue shadows where else it would
have struck upon the dark mould, or scorching dust. Pastures beside
the pacing brooks, soft banks and knolls of lowly hills, thymy slopes
of down, overlooked by the blue line of lifted sea, crisp lawns, all
dim with early dew, or smooth in evening warmth of barred sunshine,
dinted by happy feet, and softening in their fall the sound of loving
voices,--all these are summed in those simple words; and these are not
all. We may not measure to the full the depth of this heavenly gift in
our own land, though still as we think of it longer, the infinite of
that meadow sweetness, Shakespeare's peculiar joy, would open on us
more and more; yet we have it but in part. Go out in the springtime
among the meadows that slope from the shores of the Swiss lakes to the
roots of their lower mountains. There, mingled with the taller
gentians, and the white narcissus, the grass grows deep and free; and
as you follow the winding mountain path, beneath arching boughs, all
veiled with blossom--paths that for ever droop and rise over the green
banks and mounds sweeping down in scented undulation steep to the blue
water, studded here and there with new-mown heaps filling all the air
with fainter sweetness,--look up towards the higher hills, where the
waves of everlasting green roll silently into their long inlets among
the shadows of the pines; and we may perhaps at last know the meaning
of those quiet words of the 147th Psalm, "He maketh grass to grow upon
the mountains."
Assembling the images we have traced, and adding the simplest of all,
from Isaiah xl. 6, we find the grass and flowers are types, in their
passing, of the passing of human life, and in their excellence, of the
excellence of human life; and this in twofold way: first by their
beneficence, and then by their endurance--the grass of the earth, in
giving the seed of corn, and in its beauty under tread of foot and
stroke of scythe; and the grass of the waters, in giving its freshness
for our rest, and in its bending before the wave. But, understood in
the broad human and Divine sense, the "_herb_ yielding seed"--(as
opposed to the fruit tree yielding fruit)--includes a third family of
plants, and fulfils a third office to the human race. It includes the
great family of the lints and flaxes, and fulfils thus the _three_
offices of giving food, raiment, and rest. Follow out this fulfilment;
consider the association of the linen garment and the linen embroidery
with the priestly office and the furniture of the tabernacle, and
consider how the rush has been to all time the first natural carpet
thrown under the human foot. Then next observe the three virtues
definitely set forth by the three families of plants--not arbitrarily
or fancifully associated with them, but in all the three cases marked
for us by Scriptural words: 1st. Cheerfulness, or joyful serenity; in
the grass for food and beauty--"Consider the lilies of the field, how
they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin." 2nd. Humility; in the
grass for rest--"A bruised reed shall he not break." 3rd. Love; in the
grass for clothing, (because of its swift kindling,)--"The smoking
flax shall he not quench." And then finally observe the confirmation
of these last two images in, I suppose, the most important prophecy,
relating to the future state of the Christian Church, which occurs in
the Old Testament, namely that contained in the closing chapters of
Ezekiel. The measures of the Temple of God are to be taken; and
because it is only by charity and humility that those measures ever
can be taken, the angel has "a line of _flax_ in his hand, and a
measuring reed." The use of the line was to measure the land, and of
the reed to take the dimensions of the buildings; so the buildings of
the church, or its labours, are to be measured by humility; and its
territory, or land, by love.
58. LEAVES motionless. The strong pines wave above them, and the weak
grasses tremble beside them; but the blue stars rest upon the earth
with a peace as of heaven; and far along the ridges of iron rock,
moveless as they, the rubied crests of Alpine rose flush in the low
rays of morning.
59. MOSSES.--Meek creatures! the first mercy of the earth, veiling
with hushed softness its dintless rocks; creatures full of pity,
covering with strange and tender honour the scarred disgrace of ruin,
laying quiet finger on the trembling stones to teach them rest. No
words, that I know of, will say what these mosses are. None are
delicate enough, none perfect enough, none rich enough. How is one to
tell of the rounded bosses of furred and beaming green,--the starred
divisions of rubied bloom, fine-filmed, as if the rock spirits could
spin porphyry as we do glass,--the traceries of intricate silver, and
fringes of amber, lustrous, arborescent, burnished through every fibre
into fitful brightness and glossy traverses of silken change, yet all
subdued and pensive, and framed for simplest, sweetest offices of
grace? They will not be gathered, like the flowers, for chaplet, or
love-token; but of these the wild bird will make its nest, and the
wearied child his pillow.
And as the earth's first mercy, so they are its last gift to us: when
all other service is vain, from plant and tree, the soft mosses and
gray lichen take up their watch by the headstone. The woods, the
blossoms, the gift-bearing grasses, have done their parts for a time;
but these do service for ever. Trees for the builder's yard, flowers
for the bride's chamber, corn for the granary, moss for the grave.
60. LICHENS.--As in one sense the humblest, in another they are the
most honoured of the earth-children. Unfading as motionless, the worm
frets them not, and the autumn wastes not. Strong in loveliness, they
neither blanch in heat, nor pine in frost. To them, slow-fingered,
constant-hearted, is entrusted the weaving of the dark, eternal
tapestries of the hills; to them, slow-pencilled, iris-dyed, the
tender framing of their endless imagery. Sharing the stillness of the
unimpassioned rock, they share also its endurance; and while the winds
of departing spring scatter the white hawthorn blossom like drifted
snow, and summer dims on the parched meadow the drooping of its
cowslip gold,--far above, among the mountains, the silver lichen spots
rest, star-like, on the stone: and the gathering orange stain, upon
the edge of yonder western peak, reflects the sunsets of a thousand
years.