money,--no money being less productive of good, or of any percentage
whatever, than that which we shake away from the ends of undertakers'
plumes,--it is of course the duty of all good economists, and kind
persons, to prove and proclaim continually, to the poor as well as the
rich, that respect for the dead is not really shown by laying great
stones on them to tell us where they are laid; but by remembering where
they are laid, without a stone to help us; trusting them to the sacred
grass and saddened flowers; and still more, that respect and love are
shown to them, not by great monuments to them which we build with _our_
hands, but by letting the monuments stand, which they built with _their
own_. And this is the point now in question.
72. Observe, there are two great reciprocal duties concerning industry,
constantly to be exchanged between the living and the dead. We, as we
live and work, are to be always thinking of those who are to come after
us; that what we do may be serviceable, as far as we can make it so, to
them, as well as to us. Then, when we die, it is the duty of those who
come after us to accept this work of ours with thanks and remembrance,
not thrusting it aside or tearing it down the moment they think they
have no use for it. And each generation will only be happy or powerful
to the pitch that it ought to be, in fulfilling these two duties to the
Past and the Future. Its own work will never be rightly done, even for
itself--never good, or noble, or pleasurable to its own eyes--if it does
not prepare it also for the eyes of generations yet to come. And its own
possessions will never be enough for it, and its own wisdom never enough
for it, unless it avails itself gratefully and tenderly of the treasures
and the wisdom bequeathed to it by its ancestors.
73. For, be assured, that all the best things and treasures of this
world are not to be produced by each generation for itself; but we are
all intended, not to carve our work in snow that will melt, but each and
all of us to be continually rolling a great white gathering snowball,
higher and higher--larger and larger--along the Alps of human power.
Thus the science of nations is to be accumulative from father to son:
each learning a little more and a little more; each receiving all that
was known, and adding its own gain: the history and poetry of nations
are to be accumulative; each generation treasuring the history and the
songs of its ancestors, adding its own history and its own songs: and
the art of nations is to be accumulative, just as science and history
are; the work of living men is not superseding, but building itself
upon the work of the past. Nearly every great and intellectual race of
the world has produced, at every period of its career, an art with some
peculiar and precious character about it, wholly unattainable by any
other race, and at any other time; and the intention of Providence
concerning that art, is evidently that it should all grow together into
one mighty temple; the rough stones and the smooth all finding their
place, and rising, day by day, in richer and higher pinnacles to heaven.
74. Now, just fancy what a position the world, considered as one great
workroom--one great factory in the form of a globe--would have been in
by this time, if it had in the least understood this duty, or been
capable of it. Fancy what we should have had around us now, if, instead
of quarrelling and fighting over their work, the nations had aided each
other in their work, or if even in their conquests, instead of effacing
the memorials of those they succeeded and subdued, they had guarded the
spoils of their victories. Fancy what Europe would be now, if the
delicate statues and temples of the Greeks--if the broad roads and
massy walls of the Romans--if the noble and pathetic architecture of the
middle ages, had not been ground to dust by mere human rage. You talk of
the scythe of Time, and the tooth of Time: I tell you, Time is
scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm--we who smite
like the scythe. It is ourselves who abolish--ourselves who consume: we
are the mildew, and the flame; and the soul of man is to its own work as
the moth that frets when it cannot fly, and as the hidden flame that
blasts where it cannot illuminate. All these lost treasures of human
intellect have been wholly destroyed by human industry of destruction;
the marble would have stood its two thousand years as well in the
polished statue as in the Parian cliff; but we men have ground it to
powder, and mixed it with our own ashes. The walls and the ways would
have stood--it is we who have left not one stone upon another, and
restored its pathlessness to the desert; the great cathedrals of old
religion would have stood--it is we who have dashed down the carved work
with axes and hammers, and bid the mountain-grass bloom upon the
pavement, and the sea-winds chant in the galleries.
