point a happier and better country than it was, when inhabited by Wends.
But is Friedrich I. a happier and better man than Henry the Fowler? Have
all these kings thus improved their country, but never themselves? Is
this somewhat expensive and ambitious Herr, Friedrich I. buttoned in
diamonds, indeed the best that Protestantism can produce, as against
Fowlers, Bears, and Red Beards? Much more, Friedrich Wilhelm, orthodox
on predestination; most of all, his less orthodox son;--have we, in
these, the highest results which Dr. Martin Luther can produce for the
present, in the first circles of society? And if not, how is it that the
country, having gained so much in intelligence and strength, lies more
passively in their power than the baser country did under that of nobler
men?
These, and collateral questions, I mean to work out as I can, with
Carlyle's good help;--but must pause for this time; in doubt, as
heretofore. Only of this one thing I doubt not, that the name of all
great kings, set over Christian nations, must at last be, in fufilment,
the hereditary one of these German princes, "Rich in Peace;" and that
their coronation will be with Wild olive, not with gold.
FOOTNOTES:
[142] The late Sir Herbert Edwardes.
[143] I would much rather print these passages of Carlyle in large
golden letters than small black ones; but they are only here at all for
unlucky people who can't read them with the context.
THE
ETHICS OF THE DUST
TEN LECTURES
TO
LITTLE HOUSEWIVES
ON
THE ELEMENTS OF CRYSTALLISATION
CONTENTS.
ETHICS OF THE DUST.
LECTURE I. PAGE
THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS 1
LECTURE II.
THE PYRAMID BUILDERS 21
LECTURE III.
THE CRYSTAL LIFE 31
LECTURE IV.
THE CRYSTAL ORDERS 43
LECTURE V.
CRYSTAL VIRTUES 56
LECTURE VI.
CRYSTAL QUARRELS 70
LECTURE VII.
HOME VIRTUES 82
LECTURE VIII.
CRYSTAL CAPRICE 98
LECTURE IX.
CRYSTAL SORROWS 111
LECTURE X.
THE CRYSTAL REST 125
NOTES 143
FICTION--FAIR AND FOUL 153
ELEMENTS OF DRAWING.
LETTER I.
ON FIRST PRACTICE 233
LETTER II.
SKETCHING FROM NATURE 293
LETTER III.
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION 331
APPENDIX: THINGS TO BE STUDIED 403
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
ELEMENTS OF DRAWING.
FIGURE PAGE
1. SQUARES 237
2. GRADATED SPACES 241
3. OUTLINE OF LETTER 245
4. OUTLINE OF BOUGH OF TREE 248
5. CHARRED LOG 257
6. SHOOT OF LILAC 272
7. LEAF 274
8. BOUGH OF PHILLYREA 275
9. SPRAY OF PHILLYREA 276
10. TRUNK OF TREE, BY TITIAN 284
11. SKETCH FROM RAPHAEL 285
12. OUTLINES OF A BALL 287
13. WOODCUT OF DURER'S 289
14, 15, 16. MASSES OF LEAVES 290, 291
17, 18, 19. CURVATURES IN LEAVES 295, 296
20. FROM AN ETCHING, BY TURNER 297
21. ALPINE BRIDGE 307
22. ALPINE BRIDGE AS IT APPEARS AT VARIOUS DISTANCES 308
23. OUTLINES EXPRESSIVE OF FOLIAGE 314
24. SHOOT OF SPANISH CHESTNUT 315
25. YOUNG SHOOT OF OAK 316
26, 27, 28. WOODCUTS AFTER TITIAN 321, 322
29. DIAGRAM OF WINDOW 339
30. SWISS COTTAGE 355
31. GROUPS OF LEAVE 350
32. PAINTING, by Turner 361
33. SKETCH ON CALAIS SANDS, by Turner 365
34. DRAWING OF AN IDEAL BRIDGE, by Turner 369
35. PROFILE OF THE TOWERS OF EHRENBREITSTEIN 370
36. CURVES 371
37, 38, 39. CURVES FOUND IN LEAVES 372
40. OUTLINES OF A TREE TRUNK 373
41-44. TREE RADIATION 374, 375
45, 46. WOODCUTS OF LEAF 376
47. LEAF OF COLUMBINE 378
48. TOP OF AN OLD TOWER 385
PERSONAE.
OLD LECTURER (of incalculable age)
FLORRIE, on astronomical evidence presumed to be aged 9.
ISABEL " 11.
MAY " 11.
LILY " 12.
KATHLEEN " 14.
LUCILLA " 15.
VIOLET " 16.
DORA (who has the keys and is housekeeper) " 17.
EGYPT (so called from her dark eyes) " 17.
JESSIE (who somehow always makes the room look
brighter when she is in it) " 18.
MARY (of whom everybody, including the Old Lecturer,
is in great awe) " 20.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
I have seldom been more disappointed by the result of my best pains
given to any of my books, than by the earnest request of my publisher,
after the opinion of the public had been taken on the 'Ethics of the
Dust,' that I would "write no more in dialogue!" However, I bowed to
public judgment in this matter at once, (knowing also my inventive
powers to be of the feeblest,); but in reprinting the book, (at the
prevailing request of my kind friend, Mr. Henry Willett,) I would pray
the readers whom it may at first offend by its disconnected method, to
examine, nevertheless, with care, the passages in which the principal
speaker sums the conclusions of any dialogue: for these summaries were
written as introductions, for young people, to all that I have said on
the same matters in my larger books; and, on re-reading them, they
satisfy me better, and seem to me calculated to be more generally
useful, than anything else I have done of the kind.
The summary of the contents of the whole book, beginning, "You may at
least earnestly believe," at p. 130, is thus the clearest exposition I
have ever yet given of the general conditions under which the Personal
Creative Power manifests itself in the forms of matter; and the analysis
of heathen conceptions of Deity, beginning at p. 131, and closing at p.
138, not only prefaces, but very nearly supersedes, all that in more
lengthy terms I have since asserted, or pleaded for, in 'Aratra
Pentelici,' and the 'Queen of the Air.'
And thus, however the book may fail in its intention of suggesting new
occupations or interests to its younger readers, I think it worth
reprinting, in the way I have also reprinted 'Unto this Last,'--page for
page; that the students of my more advanced works may be able to refer
to these as the original documents of them; of which the most essential
in this book are these following.
I. The explanation of the baseness of the avaricious functions of the
Lower Pthah, p. 39, with his beetle-gospel, p. 41, "that a nation can
stand on its vices better than on its virtues," explains the main motive
of all my books on Political Economy.
II. The examination of the connexion between stupidity and crime, pp.
57-62, anticipated all that I have had to urge in Fors Clavigera against
the commonly alleged excuse for public wickedness,--"They don't mean
it--they don't know any better."
III. The examination of the roots of Moral Power, pp. 90-92, is a
summary of what is afterwards developed with utmost care in my inaugural
lecture at Oxford on the relation of Art to Morals; compare in that
lecture, Secs. 83-85, with the sentence in p. 91 of this book, "Nothing
is ever done so as really to please our Father, unless we would also have
done it, though we had had no Father to know of it."
This sentence, however, it must be observed, regards only the general
conditions of action in the children of God, in consequence of which it
is foretold of them by Christ that they will say at the Judgment, "When
saw we thee?" It does not refer to the distinct cases in which virtue
consists in faith given to command, appearing to foolish human judgment
inconsistent with the Moral Law, as in the sacrifice of Isaac; nor to
those in which any directly-given command requires nothing more of
virtue than obedience.
IV. The subsequent pages, 92-97, were written especially to check the
dangerous impulses natural to the minds of many amiable young women, in
the direction of narrow and selfish religious sentiment: and they
contain, therefore, nearly everything which I believe it necessary that
young people should be made to observe, respecting the errors of
monastic life. But they in nowise enter on the reverse, or favourable
side: of which indeed I did not, and as yet do not, feel myself able to
speak with any decisiveness; the evidence on that side, as stated in the
text, having "never yet been dispassionately examined."
V. The dialogue with Lucilla, beginning at p. 63, is, to my own fancy,
the best bit of conversation in the book, and the issue of it, at p. 67,
the most practically and immediately useful. For on the idea of the
inevitable weakness and corruption of human nature, has logically
followed, in our daily life, the horrible creed of modern "Social
science," that all social action must be scientifically founded on
vicious impulses. But on the habit of measuring and reverencing our
powers and talents that we may kindly use them, will be founded a true
Social science, developing, by the employment of them, all the real
powers and honourable feelings of the race.
VI. Finally, the account given in the second and third lectures, of the
real nature and marvellousness of the laws of crystallization, is
necessary to the understanding of what farther teaching of the beauty of
inorganic form I may be able to give, either in 'Deucalion,' or in my
'Elements of Drawing.' I wish however that the second lecture had been
made the beginning of the book; and would fain now cancel the first
altogether, which I perceive to be both obscure and dull. It was meant
for a metaphorical description of the pleasures and dangers in the
kingdom of Mammon, or of worldly wealth; its waters mixed with blood,
its fruits entangled in thickets of trouble, and poisonous when
gathered; and the final captivity of its inhabitants within frozen walls
of cruelty and disdain. But the imagery is stupid and ineffective
throughout; and I retain this chapter only because I am resolved to
leave no room for any one to say that I have withdrawn, as erroneous in
principle, so much as a single sentence of any of my books written since
1860.
One license taken in this book, however, though often permitted to
essay-writers for the relief of their dulness, I never mean to take
more,--the relation of composed metaphor as of actual dream, pp. 23 and
104. I assumed, it is true, that in these places the supposed dream
would be easily seen to be an invention; but must not any more, even
under so transparent disguise, pretend to any share in the real powers
of Vision possessed by great poets and true painters.
BRANTWOOD:
_10th October, 1877._
PREFACE.
The following lectures were really given, in substance, at a girls'
school (far in the country); which in the course of various experiments
on the possibility of introducing some better practice of drawing into
the modern scheme of female education, I visited frequently enough to
enable the children to regard me as a friend. The lectures always fell
more or less into the form of fragmentary answers to questions; and they
are allowed to retain that form, as, on the whole, likely to be more
interesting than the symmetries of a continuous treatise. Many children
(for the school was large) took part, at different times, in the
conversations; but I have endeavoured, without confusedly multiplying
the number of imaginary[144] speakers, to represent, as far as I could,
the general tone of comment and enquiry among young people.
