sails swelling, and the proud vessel rising to the Pacific billows, the
north star sinking, and the advent of the Southern Cross; the thousand
miles of ocean without land around, the voyage through space made
visible as sea, the far, far south, the transit around a world? If
Italian painters had had such things as these to paint, if poets of old
time had had such things as these to sing, do you imagine they would
have been contented with crank caravels and tales thrice told already?
They had eyes to see that which was around them. Open your eyes and see
those things which are around us at this hour.
THE PIGEONS AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM
The front of the British Museum stands in the sunlight clearly marked
against the firm blue of the northern sky. The blue appears firm as if
solid above the angle of the stonework, for while looking towards
it--towards the north--the rays do not come through the azure, which is
therefore colour without life. It seems nearer than the southern sky,
it descends and forms a close background to the building; as you
approach you seem to come nearer to the blue surface rising at its
rear. The dark edges of sloping stone are distinct and separate, but
not sharp; the hue of the stone is toned by time and weather, and is so
indefinite as to have lost its hardness. Those small rounded bodies
upon the cornice are pigeons resting in the sun, so motionless and
neutral-tinted that they might be mistaken for some portion of the
carving. A double gilt ring, a circle in a circle, at the feet of an
allegorical figure gleams brightly against the dark surface. The sky
already seems farther away seen between the boles of stone, perpetual
shade dwells in their depth, but two or three of the pigeons fluttering
down are searching for food on the sunlit gravel at the bottom of the
steps. To them the building is merely a rock, pierced with convenient
caverns; they use its exterior for their purpose, but penetrate no
farther. With air and light, the sunlit gravel, the green lawn between
it and the outer railings--with these they are concerned, and with
these only. The heavy roll of the traffic in Oxford Street, audible
here, is nothing to them; the struggle for money does not touch them,
they let it go by. Nor the many minds searching and re-searching in the
great Library, this mental toil is no more to them than the lading of
the waggons in the street. Neither the tangible product nor the
intellectual attainment is of any value--only the air and light. There
are idols in the galleries within upon whose sculptured features the
hot Eastern sun shone thousands of years since. They were made by human
effort, however mistaken, and they were the outcome of human thought
and handiwork. The doves fluttered about the temples in those days,
full only of the air and light. They fluttered about the better temples
of Greece and round the porticos where philosophy was born. Still only
the light, the sunlight, the air of heaven. We labour on and think, and
carve our idols and the pen never ceases from its labour; but the lapse
of the centuries has left us in the same place. The doves who have not
laboured nor travailed in thought possess the sunlight. Is not theirs
the preferable portion?
The shade deepens as I turn from the portico to the hall and vast domed
house of books. The half-hearted light under the dome is stagnant and
dead. For it is the nature of light to beat and throb; it has a pulse
and undulation like the swing of the sea. Under the trees in the
woodlands it vibrates and lives; on the hills there is a resonance of
light. It beats against every leaf, and, thrown back, beats again; it
is agitated with the motion of the grass blades; you can feel it
ceaselessly streaming on your face. It is renewed and fresh every
moment, and never twice do you see the same ray. Stayed and checked by
the dome and book-built walls, the beams lose their elasticity, and the
ripple ceases in the motionless pool. The eyes, responding, forget to
turn quickly, and only partially see. Deeper thought and inspiration
quit the heart, for they can only exist where the light vibrates and
communicates its tone to the soul. If any imagine they shall find
thought in many books, certainly they will be disappointed. Thought
dwells by the stream and sea, by the hill and in the woodland, in the
sunlight and free wind, where the wild dove haunts. Walls and roof shut
it off as they shut off the undulation of light. The very lightning
cannot penetrate here. A murkiness marks the coming of the cloud, and
the dome becomes vague, but the fierce flash is shorn to a pale
reflection, and the thunder is no more than the rolling of a heavier
truck loaded with tomes. But in closing out the sky, with it is cut off
all that the sky can tell you with its light, or in its passion of
storm.
Sitting at these long desks and trying to read, I soon find that I have
made a mistake; it is not here I shall find that which I seek. Yet the
magic of books draws me here time after time, to be as often
disappointed. Something in a book tempts the mind as pictures tempt the
eye; the eye grows weary of pictures, but looks again. The mind wearies
of books, yet cannot forget that once when they were first opened in
youth they gave it hope of knowledge. Those first books exhausted,
there is nothing left but words and covers. It seems as if all the
books in the world--really books--can be bought for L10. Man's whole
thought is purchaseable at that small price, for the value of a watch,
of a good dog. For the rest it is repetition and paraphrase. The grains
of wheat were threshed out and garnered two thousand years since.
