Then St. Barbara hung her head quite down, and said she was very sorry

she had been so foolish; and kissed Neith; and stood thinking a minute:

and then her eyes got bright again, and she said, she would go directly

and build a chapel with five windows in it; four for the four cardinal

virtues, and one for humility, in the middle, bigger than the rest. And

Neith very nearly laughed quite out, I thought; certainly her beautiful

lips lost all their sternness for an instant; then she said, 'Well,

love, build it, but do not put so many colours into your windows as you

usually do; else no one will be able to see to read, inside: and when it

is built, let a poor village priest consecrate it, and not an

archbishop.' St. Barbara started a little, I thought, and turned as if

to say something; but changed her mind, and gathered up her train, and

went out. And Neith bent herself again to her loom, in which she was

weaving a web of strange dark colours, I thought; but perhaps it was

only after the glittering of St. Barbara's embroidered train: and I

tried to make out the figures in Neith's web, and confused myself among

them, as one always does in dreams; and then the dream changed

altogether, and I found myself, all at once, among a crowd of little

Gothic and Egyptian spirits, who were quarrelling: at least the Gothic

ones were trying to quarrel; for the Egyptian ones only sat with their

hands on their knees, and their aprons sticking out very stiffly; and

stared. And after a while I began to understand what the matter was. It

seemed that some of the troublesome building imps, who meddle and make

continually, even in the best Gothic work, had been listening to St.

Barbara's talk with Neith; and had made up their minds that Neith had no

workpeople who could build against them. They were but dull imps, as you

may fancy by their thinking that; and never had done much, except

disturbing the great Gothic building angels at their work, and playing

tricks to each other; indeed, of late they had been living years and

years, like bats, up under the cornices of Strasbourg and Cologne

cathedrals, with nothing to do but to make mouths at the people below.

However, they thought they knew everything about tower building; and

those who had heard what Neith said, told the rest; and they all flew

down directly, chattering in German, like jackdaws, to show Neith's

people what they could do. And they had found some of Neith's old

workpeople somewhere near Sais, sitting in the sun, with their hands on

their knees; and abused them heartily: and Neith's people did not mind

at first, but, after a while, they seemed to get tired of the noise; and

one or two rose up slowly, and laid hold of their measuring rods, and

said, 'If St. Barbara's people liked to build with them, tower against

pyramid, they would show them how to lay stones.' Then the little Gothic

spirits threw a great many double somersaults for joy; and put the tips

of their tongues out slily to each other, on one side; and I heard the

Egyptians say, 'they must be some new kind of frog--they didn't think

there was much building in _them_.' However, the stiff old workers took

their rods, as I said, and measured out a square space of sand; but as

soon as the German spirits saw that, they declared they wanted exactly

that bit of ground to build on, themselves. Then the Egyptian builders

offered to go farther off, and the Germans ones said, 'Ja wohl.' But as

soon as the Egyptians had measured out another square, the little

Germans said they must have some of that too. Then Neith's people

laughed; and said, 'they might take as much as they liked, but they

would not move the plan of their pyramid again.' Then the little Germans

took three pieces, and began to build three spires directly; one large,

and two little. And when the Egyptians saw they had fairly begun, they

laid their foundation all round, of large square stones: and began to

build, so steadily that they had like to have swallowed up the three

little German spires. So when the Gothic spirits saw that, they built

their spires leaning, like the tower of Pisa, that they might stick out

at the side of the pyramid. And Neith's people stared at them; and

thought it very clever, but very wrong; and on they went, in their own

way, and said nothing. Then the little Gothic spirits were terribly

provoked because they could not spoil the shape of the pyramid; and they

sat down all along the ledges of it to make faces; but that did no good.

Then they ran to the corners, and put their elbows on their knees, and

stuck themselves out as far as they could, and made more faces; but that

did no good, neither. Then they looked up to the sky, and opened their

mouths wide, and gobbled, and said it was too hot for work, and

wondered when it would rain; but that did no good, neither. And all the

while the Egyptian spirits were laying step above step, patiently. But

when the Gothic ones looked, and saw how high they had got, they said,

'Ach, Himmel!' and flew down in a great black cluster to the bottom; and

swept out a level spot in the sand with their wings, in no time, and

began building a tower straight up, as fast as they could. And the

Egyptians stood still again to stare at them; for the Gothic spirits had

got quite into a passion, and were really working very wonderfully. They

cut the sandstone into strips as fine as reeds; and put one reed on the

top of another, so that you could not see where they fitted: and they

twisted them in and out like basket work, and knotted them into

likenesses of ugly faces, and of strange beasts biting each other; and

up they went, and up still, and they made spiral staircases at the

corners, for the loaded workers to come up by (for I saw they were but

weak imps, and could not fly with stones on their backs), and then they

made traceried galleries for them to run round by; and so up again; with

finer and finer work, till the Egyptians wondered whether they meant the

thing for a tower or a pillar: and I heard them saying to one another,

'It was nearly as pretty as lotus stalks; and if it were not for the

ugly faces, there would be a fine temple, if they were going to build it

all with pillars as big as that!' But in a minute afterwards,--just as

the Gothic spirits had carried their work as high as the upper course,

but three or four, of the pyramid--the Egyptians called out to them to

'mind what they were about, for the sand was running away from under one

of their tower corners.' But it was too late to mind what they were

about; for, in another instant, the whole tower sloped aside; and the

Gothic imps rose out of it like a flight of puffins, in a single cloud;

but screaming worse than any puffins you ever heard: and down came the

tower, all in a piece, like a falling poplar, with its head right on the

flank of the pyramid; against which it snapped short off. And of course

that waked me!

MARY. What a shame of you to have such a dream, after all you have told

us about Gothic architecture!

L. If you have understood anything I ever told you about it, you know

that no architecture was ever corrupted more miserably; or abolished

more justly by the accomplishment of its own follies. Besides, even in

its days of power, it was subject to catastrophes of this kind. I have

stood too often, mourning, by the grand fragment of the apse of

Beauvais, not to have that fact well burnt into me. Still, you must have

seen, surely, that these imps were of the Flamboyant school; or, at

least, of the German schools correspondent with it in extravagance.

MARY. But, then, where is the crystal about which you dreamed all this?

L. Here; but I suppose little Pthah has touched it again, for it is very

small. But, you see, here is the pyramid, built of great square stones

of fluor spar, straight up; and here are the three little pinnacles of

mischievous quartz, which have set themselves, at the same time, on the

same foundation; only they lean like the tower of Pisa, and come out

obliquely at the side: and here is one great spire of quartz which seems

as if it had been meant to stand straight up, a little way off; and then

had fallen down against the pyramid base, breaking its pinnacle away. In

reality, it has crystallised horizontally, and terminated imperfectly:

but, then, by what caprice does one crystal form horizontally, when all

the rest stand upright? But this is nothing to the phantasies of fluor,

and quartz, and some other such companions, when they get leave to do

anything they like. I could show you fifty specimens, about every one of

which you might fancy a new fairy tale. Not that, in truth, any crystals

get leave to do quite what they like; and many of them are sadly tried,

and have little time for caprices--poor things!

MARY. I thought they always looked as if they were either in play or in

mischief! What trials have they?

L. Trials much like our own. Sickness, and starvation; fevers, and

agues, and palsy; oppression; and old age, and the necessity of passing

away in their time, like all else. If there's any pity in you, you must

come to-morrow, and take some part in these crystal griefs.

DORA. I am sure we shall cry till our eyes are red.

L. Ah, you may laugh, Dora: but I've been made grave, not once, nor

twice, to see that even crystals 'cannot choose but be old' at last. It

may be but a shallow proverb of the Justice's; but it is a shrewdly wide

one.

DORA (_pensive, for once_). I suppose it is very dreadful to be old! But

then (_brightening again_), what should we do without our dear old

friends, and our nice old lecturers?

L. If all nice old lecturers were minded as little as one I know of----

DORA. And if they all meant as little what they say, would they not

deserve it? But we'll come--we'll come, and cry.

FOOTNOTES:

[152] Note v.

LECTURE IX.

_CRYSTAL SORROWS._

_Working Lecture in Schoolroom._

L. We have been hitherto talking, children, as if crystals might live,

and play, and quarrel, and behave ill or well, according to their

characters, without interruption from anything else. But so far from

this being so, nearly all crystals, whatever their characters, have to

live a hard life of it, and meet with many misfortunes. If we could see

far enough, we should find, indeed, that, at the root, all their vices

were misfortunes: but to-day I want you to see what sort of troubles the

best crystals have to go through, occasionally, by no fault of their

own.

This black thing, which is one of the prettiest of the very few pretty

black things in the world, is called 'Tourmaline.' It may be

transparent, and green, or red, as well as black; and then no stone can

be prettier (only, all the light that gets into it, I believe, comes out

a good deal the worse; and is not itself again for a long while). But

this is the commonest state of it,--opaque, and as black as jet.

MARY. What does 'Tourmaline' mean?

L. They say it is Ceylanese, and I don't know Ceylanese; but we may

always be thankful for a graceful word, whatever it means.

MARY. And what is it made of?

L. A little of everything; there's always flint, and clay, and magnesia

in it; and the black is iron, according to its fancy; and there's

boracic acid, if you know what that is; and if you don't, I cannot tell

you to-day; and it doesn't signify; and there's potash, and soda; and,

on the whole, the chemistry of it is more like a mediaeval doctor's

prescription, than the making of a respectable mineral: but it may,

perhaps, be owing to the strange complexity of its make, that it has a

notable habit which makes it, to me, one of the most interesting of

minerals. You see these two crystals are broken right across, in many

places, just as if they had been shafts of black marble fallen from a

ruinous temple; and here they lie, imbedded in white quartz, fragment

succeeding fragment, keeping the line of the original crystal, while the

quartz fills up the intervening spaces. Now tourmaline has a trick of

doing this, more than any other mineral I know: here is another bit

which I picked up on the glacier of Macugnaga; it is broken, like a

pillar built of very flat broad stones, into about thirty joints, and

all these are heaved and warped away from each other sideways, almost

into a line of steps; and then all is filled up with quartz paste. And

here, lastly, is a green Indian piece, in which the pillar is first

disjointed, and then wrung round into the shape of an S.

MARY. How _can_ this have been done?

L. There are a thousand ways in which it may have been done; the

difficulty is not to account for the doing of it; but for the showing of

it in some crystals, and not in others. You never by any chance get a

quartz crystal broken or twisted in this way. If it break or twist at

all, which it does sometimes, like the spire of Dijon, it is by its own

will or fault; it never seems to have been passively crushed. But, for

the forces which cause this passive ruin of the tourmaline,--here is a

stone which will show you multitudes of them in operation at once. It is

known as 'brecciated agate,' beautiful, as you see; and highly valued as

a pebble: yet, so far as I can read or hear, no one has ever looked at

it with the least attention. At the first glance, you see it is made of

very fine red striped agates, which have been broken into small pieces,

and fastened together again by paste, also of agate. There would be

nothing wonderful in this, if this were all. It is well known that by

the movements of strata, portions of rock are often shattered to

pieces:--well known also that agate is a deposit of flint by water under

certain conditions of heat and pressure: there is, therefore, nothing

wonderful in an agate's being broken; and nothing wonderful in its

being mended with the solution out of which it was itself originally

congealed. And with this explanation, most people, looking at a

brecciated agate, or brecciated anything, seem to be satisfied. I was so

myself, for twenty years; but, lately happening to stay for some time at

the Swiss Baden, where the beach of the Limmat is almost wholly composed

of brecciated limestones, I began to examine them thoughtfully; and

perceived, in the end, that they were, one and all, knots of as rich

mystery as any poor little human brain was ever lost in. That piece of

agate in your hand, Mary, will show you many of the common phenomena of

breccias; but you need not knit your brows over it in that way; depend

upon it, neither you nor I shall ever know anything about the way it was

made, as long as we live.

DORA. That does not seem much to depend upon.

L. Pardon me, puss. When once we gain some real notion of the extent and

the unconquerableness of our ignorance, it is a very broad and restful

thing to depend upon: you can throw yourself upon it at ease, as on a

cloud, to feast with the gods. You do not thenceforward trouble

yourself,--nor any one else,--with theories, or the contradiction of

theories; you neither get headache nor heartburning; and you never more

waste your poor little store of strength, or allowance of time.

However, there are certain facts, about this agate-making, which I can

tell you; and then you may look at it in a pleasant wonder as long as

you like; pleasant wonder is no loss of time.