It will be at once seen that these Lectures were not intended for an
introduction to mineralogy. Their purpose was merely to awaken in the
minds of young girls, who were ready to work earnestly and
systematically, a vital interest in the subject of their study. No
science can be learned in play; but it is often possible, in play, to
bring good fruit out of past labour, or show sufficient reasons for the
labour of the future.
The narrowness of this aim does not, indeed, justify the absence of all
reference to many important principles of structure, and many of the
most interesting orders of minerals; but I felt it impossible to go far
into detail without illustrations; and if readers find this book useful,
I may, perhaps, endeavour to supplement it by illustrated notes of the
more interesting phenomena in separate groups of familiar
minerals;--flints of the chalk;--agates of the basalts;--and the
fantastic and exquisitely beautiful varieties of the vein-ores of the
two commonest metals, lead and iron. But I have always found that the
less we speak of our intentions, the more chance there is of our
realizing them; and this poor little book will sufficiently have done
its work, for the present, if it engages any of its young readers in
study which may enable them to despise it for its shortcomings.
DENMARK HILL:
_Christmas, 1865._
FOOTNOTES:
[144] I do not mean, in saying 'imaginary,' that I have not permitted to
myself, in several instances, the affectionate discourtesy of some
reminiscence of personal character; for which I must hope to be forgiven
by my old pupils and their friends, as I could not otherwise have
written the book at all. But only two sentences in all the dialogues,
and the anecdote of 'Dotty,' are literally 'historical.'
THE ETHICS OF THE DUST.
LECTURE I.
_THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS._
_A very idle talk, by the dining-room fire, after
raisin-and-almond time._
OLD LECTURER; FLORRIE, ISABEL, MAY, LILY, _and_ SIBYL.
OLD LECTURER (L.). Come here, Isabel, and tell me what the make-believe
was, this afternoon.
ISABEL (_arranging herself very primly on the foot-stool_). Such a
dreadful one! Florrie and I were lost in the Valley of Diamonds.
L. What! Sindbad's, which nobody could get out of?
ISABEL. Yes; but Florrie and I got out of it.
L. So I see. At least, I see you did; but are you sure Florrie did?
ISABEL. Quite sure.
FLORRIE (_putting her head round from behind_ L.'s _sofa-cushion_).
Quite sure. (_Disappears again._)
L. I think I could be made to feel surer about it.
(FLORRIE _reappears, gives_ L. _a kiss, and again exit._)
L. I suppose it's all right; but how did you manage it?
ISABEL. Well, you know, the eagle that took up Sindbad was very
large--very, very large--the largest of all the eagles.
L. How large were the others?
ISABEL. I don't quite know--they were so far off. But this one was, oh,
so big! and it had great wings, as wide as--twice over the ceiling. So,
when it was picking up Sindbad, Florrie and I thought it wouldn't know
if we got on its back too: so I got up first, and then I pulled up
Florrie, and we put our arms round its neck, and away it flew.
L. But why did you want to get out of the valley? and why haven't you
brought me some diamonds?
ISABEL. It was because of the serpents. I couldn't pick up even the
least little bit of a diamond, I was so frightened.
L. You should not have minded the serpents.
ISABEL. Oh, but suppose that they had minded me?
L. We all of us mind you a little too much, Isabel, I'm afraid.
ISABEL. No--no--no, indeed.
L. I tell you what, Isabel--I don't believe either Sindbad, or Florrie,
or you, ever were in the Valley of Diamonds.
ISABEL. You naughty! when I tell you we were!
L. Because you say you were frightened at the serpents.
ISABEL. And wouldn't you have been?
L. Not at those serpents. Nobody who really goes into the valley is ever
frightened at them--they are so beautiful.
ISABEL (_suddenly serious_). But there's no real Valley of Diamonds, is
there?
L. Yes, Isabel; very real indeed.
FLORRIE (_reappearing_). Oh, where? Tell me about it.
L. I cannot tell you a great deal about it; only I know it is very
different from Sindbad's. In his valley, there was only a diamond lying
here and there; but, in the real valley, there are diamonds covering the
grass in showers every morning, instead of dew: and there are clusters
of trees, which look like lilac trees; but, in spring, all their
blossoms are of amethyst.
FLORRIE. But there can't be any serpents there, then?
L. Why not?
FLORRIE. Because they don't come into such beautiful places.
L. I never said it was a beautiful place.
FLORRIE. What! not with diamonds strewed about it like dew?
L. That's according te your fancy, Florrie. For myself, I like dew
better.
ISABEL. Oh, but the dew won't stay; it all dries!
L. Yes; and it would be much nicer if the diamonds dried too, for the
people in the valley have to sweep them off the grass, in heaps,
whenever they want to walk on it; and then the heaps glitter so, they
hurt one's eyes.
FLORRIE. Now you're just playing, you know.
L. So are you, you know.
FLORRIE. Yes, but you mustn't play.
L. That's very hard, Florrie; why mustn't I, if you may?
FLORRIE. Oh, I may, because I'm little, but you mustn't, because
you're--(_hesitates for a delicate expression of magnitude_).
L. (_rudely taking the first that comes_). Because I'm big? No; that's
not the way of it at all, Florrie. Because you're little, you should
have very little play; and because I'm big I should have a great deal.
ISABEL _and_ FLORRIE (_both_). No--no--no--no. That isn't it at all.
(ISABEL _sola, quoting Miss Ingelow._) 'The lambs play always--they know
no better.' (_Putting her head very much on one side._) Ah,
now--please--please--tell us true; we want to know.
L. But why do you want me to tell you true, any more than the man who
wrote the 'Arabian Nights?'
ISABEL. Because--because we like to know about real things; and you can
tell us, and we can't ask the man who wrote the stories.
L. What do you call real things?
ISABEL. Now, you know! Things that really are.
L. Whether you can see them or not?
ISABEL. Yes, if somebody else saw them.
L. But if nobody has ever seen them?
ISABEL (_evading the point_.) Well, but, you know, if there were a real
Valley of Diamonds, somebody _must_ have seen it.
L. You cannot be so sure of that, Isabel. Many people go to real places,
and never see them; and many people pass through this valley, and never
see it.
FLORRIE. What stupid people they must be!
L. No, Florrie. They are much wiser than the people who do see it.
MAY. I think I know where it is.
ISABEL. Tell us more about it, and then we'll guess.
L. Well. There's a great broad road, by a river-side, leading up into
it.
MAY (_gravely cunning, with emphasis on the last word_). Does the road
really go _up_?
L. You think it should go down into a valley? No, it goes up; this is a
valley among the hills, and it is as high as the clouds, and is often
full of them; so that even the people who most want to see it, cannot,
always.
ISABEL. And what is the river beside the road like?
L. It ought to be very beautiful, because it flows over diamond
sand--only the water is thick and red.
ISABEL. Red water?
L. It isn't all water.
MAY. Oh, please never mind that, Isabel, just now; I want to hear about
the valley.
L. So the entrance to it is very wide, under a steep rock; only such
numbers of people are always trying to get in, that they keep jostling
each other, and manage it but slowly. Some weak ones are pushed back,
and never get in at all; and make great moaning as they go away: but
perhaps they are none the worse in the end.
MAY. And when one gets in, what is it like?
L. It is up and down, broken kind of ground: the road stops directly;
and there are great dark rocks, covered all over with wild gourds and
wild vines; the gourds, if you cut them, are red, with black seeds, like
water-melons, and look ever so nice; and the people of the place make a
red pottage of them: but you must take care not to eat any if you ever
want to leave the valley (though I believe putting plenty of meal in it
makes it wholesome). Then the wild vines have clusters of the colour of
amber; and the people of the country say they are the grape of Eshcol;
and sweeter than honey; but, indeed, if anybody else tastes them, they
are like gall. Then there are thickets of bramble, so thorny that they
would be cut away directly, anywhere else; but here they are covered
with little cinque-foiled blossoms of pure silver; and, for berries,
they have clusters of rubies. Dark rubies, which you only see are red
after gathering them. But you may fancy what blackberry parties the
children have! Only they get their frocks and hands sadly torn.
LILY. But rubies can't spot one's frocks as blackberries do?
L. No; but I'll tell you what spots them--the mulberries. There are
great forests of them, all up the hills, covered with silkworms, some
munching the leaves so loud that it is like mills at work; and some
spinning. But the berries are the blackest you ever saw; and, wherever
they fall, they stain a deep red; and nothing ever washes it out again.
And it is their juice, soaking through the grass, which makes the river
so red, because all its springs are in this wood. And the boughs of the
trees are twisted, as if in pain, like old olive branches; and their
leaves are dark. And it is in these forests that the serpents are; but
nobody is afraid of them. They have fine crimson crests, and they are
wreathed about the wild branches, one in every tree, nearly; and they
are singing serpents, for the serpents are, in this forest, what birds
are in ours.
FLORRIE. Oh, I don't want to go there at all, now.
L. You would like it very much indeed, Florrie, if you were there. The
serpents would not bite you; the only fear would be of your turning into
one!
FLORRIE. Oh, dear, but that's worse.
L. You wouldn't think so if you really were turned into one, Florrie;
you would be very proud of your crest. And as long as you were yourself
(not that you could get there if you remained quite the little Florrie
you are now), you would like to hear the serpents sing. They hiss a
little through it, like the cicadas in Italy; but they keep good time,
and sing delightful melodies; and most of them have seven heads, with
throats which each take a note of the octave; so that they can sing
chords--it is very fine indeed. And the fire-flies fly round the edge of
the forests all the night long; you wade in fire-flies, they make the
fields look like a lake trembling with reflection of stars; but you must
take care not to touch them, for they are not like Italian fireflies,
but burn, like real sparks.
FLORRIE. I don't like it at all; I'll never go there.