Except the receipts of chemists, except specifications for the
steam-engine, or the electric motor, there is nothing in these millions
of books that was not known at the commencement of our era. Not a
thought has been added. Continual threshing has widened out the heap of
straw and spread it abroad, but it is empty. Nothing will ever be found
in it. Those original grains of true thought were found beside the
stream, the sea, in the sunlight, at the shady verge of woods. Let us
leave this beating and turning over of empty straw; let us return to
the stream and the hills; let us ponder by night in view of the stars.
It is pleasant to go out again into the portico under the great
columns. On the threshold I feel nearer knowledge than when within. The
sun shines, and southwards above the houses there is a statue crowning
the summit of some building. The figure is in the midst of the light;
it stands out clear and white as if in Italy. The southern blue is
luminous--the beams of light flow through it--the air is full of the
undulation and life of light. There is rest in gazing at the sky: a
sense that wisdom does exist and may be found, a hope returns that was
taken away among the books. The green lawn is pleasant to look at,
though it is mown so ruthlessly. If they would only let the grass
spring up, there would be a thought somewhere entangled in the long
blades as a dewdrop sparkles in their depths. Seats should be placed
here, under the great columns or by the grass, so that one might enjoy
the sunshine after books and watch the pigeons. They have no fear of
the people, they come to my feet, but the noise of a door heavily
swinging-to in the great building alarms them; they rise and float
round, and return again. The sunlight casts a shadow of the pigeon's
head and neck upon his shoulder; he turns his head, and the shadow of
his beak falls on his breast. Iridescent gleams of bronze and green and
blue play about his neck; blue predominates. His pink feet step so
near, the red round his eye is visible. As he rises vertically, forcing
his way in a straight line upwards, his wings almost meet above his
back and again beneath the body; they are put forth to his full stroke.
When his flight inclines and becomes gradually horizontal, the effort
is less and the wing tips do not approach so closely.
They have not laboured in mental searching as we have; they have not
wasted their time looking among empty straw for the grain that is not
there. They have been in the sunlight. Since the days of ancient Greece
the doves have remained in the sunshine; we who have laboured have
found nothing. In the sunshine, by the shady verge of woods, by the
sweet waters where the wild dove sips, there alone will thought be
found.
THE PLAINEST CITY IN EUROPE
The fixed perspective of Paris neither elongates nor contracts with any
change of atmosphere, so that the apparent distance from one point to
another remains always the same. Reduced to the simplest elements the
street architecture of Paris consists of two parallel lines, which to
the eye appear to gradually converge. In sunshine and shade the sides
of the street approach in an unvarying ratio; a cloud goes over, and
the lines do not soften; brilliant light succeeds, and is merely
light--no effect accompanies it. The architecture conquers, and is
always architecture; it resists the sun, the air, the rain, being
without expression. The geometry of the street can never be forgotten.
Moving along it you have merely advanced so far along a perspective,
between the two lines which tutors rule to teach drawing. By-and-by,
when you reach the other end and look back, the perspective is
accurately reversed. This is now the large end of the street, and that
which has been left the small. The houses seen from this end present
precisely the same facade as they did at starting, so that were it not
for the sense of weariness from walking it would be easy to imagine
that no movement had taken place. Each house is exactly the same height
as the next, the windows are of the same pattern, the wooden outer
blinds the same shape; the line of the level roof runs along straight
and unbroken, the chimneys are either invisible or insignificant.