First, then, it is not broken freely by a blow; it is slowly wrung, or

ground, to pieces. You can only with extreme dimness conceive the force

exerted on mountains in transitional states of movement. You have all

read a little geology; and you know how coolly geologists talk of

mountains being raised or depressed. They talk coolly of it, because

they are accustomed to the fact; but the very universality of the fact

prevents us from ever conceiving distinctly the conditions of force

involved. You know I was living last year in Savoy; my house was on the

back of a sloping mountain which rose gradually for two miles, behind

it; and then fell at once in a great precipice towards Geneva, going

down three thousand feet in four or five cliffs, or steps. Now that

whole group of cliffs had simply been torn away by sheer strength from

the rocks below, as if the whole mass had been as soft as biscuit. Put

four or five captains' biscuits on the floor, on the top of one another;

and try to break them all in half, not by bending, but by holding one

half down, and tearing the other halves straight up;--of course you will

not be able to do it, but you will feel and comprehend the sort of force

needed. Then, fancy each captains' biscuit a bed of rock, six or seven

hundred feet thick; and the whole mass torn straight through; and one

half heaved up three thousand feet, grinding against the other as it

rose,--and you will have some idea of the making of the Mont Saleve.

MAY. But it must crush the rocks all to dust!

L. No; for there is no room for dust. The pressure is too great;

probably the heat developed also so great that the rock is made partly

ductile; but the worst of it is, that we never can see these parts of

mountains in the state they were left in at the time of their elevation;

for it is precisely in these rents and dislocations that the crystalline

power principally exerts itself. It is essentially a styptic power, and

wherever the earth is torn, it heals and binds; nay, the torture and

grieving of the earth seem necessary to bring out its full energy; for

you only find the crystalline living power fully in action, where the

rents and faults are deep and many.

DORA. If you please, sir,--would you tell us--what are 'faults'?

L. You never heard of such things?

DORA. Never in all our lives.

L. When a vein of rock which is going on smoothly, is interrupted by

another troublesome little vein, which stops it, and puts it out, so

that it has to begin again in another place--that is called a fault. _I_

always think it ought to be called the fault of the vein that interrupts

it; but the miners always call it the fault of the vein that is

interrupted.

DORA. So it is, if it does not begin again where it left off.

L. Well, that is certainly the gist of the business: but, whatever

good-natured old lecturers may do, the rocks have a bad habit, when they

are once interrupted, of never asking 'Where was I?'

DORA. When the two halves of the dining table came separate, yesterday,

was that a 'fault'?

L. Yes; but not the table's. However, it is not a bad illustration,

Dora. When beds of rock are only interrupted by a fissure, but remain at

the same level, like the two halves of the table, it is not called a

fault, but only a fissure; but if one half of the table be either tilted

higher than the other, or pushed to the side, so that the two parts will

not fit, it is a fault. You had better read the chapter on faults in

Jukes's Geology; then you will know all about it. And this rent that I

am telling you of in the Saleve, is one only of myriads, to which are

owing the forms of the Alps, as, I believe, of all great mountain

chains. Wherever you see a precipice on any scale of real magnificence,

you will nearly always find it owing to some dislocation of this kind;

but the point of chief wonder to me, is the delicacy of the touch by

which these gigantic rents have been apparently accomplished. Note,

however, that we have no clear evidence, hitherto, of the time taken to

produce any of them. We know that a change of temperature alters the

position and the angles of the atoms of crystals, and also the entire

bulk of rocks. We know that in all volcanic, and the greater part of all

subterranean, action, temperatures are continually changing, and

therefore masses of rock must be expanding or contracting, with infinite

slowness, but with infinite force. This pressure must result in

mechanical strain somewhere, both in their own substance, and in that of

the rocks surrounding them; and we can form no conception of the result

of irresistible pressure, applied so as to rend and raise, with

imperceptible slowness of gradation, masses thousands of feet in

thickness. We want some experiments tried on masses of iron and stone;

and we can't get them tried, because Christian creatures never will

seriously and sufficiently spend money, except to find out the shortest

ways of killing each other. But, besides this slow kind of pressure,

there is evidence of more or less sudden violence, on the same terrific

scale; and, through it all, the wonder, as I said, is always to me the

delicacy of touch. I cut a block of the Saleve limestone from the edge

of one of the principal faults which have formed the precipice; it is a

lovely compact limestone, and the fault itself is filled up with a red

breccia formed of the crushed fragments of the torn rock, cemented by a

rich red crystalline paste. I have had the piece I cut from it smoothed,

and polished across the junction; here it is; and you may now pass your

soft little fingers over the surface, without so much as feeling the

place where a rock which all the hills of England might have been sunk

in the body of, and not a summit seen, was torn asunder through that

whole thickness, as a thin dress is torn when you tread upon it.

(_The audience examine the stone, and touch it timidly; but

the matter remains inconceivable to them._)

MARY (_struck by the beauty of the stone_). But this is almost marble?

L. It is quite marble. And another singular point in the business, to my

mind, is that these stones, which men have been cutting into slabs, for

thousands of years, to ornament their principal buildings with,--and

which, under the general name of 'marble,' have been the delight of the

eyes, and the wealth of architecture, among all civilised nations,--are

precisely those on which the signs and brands of these earth agonies

have been chiefly struck; and there is not a purple vein nor flaming

zone in them, which is not the record of their ancient torture. What a

boundless capacity for sleep, and for serene stupidity, there is in the

human mind! Fancy reflective beings, who cut and polish stones for three

thousand years, for the sake of the pretty stains upon them; and educate

themselves to an art at last (such as it is), of imitating these veins

by dexterous painting; and never a curious soul of them, all that while,

asks, 'What painted the rocks?'

(_The audience look dejected, and ashamed of themselves._)

The fact is, we are all, and always, asleep, through our lives; and it

is only by pinching ourselves very hard that we ever come to see, or

understand, anything. At least, it is not always we who pinch ourselves;

sometimes other people pinch us; which I suppose is very good of

them,--or other things, which I suppose is very proper of them. But it

is a sad life; made up chiefly of naps and pinches.

(_Some of the audience, on this, appearing to think that the

others require pinching, the_ LECTURER _changes the

subject._)

Now, however, for once, look at a piece of marble carefully, and think

about it. You see this is one side of the fault; the other side is down

or up, nobody knows where; but, on this side, you can trace the evidence

of the dragging and tearing action. All along the edge of this marble,

the ends of the fibres of the rock are torn, here an inch, and there

half an inch, away from each other; and you see the exact places where

they fitted, before they were torn separate; and you see the rents are

now all filled up with the sanguine paste, full of the broken pieces of

the rock; the paste itself seems to have been half melted, and partly to

have also melted the edge of the fragments it contains, and then to have

crystallised with them, and round them. And the brecciated agate I first

showed you contains exactly the same phenomena; a zoned crystallisation

going on amidst the cemented fragments, partly altering the structure of

those fragments themselves, and subject to continual change, either in

the intensity of its own power, or in the nature of the materials

submitted to it;--so that, at one time, gravity acts upon them, and

disposes them in horizontal layers, or causes them to droop in

stalactites; and at another, gravity is entirely defied, and the

substances in solution are crystallised in bands of equal thickness on

every side of the cell. It would require a course of lectures longer

than these (I have a great mind,--you have behaved so saucily--to stay

and give them) to describe to you the phenomena of this kind, in agates

and chalcedonies only;--nay, there is a single sarcophagus in the

British Museum, covered with grand sculpture of the 18th dynasty, which

contains in the magnificent breccia (agates and jaspers imbedded in

porphyry), out of which it is hewn, material for the thought of years;

and record of the earth-sorrow of ages in comparison with the duration

of which, the Egyptian letters tell us but the history of the evening

and morning of a day.

Agates, I think, of all stones, confess most of their past history; but

all crystallisation goes on under, and partly records, circumstances of

this kind--circumstances of infinite variety, but always involving

difficulty, interruption, and change of condition at different times.

Observe, first, you have the whole mass of the rock in motion, either

contracting itself, and so gradually widening the cracks; or being

compressed, and thereby closing them, and crushing their edges;--and, if

one part of its substance be softer, at the given temperature, than

another, probably squeezing that softer substance out into the veins.

Then the veins themselves, when the rock leaves them open by its

contraction, act with various power of suction upon its substance;--by

capillary attraction when they are fine,--by that of pure vacuity when

they are larger, or by changes in the constitution and condensation of

the mixed gases with which they have been originally filled. Those gases

themselves may be supplied in all variation of volume and power from

below; or, slowly, by the decomposition of the rocks themselves; and, at

changing temperatures, must exert relatively changing forces of

decomposition and combination on the walls of the veins they fill; while

water, at every degree of heat and pressure (from beds of everlasting

ice, alternate with cliffs of native rock, to volumes of red hot, or

white hot, steam), congeals, and drips, and throbs, and thrills, from

crag to crag; and breathes from pulse to pulse of foaming or fiery

arteries, whose beating is felt through chains of the great islands of

the Indian seas, as your own pulses lift your bracelets, and makes whole

kingdoms of the world quiver in deadly earthquake, as if they were light

as aspen leaves. And, remember, the poor little crystals have to live

their lives, and mind their own affairs, in the midst of all this, as

best they may. They are wonderfully like human creatures,--forget all

that is going on if they don't see it, however dreadful; and never think

what is to happen to-morrow. They are spiteful or loving, and indolent

or painstaking, and orderly or licentious, with no thought whatever of

the lava or the flood which may break over them any day; and evaporate

them into air-bubbles, or wash them into a solution of salts. And you

may look at them, once understanding the surrounding conditions of their

fate, with an endless interest. You will see crowds of unfortunate

little crystals, who have been forced to constitute themselves in a

hurry, their dissolving element being fiercely scorched away; you will

see them doing their best, bright and numberless, but tiny. Then you

will find indulged crystals, who have had centuries to form themselves

in, and have changed their mind and ways continually; and have been

tired, and taken heart again; and have been sick, and got well again;

and thought they would try a different diet, and then thought better of

it; and made but a poor use of their advantages, after all. And others

you will see, who have begun life as wicked crystals; and then have been

impressed by alarming circumstances, and have become converted crystals,

and behaved amazingly for a little while, and fallen away again, and

ended, but discreditably, perhaps even in decomposition; so that one

doesn't know what will become of them. And sometimes you will see

deceitful crystals, that look as soft as velvet, and are deadly to all

near them; and sometimes you will see deceitful crystals, that seem

flint-edged, like our little quartz-crystal of a housekeeper here,

(hush! Dora,) and are endlessly gentle and true wherever gentleness and

truth are needed. And sometimes you will see little child-crystals put

to school like school-girls, and made to stand in rows; and taken the

greatest care of, and taught how to hold themselves up, and behave: and

sometimes you will see unhappy little child-crystals left to lie about

in the dirt, and pick up their living, and learn manners, where they

can. And sometimes you will see fat crystals eating up thin ones, like

great capitalists and little labourers; and politico-economic crystals

teaching the stupid ones how to eat each other, and cheat each other;

and foolish crystals getting in the way of wise ones; and impatient

crystals spoiling the plans of patient ones, irreparably; just as things

go on in the world. And sometimes you may see hypocritical crystals

taking the shape of others, though they are nothing like in their minds;

and vampire crystals eating out the hearts of others; and hermit-crab

crystals living in the shells of others; and parasite crystals living on

the means of others; and courtier crystals glittering in attendance upon

others; and all these, besides the two great companies of war and peace,

who ally themselves, resolutely to attack, or resolutely to defend. And

for the close, you see the broad shadow and deadly force of inevitable

fate, above all this: you see the multitudes of crystals whose time has

come; not a set time, as with us, but yet a time, sooner or later, when

they all must give up their crystal ghosts:--when the strength by which

they grew, and the breath given them to breathe, pass away from them;

and they fail, and are consumed, and vanish away; and another generation

is brought to life, framed out of their ashes.

MARY. It is very terrible. Is it not the complete fulfilment, down into

the very dust, of that verse: 'The whole creation groaneth and

travaileth in pain'?

L. I do not know that it is in pain, Mary: at least, the evidence tends

to show that there is much more pleasure than pain, as soon as sensation

becomes possible.

LUCILLA. But then, surely, if we are told that it is pain, it must be

pain?

L. Yes; if we are told; and told in the way you mean, Lucilla; but

nothing is said of the proportion to pleasure. Unmitigated pain would

kill any of us in a few hours; pain equal to our pleasures would make us

loathe life; the word itself cannot be applied to the lower conditions

of matter, in its ordinary sense. But wait till to-morrow to ask me

about this. To-morrow is to be kept for questions and difficulties; let

us keep to the plain facts to-day. There is yet one group of facts

connected with this rending of the rocks, which I especially want you to

notice. You know, when you have mended a very old dress, quite

meritoriously, till it won't mend any more----

EGYPT (_interrupting_). Could not you sometimes take gentlemen's work to

illustrate by?