L. I hope not, Florrie; or at least that you will get out again if you
do. And it is very difficult to get out, for beyond these serpent
forests there are great cliffs of dead gold, which form a labyrinth,
winding always higher and higher, till the gold is all split asunder by
wedges of ice; and glaciers, welded, half of ice seven times frozen, and
half of gold seven times frozen, hang down from them, and fall in
thunder, cleaving into deadly splinters, like the Cretan arrowheads; and
into a mixed dust of snow and gold, ponderous, yet which the mountain
whirlwinds are able to lift and drive in wreaths and pillars, hiding the
paths with a burial cloud, fatal at once with wintry chill, and weight
of golden ashes. So the wanderers in the labyrinth fall, one by one, and
are buried there:--yet, over the drifted graves, those who are spared
climb to the last, through coil on coil of the path;--for at the end of
it they see the king of the valley, sitting on his throne: and beside
him (but it is only a false vision), spectra of creatures like
themselves, set on thrones, from which they seem to look down on all the
kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them. And on the canopy of his
throne there is an inscription in fiery letters, which they strive to
read, but cannot; for it is written in words which are like the words of
all languages, and yet are of none. Men say it is more like their own
tongue to the English than it is to any other nation; but the only
record of it is by an Italian, who heard the King himself cry it as a
war cry, 'Pape Satan, Pape Satan Aleppe.'[145]
SIBYL. But do they all perish there? You said there was a way through
the valley, and out of it.
L. Yes; but few find it. If any of them keep to the grass paths, where
the diamonds are swept aside; and hold their hands over their eyes so as
not to be dazzled, the grass paths lead forward gradually to a place
where one sees a little opening in the golden rocks. You were at
Chamouni last year, Sibyl; did your guide chance to show you the pierced
rock of the Aiguille du Midi?
SIBYL. No, indeed, we only got up from Geneva on Monday night; and it
rained all Tuesday; and we had to be back at Geneva again, early on
Wednesday morning.
L. Of course. That is the way to see a country in a Sibylline manner, by
inner consciousness: but you might have seen the pierced rock in your
drive up, or down, if the clouds broke: not that there is much to see in
it; one of the crags of the aiguille-edge, on the southern slope of it,
is struck sharply through, as by an awl, into a little eyelet hole;
which you may see, seven thousand feet above the valley (as the clouds
flit past behind it, or leave the sky), first white, and then dark blue.
Well, there's just such an eyelet hole in one of the upper crags of the
Diamond Valley; and, from a distance, you think that it is no bigger
than the eye of a needle. But if you get up to it, they say you may
drive a loaded camel through it, and that there are fine things on the
other side, but I have never spoken with anybody who had been through.
SIBYL. I think we understand it now. We will try to write it down, and
think of it.
L. Meantime, Florrie, though all that I have been telling you is very
true, yet you must not think the sort of diamonds that people wear in
rings and necklaces are found lying about on the grass. Would you like
to see how they really are found?
FLORRIE. Oh, yes--yes.
L. Isabel--or Lily--run up to my room and fetch me the little box with a
glass lid, out of the top drawer of the chest of drawers. (_Race
between_ LILY _and_ ISABEL.)
(_Re-enter_ ISABEL _with the box, very much out of breath._
LILY _behind._)
L. Why, you never can beat Lily in a race on the stairs, can you,
Isabel?
ISABEL (_panting_). Lily--beat me--ever so far--but she gave me--the
box--to carry in.
L. Take off the lid, then; gently.
FLORRIE (_after peeping in, disappointed_). There's only a great ugly
brown stone!
L. Not much more than that, certainly, Florrie, if people were wise. But
look, it is not a single stone; but a knot of pebbles fastened together
by gravel; and in the gravel, or compressed sand, if you look close, you
will see grains of gold glittering everywhere, all through; and then, do
you see these two white beads, which shine, as if they had been covered
with grease?
FLORRIE. May I touch them?
L. Yes; you will find they are not greasy, only very smooth. Well, those
are the fatal jewels; native here in their dust with gold, so that you
may see, cradled here together, the two great enemies of mankind,--the
strongest of all malignant physical powers that have tormented our race.
SIBYL. Is that really so? I know they do great harm; but do they not
also do great good?
L. My dear child, what good? Was any woman, do you suppose, ever the
better for possessing diamonds? but how many have been made base,
frivolous, and miserable by desiring them? Was ever man the better for
having coffers full of gold? But who shall measure the guilt that is
incurred to fill them? Look into the history of any civilised nations;
analyse, with reference to this one cause of crime and misery, the lives
and thoughts of their nobles, priests, merchants, and men of luxurious
life. Every other temptation is at last concentrated into this; pride,
and lust, and envy, and anger all give up their strength to avarice. The
sin of the whole world is essentially the sin of Judas. Men do not
disbelieve their Christ; but they sell Him.
SIBYL. But surely that is the fault of human nature? it is not caused by
the accident, as it were, of there being a pretty metal, like gold, to
be found by digging. If people could not find that, would they not find
something else, and quarrel for it instead?
L. No. Wherever legislators have succeeded in excluding, for a time,
jewels and precious metals from among national possessions, the national
spirit has remained healthy. Covetousness is not natural to
man--generosity is; but covetousness must be excited by a special cause,
as a given disease by a given miasma; and the essential nature of a
material for the excitement of covetousness is, that it shall be a
beautiful thing which can be retained _without a use_. The moment we
can use our possessions to any good purpose ourselves, the instinct of
communicating that use to others rises side by side with our power. If
you can read a book rightly, you will want others to hear it; if you can
enjoy a picture rightly, you will want others to see it: learn how to
manage a horse, a plough, or a ship, and you will desire to make your
subordinates good horsemen, ploughmen, or sailors; you will never be
able to see the fine instrument you are master of, abused; but, once fix
your desire on anything useless, and all the purest pride and folly in
your heart will mix with the desire, and make you at last wholly
inhuman, a mere ugly lump of stomach and suckers, like a cuttle-fish.
SIBYL. But surely, these two beautiful things, gold and diamonds, must
have been appointed to some good purpose?
L. Quite conceivably so, my dear: as also earthquakes and pestilences;
but of such ultimate purposes we can have no sight. The practical,
immediate office of the earthquake and pestilence is to slay us, like
moths; and, as moths, we shall be wise to live out of their way. So, the
practical, immediate office of gold and diamonds is the multiplied
destruction of souls (in whatever sense you have been taught to
understand that phrase); and the paralysis of wholesome human effort and
thought on the face of God's earth: and a wise nation will live out of
the way of them. The money which the English habitually spend in cutting
diamonds would, in ten years, if it were applied to cutting rocks
instead, leave no dangerous reef nor difficult harbour round the whole
island coast. Great Britain would be a diamond worth cutting, indeed, a
true piece of regalia. (_Leaves this to their thoughts for a little
while._) Then, also, we poor mineralogists might sometimes have the
chance of seeing a fine crystal of diamond unhacked by the jeweller.
SIBYL. Would it be more beautiful uncut?
L. No; but of infinite interest. We might even come to know something
about the making of diamonds.
SIBYL. I thought the chemists could make them already?
L. In very small black crystals, yes; but no one knows how they are
formed where they are found; or if indeed they are formed there at all.
These, in my hand, look as if they had been swept down with the gravel
and gold; only we can trace the gravel and gold to their native rocks,
but not the diamonds. Read the account given of the diamond in any good
work on mineralogy;--you will find nothing but lists of localities of
gravel, or conglomerate rock (which is only an old indurated gravel).
Some say it was once a vegetable gum; but it may have been charred wood;
but what one would like to know is, mainly, why charcoal should make
itself into diamonds in India, and only into black lead in Borrowdale.
SIBYL. Are they wholly the same, then?
L. There is a little iron mixed with our black lead but nothing to
hinder its crystallisation. Your pencils in fact are all pointed with
formless diamond, though they would be HHH pencils to purpose, if it
crystallised.
SUBYL. But what _is_ crystallisation?
L. A pleasant question, when one's half asleep, and it has been tea time
these two hours. What thoughtless things girls are!
SIBYL. Yes, we are; but we want to know, for all that.
L. My dear, it would take a week to tell you.
SIBYL. Well, take it, and tell us.
L. But nobody knows anything about it.
SIBYL. Then tell us something that nobody knows.
L. Get along with you, and tell Dora to make tea.
(_The house rises; but of course the_ LECTURER _wanted to be
forced to lecture again, and was._)
FOOTNOTES:
[145] Dante, Inf. 7. 1.
LECTURE II.
_THE PYRAMID BUILDERS._
_In the large Schoolroom, to which everybody has been
summoned by ringing of the great bell._
L. So you have all actually come to hear about crystallisation! I cannot
conceive why, unless the little ones think that the discussion may
involve some reference to sugar-candy.
(_Symptoms of high displeasure among the younger members of
council._ ISABEL _frowns severely at L., and shakes her head
violently._)
My dear children, if you knew it, you are yourselves, at this moment, as
you sit in your ranks, nothing, in the eye of a mineralogist, but a
lovely group of rosy sugar-candy, arranged by atomic forces. And even
admitting you to be something more, you have certainly been
crystallising without knowing it. Did I not hear a great hurrying and
whispering, ten minutes ago, when you were late in from the playground;
and thought you would not all be quietly seated by the time I was
ready:--besides some discussion about places--something about 'it's not
being fair that the little ones should always be nearest?' Well, you
were then all being crystallised. When you ran in from the garden, and
against one another in the passages, you were in what mineralogists
would call a state of solution, and gradual confluence; when you got
seated in those orderly rows, each in her proper place, you became
crystalline. That is just what the atoms of a mineral do, if they can,
whenever they get disordered: they get into order again as soon as may
be.
I hope you feel inclined to interrupt me, and say, 'But we know our
places; how do the atoms know theirs? And sometimes we dispute about
our places; do the atoms--(and, besides, we don't like being compared to
atoms at all)--never dispute about theirs?' Two wise questions these, if
you had a mind to put them! it was long before I asked them myself, of
myself. And I will not call you atoms any more. May I call you--let me
see--'primary molecules?' (_General dissent, indicated in subdued but
decisive murmurs._) No! not even, in familiar Saxon, 'dust?'
(_Pause, with expression on faces of sorrowful doubt_; LILY
_gives voice to the general sentiment in a timid 'Please
don't._')
No, children, I won't call you that; and mind, as you grow up, that you
do not get into an idle and wicked habit of calling yourselves that. You
are something better than dust, and have other duties to do than ever
dust can do; and the bonds of affection you will enter into are better
than merely 'getting into order.' But see to it, on the other hand, that
you always behave at least as well as 'dust;' remember, it is only on
compulsion, and while it has no free permission to do as it likes, that
_it_ ever gets out of order; but sometimes, with some of us, the
compulsion has to be the other way--hasn't it? (_Remonstratory whispers,
expressive of opinion that the_ LECTURER _is becoming too personal._)
I'm not looking at anybody in particular--indeed I am not. Nay, if you
blush so, Kathleen, how can one help looking? We'll go back to the
atoms.