75. You will perhaps think all this was somehow necessary for the
development of the human race. I cannot stay now to dispute that, though
I would willingly; but do you think it is _still_ necessary for that
development? Do you think that in this nineteenth century it is still
necessary for the European nations to turn all the places where their
principal art-treasures are into battle-fields? For that is what they
are doing even while I speak; the great firm of the world is managing
its business at this moment, just as it has done in past time. Imagine
what would be the thriving circumstances of a manufacturer of some
delicate produce--suppose glass, or china--in whose workshop and
exhibition rooms all the workmen and clerks began fighting at least once
a day, first blowing off the steam, and breaking all the machinery they
could reach; and then making fortresses of all the cupboards, and
attacking and defending the show-tables, the victorious party finally
throwing everything they could get hold of out of the window, by way of
showing their triumph, and the poor manufacturer picking up and putting
away at last a cup here and a handle there. A fine prosperous business
that would be, would it not? and yet that is precisely the way the great
manufacturing firm of the world carries on its business.
76. It has so arranged its political squabbles for the last six or seven
hundred years, that not one of them could be fought out but in the midst
of its most precious art; and it so arranges them to this day. For
example, if I were asked to lay my finger, in a map of the world, on the
spot of the world's surface which contained at this moment the most
singular concentration of art-teaching and art-treasure, I should lay it
on the name of the town of Verona. Other cities, indeed, contain more
works of carriageable art, but none contain so much of the glorious
local art, and of the springs and sources of art, which can by no means
be made subjects of package or porterage, nor, I grieve to say, of
salvage. Verona possesses, in the first place, not the largest, but the
most perfect and intelligible Roman amphitheatre that exists, still
unbroken in circle of step, and strong in succession of vault and arch:
it contains minor Roman monuments, gateways, theatres, baths, wrecks of
temples, which give the streets of its suburbs a character of antiquity
unexampled elsewhere, except in Rome itself. But it contains, in the
next place, what Rome does not contain--perfect examples of the great
twelfth-century Lombardic architecture, which was the root of all the
mediæval art of Italy, without which no Giottos, no Angelicos, no
Raphaels would have been possible: it contains that architecture, not in
rude forms, but in the most perfect and loveliest types it ever
attained--contains those, not in ruins, nor in altered and hardly
decipherable fragments, but in churches perfect from porch to apse, with
all their carving fresh, their pillars firm, their joints unloosened.
Besides these, it includes examples of the great thirteenth and
fourteenth-century Gothic of Italy, not merely perfect, but elsewhere
unrivalled. At Rome, the Roman--at Pisa, the Lombard--architecture may
be seen in greater or in equal nobleness; but not at Rome, nor Pisa, nor
Florence, nor in any city of the world, is there a great mediæval Gothic
like the Gothic of Verona. Elsewhere, it is either less pure in type or
less lovely in completion: only at Verona may you see it in the
simplicity of its youthful power, and the tenderness of its accomplished
beauty. And Verona possesses, in the last place, the loveliest
Renaissance architecture of Italy, not disturbed by pride, nor defiled
by luxury, but rising in fair fulfilment of domestic service, serenity
of effortless grace, and modesty of home seclusion; its richest work
given to the windows that open on the narrowest streets and most silent
gardens. All this she possesses, in the midst of natural scenery such as
assuredly exists nowhere else in the habitable globe--a wild Alpine
river foaming at her feet, from whose shore the rocks rise in a great
crescent, dark with cypress, and misty with olive: illimitably, from
before her southern gates, the tufted plains of Italy sweep and fade in
golden light; around her, north and west, the Alps crowd in crested
troops, and the winds of Benacus bear to her the coolness of their
snows.