L. Gentlemen's work is rarely so useful as yours, Egypt; and when it is

useful, girls cannot easily understand it.

DORA. I am sure we should understand it better than gentlemen understand

about sewing.

L. My dear, I hope I always speak modestly, and under correction, when I

touch upon matters of the kind too high for me; and besides, I never

intend to speak otherwise than respectfully of sewing;--though you

always seem to think I am laughing at you. In all seriousness,

illustrations from sewing are those which Neith likes me best to use;

and which young ladies ought to like everybody to use. What do you think

the beautiful word 'wife' comes from?

DORA (_tossing her head_). I don't think it is a particularly beautiful

word.

L. Perhaps not. At your ages you may think 'bride' sounds better; but

wife's the word for wear, depend upon it. It is the great word in which

the English and Latin languages conquer the French and the Greek. I hope

the French will some day get a word for it, yet, instead of their

dreadful 'femme.' But what do you think it comes from?

DORA. I never _did_ think about it.

L. Nor you, Sibyl?

SIBYL. No; I thought it was Saxon, and stopped there.

L. Yes; but the great good of Saxon words is, that they usually do mean

something. Wife means 'weaver.' You have all the right to call

yourselves little 'housewives,' when you sew neatly.

DORA. But I don't think we want to call ourselves 'little housewives.'

L. You must either be house-Wives, or house-Moths; remember that. In the

deep sense, you must either weave men's fortunes, and embroider them; or

feed upon, and bring them to decay. You had better let me keep my sewing

illustration, and help me out with it.

DORA. Well we'll hear it, under protest.

L. You have heard it before; but with reference to other matters. When

it is said, 'no man putteth a piece of new cloth on an old garment, else

it taketh from the old,' does it not mean that the new piece tears the

old one away at the sewn edge?

DORA. Yes; certainly.

L. And when you mend a decayed stuff with strong thread, does not the

whole edge come away sometimes, when it tears again?

DORA. Yes; and then it is of no use to mend it any more.

L. Well, the rocks don't seem to think that: but the same thing happens

to them continually. I told you they were full of rents, or veins. Large

masses of mountain are sometimes as full of veins as your hand is; and

of veins nearly as fine (only you know a rock vein does not mean a tube,

but a crack or cleft). Now these clefts are mended, usually, with the

strongest material the rock can find; and often literally with threads;

for the gradually opening rent seems to draw the substance it is filled

with into fibres, which cross from one side of it to the other, and are

partly crystalline; so that, when the crystals become distinct, the

fissure has often exactly the look of a tear, brought together with

strong cross stitches. Now when this is completely done, and all has

been fastened and made firm, perhaps some new change of temperature may

occur, and the rock begin to contract again. Then the old vein must open

wider; or else another open elsewhere. If the old vein widen, it _may_

do so at its centre; but it constantly happens, with well filled veins,

that the cross stitches are too strong to break; the walls of the vein,

instead, are torn away by them; and another little supplementary

vein--often three or four successively--will be thus formed at the side

of the first.

MARY. That is really very much like our work. But what do the mountains

use to sew with?

L. Quartz, whenever they can get it: pure limestones are obliged to be

content with carbonate of lime; but most mixed rocks can find some

quartz for themselves. Here is a piece of black slate from the Buet: it

looks merely like dry dark mud;--you could not think there was any

quartz in it; but, you see, its rents are all stitched together with

beautiful white thread, which is the purest quartz, so close drawn that

you can break it like flint, in the mass; but, where it has been exposed

to the weather, the fine fibrous structure is shown: and, more than

that, you see the threads have been all twisted and pulled aside, this

way and the other, by the warpings and shifting of the sides of the vein

as it widened.

MARY. It is wonderful! But is that going on still? Are the mountains

being torn and sewn together again at this moment?

L. Yes, certainly, my dear: but I think, just as certainly (though

geologists differ on this matter), not with the violence, or on the

scale, of their ancient ruin and renewal. All things seem to be tending

towards a condition of at least temporary rest; and that groaning and

travailing of the creation, as, assuredly, not wholly in pain, is not,

in the full sense, 'until now.'

MARY. I want so much to ask you about that!

SIBYL. Yes; and we all want to ask you about a great many other things

besides.

L. It seems to me that you have got quite as many new ideas as are good

for any of you at present: and I should not like to burden you with

more; but I must see that those you have are clear, if I can make them

so; so we will have one more talk, for answer of questions, mainly.

Think over all the ground, and make your difficulties thoroughly

presentable. Then we'll see what we can make of them.

DORA. They shall all be dressed in their very best; and curtsey as they

come in.

L. No, no, Dora; no curtseys, if you please. I had enough of them the

day you all took a fit of reverence, and curtsied me out of the room.

DORA. But, you know, we cured ourselves of the fault, at once, by that

fit. We have never been the least respectful since. And the difficulties

will only curtsey themselves out of the room, I hope;--come in at one

door--vanish at the other.

L. What a pleasant world it would be, if all its difficulties were

taught to behave so! However, one can generally make something, or

(better still) nothing, or at least less, of them, if they thoroughly

know their own minds; and your difficulties--I must say that for you,

children,--generally do know their own minds, as you do yourselves.

DORA. That is very kindly said for us. Some people would not allow so

much as that girls had any minds to know.

L. They will at least admit that you have minds to change, Dora.

MARY. You might have left us the last speech, without a retouch. But

we'll put our little minds, such as they are, in the best trim we can,

for to-morrow.

LECTURE X.

_THE CRYSTAL REST._

_Evening. The fireside._ L's _arm-chair in the comfortablest

corner._

L. (_perceiving various arrangements being made of foot-stool, cushion,

screen, and the like_). Yes, yes, it's all very fine! and I am to sit

here to be asked questions till supper-time, am I?

DORA. I don't think you can have any supper to-night:--we've got so much

to ask.

LILY. Oh, Miss Dora! We can fetch it him here, you know, so nicely!

L. Yes, Lily, that will be pleasant, with competitive examination going

on over one's plate; the competition being among the examiners. Really,

now that I know what teasing things girls are, I don't so much wonder

that people used to put up patiently with the dragons who took _them_

for supper. But I can't help myself, I suppose;--no thanks to St.

George. Ask away, children, and I'll answer as civilly as may be.

DORA. We don't so much care about being answered civilly, as about not

being asked things back again.

L. 'Ayez seulement la patience que je le parle.' There shall be no

requitals.

DORA. Well, then, first of all--What shall we ask first, Mary?

MARY. It does not matter. I think all the questions come into one, at

last, nearly.

DORA. You know, you always talk as if the crystals were alive; and we

never understand how much you are in play, and how much in earnest.

That's the first thing.

L. Neither do I understand, myself, my dear, how much I am in earnest.

The stones puzzle me as much as I puzzle you. They look as if they were

alive, and make me speak as if they were; and I do not in the least know

how much truth there is in the appearance. I'm not to ask things back

again to-night, but all questions of this sort lead necessarily to the

one main question, which we asked, before, in vain, 'What is it to be

alive?'

DORA. Yes; but we want to come back to that: for we've been reading

scientific books about the 'conservation of forces,' and it seems all so

grand, and wonderful; and the experiments are so pretty; and I suppose

it must be all right: but then the books never speak as if there were

any such thing as 'life.'

L. They mostly omit that part of the subject, certainly, Dora; but they

are beautifully right as far as they go; and life is not a convenient

element to deal with. They seem to have been getting some of it into and

out of bottles, in their 'ozone' and 'antizone' lately; but they still

know little of it: and, certainly, I know less.

DORA. You promised not to be provoking, to-night.

L. Wait a minute. Though, quite truly, I know less of the secrets of

life than the philosophers do; I yet know one corner of ground on which

we artists can stand, literally as 'Life Guards' at bay, as steadily as

the Guards at Inkermann; however hard the philosophers push. And you may

stand with us, if once you learn to draw nicely.

DORA. I'm sure we are all trying! but tell us where we may stand.

L. You may always stand by Form, against Force. To a painter, the

essential character of anything is the form of it; and the philosophers

cannot touch that. They come and tell you, for instance, that there is

as much heat, or motion, or calorific energy (or whatever else they like

to call it), in a tea-kettle as in a Gier-eagle. Very good; that is so;

and it is very interesting. It requires just as much heat as will boil

the kettle, to take the Gier-eagle up to his nest; and as much more to

bring him down again on a hare or a partridge. But we painters,

acknowledging the equality and similarity of the kettle and the bird in

all scientific respects, attach, for our part, our principal interest to

the difference in their forms. For us, the primarily cognisable facts,

in the two things, are, that the kettle has a spout, and the eagle a

beak; the one a lid on its back, the other a pair of wings;--not to

speak of the distinction also of volition, which the philosophers may

properly call merely a form or mode of force;--but then, to an artist,

the form, or mode, is the gist of the business. The kettle chooses to

sit still on the hob; the eagle to recline on the air. It is the fact of

the choice, not the equal degree of temperature in the fulfilment of it,

which appears to us the more interesting circumstance;--though the other

is very interesting too. Exceedingly so! Don't laugh, children; the

philosophers have been doing quite splendid work lately, in their own

way: especially, the transformation of force into light is a great piece

of systematised discovery; and this notion about the sun's being

supplied with his flame by ceaseless meteoric hail is grand, and looks

very likely to be true. Of course, it is only the old gun-lock,--flint

and steel,--on a large scale: but the order and majesty of it are

sublime. Still, we sculptors and painters care little about it. 'It is

very fine,' we say, 'and very useful, this knocking the light out of the

sun, or into it, by an eternal cataract of planets. But you may hail

away, so, for ever, and you will not knock out what we can. Here is a

bit of silver, not the size of half-a-crown, on which, with a single

hammer stroke, one of us, two thousand and odd years ago, hit out the

head of the Apollo of Clazomenae. It is merely a matter of form; but if

any of you philosophers, with your whole planetary system to hammer

with, can hit out such another bit of silver as this,--we will take off

our hats to you. For the present, we keep them on.'

MARY. Yes, I understand; and that is nice; but I don't think we shall

any of us like having only form to depend upon.

L. It was not neglected in the making of Eve, my dear.

MARY. It does not seem to separate us from the dust of the ground. It is

that breathing of the life which we want to understand.

L. So you should: but hold fast to the form, and defend that first, as

distinguished from the mere transition of forces. Discern the moulding

hand of the potter commanding the clay, from his merely beating foot,

as it turns the wheel. If you can find incense, in the vase,

afterwards,--well: but it is curious how far mere form will carry you

ahead of the philosophers. For instance, with regard to the most

interesting of all their modes of force--light;--they never consider how

far the existence of it depends on the putting of certain vitreous and

nervous substances into the formal arrangement which we call an eye. The

German philosophers began the attack, long ago, on the other side, by

telling us, there was no such thing as light at all, unless we chose to

see it: now, German and English, both, have reversed their engines, and

insist that light would be exactly the same light that it is, though

nobody could ever see it. The fact being that the force must be there,

and the eyes there; and 'light' means the effect of the one on the

other;--and perhaps, also--(Plato saw farther into that mystery than any

one has since, that I know of),--on something a little way within the

eyes; but we may stand quite safe, close behind the retina, and defy the

philosophers.

SIBYL. But I don't care so much about defying the philosophers, if only

one could get a clear idea of life, or soul, for one's self.

L. Well, Sibyl, you used to know more about it, in that cave of yours,

than any of us. I was just going to ask you about inspiration, and the

golden bough, and the like; only I remembered I was not to ask anything.

But, will not you, at least, tell us whether the ideas of Life, as the

power of putting things together, or 'making' them; and of Death, as the

power of pushing things separate, or 'unmaking' them, may not be very

simply held in balance against each other?

SIBYL. No, I am not in my cave to-night; and cannot tell you anything.

L. I think they may. Modern Philosophy is a great separator; it is

little more than the expansion of Moliere's great sentence, 'Il s'ensuit

de la, que tout ce qu'il y a de beau est dans les dictionnaires; il n'y

a que les mots qui sont transposes.' But when you used to be in your

cave, Sibyl, and to be inspired, there was (and there remains still in

some small measure), beyond the merely formative and sustaining power,

another, which we painters call 'passion'--I don't know what the

philosophers call it; we know it makes people red, or white; and

therefore it must be something, itself; and perhaps it is the most truly

'poetic' or 'making' force of all, creating a world of its own out of a

glance, or a sigh: and the want of passion is perhaps the truest death,

or 'unmaking' of everything;--even of stones. By the way, you were all

reading about that ascent of the Aiguille Verte, the other day?

SIBYL. Because you had told us it was so difficult, you thought it could

not be ascended.