'How do they know their places?' you asked, or should have asked. Yes,
and they have to do much more than know them: they have to find their
way to them, and that quietly and at once, without running against each
other.
We may, indeed, state it briefly thus:--Suppose you have to build a
castle, with towers and roofs and buttresses, out of bricks of a given
shape, and that these bricks are all lying in a huge heap at the bottom,
in utter confusion, upset out of carts at random. You would have to draw
a great many plans, and count all your bricks, and be sure you had
enough for this and that tower, before you began, and then you would
have to lay your foundation, and add layer by layer, in order, slowly.
But how would you be astonished, in these melancholy days, when children
don't read children's books, nor believe any more in fairies, if
suddenly a real benevolent fairy, in a bright brick-red gown, were to
rise in the midst of the red bricks, and to tap the heap of them with
her wand, and say: 'Bricks, bricks, to your places!' and then you saw in
an instant the whole heap rise in the air, like a swarm of red bees,
and--you have been used to see bees make a honeycomb, and to think that
strange enough, but now you would see the honeycomb make itself!--You
want to ask something, Florrie, by the look of your eyes.
FLORRIE. Are they turned into real bees, with stings?
L. No, Florrie; you are only to fancy flying bricks, as you saw the
slates flying from the roof the other day in the storm; only those
slates didn't seem to know where they were going, and, besides, were
going where they had no business: but my spell-bound bricks, though they
have no wings, and what is worse, no heads and no eyes, yet find their
way in the air just where they should settle, into towers and roofs,
each flying to his place and fastening there at the right moment, so
that every other one shall fit to him in his turn.
LILY. But who are the fairies, then, who build the crystals?
L. There is one great fairy, Lily, who builds much more than crystals;
but she builds these also. I dreamed that I saw her building a pyramid,
the other day, as she used to do, for the Pharaohs.
ISABEL. But that was only a dream?
L. Some dreams are truer than some wakings, Isabel; but I won't tell it
you unless you like.
ISABEL. Oh, please, please.
L. You are all such wise children, there's no talking to you; you won't
believe anything.
LILY. No, we are not wise, and we will believe anything, when you say we
ought.
L. Well, it came about this way. Sibyl, do you recollect that evening
when we had been looking at your old cave by Cumae, and wondering why you
didn't live there still; and then we wondered how old you were; and
Egypt said you wouldn't tell, and nobody else could tell but she; and
you laughed--I thought very gaily for a Sibyl--and said you would
harness a flock of cranes for us, and we might fly over to Egypt if we
liked, and see.
SIBYL. Yes, and you went, and couldn't find out after all!
L. Why, you know, Egypt had been just doubling that third pyramid of
hers;[146] and making a new entrance into it; and a fine entrance it
was! First, we had to go through an ante-room, which had both its doors
blocked up with stones; and then we had three granite portcullises to
pull up, one after another; and the moment we had got under them, Egypt
signed to somebody above; and down they came again behind us, with a
roar like thunder, only louder; then we got into a passage fit for
nobody but rats, and Egypt wouldn't go any further herself, but said we
might go on if we liked; and so we came to a hole in the pavement, and
then to a granite trap-door--and then we thought we had gone quite far
enough, and came back, and Egypt laughed at us.
EGYPT. You would not have had me take my crown off, and stoop all the
way down a passage fit only for rats?
L. It was not the crown, Egypt--you know that very well. It was the
flounces that would not let you go any farther. I suppose, however, you
wear them as typical of the inundation of the Nile, so it is all right.
ISABEL. Why didn't you take me with you? Where rats can go, mice can. I
wouldn't have come back.
L. No, mousie; you would have gone on by yourself, and you might have
waked one of Pasht's cats.[147] and it would have eaten you. I was very
glad you were not there. But after all this, I suppose the imagination
of the heavy granite blocks and the underground ways had troubled me,
and dreams are often shaped in a strange opposition to the impressions
that have caused them; and from all that we had been reading in Bunsen
about stones that couldn't be lifted with levers, I began to dream about
stones that lifted themselves with wings.
SIBYL. Now you must just tell us all about it.
L. I dreamed that I was standing beside the lake, out of whose clay the
bricks were made for the great pyramid of Asychis.[148] They had just
been all finished, and were lying by the lake margin, in long ridges,
like waves. It was near evening; and as I looked towards the sunset, I
saw a thing like a dark pillar standing where the rock of the desert
stoops to the Nile valley. I did not know there was a pillar there, and
wondered at it; and it grew larger, and glided nearer, becoming like the
form of a man, but vast, and it did not move its feet, but glided like a
pillar of sand. And as it drew nearer, I looked by chance past it,
towards the sun; and saw a silver cloud, which was of all the clouds
closest to the sun (and in one place crossed it), draw itself back from
the sun, suddenly. And it turned, and shot towards the dark pillar;
leaping in an arch, like an arrow out of a bow. And I thought it was
lightning; but when it came near the shadowy pillar, it sank slowly down
beside it, and changed into the shape of a woman, very beautiful, and
with a strength of deep calm in her blue eyes. She was robed to the feet
with a white robe; and above that, to her knees, by the cloud which I
had seen across the sun; but all the golden ripples of it had become
plumes, so that it had changed into two bright wings like those of a
vulture, which wrapped round her to her knees. She had a weaver's
shuttle hanging over her shoulder, by the thread of it, and in her left
hand, arrows, tipped with fire.
ISABEL (_clapping her hands_). Oh! it was Neith, it was Neith! I know
now.
L. Yes; it was Neith herself; and as the two great spirits came nearer
to me, I saw they were the Brother and Sister--the pillared shadow was
the Greater Pthah.[149] And I heard them speak, and the sound of their
words was like a distant singing. I could not understand the words one
by one; yet their sense came to me; and so I knew that Neith had come
down to see her brother's work, and the work that he had put into the
mind of the king to make his servants do. And she was displeased at it;
because she saw only pieces of dark clay: and no porphyry, nor marble,
nor any fair stone that men might engrave the figures of the gods upon.
And she blamed her brother, and said, 'Oh, Lord of truth! is this then
thy will, that men should mould only four-square pieces of clay: and the
forms of the gods no more?' Then the Lord of truth sighed, and said,
'Oh! sister, in truth they do not love us; why should they set up our
images? Let them do what they may, and not lie--let them make their clay
four-square; and labour; and perish.'
Then Neith's dark blue eyes grew darker, and she said, 'Oh, Lord of
truth! why should they love us? their love is vain; or fear us? for
their fear is base. Yet let them testify of us, that they knew we lived
for ever.'
But the Lord of truth answered, 'They know, and yet they know not. Let
them keep silence; for their silence only is truth.'
But Neith answered, 'Brother, wilt thou also make league with Death,
because Death is true? Oh! thou potter, who hast cast these human things
from thy wheel, many to dishonour, and few to honour; wilt thou not let
them so much as see my face; but slay them in slavery?'
But Pthah only answered, 'Let them build, sister, let them build.'
And Neith answered, 'What shall they build, if I build not with them?'
And Pthah drew with his measuring rod upon the sand. And I saw suddenly,
drawn on the sand, the outlines of great cities, and of vaults, and
domes, and aqueducts, and bastions, and towers, greater than obelisks,
covered with black clouds. And the wind blew ripples of sand amidst the
lines that Pthah drew, and the moving sand was like the marching of men.
But I saw that wherever Neith looked at the lines, they faded, and were
effaced.
'Oh, Brother!' she said at last, 'what is this vanity? If I, who am
Lady of wisdom, do not mock the children of men, why shouldst thou mock
them, who art Lord of truth?' But Pthah answered, 'They thought to bind
me; and they shall be bound. They shall labour in the fire for vanity.'
And Neith said, looking at the sand, 'Brother, there is no true labour
here--there is only weary life and wasteful death.'
And Pthah answered, 'Is it not truer labour, sister, than thy sculpture
of dreams?'
Then Neith smiled; and stopped suddenly.
She looked to the sun; its edge touched the horizon-edge of the desert.
Then she looked to the long heaps of pieces of clay, that lay, each with
its blue shadow, by the lake shore.
'Brother,' she said, 'how long will this pyramid of thine be in
building?'
'Thoth will have sealed the scroll of the years ten times, before the
summit is laid.'
'Brother, thou knowest not how to teach thy children to labour,'
answered Neith. 'Look! I must follow Phre beyond Atlas; shall I build
your pyramid for you before he goes down?' And Pthah answered, 'Yea,
sister, if thou canst put thy winged shoulders to such work.' And Neith
drew herself to her height; and I heard a clashing pass through the
plumes of her wings, and the asp stood up on her helmet, and fire
gathered in her eyes. And she took one of the flaming arrows out of the
sheaf in her left hand, and stretched it out over the heaps of clay. And
they rose up like flights of locusts, and spread themselves in the air,
so that it grew dark in a moment. Then Neith designed them places with
her arrow point; and they drew into ranks, like dark clouds laid level
at morning. Then Neith pointed with her arrow to the north, and to the
south, and to the east, and to the west, and the flying motes of earth
drew asunder into four great ranked crowds; and stood, one in the north,
and one in the south, and one in the east, and one in the west--one
against another. Then Neith spread her wings wide for an instant, and
closed them with a sound like the sound of a rushing sea; and waved her
hand towards the foundation of the pyramid, where it was laid on the
brow of the desert. And the four flocks drew together and sank down,
like sea-birds settling to a level rock; and when they met, there was a
sudden flame, as broad as the pyramid, and as high as the clouds; and it
dazzled me; and I closed my eyes for an instant; and when I looked
again, the pyramid stood on its rock, perfect; and purple with the light
from the edge of the sinking sun.
THE YOUNGER CHILDREN (_variously pleased_). I'm so glad! How nice! But
what did Pthah say?
