which I can find any approximately clear description of the Greek
halcyon. It is about as large, he says, as a small sparrow; (the
question how large a Greek sparrow was we must for the present allow to
remain open;) and it is mixed of green and blue, with gleaming of purple
above, and it has a slender and long beak: the beak is said to be
"chloros," which I venture to translate "green," when it is used of the
feathers, but it may mean anything, used of the beak. Then follows the
same account as other people's, of the nest-building, except that the
nest is compared in shape to a medicinal gourd. And then the writer goes
on to say that there are two species of halcyons--one larger than the
other, and silent, but the smaller, fond of singing (ᾠδική); and that
the females of these are so true to their mates that, when the latter
grow old, the female bird flies underneath them, and carries them
wherever they would like to go; and after they die will not eat nor
drink anything, and so dies too. "And there is a certain kind of them,
of which, if any one hear the voice, it is an altogether true sign to
him that he will die in a short time."
198. You will, I think, forgive me, if after reading to you these lovely
fables, I do not distract you, or detain, with the difficult
investigation of the degree in which they are founded on the not yet
sufficiently known facts of the Kingfisher's life.
I would much rather that you should remain impressed with the effect
which the lovely colour and fitful appearance of the bird have had on
the imagination of men. I may satisfy you by the assurance that the
halcyon of England is also the commonest halcyon of Greece and of
Palestine; and I may at once prove to you the real gain of being
acquainted with the traditions of it, by reading to you two stanzas,
certainly among the most familiar to your ears in the whole range of
English poetry; yet which, I am well assured, will sound, after what we
have been reflecting upon to-day, almost as if they were new to you.
Note especially how Milton's knowledge that Halcyone was the daughter of
the Winds, and Ceyx the son of the Morning Star, affects the course of
his thought in the successive stanzas--
"But peaceful was the night,
Wherein the Prince of light
His reign of peace upon earth began:
The winds with wonder whist,
Smoothly the waters kist,
Whispering new joys to the mild ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmèd wave.
"The stars, with deep amaze,
Stand fix'd in steadfast gaze,
Bending one way their precious influence;
And will not take their flight,
For all the morning light
Of Lucifer, that often warn'd them thence;
But in their glimmering orbs did glow,
Until their Lord Himself bespake, and bid them go."
199. I should also only weary you if I attempted to give you any
interpretation of the much-entangled web of Greek fables connected with
the story of Halcyone. You observe that in all these passages I have
said "King of Trachis" instead of Ceyx. That is partly because I don't
know how to pronounce Ceyx either in Greek or English; but it is chiefly
to make you observe that this story of the sea-mew and Halcyon, now
known through all the world, like the sea-mew's cry, has its origin in
the "Rough country," or crag-country, under Mount Œta, made sacred to
the Greek mind by the death of Heracles; and observe what strange
connection that death has with the Halcyon's story. Heracles goes to
this "Rough country" to seek for rest; all the waves and billows of his
life having--as he thinks now--gone over him. But he finds death.
As far as I can form any idea of this "rough, or torn, country" from the
descriptions of Colonel Leake or any other traveller, it must resemble
closely the limestone cliffs just above Altorf, which break down to the
valley from the ridge of the Windgelle, and give source, at their foot,
to faultlessly clear streams,--green-blue among the grass.
You will find Pausanias noting the springs of Thermopylæ as of the
bluest water he ever saw; and if you fancy the Lake Lucerne to be the
sea bay running inland from Artemisium, you will have a clear and
useful, nor in any serious way, inaccurate, image of the scene where the
Greeks thought their best hero should die. You may remember also, with
advantage, that Morgarten--the Thermopylæ of Switzerland--lies by the
little lake of Egeri, not ten miles from this bay of Altorf; and that
the Heracles of Switzerland is born under those Trachinian crags.
If, farther, you remember that the Halcyon would actually be seen
flitting above the blue water of the springs, like one of their waves
caught up and lighted by the sun; and the sea-mews haunting the cliffs,
you will see how physical circumstances modify the under-tone of the
words of every mythic tradition.
I cannot express to you how strange--how more and more strange every
day--it seems to me, that I cannot find a single drawing, nor definite
account, of scenes so memorable as this, to point you to; but must guess
and piece their image together for you as best I can from their Swiss
similitudes. No English gentleman can pass through public school-life
without knowing his Trachiniæ; yet I believe, literally, we could give
better account of the forms of the mountains in the moon, than we could
of Œta. And what has art done to help us? How many Skiddaws or
Benvenues, for one Œta,--if one! And when the English gentleman
becomes an art-patron, he employs his painter-servant only to paint
himself and his house; and when Turner was striving, in his youth, to
enforce the mythology, and picture these very scenes in Greece, and
putting his whole strength into the endeavour to conceive them, the
noble pictures remained in his gallery; and for bread, he had to
paint ---- Hall, the seat of ----, Esquire, with the carriage drive, the
summer-house, and the squire going out hunting.