Nothing projects, no bow window, balcony, or gable; the surface is as
flat as well can be. From parapet to pavement the wall descends plumb,
and the glance slips along it unchecked. Each house is exactly the same
colour as the next, white; the wooden outer blinds are all the same
colour, a dull grey; in the windows there are no visible red, or green,
or tapestry curtains, mere sashes. There are no flowers in the windows
to catch the sunlight. The upper storeys have the air of being
uninhabited, as the windows have no curtains whatever, and the wooden
blinds are frequently closed. Two flat vertical surfaces, one on each
side of the street, each white and grey, extend onwards and approach in
mathematical ratio. That is a Parisian street. Go on now to the next
street, and you find precisely the same conditions repeated--the
streets that cross are similar, those that radiate the same. Some are
short, others long, some wide, some narrow; they are all geometry and
white paint. The vast avenues, a rifle-shot across, such as the Avenue
de l'Opera, differ only in width and in the height of the houses. The
monotony of these gigantic houses is too great to be expressed. Then
across the end of the avenue they throw some immense facade--some
public building, an opera-house, a palace, a ministry, anything will
do--in order that you shall see nothing but Paris. Weary of the
gigantic monotony of the gigantic houses, exactly alike, your eye shall
not catch a glimpse of some distant cloud rising like a snowy mountain
(as Japanese artists show the top of Fusiyama); you shall not see the
breadth of the sky, nor even any steeple, tower, dome, or gable; you
shall see nothing but Paris; the avenue is wide enough for the Grand
Army to march down, but the exit to the eye is blocked by this immense
meaningless facade drawn across it. No doubt it is executed in the
"highest style"; in effect it appears a repetition of windows, columns,
and doorways exactly alike, all quite meaningless, for the columns
support nothing, like the fronts sold in boxes of children's toy
bricks. Perhaps on the roof there is some gilding, and you ask yourself
the question why it is there. These facades, of which there are so
many, vary in detail; in effect they are all the same, an utter
weariness to the eye. Every fresh day's research into the city brings
increasing disappointment, a sense of the childish, of feebleness, and
weakness exhibited in public, as if they had built in sugar for the top
of a cake. The level ground will not permit of any advantage of view;
there are none of those sudden views so common and so striking in
English towns. Everything is planed, smoothed, and set to an oppressive
regularity.
Turning round a corner one comes suddenly on a pillar of a dingy, dull
hue, whose outline bulges unpleasantly. In London you would shrug your
shoulders, mutter "hideous!" and pass on. This is the famous Vendome
Column. As for the Column of July, it is so insignificant, so silly (no
other word expresses it so well), that a second glance is carefully
avoided. The Hotel de Ville, a vast white building, is past
description, it is so plain and so repellent in its naked glaring
assertion. From about old Notre Dame they have removed every medieval
outwork which had grown up around and rendered it lifelike; it now
rises perpendicular and abrupt from the white surface of the square.
Unless you had been told that it was the Notre Dame of Victor Hugo you
would not look at its exterior twice. The interior is another matter.
In external form Notre Dame cannot enter into competition with
Canterbury. The barrack-like Hotel des Invalides, the tomb of
Napoleon--was ever a tomb so miserably lacking in all that should
inspire a reverential feeling?
The marble tub in which the urn is sunk, the gilded chapel, and the
yellow windows--could anything be more artificial and less appropriate?
They jar on the senses, they insult the torn flags which were carried
by the veterans at Austerlitz, and which now droop, never again to be
unfurled to the wind of battle. The tiny Seine might as well flow in a
tunnel, being bridged so much. There remains but the Arc de Triomphe,
the only piece of architecture in all modern Paris worth a second look.
Even this is spoiled by the same intolerable artificiality. The
ridiculous sculpture on the face, the figures blowing trumpets, and,
above all, the group on the summit, which the tongue of man cannot
describe, so utterly hideous is it, destroy the noble lines of the
arch, if any one is so imprudent as to approach near it. Receding down
the Avenue Friedland--somewhat aslant--the chestnut trees presently
conceal the side sculpture; and then by tilting one's hat so that the
brim shall hide the group on the summit, it is possible to admire the
proportions of the Arc. In the Tuileries gardens there is a spot where
distance obliterates the sculpture, and the projecting bough of an elm
conceals the group on the top. Here the arch appears noble; but it is
no longer French; it is now merely a copy of a Roman original, which
any of our own architects could erect for us in Hyde Park. For the most
part the vaunted Boulevards are but planted with planes, the least
pleasing of trees, whose leaves present an unvarying green, till they
drop a dead brown; and the horse-chestnuts in the Champs Elysees are
set in straight lines to repeat the geometry of the streets.
Thus central Paris has no character. It is without individuality and
expressionless. Suppose you said, "The human face is really very
irregular; it requires shaping. This nose projects; here, let us
flatten it to the level of the cheek. This mouth curves at the corners;
let us cut it straight. These eyebrows arch; make them straight. This
colour is too flesh-like; bring white paint. Besides, the features
move, they laugh, they assume sadness; this is wrong. Here, divide the
muscles, that they may hence forth remain in unvarying rigidity." That
is what has been done to Paris. It is made straight; it is idealised
after Euclid; it is stiff, wearisome, and feeble. Lastly, it has no
expression. The distances as observed at the commencement remain always
the same, partly because of the obtrusive geometry and the monotony,
partly because of the whiteness, and partly because of the peculiarity
of the atmosphere, for which of course the Parisian is not responsible,
but should have remembered in building. Advantage might surely have
been taken of so clear an air in some manner. The colour and tone, the
light and shade, the change and variety of London are entirely wanting;
in short, Paris is the plainest city in Europe.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Life of the Fields, by Richard Jefferies