L. Neith did not wait to hear what he would say. When I turned back to
look at her, she was gone; and I only saw the level white cloud form
itself again, close to the arch of the sun as it sank. And as the last
edge of the sun disappeared, the form of Pthah faded into a mighty
shadow, and so passed away.
EGYPT. And was Neith's pyramid left?
L. Yes; but you could not think, Egypt, what a strange feeling of utter
loneliness came over me when the presence of the two gods passed away.
It seemed as if I had never known what it was to be alone before; and
the unbroken line of the desert was terrible.
EGYPT. I used to feel that, when I was queen: sometimes I had to carve
gods, for company, all over my palace. I would fain have seen real ones,
if I could.
L. But listen a moment yet, for that was not quite all my dream. The
twilight drew swiftly to the dark, and I could hardly see the great
pyramid; when there came a heavy murmuring sound in the air; and a
horned beetle, with terrible claws, fell on the sand at my feet, with a
blow like the beat of a hammer. Then it stood up on its hind claws, and
waved its pincers at me: and its fore claws became strong arms, and
hands; one grasping real iron pincers, and the other a huge hammer; and
it had a helmet on its head, without any eyelet holes, that I could see.
And its two hind claws became strong crooked legs, with feet bent
inwards. And so there stood by me a dwarf, in glossy black armour,
ribbed and embossed like a beetle's back, leaning on his hammer. And I
could not speak for wonder; but he spoke with a murmur like the dying
away of a beat upon a bell. He said, 'I will make Neith's great pyramid
small. I am the lower Pthah; and have power over fire. I can wither the
strong things, and strengthen the weak; and everything that is great I
can make small, and everything that is little I can make great.' Then he
turned to the angle of the pyramid and limped towards it. And the
pyramid grew deep purple; and then red like blood, and then pale
rose-colour, like fire. And I saw that it glowed with fire from within.
And the lower Pthah touched it with the hand that held the pincers; and
it sank down like the sand in an hour-glass,--then drew itself together,
and sank, still, and became nothing, it seemed to me; but the armed
dwarf stooped down, and took it into his hand, and brought it to me,
saying, 'Everything that is great I can make like this pyramid; and give
into men's hands to destroy.' And I saw that he had a little pyramid in
his hand, with as many courses in it as the large one; and built like
that, only so small. And because it glowed still, I was afraid to touch
it; but Pthah said, 'Touch it--for I have bound the fire within it, so
that it cannot burn.' So I touched it, and took it into my own hand; and
it was cold; only red, like a ruby. And Pthah laughed, and became like a
beetle again, and buried himself in the sand, fiercely; throwing it back
over his shoulders. And it seemed to me as if he would draw me down with
him into the sand; and I started back, and woke, holding the little
pyramid so fast in my hand that it hurt me.
EGYPT. Holding WHAT in your hand?
L. The little pyramid.
EGYPT. Neith's pyramid?
L. Neith's, I believe; though not built for Asychis. I know only that it
is a little rosy transparent pyramid, built of more courses of bricks
than I can count, it being made so small. You don't believe me, of
course, Egyptian infidel; but there it is. (_Giving crystal of rose
Fluor._)
(_Confused examination by crowded audience, over each
other's shoulders and under each other's arms.
Disappointment begins to manifest itself._)
SIBYL (_not quite knowing why she and others are disappointed_). But you
showed us this the other day!
L. Yes; but you would not look at it the other day.
SIBYL. But was all that fine dream only about this?
L. What finer thing could a dream be about than this! It is small, if
you will; but when you begin to think of things rightly, the ideas of
smallness and largeness pass away. The making of this pyramid was in
reality just as wonderful as the dream I have been telling you, and just
as incomprehensible. It was not, I suppose, as swift, but quite as grand
things are done as swiftly. When Neith makes crystals of snow, it needs
a great deal more marshalling of the atoms, by her flaming arrows, than
it does to make crystals like this one; and that is done in a moment.
EGYPT. But how you _do_ puzzle us! Why do you say Neith does it? You
don't mean that she is a real spirit, do you?
L. What _I_ mean, is of little consequence. What the Egyptians meant,
who called her 'Neith,'--or Homer, who called her 'Athena,'--or Solomon,
who called her by a word which the Greeks render as 'Sophia,' you must
judge for yourselves. But her testimony is always the same, and all
nations have received it: 'I was by Him as one brought up with Him, and
I was daily His delight; rejoicing in the habitable parts of the earth,
and my delights were with the sons of men.'
MARY. But is not that only a personification?
L. If it be, what will you gain by unpersonifying it, or what right have
you to do so? Cannot you accept the image given you, in its life; and
listen, like children, to the words which chiefly belong to you as
children: 'I love them that love me, and those that seek me early shall
find me?'
(_They are all quiet for a minute or two; questions begin to
appear in their eyes._)
I cannot talk to you any more to-day. Take that rose-crystal away with
you and think.
FOOTNOTES:
[146] Note i.
[147] Note iii.
[148] Note ii.
[149] Note iii.
LECTURE III.
_THE CRYSTAL LIFE._
_A very dull Lecture, wilfully brought upon themselves by
the elder children. Some of the young ones have, however,
managed to get in by mistake._ SCENE, _the Schoolroom._
L. So I am to stand up here merely to be asked questions, to-day, Miss
Mary, am I?
MARY. Yes; and you must answer them plainly; without telling us any more
stories. You are quite spoiling the children: the poor little things'
heads are turning round like kaleidoscopes; and they don't know in the
least what you mean. Nor do we old ones, either, for that matter: to-day
you must really tell us nothing but facts.
L. I am sworn; but you won't like it, a bit.
MARY. Now, first of all, what do you mean by 'bricks?'--Are the smallest
particles of minerals all of some accurate shape, like bricks?
L. I do not know, Miss Mary; I do not even know if anybody knows. The
smallest atoms which are visibly and practically put together to make
large crystals, may better be described as 'limited in fixed directions'
than as 'of fixed forms.' But I can tell you nothing clear about
ultimate atoms: you will find the idea of little bricks, or, perhaps, of
little spheres, available for all the uses you will have to put it to.
MARY. Well, it's very provoking; one seems always to be stopped just
when one is coming to the very thing one wants to know.
L. No, Mary, for we should not wish to know anything but what is easily
and assuredly knowable. There's no end to it If I could show you, or
myself, a group of ultimate atoms, quite clearly, in this magnifying
glass, we should both be presently vexed because we could not break them
in two pieces, and see their insides.
MARY. Well then, next, what do you mean by the flying of the bricks?
What is it the atoms do, that is like flying?
L. When they are dissolved, or uncrystallised, they are really separated
from each other, like a swarm of gnats in the air, or like a shoal of
fish in the sea;--generally at about equal distances. In currents of
solutions, or at different depths of them, one part may be more full of
the dissolved atoms than another; but on the whole, you may think of
them as equidistant, like the spots in the print of your gown. If they
are separated by force of heat only, the substance is said to be melted;
if they are separated by any other substance, as particles of sugar by
water, they are said to be 'dissolved.' Note this distinction carefully,
all of you.
DORA. I will be very particular. When next you tell me there isn't sugar
enough in your tea, I will say, 'It is not yet dissolved, sir.'
L. I tell you what shall be dissolved, Miss Dora; and that's the present
parliament, if the members get too saucy.
(DORA _folds her hands and casts down her eyes._)
L. (_proceeds in state_). Now, Miss Mary, you know already, I believe,
that nearly everything will melt, under a sufficient heat, like wax.
Limestone melts (under pressure); sand melts; granite melts; the lava of
a volcano is a mixed mass of many kinds of rocks, melted: and any melted
substance nearly always, if not always, crystallises as it cools; the
more slowly the more perfectly. Water melts at what we call the
freezing, but might just as wisely, though not as conveniently, call the
melting, point; and radiates as it cools into the most beautiful of all
known crystals. Glass melts at a greater heat, and will crystallise, if
you let it cool slowly enough, in stars, much like snow. Gold needs more
heat to melt it, but crystallises also exquisitely, as I will presently
show you. Arsenic and sulphur crystallise from their vapours. Now in any
of these cases, either of melted, dissolved, or vaporous bodies, the
particles are usually separated from each other, either by heat, or by
an intermediate substance; and in crystallising they are both brought
nearer to each other, and packed, so as to fit as closely as possible:
the essential part of the business being not the bringing together, but
the packing. Who packed your trunk for you, last holidays, Isabel?
ISABEL. Lily does, always.
L. And how much can you allow for Lily's good packing, in guessing what
will go into the trunk?
ISABEL. Oh! I bring twice as much as the trunk holds. Lily always gets
everything in.
LILY. Ah! but, Isey, if you only knew what a time it takes! and since
you've had those great hard buttons on your frocks, I can't do anything
with them. Buttons won't go anywhere, you know.
L. Yes, Lily, it would be well if she only knew what a time it takes;
and I wish any of us knew what a time crystallisation takes, for that is
consummately fine packing. The particles of the rock are thrown down,
just as Isabel brings her things--in a heap; and innumerable Lilies, not
of the valley, but of the rock, come to pack them. But it takes such a
time!
However, the best--out and out the best--way of understanding the thing,
is to crystallise yourselves.
THE AUDIENCE. Ourselves!
L. Yes; not merely as you did the other day, carelessly, on the
schoolroom forms; but carefully and finely, out in the playground. You
can play at crystallisation there as much as you please.
KATHLEEN _and_ JESSIE. Oh! how?--how?
L. First, you must put yourselves together, as close as you can, in the
middle of the grass, and form, for first practice any figure you like.
JESSIE. Any dancing figure, do you mean?
L. No; I mean a square, or a cross, or a diamond. Any figure you like,
standing close together. You had better outline it first on the turf,
with sticks, or pebbles, so as to see that it is rightly drawn; then get
into it and enlarge or diminish it at one side, till you are all quite
in it, and no empty space left.
DORA. Crinoline and all?
L. The crinoline may stand eventually for rough crystalline surface,
unless you pin it in; and then you may make a polished crystal of
yourselves.
LILY. Oh, we'll pin it in--we'll pin it in!
L. Then, when you are all in the figure, let every one note her place,
and who is next her on each side; and let the outsiders count how many
places they stand from the corners.
KATHLEEN. Yes, yes,--and then?