L. Yes; I believed the Aiguille Verte would have held its own. But do

you recollect what one of the climbers exclaimed, when he first felt

sure of reaching the summit?

SIBYL. Yes, it was, 'Oh, Aiguille Verte, vous etes morte, vous etes

morte!'

L. That was true instinct. Real philosophic joy. Now can you at all

fancy the difference between that feeling of triumph in a mountain's

death; and the exultation of your beloved poet, in its life--

'Quantus Athos, aut quantus Eryx, aut ipse coruscis

Quum fremit ilicibus quantus, gandetque nivali

Vertice, se attollens pater Apenninus ad auras.'

DORA. You must translate for us mere house-keepers, please,--whatever

the cave-keepers may know about it.

MARY. Will Dryden do?

L. No. Dryden is a far way worse than nothing, and nobody will 'do.' You

can't translate it. But this is all you need know, that the lines are

full of a passionate sense of the Apennines' fatherhood, or protecting

power over Italy; and of sympathy with their joy in their snowy strength

in heaven; and with the same joy, shuddering through all the leaves of

their forests.

MARY. Yes, that is a difference indeed! but then, you know, one can't

help feeling that it is fanciful. It is very delightful to imagine the

mountains to be alive; but then,--_are_ they alive?

L. It seems to me, on the whole, Mary, that the feelings of the purest

and most mightily passioned human souls are likely to be the truest.

Not, indeed, if they do not desire to know the truth, or blind

themselves to it that they may please themselves with passion; for then

they are no longer pure: but if, continually seeking and accepting the

truth as far as it is discernible, they trust their Maker for the

integrity of the instincts He has gifted them with, and rest in the

sense of a higher truth which they cannot demonstrate, I think they will

be most in the right, so.

DORA _and_ JESSIE (_clapping their hands_). Then we really may believe

that the mountains are living?

L. You may at least earnestly believe, that the presence of the spirit

which culminates in your own life, shows itself in dawning, wherever the

dust of the earth begins to assume any orderly and lovely state. You

will find it impossible to separate this idea of gradated manifestation

from that of the vital power. Things are not either wholly alive, or

wholly dead. They are less or more alive. Take the nearest, most easily

examined instance--the life of a flower. Notice what a different degree

and kind of life there is in the calyx and the corolla. The calyx is

nothing but the swaddling clothes of the flower; the child-blossom is

bound up in it, hand and foot; guarded in it, restrained by it, till the

time of birth. The shell is hardly more subordinate to the germ in the

egg, than the calyx to the blossom. It bursts at last; but it never

lives as the corolla does. It may fall at the moment its task is

fulfilled, as in the poppy; or wither gradually, as in the buttercup; or

persist in a ligneous apathy, after the flower is dead, as in the rose;

or harmonise itself so as to share in the aspect of the real flower, as

in the lily; but it never shares in the corolla's bright passion of

life. And the gradations which thus exist between the different members

of organic creatures, exist no less between the different ranges of

organism. We know no higher or more energetic life than our own; but

there seems to me this great good in the idea of gradation of life--it

admits the idea of a life above us, in other creatures, as much nobler

than ours, as ours is nobler than that of the dust.

MARY. I am glad you have said that; for I know Violet and Lucilla and

May want to ask you something; indeed, we all do; only you frightened

Violet so about the ant-hill, that she can't say a word; and May is

afraid of your teasing her, too: but I know they are wondering why you

are always telling them about heathen gods and goddesses, as if you half

believed in them; and you represent them as good; and then we see there

is really a kind of truth in the stories about them; and we are all

puzzled: and, in this, we cannot even make our difficulty quite clear to

ourselves;--it would be such a long confused question, if we could ask

you all we should like to know.

L. Nor is it any wonder, Mary; for this is indeed the longest, and the

most wildly confused question that reason can deal with; but I will try

to give you, quickly, a few clear ideas about the heathen gods, which

you may follow out afterwards, as your knowledge increases.

Every heathen conception of deity in which you are likely to be

interested, has three distinct characters:--

I. It has a physical character. It represents some of the great powers

or objects of nature--sun or moon, or heaven, or the winds, or the sea.

And the fables first related about each deity represent, figuratively,

the action of the natural power which it represents; such as the rising

and setting of the sun, the tides of the sea, and so on.

II. It has an ethical character, and represents, in its history, the

moral dealings of God with man. Thus Apollo is first, physically, the

sun contending with darkness; but morally, the power of divine life

contending with corruption. Athena is, physically, the air; morally, the

breathing of the divine spirit of wisdom. Neptune is, physically, the

sea; morally, the supreme power of agitating passion; and so on.

III. It has, at last, a personal character; and is realised in the minds

of its worshippers as a living spirit, with whom men may speak face to

face, as a man speaks to his friend.

Now it is impossible to define exactly, how far, at any period of a

national religion, these three ideas are mingled; or how far one

prevails over the other. Each enquirer usually takes up one of these

ideas, and pursues it, to the exclusion of the others: no impartial

effort seems to have been made to discern the real state of the heathen

imagination in its successive phases. For the question is not at all

what a mythological figure meant in its origin; but what it became in

each subsequent mental development of the nation inheriting the thought.

Exactly in proportion to the mental and moral insight of any race, its

mythological figures mean more to it, and become more real. An early and

savage race means nothing more (because it has nothing more to mean) by

its Apollo, than the sun; while a cultivated Greek means every operation

of divine intellect and justice. The Neith, of Egypt, meant, physically,

little more than the blue of the air; but the Greek, in a climate of

alternate storm and calm, represented the wild fringes of the

storm-cloud by the serpents of her aegis; and the lightning and cold of

the highest thunder-clouds, by the Gorgon on her shield: while morally,

the same types represented to him the mystery and changeful terror of

knowledge, as her spear and helm its ruling and defensive power. And no

study can be more interesting, or more useful to you, than that of the

different meanings which have been created by great nations, and great

poets, out of mythological figures given them, at first, in utter

simplicity. But when we approach them in their third, or personal,

character (and, for its power over the whole national mind, this is far

the leading one), we are met at once by questions which may well put all

of you at pause. Were they idly imagined to be real beings? and did they

so usurp the place of the true God? Or were they actually real

beings--evil spirits,--leading men away from the true God? Or is it

conceivable that they might have been real beings,--good

spirits,--entrusted with some message from the true God? These were the

questions you wanted to ask; were they not, Lucilla?

LUCILLA. Yes, indeed.

L. Well, Lucilla, the answer will much depend upon the clearness of your

faith in the personality of the spirits which are described in the book

of your own religion;--their personality, observe, as distinguished from

merely symbolical visions. For instance, when Jeremiah has the vision

of the seething pot with its mouth to the north, you know that this

which he sees is not a real thing; but merely a significant dream. Also,

when Zechariah sees the speckled horses among the myrtle trees in the

bottom, you still may suppose the vision symbolical;--you do not think

of them as real spirits, like Pegasus, seen in the form of horses. But

when you are told of the four riders in the Apocalypse, a distinct sense

of personality begins to force itself upon you. And though you might, in

a dull temper, think that (for one instance of all) the fourth rider on

the pale horse was merely a symbol of the power of death,--in your

stronger and more earnest moods you will rather conceive of him as a

real and living angel. And when you look back from the vision of the

Apocalypse to the account of the destruction of the Egyptian first-born,

and of the army of Sennacherib, and again to David's vision at the

threshing floor of Araunah, the idea of personality in this death-angel

becomes entirely defined, just as in the appearance of the angels to

Abraham, Manoah, or Mary.

Now, when you have once consented to this idea of a personal spirit,

must not the question instantly follow: 'Does this spirit exercise its

functions towards one race of men only, or towards all men? Was it an

angel of death to the Jew only, or to the Gentile also?' You find a

certain Divine agency made visible to a King of Israel, as an armed

angel, executing vengeance, of which one special purpose was to lower

his kingly pride. You find another (or perhaps the same) agency, made

visible to a Christian prophet as an angel standing in the sun, calling

to the birds that fly under heaven to come, that they may eat the flesh

of kings. Is there anything impious in the thought that the same agency

might have been expressed to a Greek king, or Greek seer, by similar

visions?--that this figure, standing in the sun, and armed with the

sword, or the bow (whose arrows were drunk with blood), and exercising

especially its power in the humiliation of the proud, might, at first,

have been called only 'Destroyer,' and afterwards, as the light, or sun,

of justice, was recognised in the chastisement, called also 'Physician'

or 'Healer?' If you feel hesitation in admitting the possibility of

such a manifestation, I believe you will find it is caused, partly

indeed by such trivial things as the difference to your ear between

Greek and English terms; but, far more, by uncertainty in your own mind

respecting the nature and truth of the visions spoken of in the Bible.

Have any of you intently examined the nature of your belief in them?

You, for instance, Lucilla, who think often, and seriously, of such

things?

LUCILLA. No; I never could tell what to believe about them. I know they

must be true in some way or other; and I like reading about them.

L. Yes; and I like reading about them too, Lucilla; as I like reading

other grand poetry. But, surely, we ought both to do more than like it?

Will God be satisfied with us, think you, if we read His words merely

for the sake of an entirely meaningless poetical sensation?

LUCILLA. But do not the people who give themselves to seek out the

meaning of these things, often get very strange, and extravagant?

L. More than that, Lucilla. They often go mad. That abandonment of the

mind to religious theory, or contemplation, is the very thing I have

been pleading with you against. I never said you should set yourself to

discover the meanings; but you should take careful pains to understand

them, so far as they _are_ clear; and you should always accurately

ascertain the state of your mind about them. I want you never to read

merely for the pleasure of fancy; still less as a formal religious duty

(else you might as well take to repeating Paters at once; for it is

surely wiser to repeat one thing we understand, than read a thousand

which we cannot). Either, therefore, acknowledge the passages to be, for

the present, unintelligible to you; or else determine the sense in which

you at present receive them; or, at all events, the different senses

between which you clearly see that you must choose. Make either your

belief, or your difficulty, definite; but do not go on, all through your

life, believing nothing intelligently, and yet supposing that your

having read the words of a divine book must give you the right to

despise every religion but your own. I assure you, strange as it may

seem, our scorn of Greek tradition depends, not on our belief, but our

disbelief, of our own traditions. We have, as yet, no sufficient clue to

the meaning of either; but you will always find that, in proportion to

the earnestness of our own faith, its tendency to accept a spiritual

personality increases: and that the most vital and beautiful Christian

temper rests joyfully in its conviction of the multitudinous ministry of

living angels, infinitely varied in rank and power. You all know one

expression of the purest and happiest form of such faith, as it exists

in modern times, in Richter's lovely illustrations of the Lord's Prayer.

The real and living death-angel, girt as a pilgrim for journey, and

softly crowned with flowers, beckons at the dying mother's door;

child-angels sit talking face to face with mortal children, among the

flowers;--hold them by their little coats, lest they fall on the

stairs;--whisper dreams of heaven to them, leaning over their pillows;

carry the sound of the church bells for them far through the air; and

even descending lower in service, fill little cups with honey, to hold

out to the weary bee. By the way, Lily, did you tell the other children

that story about your little sister, and Alice, and the sea?

LILY. I told it to Alice, and to Miss Dora. I don't think I did to

anybody else. I thought it wasn't worth.

L. We shall think it worth a great deal now, Lily, if you will tell it

us. How old is Dotty, again? I forget.

LILY. She is not quite three; but she has such odd little old ways,

sometimes.

L. And she was very fond of Alice?

LILY. Yes; Alice was so good to her always!

L. And so when Alice went away?

LILY. Oh, it was nothing, you know, to tell about; only it was strange

at the time.

L. Well; but I want you to tell it.

LILY. The morning after Alice had gone, Dotty was very sad and restless

when she got up; and went about, looking into all the corners, as if she

could find Alice in them, and at last she came to me, and said, 'Is Alie

gone over the great sea?' And I said, 'Yes, she is gone over the great,

deep sea, but she will come back again some day.' Then Dotty looked

round the room; and I had just poured some water out into the basin; and

Dotty ran to it, and got up on a chair, and dashed her hands through the

water, again and again; and cried, 'Oh, deep, deep sea! send little Alie

back to me.'

L. Isn't that pretty, children? There's a dear little heathen for you!

The whole heart of Greek mythology is in that; the idea of a personal

being in the elemental power;--of its being moved by prayer;--and of its

presence everywhere, making the broken diffusion of the element sacred.