77. And this is the city--such, and possessing such things as these--at
whose gates the decisive battles of Italy are fought continually: three
days her towers trembled with the echo of the cannon of Arcola; heaped
pebbles of the Mincio divide her fields to this hour with lines of
broken rampart, whence the tide of war rolled back to Novara; and now on
that crescent of her eastern cliffs, whence the full moon used to rise
through the bars of the cypresses in her burning summer twilights,
touching with soft increase of silver light the rosy marbles of her
balconies,--along the ridge of that encompassing rock, other circles are
increasing now, white and pale; walled towers of cruel strength,
sable-spotted with cannon-courses. I tell you, I have seen, when the
thunderclouds came down on those Italian hills, and all their crags were
dipped in the dark, terrible purple, as if the winepress of the wrath of
God had stained their mountain-raiment--I have seen the hail fall in
Italy till the forest branches stood stripped and bare as if blasted by
the locust; but the white hail never fell from those clouds of heaven as
the black hail will fall from the clouds of hell, if ever one breath of
Italian life stirs again in the streets of Verona.
78. Sad as you will feel this to be, I do not say that you can directly
prevent it; you cannot drive the Austrians out of Italy, nor prevent
them from building forts where they choose. But I do say,[11] that you,
and I, and all of us, ought to be both acting and feeling with a full
knowledge and understanding of these things; and that, without trying to
excite revolutions or weaken governments, we may give our own thoughts
and help, so as in a measure to prevent needless destruction. We should
do this, if we only realized the thing thoroughly. You drive out day by
day through your own pretty suburbs, and you think only of making, with
what money you have to spare, your gateways handsomer, and your
carriage-drives wider--and your drawing-rooms more splendid, having a
vague notion that you are all the while patronizing and advancing art;
and you make no effort to conceive the fact that, within a few hours'
journey of you, there are gateways and drawing-rooms which might just as
well be yours as these, all built already; gateways built by the
greatest masters of sculpture that ever struck marble; drawing-rooms,
painted by Titian and Veronese; and you won't accept nor save these as
they are, but you will rather fetch the house-painter from over the way,
and let Titian and Veronese house the rats.
[Note 11: The reader can hardly but remember Mrs. Browning's
beautiful appeal for Italy, made on the occasion of the first great
Exhibition of Art in England:--
Magi of the east and of the west,
Your incense, gold, and myrrh are excellent!--
What gifts for Christ, then, bring ye with the rest?
Your hands have worked well. Is your courage spent
In handwork only? Have you nothing best,
Which generous souls may perfect and present,
And He shall thank the givers for? no light
Of teaching, liberal nations, for the poor,
Who sit in darkness when it is not night?
No cure for wicked children? Christ,--no cure,
No help for women, sobbing out of sight
Because men made the laws? no brothel-lure
Burnt out by popular lightnings? Hast thou found
No remedy, my England, for such woes?
No outlet, Austria, for the scourged and bound,
No call back for the exiled? no repose,
Russia for knouted Poles worked underground,
And gentle ladies bleached among the snows?
No mercy for the slave, America?
No hope for Rome, free France, chivalric France?
Alas, great nations have great shames, I say.
No pity, O world, no tender utterance
Of benediction, and prayers stretched this way
For poor Italia, baffled by mischance?
O gracious nations, give some ear to me!
You all go to your Fair, and I am one
Who at the roadside of humanity
Beseech your alms,--God's justice to be done.
So, prosper!
]
79. "Yes," of course, you answer; "we want nice houses here, not houses
in Verona. What should we do with houses in Verona?" And I answer, do
precisely what you do with the most expensive part of your possessions
here: take pride in them--only a noble pride. You know well, when you
examine your own hearts, that the greater part of the sums you spend on
possessions is spent for pride. Why are your carriages nicely painted
and finished outside? You don't see the outsides as you sit in them--the
outsides are for other people to see. Why are your exteriors of houses
so well finished, your furniture so polished and costly, but for other
people to see? You are just as comfortable yourselves, writing on your
old friend of a desk, with the white cloudings in his leather, and using
the light of a window which is nothing but a hole in the brick wall. And
all that is desirable to be done in this matter is merely to take pride
in preserving great art, instead of in producing mean art; pride in the
possession of precious and enduring things, a little way off, instead
of slight and perishing things near at hand. You know, in old English
times, our kings liked to have lordships and dukedoms abroad: and why
should not your merchant princes like to have lordships and estates
abroad? Believe me, rightly understood, it would be a prouder, and in
the full sense of our English word, more "respectable" thing to be lord
of a palace at Verona, or of a cloister full of frescoes at Florence,
than to have a file of servants dressed in the finest liveries that ever
tailor stitched, as long as would reach from here to Bolton:--yes, and a
prouder thing to send people to travel in Italy, who would have to say
every now and then, of some fair piece of art, "Ah! this was _kept_ here
for us by the good people of Manchester," than to bring them travelling
all the way here, exclaiming of your various art treasures, "These were
_brought_ here for us, (not altogether without harm) by the good people
of Manchester."