L. Then you must scatter all over the playground--right over it from
side to side, and end to end; and put yourselves all at equal distances
from each other, everywhere. You needn't mind doing it very accurately,
but so as to be nearly equidistant; not less than about three yards
apart from each other, on every side.
JESSIE. We can easily cut pieces of string of equal length, to hold. And
then?
L. Then, at a given signal, let everybody walk, at the same rate,
towards the outlined figure in the middle. You had better sing as you
walk; that will keep you in good time. And as you close in towards it,
let each take her place, and the next comers fit themselves in beside
the first ones, till you are all in the figure again.
KATHLEEN. Oh! how we shall run against each other! What fun it will be!
L. No, no, Miss Katie; I can't allow any running against each other. The
atoms never do that, whatever human creatures do. You must all know your
places, and find your way to them without jostling.
LILY. But how ever shall we do that?
ISABEL. Mustn't the ones in the middle be the nearest, and the outside
ones farther off--when we go away to scatter, I mean?
L. Yes; you must be very careful to keep your order; you will soon find
out how to do it; it is only like soldiers forming square, except that
each must stand still in her place as she reaches it, and the others
come round her; and you will have much more complicated figures,
afterwards, to form, than squares.
ISABEL. I'll put a stone at my place: then I shall know it.
L. You might each nail a bit of paper to the turf, at your place, with
your name upon it: but it would be of no use, for if you don't know your
places, you will make a fine piece of business of it, while you are
looking for your names. And, Isabel, if with a little head, and eyes,
and a brain (all of them very good and serviceable of their kind, as
such things go), you think you cannot know your place without a stone at
it, after examining it well,--how do you think each atom knows its
place, when it never was there before, and there's no stone at it?
ISABEL. But does every atom know its place?
L. How else could it get there?
MARY. Are they not attracted to their places?
L. Cover a piece of paper with spots, at equal intervals; and then
imagine any kind of attraction you choose, or any law of attraction, to
exist between the spots, and try how, on that permitted supposition, you
can attract them into the figure of a Maltese cross, in the middle of
the paper.
MARY (_having tried it_). Yes; I see that I cannot:--one would need all
kinds of attractions, in different ways, at different places. But you do
not mean that the atoms are alive?
L. What is it to be alive?
DORA. There now; you're going to be provoking, I know.
L. I do not see why it should be provoking to be asked what it is to be
alive. Do you think you don't know whether you are alive or not?
(ISABEL _skips to the end of the room and back._)
L. Yes, Isabel, that's all very fine; and you and I may call that being
alive: but a modern philosopher calls it being in a 'mode of motion.' It
requires a certain quantity of heat to take you to the sideboard; and
exactly the same quantity to bring you back again. That's all.
ISABEL. No, it isn't. And besides, I'm not hot.
L. I am, sometimes, at the way they talk. However, you know, Isabel, you
might have been a particle of a mineral, and yet have been carried round
the room, or anywhere else, by chemical forces, in the liveliest way.
ISABEL. Yes; but I wasn't carried: I carried myself.
L. The fact is, mousie, the difficulty is not so much to say what makes
a thing alive, as what makes it a Self. As soon as you are shut off from
the rest of the universe into a Self, you begin to be alive.
VIOLET (_indignant_). Oh, surely--surely that cannot be so. Is not all
the life of the soul in communion, not separation?
L. There can be no communion where there is no distinction. But we shall
be in an abyss of metaphysics presently, if we don't look out; and
besides, we must not be too grand, to-day, for the younger children.
We'll be grand, some day, by ourselves, if we must. (_The younger
children are not pleased, and prepare to remonstrate; but, knowing by
experience, that all conversations in which the word 'communion' occurs,
are unintelligible, think better of it._) Meantime, for broad answer
about the atoms. I do not think we should use the word 'life,' of any
energy which does not belong to a given form. A seed, or an egg, or a
young animal are properly called 'alive' with respect to the force
belonging to those forms, which consistently develops that form, and no
other. But the force which crystallises a mineral appears to be chiefly
external, and it does not produce an entirely determinate and individual
form, limited in size, but only an aggregation, in which some limiting
laws must be observed.
MARY. But I do not see much difference, that way, between a crystal and
a tree.
L. Add, then, that the mode of the energy in a living thing implies a
continual change in its elements; and a period for its end. So you may
define life by its attached negative, death; and still more by its
attached positive, birth. But I won't be plagued any more about this,
just now; if you choose to think the crystals alive, do, and welcome.
Rocks have always been called 'living' in their native place.
MARY. There's one question more; then I've done.
L. Only one?
MARY. Only one.
L. But if it is answered, won't it turn into two?
MARY. No; I think it will remain single, and be comfortable.
L. Let me hear it.
MARY. You know, we are to crystallise ourselves out of the whole
playground. Now, what playground have the minerals? Where are they
scattered before they are crystallised; and where are the crystals
generally made?
L. That sounds to me more like three questions than one, Mary. If it is
only one, it is a wide one.
MARY. I did not say anything about the width of it.
L. Well, I must keep it within the best compass I can. When rocks either
dry from a moist state, or cool from a heated state, they necessarily
alter in bulk; and cracks, or open spaces, form in them in all
directions. These cracks must be filled up with solid matter, or the
rock would eventually become a ruinous heap. So, sometimes by water,
sometimes by vapour, sometimes nobody knows how, crystallisable matter
is brought from somewhere, and fastens itself in these open spaces, so
as to bind the rock together again, with crystal cement. A vast quantity
of hollows are formed in lavas by bubbles of gas, just as the holes are
left in bread well baked. In process of time these cavities are
generally filled with various crystals.
MARY. But where does the crystallising substance come from?
L. Sometimes out of the rock itself; sometimes from below or above,
through the veins. The entire substance of the contracting rock may be
filled with liquid, pressed into it so as to fill every pore;--or with
mineral vapour;--or it may be so charged at one place, and empty at
another. There's no end to the 'may be's.' But all that you need fancy,
for our present purpose, is that hollows in the rocks, like the caves in
Derbyshire, are traversed by liquids or vapour containing certain
elements in a more or less free or separate state, which crystallise on
the cave walls.
SIBYL. There now;--Mary has had all her questions answered: it's my turn
to have mine.
L. Ah, there's a conspiracy among you, I see. I might have guessed as
much.
DORA. I'm sure you ask us questions enough! How can you have the heart,
when you dislike so to be asked them yourself?
L. My dear child, if people do not answer questions, it does not matter
how many they are asked, because they've no trouble with them. Now, when
I ask you questions, I never expect to be answered; but when you ask me,
you always do; and it's not fair.
DORA. Very well, we shall understand, next time.
SIBYL. No, but seriously, we all want to ask one thing more, quite
dreadfully.
L. And I don't want to be asked it, quite dreadfully; but you'll have
your own way, of course.
SIBYL. We none of us understand about the lower Pthah. It was not merely
yesterday; but in all we have read about him in Wilkinson, or in any
book, we cannot understand what the Egyptians put their god into that
ugly little deformed shape for.
L. Well, I'm glad it's that sort of question; because I can answer
anything I like, to that.
EGYPT. Anything you like will do quite well for us; we shall be pleased
with the answer, if you are.
L. I am not so sure of that, most gracious queen; for I must begin by
the statement that queens seem to have disliked all sorts of work, in
those days, as much as some queens dislike sewing to-day.
EGYPT. Now, it's too bad! and just when I was trying to say the
civillest thing I could!
L. But, Egypt, why did you tell me you disliked sewing so?
EGYPT. Did not I show you how the thread cuts my fingers? and I always
get cramp, somehow, in my neck, if I sew long.
L. Well, I suppose the Egyptian queens thought every body got cramp in
their neck, if they sewed long; and that thread always cut people's
fingers. At all events, every kind of manual labour was despised both by
them, and the Greeks; and, while they owned the real good and fruit of
it, they yet held it a degradation to all who practised it. Also,
knowing the laws of life thoroughly, they perceived that the special
practice necessary to bring any manual art to perfection strengthened
the body distortedly; one energy or member gaining at the expense of the
rest. They especially dreaded and despised any kind of work that had to
be done near fire: yet, feeling what they owed to it in metal-work, as
the basis of all other work, they expressed this mixed reverence and
scorn in the varied types of the lame Hephaestus, and the lower Pthah.
SIBYL. But what did you mean by making him say 'everything great I can
make small, and everything small great?'
L. I had my own separate meaning in that. We have seen in modern times
the power of the lower Pthah developed in a separate way, which no Greek
nor Egyptian could have conceived. It is the character of pure and
eyeless manual labour to conceive everything as subjected to it: and, in
reality, to disgrace and diminish all that is so subjected; aggrandising
itself, and the thought of itself, at the expense of all noble things. I
heard an orator, and a good one too, at the Working Men's College, the
other day, make a great point in a description of our railroads; saying,
with grandly conducted emphasis, 'They have made man greater, and the
world less.' His working audience were mightily pleased; they thought it
so very fine a thing to be made bigger themselves; and all the rest of
the world less. I should have enjoyed asking them (but it would have
been a pity--they were so pleased), how much less they would like to
have the world made;--and whether, at present, those of them really felt
the biggest men, who lived in the least houses.
SIBYL. But then, why did you make Pthah say that he could make weak
things strong, and small things great?
L. My dear, he is a boaster and self-assertor, by nature; but it is so
far true. For instance, we used to have a fair in our neighbourhood--a
very fine fair we thought it. You never saw such an one; but if you look
at the engraving of Turner's 'St. Catherine's Hill,' you will see what
it was like. There were curious booths, carried on poles; and
peep-shows; and music, with plenty of drums and cymbals; and much
barley-sugar and gingerbread, and the like: and in the alleys of this
fair the London populace would enjoy themselves, after their fashion,
very thoroughly. Well, the little Pthah set to work upon it one day; he
made the wooden poles into iron ones, and put them across, like his own
crooked legs, so that you always fall over them if you don't look where
you are going; and he turned all the canvas into panes of glass, and put
it up on his iron cross-poles; and made all the little booths into one
great booth; and people said it was very fine, and a new style of
architecture; and Mr. Dickens said nothing was ever like it in
Fairyland, which was very true. And then the little Pthah set to work to
put fine fairings in it; and he painted the Nineveh bulls afresh, with
the blackest eyes he could paint (because he had none himself), and he
got the angels down from Lincoln choir, and gilded their wings like his
gingerbread of old times; and he sent for everything else he could think
of, and put it in his booth. There are the casts of Niobe and her
children; and the Chimpanzee; and the wooden Caffres and New-Zealanders;
and the Shakespeare House; and Le Grand Blondin, and Le Petit Blondin;
and Handel; and Mozart; and no end of shops, and buns, and beer; and all
the little-Pthah-worshippers say, never was anything so sublime!