Now, remember, the measure in which we may permit ourselves to think of

this trusted and adored personality, in Greek, or in any other,

mythology, as conceivably a shadow of truth, will depend on the degree

in which we hold the Greeks, or other great nations, equal, or inferior,

in privilege and character, to the Jews, or to ourselves. If we believe

that the great Father would use the imagination of the Jew as an

instrument by which to exalt and lead him; but the imagination of the

Greek only to degrade and mislead him: if we can suppose that real

angels were sent to minister to the Jews and to punish them; but no

angels, or only mocking spectra of angels, or even devils in the shapes

of angels, to lead Lycurgus and Leonidas from desolate cradle to

hopeless grave:--and if we can think that it was only the influence of

spectres, or the teaching of demons, which issued in the making of

mothers like Cornelia, and of sons like Cleobis and Bito, we may, of

course, reject the heathen Mythology in our privileged scorn: but, at

least, we are bound to examine strictly by what faults of our own it has

come to pass, that the ministry of real angels among ourselves is

occasionally so ineffectual, as to end in the production of Cornelias

who entrust their child-jewels to Charlotte Winsors for the better

keeping of them; and of sons like that one who, the other day, in

France, beat his mother to death with a stick; and was brought in by the

jury, 'guilty, with extenuating circumstances.'

MAY. Was that really possible?

L. Yes, my dear. I am not sure that I can lay my hand on the reference

to it (and I should not have said 'the other day'--it was a year or two

ago), but you may depend on the fact; and I could give you many like it,

if I chose. There was a murder done in Russia, very lately, on a

traveller. The murderess's little daughter was in the way, and found it

out, somehow. Her mother killed her, too, and put her into the oven.

There is a peculiar horror about the relations between parent and child,

which are being now brought about by our variously degraded forms of

European white slavery. Here _is_ one reference, I see, in my notes on

that story of Cleobis and Bito; though I suppose I marked this chiefly

for its quaintness, and the beautifully Christian names of the sons; but

it is a good instance of the power of the King of the Valley of

Diamonds[153] among us.

In 'Galignani' of July 21-22, 1862, is reported a trial of a farmer's

son in the department of the Yonne. The father, two years ago, at Malay

le Grand, gave up his property to his two sons, on condition of being

maintained by them. Simon fulfilled his agreement, but Pierre would not.

The tribunal of Sens condemns Pierre to pay eighty-four francs a year to

his father. Pierre replies, 'he would rather die than pay it.' Actually,

returning home, he throws himself into the river, and the body is not

found till next day.

MARY. But--but--I can't tell what you would have us think. Do you

seriously mean that the Greeks were better than we are; and that their

gods were real angels?

L. No, my dear. I mean only that we know, in reality, less than nothing

of the dealings of our Maker with our fellow-men; and can only reason or

conjecture safely about them, when we have sincerely humble thoughts of

ourselves and our creeds.

We owe to the Greeks every noble discipline in literature; every radical

principle of art; and every form of convenient beauty in our household

furniture and daily occupations of life. We are unable, ourselves, to

make rational use of half that we have received from them: and, of our

own, we have nothing but discoveries in science, and fine mechanical

adaptations of the discovered physical powers. On the other hand, the

vice existing among certain classes, both of the rich and poor, in

London, Paris, and Vienna, could have been conceived by a Spartan or

Roman of the heroic ages only as possible in a Tartarus, where fiends

were employed to teach, but not to punish, crime. It little becomes us

to speak contemptuously of the religion of races to whom we stand in

such relations; nor do I think any man of modesty or thoughtfulness will

ever speak so of any religion, in which God has allowed one good man to

die, trusting.

The more readily we admit the possibility of our own cherished

convictions being mixed with error, the more vital and helpful whatever

is right in them will become: and no error is so conclusively fatal as

the idea that God will not allow _us_ to err, though He has allowed all

other men to do so. There may be doubt of the meaning of other visions,

but there is none respecting that of the dream of St. Peter; and you may

trust the Rock of the Church's Foundation for true interpreting, when he

learned from it that, 'in every nation, he that feareth God and worketh

righteousness, is accepted with Him.' See that you understand what that

righteousness means; and set hand to it stoutly: you will always measure

your neighbors' creed kindly, in proportion to the substantial fruits of

your own. Do not think you will ever get harm by striving to enter into

the faith of others, and to sympathise, in imagination, with the guiding

principles of their lives. So only can you justly love them, or pity

them, or praise. By the gracious effort you will double, treble--nay,

indefinitely multiply, at once the pleasure, the reverence, and the

intelligence with which you read: and, believe me, it is wiser and

holier, by the fire of your own faith to kindle the ashes of expired

religions, than to let your soul shiver and stumble among their graves,

through the gathering darkness, and communicable cold.

MARY (_after some pause_). We shall all like reading Greek history so

much better after this! but it has put everything else out of our heads

that we wanted to ask.

L. I can tell you one of the things; and I might take credit for

generosity in telling you; but I have a personal reason--Lucilla's verse

about the creation.

DORA. Oh, yes--yes; and its 'pain together, until now.'

L. I call you back to that, because I must warn you against an old error

of my own. Somewhere in the fourth volume of 'Modern Painters,' I said

that the earth seemed to have passed through its highest state: and

that, after ascending by a series of phases, culminating in its

habitation by man, it seems to be now gradually becoming less fit for

that habitation.

MARY. Yes, I remember.

L. I wrote those passages under a very bitter impression of the gradual

perishing of beauty from the loveliest scenes which I knew in the

physical world;--not in any doubtful way, such as I might have

attributed to loss of sensation in myself--but by violent and definite

physical action; such as the filling up of the Lac de Chede by landslips

from the Rochers des Fiz;--the narrowing of the Lake Lucerne by the

gaining delta of the stream of the Muotta-Thal, which, in the course of

years, will cut the lake into two, as that of Brientz has been divided

from that of Thun;--the steady diminishing of the glaciers north of the

Alps, and still more, of the sheets of snow on their southern slopes,

which supply the refreshing streams of Lombardy:--the equally steady

increase of deadly maremma round Pisa and Venice; and other such

phenomena, quite measurably traceable within the limits even of short

life, and unaccompanied, as it seemed, by redeeming or compensatory

agencies. I am still under the same impression respecting the existing

phenomena; but I feel more strongly, every day, that no evidence to be

collected within historical periods can be accepted as any clue to the

great tendencies of geological change; but that the great laws which

never fail, and to which all change is subordinate, appear such as to

accomplish a gradual advance to lovelier order, and more calmly, yet

more deeply, animated Rest. Nor has this conviction ever fastened itself

upon me more distinctly, than during my endeavour to trace the laws

which govern the lowly framework of the dust. For, through all the

phases of its transition and dissolution, there seems to be a continual

effort to raise itself into a higher state; and a measured gain, through

the fierce revulsion and slow renewal of the earth's frame, in beauty,

and order, and permanence. The soft white sediments of the sea draw

themselves, in process of time, into smooth knots of sphered symmetry;

burdened and strained under increase of pressure, they pass into a

nascent marble; scorched by fervent heat, they brighten and blanch into

the snowy rock of Paros and Carrara. The dark drift of the inland river,

or stagnant slime of inland pool and lake, divides, or resolves itself

as it dries, into layers of its several elements; slowly purifying each

by the patient withdrawal of it from the anarchy of the mass in which it

was mingled. Contracted by increasing drought, till it must shatter into

fragments, it infuses continually a finer ichor into the opening veins,

and finds in its weakness the first rudiments of a perfect strength.

Bent at last, rock from rock, nay, atom from atom, and tormented in

lambent fire, it knits, through the fusion, the fibres of a perennial

endurance; and, during countless subsequent centuries, declining, or

rather let me say, rising to repose, finishes the infallible lustre of

its crystalline beauty, under harmonies of law which are wholly

beneficent, because wholly inexorable.

(_The children seem pleased, but more inclined to think over

these matters than to talk._)

L. (_after giving them a little time_). Mary, I seldom ask you to read

anything out of books of mine; but there is a passage about the Law of

Help, which I want you to read to the children now, because it is of no

use merely to put it in other words for them. You know the place I mean,

do not you?

MARY. Yes (_presently finding it_); where shall I begin?

L. Here; but the elder ones had better look afterwards at the piece

which comes just before this.

MARY (_reads_):

* * * * *

'A pure or holy state of anything is that in which all its parts are

helpful or consistent. The highest and first law of the universe, and

the other name of life, is therefore, "help." The other name of death is

"separation." Government and co-operation are in all things, and

eternally, the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, eternally, and in

all things, the laws of death.

'Perhaps the best, though the most familiar, example we could take of

the nature and power of consistence, will be that of the possible

changes in the dust we tread on.

'Exclusive of animal decay, we can hardly arrive at a more absolute type

of impurity, than the mud or slime of a damp, over-trodden path, in the

outskirts of a manufacturing town. I do not say mud of the road, because

that is mixed with animal refuse; but take merely an ounce or two of the

blackest slime of a beaten footpath, on a rainy day, near a

manufacturing town. That slime we shall find in most cases composed of

clay (or brickdust, which is burnt clay), mixed with soot, a little sand

and water. All these elements are at helpless war with each other, and

destroy reciprocally each other's nature and power: competing and

fighting for place at every tread of your foot; sand squeezing out clay,

and clay squeezing out water, and soot meddling everywhere, and defiling

the whole. Let us suppose that this ounce of mud is left in perfect

rest, and that its elements gather together, like to like, so that their

atoms may get into the closest relations possible.

'Let the clay begin. Ridding itself of all foreign substance, it

gradually becomes a white earth, already very beautiful, and fit, with

help of congealing fire, to be made into finest porcelain, and painted

on, and be kept in kings' palaces. But such artificial consistence is

not its best. Leave it still quiet, to follow its own instinct of unity,

and it becomes, not only white but clear; not only clear, but hard; nor

only clear and hard, but so set that it can deal with light in a

wonderful way, and gather out of it the loveliest blue rays only,

refusing the rest. We call it then a sapphire.

'Such being the consummation of the clay, we give similar permission of

quiet to the sand. It also becomes, first, a white earth; then proceeds

to grow clear and hard, and at last arranges itself in mysterious,

infinitely fine parallel lines, which have the power of reflecting, not

merely the blue rays, but the blue, green, purple, and red rays, in the

greatest beauty in which they can be seen through any hard material

whatsoever. We call it then an opal.

'In next order the soot sets to work. It cannot make itself white at

first; but, instead of being discouraged, tries harder and harder; and

comes out clear at last; and the hardest thing in the world: and for

the blackness that it had, obtains in exchange the power of reflecting

all the rays of the sun at once, in the vividest blaze that any solid

thing can shoot. We call it then a diamond.

'Last of all, the water purifies, or unites itself; contented enough if

it only reach the form of a dewdrop: but, if we insist on its proceeding

to a more perfect consistence, it crystallises into the shape of a star.

And, for the ounce of slime which we had by political economy of

competition, we have, by political economy of co-operation, a sapphire,

an opal, and a diamond, set in the midst of a star of snow.'

* * * * *

L. I have asked you to hear that, children, because, from all that we

have seen in the work and play of these past days, I would have you gain

at least one grave and enduring thought. The seeming trouble,--the

unquestionable degradation,--of the elements of the physical earth, must

passively wait the appointed time of their repose, or their restoration.

It can only be brought about for them by the agency of external law. But

if, indeed, there be a nobler life in us than in these strangely moving

atoms;--if, indeed, there is an eternal difference between the fire

which inhabits them, and that which animates us,--it must be shown, by

each of us in his appointed place, not merely in the patience, but in

the activity of our hope; not merely by our desire, but our labour, for

the time when the Dust of the generations of men shall be confirmed for

foundations of the gates of the city of God. The human clay, now

trampled and despised, will not be,--cannot be,--knit into strength and

light by accident or ordinances of unassisted fate. By human cruelty and

iniquity it has been afflicted;--by human mercy and justice it must be

raised: and, in all fear or questioning of what is or is not, the real

message of creation, or of revelation, you may assuredly find perfect

peace, if you are resolved to do that which your Lord has plainly

required,--and content that He should indeed require no more of

you,--than to do Justice, to love Mercy, and to walk humbly with Him.

FOOTNOTES:

[153] Note vi.

NOTES.

NOTE I.

Page 24.

_'That third pyramid of hers.'_

Throughout the dialogues, it must be observed that 'Sibyl' is addressed

(when in play) as having once been the Cumaean Sibyl; and 'Egypt' as

having been queen Nitocris,--the Cinderella, and 'the greatest heroine

and beauty' of Egyptian story. The Egyptians called her 'Neith the

Victorious' (Nitocris), and the Greeks 'Face of the Rose' (Rhodope).

Chaucer's beautiful conception of Cleopatra in the 'Legend of Good

Women,' is much more founded on the traditions of her than on those of

Cleopatra; and, especially in its close, modified by Herodotus's

terrible story of the death of Nitocris, which, however, is

mythologically nothing more than a part of the deep monotonous ancient

dirge for the fulfilment of the earthly destiny of Beauty; 'She cast

herself into a chamber full of ashes.'