80. "Ah!" but you say, "the Art Treasures Exhibition will pay; but
Veronese palaces won't." Pardon me. They _would_ pay, less directly, but
far more richly. Do you suppose it is in the long run good for
Manchester, or good for England, that the Continent should be in the
state it is? Do you think the perpetual fear of revolution, or the
perpetual repression of thought and energy that clouds and encumbers the
nations of Europe, is eventually profitable for _us_? Were we any the
better of the course of affairs in '48? or has the stabling of the
dragoon horses in the great houses of Italy any distinct effect in the
promotion of the cotton-trade? Not so. But every stake that you could
hold in the stability of the Continent, and every effort that you could
make to give example of English habits and principles on the Continent,
and every kind deed that you could do in relieving distress and
preventing despair on the Continent, would have tenfold reaction on the
prosperity of England, and open and urge, in a thousand unforeseen
directions, the sluices of commerce and the springs of industry.
81. I could press, if I chose, both these motives upon you, of pride and
self-interest, with more force, but these are not motives which ought to
be urged upon you at all. The only motive that I ought to put before
you is simply that it would be right to do this; that the holding of
property abroad, and the personal efforts of Englishmen to redeem the
condition of foreign nations, are among the most direct pieces of duty
which our wealth renders incumbent upon us. I do not--and in all truth
and deliberateness I say this--I do not know anything more ludicrous
among the self-deceptions of well-meaning people than their notion of
patriotism, as requiring them to limit their efforts to the good of
their own country;--the notion that charity is a geographical virtue,
and that what it is holy and righteous to do for people on one bank of a
river, it is quite improper and unnatural to do for people on the other.
It will be a wonderful thing, some day or other, for the Christian world
to remember, that it went on thinking for two thousand years that
neighbours were neighbours at Jerusalem, but not at Jericho; a wonderful
thing for us English to reflect, in after-years, how long it was before
we could shake hands with anybody across that shallow salt wash, which
the very chalk-dust of its two shores whitens from Folkestone to
Ambleteuse.
82. Nor ought the motive of gratitude, as well as that of mercy, to be
without its influence on you, who have been the first to ask to see, and
the first to show to us, the treasures which this poor lost Italy has
given to England. Remember, all these things that delight you here were
hers--hers either in fact or in teaching; hers, in fact, are all the
most powerful and most touching paintings of old time that now glow upon
your walls; hers in teaching are all the best and greatest of descendant
souls--your Reynolds and your Gainsborough never could have painted but
for Venice; and the energies which have given the only true life to your
existing art were first stirred by voices of the dead that haunted the
Sacred Field of Pisa.
Well, all these motives for some definite course of action on our part
towards foreign countries rest upon very serious facts; too serious,
perhaps you will think, to be interfered with; for we are all of us in
the habit of leaving great things alone, as if Providence would mind
them, and attending ourselves only to little things which we know,
practically, Providence doesn't mind unless we do. We are ready enough
to give care to the growing of pines and lettuces, knowing that they
don't grow Providentially sweet or large unless we look after them; but
we don't give any care to the good of Italy or Germany, because we think
that they will grow Providentially happy without any of our meddling.
83. Let us leave the great things, then, and think of little things; not
of the destruction of whole provinces in war, which it may not be any
business of ours to prevent; but of the destruction of poor little
pictures in peace, from which it surely would not be much out of our way
to save them. You know I said, just now, we were all of us engaged in
pulling pictures to pieces by deputy, and you did not believe me.