SIBYL. Now, do you mean to say you never go to these Crystal Palace
concerts? They're as good as good can be.
L. I don't go to the thundering things with a million of bad voices in
them. When I want a song, I get Julia Mannering and Lucy Bertram and
Counsellor Pleydell to sing 'We be three poor Mariners' to me; then I've
no headache next morning. But I do go to the smaller concerts, when I
can; for they are very good, as you say, Sibyl: and I always get a
reserved seat somewhere near the orchestra, where I am sure I can see
the kettle-drummer drum.
SIBYL. Now _do_ be serious, for one minute.
L. I am serious--never was more so. You know one can't see the
modulation of violinists' fingers, but one can see the vibration of the
drummer's hand; and it's lovely.
SIBYL. But fancy going to a concert, not to hear, but to see!
L. Yes, it is very absurd. The quite right thing, I believe, is to go
there to talk. I confess, however, that in most music, when very well
done, the doing of it is to me the chiefly interesting part of the
business. I'm always thinking how good it would be for the fat,
supercilious people, who care so little for their half-crown's worth, to
be set to try and do a half-crown's worth of anything like it.
MARY. But surely that Crystal Palace is a great good and help to the
people of London?
L. The fresh air of the Norwood hills is, or was, my dear; but they are
spoiling that with smoke as fast as they can. And the palace (as they
call it) is a better place for them, by much, than the old fair; and it
is always there, instead of for three days only; and it shuts up at
proper hours of night. And good use may be made of the things in it, if
you know how: but as for its teaching the people, it will teach them
nothing but the lowest of the lower Pthah's work--nothing but hammer and
tongs. I saw a wonderful piece, of his doing, in the place, only the
other day. Some unhappy metal-worker--I am not sure if it was not a
metal-working firm--had taken three years to make a Golden eagle.
SIBYL. Of real gold?
L. No; of bronze, or copper, or some of their foul patent metal--it is
no matter what. I meant a model of our chief British eagle. Every
feather was made separately; and every filament of every feather
separately, and so joined on; and all the quills modelled of the right
length and right section, and at last the whole cluster of them fastened
together. You know, children, I don't think much of my own drawing; but
take my proud word for once, that when I go to the Zoological Gardens,
and happen to have a bit of chalk in my pocket, and the Gray Harpy will
sit, without screwing his head round, for thirty seconds,--I can do a
better thing of him in that time than the three years' work of this
industrious firm. For, during the thirty seconds, the eagle is my
object,--not myself; and during the three years, the firm's object, in
every fibre of bronze it made, was itself, and not the eagle. That is
the true meaning of the little Pthah's having no eyes--he can see only
himself. The Egyptian beetle was not quite the full type of him; our
northern ground beetle is a truer one. It is beautiful to see it at
work, gathering its treasures (such as they are) into little round
balls; and pushing them home with the strong wrong end of it,--head
downmost all the way,--like a modern political economist with his ball
of capital, declaring that a nation can stand on its vices better than
on its virtues. But away with you, children, now, for I'm getting cross.
DORA. I'm going down-stairs; I shall take care, at any rate, that there
are no little Pthahs in the kitchen cupboards.
LECTURE IV.
_THE CRYSTAL ORDERS._
_A working Lecture, in the large Schoolroom; with
experimental Interludes The great bell has rung
unexpectedly._
KATHLEEN (_entering disconsolate, though first at the summons_). Oh
dear, oh dear, what a day! Was ever anything so provoking! just when we
wanted to crystallise ourselves;--and I'm sure it's going to rain all
day long.
L. So am I, Kate. The sky has quite an Irish way with it But I don't see
why Irish girls should also look so dismal. Fancy that you don't want to
crystallise yourselves: you didn't, the day before yesterday, and you
were not unhappy when it rained then.
FLORRIE. Ah! but we do want to-day; and the rain's so tiresome.
L. That is to say, children, that because you are all the richer by the
expectation of playing at a new game, you choose to make yourselves
unhappier than when you had nothing to look forward to, but the old
ones.
ISABEL. But then, to have to wait--wait--wait; and before we've tried
it;--and perhaps it will rain to-morrow, too!
L. It may also rain the day after to-morrow. We can make ourselves
uncomfortable to any extent with perhapses, Isabel. You may stick
perhapses into your little minds, like pins, till you are as
uncomfortable as the Lilliputians made Gulliver with their arrows, when
he would not lie quiet.
ISABEL. But what _are_ we to do to-day?
L. To be quiet, for one thing, like Gulliver when he saw there was
nothing better to be done. And to practise patience. I can tell you
children, _that_ requires nearly as much practising as music; and we are
continually losing our lessons when the master comes. Now, to-day,
here's a nice little adagio lesson for us, if we play it properly.
ISABEL. But I don't like that sort of lesson. I can't play it properly.
L. Can you play a Mozart sonata yet, Isabel? The more need to practise.
All one's life is a music, if one touches the notes rightly, and in
time. But there must be no hurry.
KATHLEEN. I'm sure there's no music in stopping in on a rainy day.
L. There's no music in a 'rest,' Katie, that I know of: but there's the
making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the
life-melody; and scrambling on without counting--not that it's easy to
count; but nothing on which so much depends ever _is_ easy. People are
always talking of perseverance, and courage, and fortitude; but patience
is the finest and worthiest part of fortitude,--and the rarest, too. I
know twenty persevering girls for one patient one: but it is only that
twenty-first who can do her work, out and out, or enjoy it. For patience
lies at the root of all pleasures, as well as of all powers. Hope
herself ceases to be happiness, when Impatience companions her.
(ISABEL _and_ LILY _sit down on the floor, and fold their
hands. The others follow their example._)
Good children! but that's not quite the way of it, neither. Folded hands
are not necessarily resigned ones. The Patience who really smiles at
grief usually stands, or walks, or even runs: she seldom sits; though
she may sometimes have to do it, for many a day, poor thing, by
monuments; or like Chaucer's, 'with face pale, upon a hill of sand.' But
we are not reduced to that to-day. Suppose we use this calamitous
forenoon to choose the shapes we are to crystallise into? we know
nothing about them yet.
(_The pictures of resignation rise from the floor, not in
the patientest manner. General applause._)
MARY _(with one or two others_). The very thing we wanted to ask you
about!
LILY. We looked at the books about crystals, but they are so dreadful.
L. Well, Lily, we must go through a little dreadfulness, that's a fact:
no road to any good knowledge is wholly among the lilies and the grass;
there is rough climbing to be done always. But the crystal-books are a
little _too_ dreadful, most of them, I admit; and we shall have to be
content with very little of their help. You know, as you cannot stand on
each other's heads, you can only make yourselves into the sections of
crystals,--the figures they show when they are cut through; and we will
choose some that will be quite easy. You shall make diamonds of
yourselves----
ISABEL. Oh, no, no! we won't be diamonds, please.
L. Yes, you shall, Isabel; they are very pretty things, if the
jewellers, and the kings and queens, would only let them alone. You
shall make diamonds of yourselves, and rubies of yourselves, and
emeralds; and Irish diamonds; two of those--with Lily in the middle of
one, which will be very orderly, of course; and Kathleen in the middle
of the other, for which we will hope the best;--and you shall make
Derbyshire spar of yourselves, and Iceland spar, and gold, and silver,
and--Quicksilver there's enough of in you, without any making.
MARY. Now, you know, the children will be getting quite wild: we must
really get pencils and paper, and begin properly.
L. Wait a minute, Miss Mary; I think as we've the school room clear
to-day, I'll try to give you some notion of the three great orders or
ranks of crystals, into which all the others seem more or less to fall.
We shall only want one figure a day, in the playground; and that can be
drawn in a minute: but the general ideas had better be fastened first. I
must show you a great many minerals; so let me have three tables wheeled
into the three windows, that we may keep our specimens separate;--we
will keep the three orders of crystals on separate tables.
(_First Interlude, of pushing and pulling, and spreading of
baize covers._ VIOLET, _not particularly minding what she is
about, gets herself jammed into a corner, and bid to stand
out of the way; on which she devotes herself to
meditation._)
VIOLET (_after interval of meditation_). How strange it is that
everything seems to divide into threes!
L. Everything doesn't divide into threes. Ivy won't, though shamrock
will; and daisies won't, though lilies will.
VIOLET. But all the nicest things seem to divide into threes.
L. Violets won't.
VIOLET. No; I should think not, indeed! But I mean the great things.
L. I've always heard the globe had four quarters.
ISABEL. Well; but you know you said it hadn't any quarters at all. So
mayn't it really be divided into three?
L. If it were divided into no more than three, on the outside of it,
Isabel, it would be a fine world to live in; and if it were divided into
three in the inside of it, it would soon be no world to live in at all.
DORA. We shall never get to the crystals, at this rate. (_Aside to_
MARY.) He will get off into political economy before we know where we
are. (_Aloud._) But the crystals are divided into three, then?
L. No; but there are three general notions by which we may best get hold
of them. Then between these notions there are other notions.
LILY (_alarmed_). A great many? And shall we have to learn them all?
L. More than a great many--a quite infinite many. So you cannot learn
them all.
LILY (_greatly relieved_). Then may we only learn the three?
L. Certainly; unless, when you have got those three notions, you want to
have some more notions;--which would not surprise me. But we'll try for
the three, first. Katie, you broke your coral necklace this morning?
KATHLEEN. Oh! who told you? It was in jumping. I'm so sorry!
L. I'm very glad. Can you fetch me the beads of it?
KATHLEEN. I've lost some; here are the rest in my pocket, if I can only
get them out.
L. You mean to get them out some day, I suppose; so try now. I want
them.
(KATHLEEN _empties her pocket on the floor. The beads
disperse. The School disperses also. Second
Interlude--hunting piece._)
L. (_after waiting patiently for a quarter of an hour, to_ ISABEL, _who
comes up from under the table with her hair all about her ears, and the
last findable beads in her hand_). Mice are useful little things
sometimes. Now, mousie, I want all those beads crystallised. How many
ways are there of putting them in order?