I believe this Queen is now sufficiently ascertained to have either

built, or increased to double its former size, the third pyramid of

Gizeh: and the passage following in the text refers to an imaginary

endeavour, by the Old Lecturer and the children together, to make out

the description of that pyramid in the 167th page of the second volume

of Bunsen's 'Egypt's Place in Universal History'--ideal

endeavour,--which ideally terminates as the Old Lecturer's real

endeavours to the same end always have terminated. There are, however,

valuable notes respecting Nitocris at page 210 of the same volume: but

the 'Early Egyptian History for the Young,' by the author of Sidney

Gray, contains, in a pleasant form, as much information as young readers

will usually need.

NOTE II.

Page 25.

_'Pyramid of Asychis.'_

This pyramid, in mythology, divides with the Tower of Babel the shame,

or vain glory, of being presumptuously, and first among great edifices,

built with 'brick for stone.' This was the inscription on it, according

to Herodotus:--

'Despise me not, in comparing me with the pyramids of stone;

for I have the pre-eminence over them, as far as Jupiter has

pre-eminence over the gods. For, striking with staves into

the pool, men gathered the clay which fastened itself to the

staff, and kneaded bricks out of it, and so made me.'

The word I have translated 'kneaded' is literally 'drew;' in the sense

of drawing, for which the Latins used 'duco;' and thus gave us our

'ductile' in speaking of dead clay, and Duke, Doge, or leader, in

speaking of living clay. As the asserted pre-eminence of the edifice is

made, in this inscription, to rest merely on the quantity of labour

consumed in it, this pyramid is considered, in the text, as the type, at

once, of the base building, and of the lost labour, of future ages, so

far at least as the spirits of measured and mechanical effort deal with

it: but Neith, exercising her power upon it, makes it a type of the work

of wise and inspired builders.

NOTE III.

Page 25.

_'The Greater Pthah.'_

It is impossible, as yet, to define with distinctness the personal

agencies of the Egyptian deities. They are continually associated in

function, or hold derivative powers, or are related to each other in

mysterious triads; uniting always symbolism of physical phenomena with

real spiritual power. I have endeavoured partly to explain this in the

text of the tenth Lecture: here, it is only necessary for the reader to

know that the Greater Pthah more or less represents the formative power

of order and measurement: he always stands on a four-square pedestal,

'the Egyptian cubit, metaphorically used as the hieroglyphic for truth;'

his limbs are bound together, to signify fixed stability, as of a

pillar; he has a measuring-rod in his hand; and at Philae, is represented

as holding an egg on a potter's wheel; but I do not know if this symbol

occurs in older sculptures. His usual title is the 'Lord of Truth.'

Others, very beautiful: 'King of the Two Worlds, of Gracious

Countenance,' 'Superintendent of the Great Abode,' &c., are given by Mr.

Birch in Arundale's 'Gallery of Antiquities,' which I suppose is the

book of best authority easily accessible. For the full titles and

utterances of the gods, Rosellini is as yet the only--and I believe,

still a very questionable--authority; and Arundale's little book,

excellent in the text, has this great defect, that its drawings give the

statues invariably a ludicrous or ignoble character. Readers who have

not access to the originals must be warned against this frequent fault

in modern illustration (especially existing also in some of the painted

casts of Gothic and Norman work at the Crystal Palace). It is not owing

to any wilful want of veracity: the plates in Arundale's book are

laboriously faithful: but the expressions of both face and body in a

figure depend merely on emphasis of touch; and, in barbaric art, most

draughtsmen emphasise what they plainly see--the barbarism; and miss

conditions of nobleness, which they must approach the monument in a

different temper before they will discover, and draw with great subtlety

before they can express.

The character of the Lower Pthah, or perhaps I ought rather to say, of

Pthah in his lower office, is sufficiently explained in the text of the

third Lecture; only the reader must be warned that the Egyptian

symbolism of him by the beetle was not a scornful one; it expressed only

the idea of his presence in the first elements of life. But it may not

unjustly be used, in another sense, by us, who have seen his power in

new development; and, even as it was, I cannot conceive that the

Egyptians should have regarded their beetle-headed image of him

(Champollion, 'Pantheon,' pl. 12), without some occult scorn. It is the

most painful of all their types of any beneficent power; and even among

those of evil influences, none can be compared with it, except its

opposite, the tortoise-headed demon of indolence.

Pasht (p. 24, line 32) is connected with the Greek Artemis, especially

in her offices of judgment and vengeance. She is usually lioness-headed;

sometimes cat-headed; her attributes seeming often trivial or ludicrous

unless their full meaning is known; but the enquiry is much too wide to

be followed here. The cat was sacred to her; or rather to the sun, and

secondarily to her. She is alluded to in the text because she is always

the companion of Pthah (called 'the beloved of Pthah,' it may be as

Judgment, demanded and longed for by Truth); and it may be well for

young readers to have this fixed in their minds, even by chance

association. There are more statues of Pasht in the British Museum than

of any other Egyptian deity; several of them fine in workmanship; nearly

all in dark stone, which may be, presumably, to connect her, as the

moon, with the night; and in her office of avenger, with grief.

Thoth (p. 27, line 17), is the Recording Angel of Judgment; and the

Greek Hermes Phre (line 20), is the Sun.

Neith is the Egyptian spirit of divine wisdom; and the Athena of the

Greeks. No sufficient statement of her many attributes, still less of

their meanings, can be shortly given; but this should be noted

respecting the veiling of the Egyptian image of her by vulture

wings--that as she is, physically, the goddess of the air, this bird,

the most powerful creature of the air known to the Egyptians, naturally

became her symbol. It had other significations; but certainly this, when

in connection with Neith. As representing her, it was the most important

sign, next to the winged sphere, in Egyptian sculpture; and, just as in

Homer, Athena herself guides her heroes into battle, this symbol of

wisdom, giving victory, floats over the heads of the Egyptian kings. The

Greeks, representing the goddess herself in human form, yet would not

lose the power of the Egyptian symbol, and changed it into an angel of

victory. First seen in loveliness on the early coins of Syracuse and

Leontium, it gradually became the received sign of all conquest, and the

so-called 'Victory' of later times; which, little by little, loses its

truth, and is accepted by the moderns only as a personification of

victory itself,--not as an actual picture of the living Angel who led to

victory. There is a wide difference between these two conceptions,--all

the difference between insincere poetry, and sincere religion. This I

have also endeavoured farther to illustrate in the tenth Lecture; there

is however one part of Athena's character which it would have been

irrelevant to dwell upon there; yet which I must not wholly leave

unnoticed.

As the goddess of the air, she physically represents both its beneficent

calm, and necessary tempest: other storm-deities (as Chrysaor and AEolus)

being invested with a subordinate and more or less malignant function,

which is exclusively their own, and is related to that of Athena as the

power of Mars is related to hers in war. So also Virgil makes her able

to wield the lightning herself, while Juno cannot, but must pray for the

intervention of AEolus. She has precisely the correspondent moral

authority over calmness of mind, and just anger. She soothes Achilles,

as she incites Tydides; her physical power over the air being always

hinted correlatively. She grasps Achilles by his hair--as the wind would

lift it--softly,

'It fanned his cheek, it raised his hair,

Like a meadow gale in spring.'

She does not merely turn the lance of Mars from Diomed; but seizes it in

both her hands, and casts it aside, with a sense of making it vain, like

chaff in the wind;--to the shout of Achilles, she adds her own voice of

storm in heaven--but in all cases the moral power is still the principal

one--most beautifully in that seizing of Achilles by the hair, which was

the talisman of his life (because he had vowed it to the Sperchius if he

returned in safety), and which, in giving at Patroclus' tomb, he,

knowingly, yields up the hope of return to his country, and signifies

that he will die with his friend. Achilles and Tydides are, above all

other heroes, aided by her in war, because their prevailing characters

are the desire of justice, united in both with deep affections; and, in

Achilles, with a passionate tenderness, which is the real root of his

passionate anger. Ulysses is her favourite chiefly in her office as the

goddess of conduct and design.

NOTE IV.

Page 54.

_'Geometrical limitations.'_

It is difficult, without a tedious accuracy, or without full

illustration, to express the complete relations of crystalline

structure, which dispose minerals to take, at different times, fibrous,

massive, or foliated forms; and I am afraid this chapter will be

generally skipped by the reader: yet the arrangement itself will be

found useful, if kept broadly in mind; and the transitions of state are

of the highest interest, if the subject is entered upon with any

earnestness. It would have been vain to add to the scheme of this little

volume any account of the geometrical forms of crystals: an available

one, though still far too difficult and too copious, has been arranged

by the Rev. Mr. Mitchell, for Orr's 'Circle of the Sciences'; and, I

believe, the 'nets' of crystals, which are therein given to be cut out

with scissors and put prettily together, will be found more conquerable

by young ladies than by other students. They should also, when an

opportunity occurs, be shown, at any public library, the diagram of the

crystallisation of quartz referred to poles, at p. 8 of Cloizaux's

'Manuel de Mineralogie': that they may know what work is; and what the

subject is.

With a view to more careful examination of the nascent states of silica,

I have made no allusion in this volume to the influence of mere

segregation, as connected with the crystalline power. It has only been

recently, during the study of the breccias alluded to in page 113, that

I have fully seen the extent to which this singular force often modifies

rocks in which at first its influence might hardly have been suspected;

many apparent conglomerates being in reality formed chiefly by

segregation, combined with mysterious brokenly-zoned structures, like

those of some malachites. I hope some day to know more of these and

several other mineral phenomena (especially of those connected with the

relative sizes of crystals), which otherwise I should have endeavoured

to describe in this volume.

NOTE V.

Page 102.

_'St. Barbara.'_

I would have given the legends of St. Barbara, and St. Thomas, if I had

thought it always well for young readers to have everything at once told

them which they may wish to know. They will remember the stories better

after taking some trouble to find them: and the text is intelligible

enough as it stands. The idea of St. Barbara, as there given is founded

partly on her legend in Peter de Natalibus, partly on the beautiful

photograph of Van Eyck's picture of her at Antwerp: which was some time

since published at Lille.

NOTE VI.

Page 137.

_'King of the Valley of Diamonds.'_

Isabel interrupted the Lecturer here, and was briefly bid to hold her

tongue; which gave rise to some talk, apart, afterwards, between L. and

Sibyl, of which a word or two may be perhaps advisably set down.

SIBYL. We shall spoil Isabel, certainly, if we don't mind: I was glad

you stopped her, and yet sorry; for she wanted so much to ask about the

Valley of Diamonds again, and she has worked so hard at it, and made it

nearly all out by herself. She recollected Elisha's throwing in the

meal, which nobody else did.

L. But what did she want to ask?

SIBYL. About the mulberry trees and the serpents; we are all stopped by

that. Won't you tell us what it means?

L. Now, Sibyl, I am sure you, who never explained yourself, should be

the last to expect others to do so. I hate explaining myself.

SIBYL. And yet how often you complain of other people for not saying

what they meant. How I have heard you growl over the three stone steps

to purgatory; for instance!

L. Yes; because Dante's meaning is worth getting at; but mine matters

nothing: at least, if ever I think it is of any consequence, I speak it

as clearly as may be. But you may make anything you like of the serpent

forests. I could have helped you to find out what they were, by giving a

little more detail, but it would have been tiresome.

SIBYL. It is much more tiresome not to find out. Tell us, please, as

Isabel says, because we feel so stupid.

L. There is no stupidity; you could not possibly do more than guess at

anything so vague. But I think, you, Sibyl, at least, might have

recollected what first dyed the mulberry?

SIBYL. So I did; but that helped little; I thought of Dante's forest of

suicides, too, but you would not simply have borrowed that?

L. No. If I had had strength to use it, I should have stolen it, to beat

into another shape; not borrowed it. But that idea of souls in trees is

as old as the world; or at least, as the world of man. And I _did_ mean

that there were souls in those dark branches; the souls of all those who

had perished in misery through the pursuit of riches; and that the river

was of their blood, gathering gradually, and flowing out of the valley.

That I meant the serpents for the souls of those who had lived

carelessly and wantonly in their riches; and who have all their sins

forgiven by the world, because they are rich: and therefore they have

seven crimson crested heads, for the seven mortal sins; of which they

are proud: and these, and the memory and report of them, are the chief

causes of temptation to others, as showing the pleasantness and

absolving power of riches; so that thus they are singing serpents. And

the worms are the souls of the common money-getters and traffickers, who

do nothing but eat and spin: and who gain habitually by the distress or

foolishness of others (as you see the butchers have been gaining out of

the panic at the cattle plague, among the poor),--so they are made to

eat the dark leaves, and spin, and perish.