Consider, then, this similitude of ourselves. Suppose you saw (as I
doubt not you often do see) a prudent and kind young lady sitting at
work, in the corner of a quiet room, knitting comforters for her
cousins, and that just outside, in the hall, you saw a cat and her
kittens at play among the family pictures; amusing themselves especially
with the best Vandykes, by getting on the tops of the frames, and then
scrambling down the canvases by their claws; and on some one's informing
the young lady of these proceedings of the cat and kittens, suppose she
answered that it wasn't her cat, but her sister's, and the pictures
weren't hers, but her uncle's, and she couldn't leave her work, for she
had to make so many pairs of comforters before dinner. Would you not say
that the prudent and kind young lady was, on the whole, answerable for
the additional touches of claw on the Vandykes?
84. Now, that is precisely what we prudent and kind English are doing,
only on a larger scale. Here we sit in Manchester, hard at work, very
properly, making comforters for our cousins all over the world. Just
outside there in the hall--that beautiful marble hall of Italy--the cats
and kittens and monkeys are at play among the pictures: I assure you, in
the course of the fifteen years in which I have been working in those
places in which the most precious remnants of European art exist, a
sensation, whether I would or no, was gradually made distinct and deep
in my mind, that I was living and working in the midst of a den of
monkeys;--sometimes amiable and affectionate monkeys, with all manner of
winning ways and kind intentions,--more frequently selfish and
malicious monkeys; but, whatever their disposition, squabbling
continually about nuts, and the best places on the barren sticks of
trees; and that all this monkeys' den was filled, by mischance, with
precious pictures, and the witty and wilful beasts were always wrapping
themselves up and going to sleep in pictures, or tearing holes in them
to grin through; or tasting them and spitting them out again, or
twisting them up into ropes and making swings of them; and that
sometimes only, by watching one's opportunity, and bearing a scratch or
a bite, one could rescue the corner of a Tintoret, or Paul Veronese, and
push it through the bars into a place of safety.
85. Literally, I assure you, this was, and this is, the fixed impression
on my mind of the state of matters in Italy. And see how. The professors
of art in Italy, having long followed a method of study peculiar to
themselves, have at last arrived at a form of art peculiar to
themselves; very different from that which was arrived at by Correggio
and Titian. Naturally, the professors like their own form the best; and,
as the old pictures are generally not so startling to the eye as the
modern ones, the dukes and counts who possess them, and who like to see
their galleries look new and fine (and are persuaded also that a
celebrated chef-d'oeuvre ought always to catch the eye at a quarter of a
mile off), believe the professors who tell them their sober pictures are
quite faded, and good for nothing, and should all be brought bright
again; and, accordingly, give the sober pictures to the professors, to
be put right by rules of art. Then, the professors repaint the old
pictures in all the principal places, leaving perhaps only a bit of
background to set off their own work. And thus the professors come to be
generally figured, in my mind, as the monkeys who tear holes in the
pictures, to grin through. Then the picture-dealers, who live by the
pictures, cannot sell them to the English in their old and pure state;
all the good work must be covered with new paint, and varnished so as to
look like one of the professorial pictures in the great gallery, before
it is saleable. And thus the dealers come to be imaged, in my mind, as
the monkeys who make ropes of the pictures, to swing by. Then, every now
and then at some old stable, or wine-cellar, or timber-shed, behind
some forgotten vats or faggots, somebody finds a fresco of Perugino's or
Giotto's, but doesn't think much of it, and has no idea of having people
coming into his cellar, or being obliged to move his faggots; and so he
whitewashes the fresco, and puts the faggots back again; and these kind
of persons, therefore, come generally to be imaged, in my mind, as the
monkeys who taste the pictures, and spit them out, not finding them
nice. While, finally, the squabbling for nuts and apples (called in
Italy "bella libertà") goes on all day long.