ISABEL. Well, first one would string them, I suppose?
L. Yes, that's the first way. You cannot string ultimate atoms;
but you can put them in a row, and then they fasten themselves
together, somehow, into a long rod or needle. We will call these
'_Needle_-crystals.' What would be the next way?
ISABEL. I suppose, as we are to get together in the playground, when it
stops raining, in different shapes?
L. Yes; put the beads together, then, in the simplest form you can, to
begin with. Put them into a square, and pack them close.
ISABEL (_after careful endeavour_). I can't get them closer.
L. That will do. Now you may see, beforehand, that if you try to throw
yourselves into square in this confused way, you will never know your
places; so you had better consider every square as made of rods, put
side by side. Take four beads of equal size, first, Isabel; put them
into a little square. That, you may consider as made up of two rods of
two beads each. Then you can make a square a size larger, out of three
rods of three. Then the next square may be a size larger. How many rods,
Lily?
LILY. Four rods of four beads each, I suppose.
L. Yes, and then five rods of five, and so on. But now, look here; make
another square of four beads again. You see they leave a little opening
in the centre.
ISABEL (_pushing two opposite ones closer together_). Now they don't.
L. No; but now it isn't a square; and by pushing the two together you
have pushed the two others farther apart.
ISABEL. And yet, somehow, they all seem closer than they were!
L. Yes; for before, each of them only touched two of the others, but now
each of the two in the middle touches the other three. Take away one of
the outsiders, Isabel; now you have three in a triangle--the smallest
triangle you can make out of the beads. Now put a rod of three beads on
at one side. So, you have a triangle of six beads; but just the shape of
the first one. Next a rod of four on the side of that; and you have a
triangle of ten beads: then a rod of five on the side of that; and you
have a triangle of fifteen. Thus you have a square with five beads on
the side, and a triangle with five beads on the side; equal-sided,
therefore, like the square. So, however few or many you may be, you may
soon learn how to crystallise quickly into these two figures, which are
the foundation of form in the commonest, and therefore actually the most
important, as well as in the rarest, and therefore, by our esteem, the
most important, minerals of the world. Look at this in my hand.
VIOLET. Why, it is leaf-gold!
L. Yes; but beaten by no man's hammer; or rather, not beaten at all, but
woven. Besides, feel the weight of it. There is gold enough there to
gild the walls and ceiling, if it were beaten thin.
VIOLET. How beautiful! And it glitters like a leaf covered with frost.
L. You only think it so beautiful because you know it is gold. It is not
prettier, in reality, than a bit of brass: for it is Transylvanian gold;
and they say there is a foolish gnome in the mines there, who is always
wanting to live in the moon, and so alloys all the gold with a little
silver. I don't know how that may be: but the silver always _is_ in the
gold; and if he does it, it's very provoking of him, for no gold is
woven so fine anywhere else.
MARY (_who has been looking through her magnifying glass_). But this is
not woven. This is all made of little triangles.
L. Say 'patched,' then, if you must be so particular. But if you fancy
all those triangles, small as they are (and many of them are infinitely
small), made up again of rods, and those of grains, as we built our
great triangle of the beads, what word will you take for the
manufacture?
MAY. There's no word--it is beyond words.
L. Yes; and that would matter little, were it not beyond thoughts too.
But, at all events, this yellow leaf of dead gold, shed, not from the
ruined woodlands, but the ruined rocks, will help you to remember the
second kind of crystals, _Leaf_-crystals, or _Foliated_ crystals; though
I show you the form in gold first only to make a strong impression on
you, for gold is not generally, or characteristically, crystallised in
leaves; the real type of foliated crystals is this thing, Mica; which if
you once feel well, and break well, you will always know again; and you
will often have occasion to know it, for you will find it everywhere,
nearly, in hill countries.
KATHLEEN. If we break it well! May we break it?
L. To powder, if you like.
(_Surrenders plate of brown mica to public investigation.
Third Interlude. It sustains severely philosophical
treatment at all hands._)
FLORRIE. (_to whom the last fragments have descended_) Always leaves,
and leaves, and nothing but leaves, or white dust!
L. That dust itself is nothing but finer leaves.
(_Shows them to_ FLORRIE _through magnifying glass._)
ISABEL. (_peeping over_ FLORRIE'S _shoulder_). But then this bit under
the glass looks like that bit out of the glass! If we could break this
bit under the glass, what would it be like?
L. It would be all leaves still.
ISABEL. And then if we broke those again?
L. All less leaves still.
ISABEL (_impatient_). And if we broke them again, and again, and again,
and again, and again?
L. Well, I suppose you would come to a limit, if you could only see it.
Notice that the little flakes already differ somewhat from the large
ones: because I can bend them up and down, and they stay bent; while the
large flake, though it bent easily a little way, sprang back when you
let it go, and broke, when you tried to bend it far. And a large mass
would not bend at all.
MARY. Would that leaf gold separate into finer leaves, in the same way?
L. No; and therefore, as I told you, it is not a characteristic specimen
of a foliated crystallisation. The little triangles are portions of
solid crystals, and so they are in this, which looks like a black mica;
but you see it is made up of triangles like the gold, and stands, almost
accurately, as an intermediate link, in crystals, between mica and gold.
Yet this is the commonest, as gold the rarest, of metals.
MARY. Is it iron? I never saw iron so bright.
L. It is rust of iron, finely crystallised: from its resemblance to
mica, it is often called micaceous iron.
KATHLEEN. May we break this, too?
L. No, for I could not easily get such another crystal; besides, it
would not break like the mica; it is much harder. But take the glass
again, and look at the fineness of the jagged edges of the triangles
where they lap over each other. The gold has the same: but you see them
better here, terrace above terrace, countless, and in successive angles,
like superb fortified bastions.
MAY. But all foliated crystals are not made of triangles?
L. Far from it: mica is occasionally so, but usually of hexagons; and
here is a foliated crystal made of squares, which will show you that the
leaves of the rock-land have their summer green, as well as their
autumnal gold.
FLORRIE. Oh! oh! oh! (_jumps for joy_).
L. Did you never see a bit of green leaf before, Florrie?
FLORRIE. Yes, but never so bright as that, and not in a stone.
L. If you will look at the leaves of the trees in sunshine after a
shower, you will find they are much brighter than that; and surely they
are none the worse for being on stalks instead of in stones?
FLORRIE. Yes, but then there are so many of them, one never looks, I
suppose.
L. Now you have it, Florrie.
VIOLET (_sighing_). There are so many beautiful things we never see!
L. You need not sigh for that, Violet; but I will tell you what we
should all sigh for,--that there are so many ugly things we never see.
VIOLET. But we don't want to see ugly things!
L. You had better say, 'We don't want to suffer them.' You ought to be
glad in thinking how much more beauty God has made, than human eyes can
ever see; but not glad in thinking how much more evil man has made, than
his own soul can ever conceive, much more than his hands can ever heal.
VIOLET. I don't understand;--how is that like the leaves?
L. The same law holds in our neglect of multiplied pain, as in our
neglect of multiplied beauty. Florrie jumps for joy at sight of half an
inch of a green leaf in a brown stone; and takes more notice of it than
of all the green in the wood: and you, or I, or any of us, would be
unhappy if any single human creature beside us were in sharp pain; but
we can read, at breakfast, day after day, of men being killed, and of
women and children dying of hunger, faster than the leaves strew the
brooks in Vallombrosa;--and then go out to play croquet, as if nothing
had happened.
MAY. But we do not see the people being killed or dying.
L. You did not see your brother, when you got the telegram the other
day, saying he was ill, May; but you cried for him and played no
croquet. But we cannot talk of these things now; and what is more, you
must let me talk straight on, for a little while; and ask no questions
till I've done: for we branch ('exfoliate,' I should say,
mineralogically) always into something else,--though that's my fault
more than yours; but I must go straight on now. You have got a distinct
notion, I hope, of leaf-crystals; and you see the sort of look they
have: you can easily remember that 'folium' is Latin for a leaf, and
that the separate flakes of mica, or any other such stones, are called
'folia;' but, because mica is the most characteristic of these stones,
other things that are like it in structure are called 'micas;' thus we
have Uran-mica, which is the green leaf I showed you; and Copper-mica,
which is another like it, made chiefly of copper; and this foliated iron
is called 'micaceous iron.' You have then these two great orders,
Needle-crystals, made (probably) of grains in rows; and Leaf-crystals,
made (probably) of needles interwoven; now, lastly, there are crystals
of a third order, in heaps, or knots, or masses, which may be made,
either of leaves laid one upon another, or of needles bound like Roman
fasces; and mica itself, when it is well crystallised, puts itself into
such masses, as if to show us how others are made. Here is a brown
six-sided crystal, quite as beautifully chiselled at the sides as any
castle tower; but you see it is entirely built of folia of mica, one
laid above another, which break away the moment I touch the edge with my
knife. Now, here is another hexagonal tower, of just the same size and
colour, which I want you to compare with the mica carefully; but as I
cannot wait for you to do it just now, I must tell you quickly what main
differences to look for. First, you will feel it is far heavier than the
mica. Then, though its surface looks quite micaceous in the folia of it,
when you try them with the knife, you will find you cannot break them
away----
KATHLEEN. May I try?
L. Yes, you mistrusting Katie. Here's my strong knife for you.
(_Experimental pause._ KATHLEEN, _doing her best._) You'll have that
knife shutting on your finger presently, Kate; and I don't know a girl
who would like less to have her hand tied up for a week.
KATHLEEN (_who also does not like to be beaten--giving up the knife
despondently_). What _can_ the nasty hard thing be?
L. It is nothing but indurated clay, Kate: very hard set certainly, yet
not so hard as it might be. If it were thoroughly well crystallised, you
would see none of those micaceous fractures; and the stone would be
quite red and clear, all through.
KATHLEEN. Oh, cannot you show us one?
L. Egypt can, if you ask her; she has a beautiful one in the clasp of
her favourite bracelet.
KATHLEEN. Why, that's a ruby!
L. Well, so is that thing you've been scratching at.
KATHLEEN. My goodness!
(_Takes up the stone again, very delicately; and drops it.
General consternation._)