SIBYL. And the souls of the great, cruel, rich people who oppress the

poor, and lend money to government to make unjust war, where are they?

L. They change into the ice, I believe, and are knit with the gold; and

make the grave dust of the valley. I believe so, at least, for no one

ever sees those souls anywhere.

(SIBYL _ceases questioning._)

ISABEL (_who has crept up to her side without any one's seeing_). Oh,

Sibyl, please ask him about the fire-flies!

L. What, you there, mousie! No; I won't tell either Sibyl or you about

the fire-flies; nor a word more about anything else. You ought to be

little fire-flies yourselves, and find your way in twilight by your own

wits.

ISABEL. But you said they burned, you know?

L. Yes; and you may be fire-flies that way too, some of you, before

long, though I did not mean that. Away with you, children. You have

thought enough for to-day.

NOTE TO SECOND EDITION.

_Sentence_ out of letter from May (who is staying with Isabel just now

at Cassel), dated 15th June, 1877:--

"I am reading the Ethics with a nice Irish girl who is staying here, and

she's just as puzzled as I've always been about the fire-flies, and we

both want to know so much.--Please be a very nice old Lecturer, and tell

us, won't you?"

Well, May, you never were a vain girl; so could scarcely guess that I

meant them for the light, unpursued vanities, which yet blind us,

confused among the stars. One evening, as I came late into Siena, the

fire-flies were flying high on a stormy sirocco wind,--the stars

themselves no brighter, and all their host seeming, at moments, to fade

as the insects faded.

FICTION--FAIR AND FOUL.

On the first mild--or, at least, the first bright--day of March, in this

year, I walked through what was once a country lane, between the

hostelry of the Half-moon at the bottom of Herne Hill, and the secluded

College of Dulwich.

In my young days, Croxsted Lane was a green bye-road traversable for

some distance by carts; but rarely so traversed, and, for the most part,

little else than a narrow strip of untilled field, separated by

blackberry hedges from the better cared-for meadows on each side of it:

growing more weeds, therefore, than they, and perhaps in spring a

primrose or two--white archangel--daisies plenty, and purple thistles in

autumn. A slender rivulet, boasting little of its brightness, for there

are no springs at Dulwich, yet fed purely enough by the rain and morning

dew, here trickled--there loitered--through the long grass beneath the

hedges, and expanded itself, where it might, into moderately clear and

deep pools, in which, under their veils of duck-weed, a fresh-water

shell or two, sundry curious little skipping shrimps, any quantity of

tadpoles in their time, and even sometimes a tittlebat, offered

themselves to my boyhood's pleased, and not inaccurate, observation.

There, my mother and I used to gather the first buds of the hawthorn;

and there, in after years, I used to walk in the summer shadows, as in a

place wilder and sweeter than our garden, to think over any passage I

wanted to make better than usual in _Modern Painters_.

So, as aforesaid, on the first kindly day of this year, being thoughtful

more than usual of those old times, I went to look again at the place.

Often, both in those days, and since, I have put myself hard to it,

vainly, to find words wherewith to tell of beautiful things; but beauty

has been in the world since the world was made, and human language can

make a shift, somehow, to give account of it, whereas the peculiar

forces of devastation induced by modern city life have only entered the

world lately; and no existing terms of language known to me are enough

to describe the forms of filth, and modes of ruin, that varied

themselves along the course of Croxsted Lane. The fields on each side of

it are now mostly dug up for building, or cut through into gaunt corners

and nooks of blind ground by the wild crossings and concurrencies of

three railroads. Half a dozen handfuls of new cottages, with Doric

doors, are dropped about here and there among the gashed ground: the

lane itself, now entirely grassless, is a deep-rutted, heavy-hillocked

cart-road, diverging gatelessly into various brick-fields or pieces of

waste; and bordered on each side by heaps of--Hades only knows

what!--mixed dust of every unclean thing that can crumble in drought,

and mildew of every unclean thing that can rot or rust in damp: ashes

and rags, beer-bottles and old shoes, battered pans, smashed crockery,

shreds of nameless clothes, door-sweepings, floor-sweepings, kitchen

garbage, back-garden sewage, old iron, rotten timber jagged with

out-torn nails, cigar-ends, pipe-bowls, cinders, bones, and ordure,

indescribable; and, variously kneaded into, sticking to, or fluttering

foully here and there over all these,--remnants broadcast, of every

manner of newspaper, advertisement or big-lettered bill, festering and

flaunting out their last publicity in the pits of stinking dust and

mortal slime.

The lane ends now where its prettiest windings once began; being cut off

by a cross-road leading out of Dulwich to a minor railway station: and

on the other side of this road, what was of old the daintiest intricacy

of its solitude is changed into a straight, and evenly macadamised

carriage drive, between new houses of extreme respectability, with good

attached gardens and offices--most of these tenements being larger--all

more pretentious, and many, I imagine, held at greatly higher rent than

my father's, tenanted for twenty years at Herne Hill. And it became

matter of curious meditation to me what must here become of children

resembling my poor little dreamy quondam self in temper, and thus

brought up at the same distance from London, and in the same or better

circumstances of worldly fortune; but with only Croxsted Lane in its

present condition for their country walk. The trimly kept road before

their doors, such as one used to see in the fashionable suburbs of

Cheltenham or Leamington, presents nothing to their study but gravel,

and gas-lamp posts; the modern addition of a vermilion letter-pillar

contributing indeed to the splendour, but scarcely to the interest of

the scene; and a child of any sense or fancy would hastily contrive

escape from such a barren desert of politeness, and betake itself to

investigation, such as might be feasible, of the natural history of

Croxsted Lane.

But, for its sense or fancy, what food, or stimulus, can it find, in

that foul causeway of its youthful pilgrimage? What would have happened

to myself, so directed, I cannot clearly imagine. Possibly, I might have

got interested in the old iron and wood-shavings; and become an engineer

or a carpenter: but for the children of to-day, accustomed from the

instant they are out of their cradles, to the sight of this infinite

nastiness, prevailing as a fixed condition of the universe, over the

face of nature, and accompanying all the operations of industrious man,

what is to be the scholastic issue? unless, indeed, the thrill of

scientific vanity in the primary analysis of some unheard-of process of

corruption--or the reward of microscopic research in the sight of worms

with more legs, and acari of more curious generation than ever vivified

the more simply smelling plasma of antiquity.

One result of such elementary education is, however, already certain;

namely, that the pleasure which we may conceive taken by the children of

the coming time, in the analysis of physical corruption, guides, into

fields more dangerous and desolate, the expatiation of imaginative

literature: and that the reactions of moral disease upon itself, and the

conditions of languidly monstrous character developed in an atmosphere

of low vitality, have become the most valued material of modern

fiction, and the most eagerly discussed texts of modern philosophy.

The many concurrent reasons for this mischief may, I believe, be massed

under a few general heads.

I. There is first the hot fermentation and unwholesome secrecy of the

population crowded into large cities, each mote in the misery lighter,

as an individual soul, than a dead leaf, but becoming oppressive and

infectious each to his neighbour, in the smoking mass of decay. The

resulting modes of mental ruin and distress are continually new; and in

a certain sense, worth study in their monstrosity: they have accordingly

developed a corresponding science of fiction, concerned mainly with the

description of such forms of disease, like the botany of leaf-lichens.

In De Balzac's story of _Father Goriot_, a grocer makes a large fortune,

of which he spends on himself as much as may keep him alive; and on his

two daughters, all that can promote their pleasures or their pride. He

marries them to men of rank, supplies their secret expenses, and

provides for his favourite a separate and clandestine establishment with

her lover. On his deathbed, he sends for this favourite daughter, who

wishes to come, and hesitates for a quarter of an hour between doing so,

and going to a ball at which it has been for the last month her chief

ambition to be seen. She finally goes to the ball.

This story is, of course, one of which the violent contrasts and

spectral catastrophe could only take place, or be conceived, in a large

city. A village grocer cannot make a large fortune, cannot marry his

daughters to titled squires, and cannot die without having his children

brought to him, if in the neighbourhood, by fear of village gossip, if

for no better cause.

II. But a much more profound feeling than this mere curiosity of science

in morbid phenomena is concerned in the production of the carefullest

forms of modern fiction. The disgrace and grief resulting from the mere

trampling pressure and electric friction of town life, become to the

sufferers peculiarly mysterious in their undeservedness, and frightful

in their inevitableness. The power of all surroundings over them for

evil; the incapacity of their own minds to refuse the pollution, and of

their own wills to oppose the weight, of the staggering mass that chokes

and crushes them into perdition, brings every law of healthy existence

into question with them, and every alleged method of help and hope into

doubt. Indignation, without any calming faith in justice, and

self-contempt, without any curative self-reproach, dull the

intelligence, and degrade the conscience, into sullen incredulity of all

sunshine outside the dunghill, or breeze beyond the wafting of its

impurity; and at last a philosophy develops itself, partly satiric,

partly consolatory, concerned only with the regenerative vigour of

manure, and the necessary obscurities of fimetic Providence; showing how

everybody's fault is somebody else's, how infection has no law,

digestion no will, and profitable dirt no dishonour.

And thus an elaborate and ingenious scholasticism, in what may be called

the Divinity of Decomposition, has established itself in connection with

the more recent forms of romance, giving them at once a complacent tone

of clerical dignity, and an agreeable dash of heretical impudence; while

the inculcated doctrine has the double advantage of needing no laborious

scholarship for its foundation, and no painful self-denial for its

practice.

III. The monotony of life in the central streets of any great modern

city, but especially in those of London, where every emotion intended to

be derived by men from the sight of nature, or the sense of art, is

forbidden for ever, leaves the craving of the heart for a sincere, yet

changeful, interest, to be fed from one source only. Under natural

conditions the degree of mental excitement necessary to bodily health is

provided by the course of the seasons, and the various skill and fortune

of agriculture. In the country every morning of the year brings with it

a new aspect of springing or fading nature; a new duty to be fulfilled

upon earth, and a new promise or warning in heaven. No day is without

its innocent hope, its special prudence, its kindly gift, and its

sublime danger; and in every process of wise husbandry, and every

effort of contending or remedial courage, the wholesome passions, pride,

and bodily power of the labourer are excited and exerted in happiest

unison. The companionship of domestic, the care of serviceable, animals,

soften and enlarge his life with lowly charities, and discipline him in

familiar wisdoms and unboastful fortitudes; while the divine laws of

seed-time which cannot be recalled, harvest which cannot be hastened,

and winter in which no man can work, compel the impatiences and coveting

of his heart into labour too submissive to be anxious, and rest too

sweet to be wanton. What thought can enough comprehend the contrast

between such life, and that in streets where summer and winter are only

alternations of heat and cold; where snow never fell white, nor sunshine

clear; where the ground is only a pavement, and the sky no more than the

glass roof of an arcade; where the utmost power of a storm is to choke

the gutters, and the finest magic of spring, to change mud into dust:

where--chief and most fatal difference in state, there is no interest of

occupation for any of the inhabitants but the routine of counter or desk

within doors, and the effort to pass each other without collision

outside; so that from morning to evening the only possible variation of

the monotony of the hours, and lightening of the penalty of existence,

must be some kind of mischief, limited, unless by more than ordinary

godsend of fatality, to the fall of a horse, or the slitting of a

pocket.

I said that under these laws of inanition, the craving of the human

heart for some kind of excitement could be supplied from _one_ source

only. It might have been thought by any other than a sternly tentative

philosopher, that the denial of their natural food to human feelings

would have provoked a reactionary desire for it; and that the dreariness

of the street would have been gilded by dreams of pastoral felicity.

Experience has shown the fact to be otherwise; the thoroughly trained

Londoner can enjoy no other excitement than that to which he has been

accustomed, but asks for _that_ in continually more ardent or more

virulent concentration; and the ultimate power of fiction to entertain

him is by varying to his fancy the modes, and defining for his dulness

the horrors, of Death. In the single novel of _Bleak House_ there are

nine deaths (or left for death's, in the drop scene) carefully wrought

out or led up to, either by way of pleasing surprise, as the baby's at

the brickmaker's, or finished in their threatenings and sufferings, with

as much enjoyment as can be contrived in the anticipation, and as much

pathology as can be concentrated in the description. Under the following

varieties of method:--

One by assassination Mr. Tulkinghorn.

One by starvation, with phthisis Joe.

One by chagrin Richard.

One by spontaneous combustion Mr. Krook.

One by sorrow Lady Dedlock's lover.

One by remorse Lady Dedlock.

One by insanity Miss Flite.

One by paralysis Sir Leicester.

Besides the baby, by fever, and a lively young Frenchwoman left to be

hanged.

And all this, observe, not in a tragic, adventurous, or military story,

but merely as the further enlivenment of a narrative intended to be

amusing; and as a properly representative average of the statistics of

civilian mortality in the centre of London.

Observe further, and chiefly. It is not the mere number of deaths

(which, if we count the odd troopers in the last scene, is exceeded in

_Old Mortality_, and reached, within one or two, both in _Waverley_ and

_Guy Mannering_) that marks the peculiar tone of the modern novel. It is

the fact that all these deaths, but one, are of inoffensive, or at least

in the world's estimate respectable persons; and that they are all

grotesquely either violent or miserable, purporting thus to illustrate

the modern theology that the appointed destiny of a large average of our

population is to die like rats in a drain, either by trap or poison.

Not, indeed, that a lawyer in full practice can be usually supposed as

faultless in the eye of heaven as a dove or a woodcock; but it is not,

in former divinities, thought the will of Providence that he should be

dropped by a shot from a client behind his fire-screen, and retrieved in

the morning by his housemaid under the chandelier. Neither is Lady

Dedlock less reprehensible in her conduct than many women of fashion

have been and will be: but it would not therefore have been thought

poetically just, in old-fashioned morality, that she should be found by

her daughter lying dead, with her face in the mud of a St. Giles's

churchyard.

In the work of the great masters death is always either heroic,

deserved, or quiet and natural (unless their purpose be totally and

deeply tragic, when collateral meaner death is permitted, like that of

Polonius or Roderigo). In _Old Mortality_, four of the deaths,

Bothwell's, Ensign Grahame's, Macbriar's, and Evandale's, are

magnificently heroic; Burley's and Oliphant's long deserved, and swift;

the troopers', met in the discharge of their military duty, and the old

miser's, as gentle as the passing of a cloud, and almost beautiful in

its last words of--now unselfish--care.

'Ailie' (he aye ca'd me Ailie, we were auld acquaintance,)

'Ailie, take ye care and haud the gear weel thegither; for

the name of Morton of Milnwood's gane out like the last

sough of an auld sang.' And sae he fell out o' ae dwam into

another, and ne'er spak a word mair, unless it were

something we cou'dna mak out, about a dipped candle being

gude eneugh to see to dee wi'. He cou'd ne'er bide to see a

moulded ane, and there was ane, by ill luck, on the table.

In _Guy Mannering_, the murder, though unpremeditated, of a single

person, (himself not entirely innocent, but at least by heartlessness in

a cruel function earning his fate,) is avenged to the uttermost on all

the men conscious of the crime; Mr. Bertram's death, like that of his

wife, brief in pain, and each told in the space of half-a-dozen lines;

and that of the heroine of the tale, self-devoted, heroic in the

highest, and happy.

Nor is it ever to be forgotten, in the comparison of Scott's with

inferior work, that his own splendid powers were, even in early life,

tainted, and in his latter years destroyed, by modern conditions of

commercial excitement, then first, but rapidly, developing themselves.

There are parts even in his best novels coloured to meet tastes which he

despised; and many pages written in his later ones to lengthen his

article for the indiscriminate market.

But there was one weakness of which his healthy mind remained incapable

to the last. In modern stories prepared for more refined or fastidious

audiences than those of Dickens, the funereal excitement is obtained,

for the most part, not by the infliction of violent or disgusting death;

but in the suspense, the pathos, and the more or less by all felt, and

recognised, mortal phenomena of the sick-room. The temptation, to weak

writers, of this order of subject is especially great, because the study

of it from the living--or dying--model is so easy, and to many has been

the most impressive part of their own personal experience; while, if the

description be given even with mediocre accuracy, a very large section

of readers will admire its truth, and cherish its melancholy: Few

authors of second or third rate genius can either record or invent a

probable conversation in ordinary life; but few, on the other hand, are

so destitute of observant faculty as to be unable to chronicle the

broken syllables and languid movements of an invalid. The easily

rendered, and too surely recognised, image of familiar suffering is felt

at once to be real where all else had been false; and the historian of

the gestures of fever and words of delirium can count on the applause of

a gratified audience as surely as the dramatist who introduces on the

stage of his flagging action a carriage that can be driven or a fountain

that will flow. But the masters of strong imagination disdain such work,

and those of deep sensibility shrink from it.[154] Only under conditions

of personal weakness, presently to be noted, would Scott comply with the

cravings of his lower audience in scenes of terror like the death of

Front-de-Boeuf. But he never once withdrew the sacred curtain of the

sick-chamber, nor permitted the disgrace of wanton tears round the

humiliation of strength, or the wreck of beauty.

IV. No exception to this law of reverence will be found in the scenes in

Coeur de Lion's illness introductory to the principal incident in the

_Talisman_. An inferior writer would have made the king charge in

imagination at the head of his chivalry, or wander in dreams by the

brooks of Aquitaine; but Scott allows us to learn no more startling

symptoms of the king's malady than that he was restless and impatient,

and could not wear his armour. Nor is any bodily weakness, or crisis of

danger, permitted to disturb for an instant the royalty of intelligence

and heart in which he examines, trusts and obeys the physician whom his

attendants fear.

Yet the choice of the main subject in this story and its companion--the

trial, to a point of utter torture, of knightly faith, and several

passages in the conduct of both, more especially the exaggerated scenes

in the House of Baldringham, and hermitage of Engedi, are signs of the

gradual decline in force of intellect and soul which those who love

Scott best have done him the worst injustice in their endeavours to

disguise or deny. The mean anxieties, moral humiliations, and

mercilessly demanded brain-toil, which killed him, show their sepulchral

grasp for many and many a year before their final victory; and the

states of more or less dulled, distorted, and polluted imagination which

culminate in _Castle Dangerous_, cast a Stygian hue over _St. Ronan's

Well, The Fair Maid of Perth_, and _Anne of Geierstein_, which lowers

them, the first altogether, the other two at frequent intervals, into

fellowship with the normal disease which festers throughout the whole

body of our lower fictitious literature.

Fictitious! I use the ambiguous word deliberately; for it is impossible

to distinguish in these tales of the prison-house how far their vice and

gloom are thrown into their manufacture only to meet a vile demand, and

how far they are an integral condition of thought in the minds of men

trained from their youth up in the knowledge of Londinian and Parisian

misery. The speciality of the plague is a delight in the exposition of

the relations between guilt and decrepitude; and I call the results of

it literature 'of the prison-house,' because the thwarted habits of body

and mind, which are the punishment of reckless crowding in cities,

become, in the issue of that punishment, frightful subjects of exclusive

interest to themselves; and the art of fiction in which they finally

delight is only the more studied arrangement and illustration, by

coloured firelights, of the daily bulletins of their own wretchedness,

in the prison calendar, the police news, and the hospital report.

The reader will perhaps be surprised at my separating the greatest work

of Dickens, _Oliver Twist_, with honour, from the loathsome mass to

which it typically belongs. That book is an earnest and uncaricatured

record of states of criminal life, written with didactic purpose, full

of the gravest instruction, nor destitute of pathetic studies of noble

passion. Even the _Mysteries of Paris_ and Gaboriau's _Crime d'Augival_

are raised, by their definiteness of historical intention and

forewarning anxiety, far above the level of their order, and may be

accepted as photographic evidence of an otherwise incredible

civilisation, corrupted in the infernal fact of it, down to the genesis

of such figures as the Vicomte d'Augival, the Stabber,[155] the

Skeleton, and the She-wolf. But the effectual head of the whole

cretinous school is the renowned novel in which the hunchbacked lover

watches the execution of his mistress from the tower of Notre-Dame; and

its strength passes gradually away into the anatomical preparations, for

the general market, of novels like _Poor Miss Finch_, in which the

heroine is blind, the hero epileptic, and the obnoxious brother is found

dead with his hands dropped off, in the Arctic regions.[156]

This literature of the Prison-house, understanding by the word not only

the cell of Newgate, but also and even more definitely the cell of the

Hotel-Dieu, the Hopital des Fous, and the grated corridor with the

dripping slabs of the Morgue, having its central root thus in the Ile

de Paris--or historically and pre-eminently the 'Cite de Paris'--is,

when understood deeply, the precise counter-corruption of the religion

of the Sainte Chapelle, just as the worst forms of bodily and mental

ruin are the corruption of love. I have therefore called it 'Fiction

mecroyante,' with literal accuracy and precision; according to the

explanation of the word which the reader may find in any good French

dictionary,[157] and round its Arctic pole in the Morgue, he may gather

into one Caina of gelid putrescence the entire product of modern infidel

imagination, amusing itself with destruction of the body, and busying

itself with aberration of the mind.

Aberration, palsy, or plague, observe, as distinguished from normal

evil, just as the venom of rabies or cholera differs from that of a wasp

or a viper. The life of the insect and serpent deserves, or at least

permits, our thoughts; not so, the stages of agony in the fury-driven

hound. There is some excuse, indeed, for the pathologic labour of the

modern novelist in the fact that he cannot easily, in a city population,

find a healthy mind to vivisect: but the greater part of such amateur

surgery is the struggle, in an epoch of wild literary competition, to

obtain novelty of material. The varieties of aspect and colour in

healthy fruit, be it sweet or sour, may be within certain limits

described exhaustively. Not so the blotches of its conceivable blight:

and while the symmetries of integral human character can only be traced

by harmonious and tender skill, like the branches of a living tree, the

faults and gaps of one gnawed away by corroding accident can be shuffled

into senseless change like the wards of a Chubb lock.

V. It is needless to insist on the vast field for this dice-cast or

card-dealt calamity which opens itself in the ignorance, money-interest,

and mean passion, of city marriage. Peasants know each other as

children--meet, as they grow up in testing labour; and if a stout

farmer's son marries a handless girl, it is his own fault. Also in the

patrician families of the field, the young people know what they are

doing, and marry a neighbouring estate, or a covetable title, with some

conception of the responsibilities they undertake. But even among these,

their season in the confused metropolis creates licentious and

fortuitous temptation before unknown; and in the lower middle orders, an

entirely new kingdom of discomfort and disgrace has been preached to

them in the doctrines of unbridled pleasure which are merely an apology

for their peculiar forms of illbreeding. It is quite curious how often

the catastrophe, or the leading interest, of a modern novel, turns upon

the want, both in maid and bachelor, of the common self-command which

was taught to their grandmothers and grandfathers as the first element

of ordinarily decent behaviour. Rashly inquiring the other day the plot

of a modern story from a female friend, I elicited, after some

hesitation, that it hinged mainly on the young people's 'forgetting

themselves in a boat;' and I perceive it to be accepted as nearly an

axiom in the code of modern civic chivalry that the strength of amiable

sentiment is proved by our incapacity on proper occasions to express,

and on improper ones to control it. The pride of a gentleman of the old

school used to be in his power of saying what he meant, and being silent

when he ought, (not to speak of the higher nobleness which bestowed love

where it was honourable, and reverence where it was due); but the

automatic amours and involuntary proposals of recent romance acknowledge

little further law of morality than the instinct of an insect, or the

effervescence of a chemical mixture.

There is a pretty little story of Alfred de Musset's,--_La Mouche_,

which, if the reader cares to glance at it, will save me further trouble

in explaining the disciplinarian authority of mere old-fashioned

politeness, as in some sort protective of higher things. It describes,

with much grace and precision, a state of society by no means

pre-eminently virtuous, or enthusiastically heroic; in which many people

do extremely wrong, and none sublimely right. But as there are heights

of which the achievement is unattempted, there are abysses to which fall

is barred; neither accident nor temptation will make any of the

principal personages swerve from an adopted resolution, or violate an

accepted principle of honour; people are expected as a matter of course

to speak with propriety on occasion, and to wait with patience when they

are bid: those who do wrong, admit it; those who do right don't boast of

it; everybody knows his own mind, and everybody has good manners.

Nor must it be forgotten that in the worst days of the self-indulgence

which destroyed the aristocracies of Europe, their vices, however

licentious, were never, in the fatal modern sense, 'unprincipled.' The

vainest believed in virtue; the vilest respected it. 'Chaque chose avait

son nom,'[158] and the severest of English moralists recognises the

accurate wit, the lofty intellect, and the unfretted benevolence, which

redeemed from vitiated surroundings the circle of d'Alembert and

Marmontel.[159]

I have said, with too slight praise, that the vainest, in those days,

'believed' in virtue. Beautiful and heroic examples of it were always

before them; nor was it without the secret significance attaching to

what may seem the least accidents in the work of a master, that Scott

gave to both his heroines of the age of revolution in England the name

of the queen of the highest order of English chivalry.[160]