If, indeed, the squire would make his seat worth painting, and would
stay there, and would make the seats, or, shall we call them, forms, of
his peasantry, worth painting too, he would be interpreting the fable of
the Halcyon to purpose.
But you must, at once, and without any interpreter, feel for yourselves
how much is implied in those wonderful words of Simonides--written six
hundred years before Christ;--"when in the wild winter months, Zeus
gives the _wisdom of calm_;" and how much teaching there is for us in
the imagination of past days,--this dream-picture of what is true in
days that are, and are to come,--that perfect domestic love not only
makes its nest upon the waves, but that the waves will be calm that it
may.
200. True, I repeat, for all ages, and all people, that, indeed, are
desirous of peace, and loving in trouble! But what fable shall we
invent, what creature on earth or sea shall we find, to symbolize this
state of ours in modern England? To what sorrowful birds shall _we_ be
likened, who make the principal object of our lives dispeace, and
unrest; and turn our wives and daughters out of their nests, to work for
themselves?
Nay, strictly speaking, we have not even got so much as nests to turn
them out of. I was infinitely struck, only the other day, by the saying
of a large landed proprietor (a good man, who was doing all he could for
his tenantry, and building new cottages for them), that the best he
_could_ do for them, under present conditions of wages, and the like,
was, to give them good drainage and bare walls.
"I am obliged," he said to me, "to give up all thought of anything
artistic, and even then, I must lose a considerable sum on every cottage
I build."
201. Now, there is no end to the confused states of wrong and misery
which that landlord's experience signifies. In the first place, no
landlord has any business with building cottages for his people. Every
peasant should be able to build his own cottage,--to build it to his
mind; and to have a mind to build it too. In the second place, note the
unhappy notion which has grown up in the modern English mind, that
wholesome and necessary delight in what is pleasant to the eye, is
artistic affectation. You have the exponent of it all in the central and
mighty affectation of the Houses of Parliament. A number of English
gentlemen get together to talk; they have no delight whatever in any
kind of beauty; but they have a vague notion that the appointed place
for their conversation should be dignified and ornamental; and they
build over their combined heads the absurdest and emptiest piece of
filigree,--and, as it were, eternal foolscap in freestone,--which ever
human beings disgraced their posterity by. Well, all that is done,
partly, and greatly, in mere jobbery; but essentially also in a servile
imitation of the Hôtel-de-Ville builders of old time; but the English
gentleman has not the remotest idea that when Hôtels-de-Ville were
built, the ville enjoyed its hotel;--the town had a real pride in its
town hall, and place of council, and the sculptures of it had precious
meaning for all the populace.
202. And in like manner, if cottages are ever to be wisely built again,
the peasant must enjoy his cottage, and be himself its artist, as a bird
is. Shall cock-robins and yellow-hammers have wit enough to make
themselves comfortable, and bullfinches peck a Gothic tracery out of
dead clematis,--and your English yeoman be fitted by his landlord with
four dead walls and a drain-pipe? That is the result of your spending
300,000_l._ a year at Kensington in science and art, then? You have made
beautiful machines, too, wherewith you save the peasant the trouble of
ploughing and reaping, and threshing; and after being saved all that
time and toil, and getting, one would think, leisure enough for his
education, you have to lodge him also, as you drop a puppet into a deal
box, and you lose money in doing it! and two hundred years ago, without
steam, without electricity, almost without books, and altogether without
help from "Cassell's Educator" or the morning newspapers, the Swiss
shepherd could build himself a châlet, daintily carved, and with
flourished inscriptions, and with red and blue and white ποικιλία; and
the burgess of Strasburg could build himself a house like this I showed
you, and a spire such as all men know; and keep a precious book or two
in his public library, and praise God for all: while we,--what are _we_
good for, but to damage the spire, knock down half the houses, and burn
the library,--and declare there is no God but Chemistry?
203. What _are_ we good for? Are even our machines of destruction useful
to us? Do they give us real power? Once, indeed, not like halcyons, but
like sea-eagles, we had our homes upon the sea; fearless alike of storm
or enemy, winged like the wave petrel; and as Arabs of an indeed
pathless desert, we dwelt in the presence of all our brethren. Our
pride is fallen; no reed shaken with the wind, near the little singing
halcyon's nest, is more tremulous than we are now; though we have built
iron nests on the sea, with walls impregnable. We have lost our
pride--but have we gained peace? Do we even care to seek it, how much
less strive to make it?
204. Have you ever thought seriously of the meaning of that blessing
given to the peace-makers? People are always expecting to get peace in
heaven; but you know whatever peace they get there will be ready made.
Whatever making of peace _they_ can be blest for, must be on the earth
here: not the taking of arms against, but the building of nests amidst,
its "sea of troubles." Difficult enough, you think? Perhaps so, but I do
not see that any of us try. We complain of the want of many things--we
want votes, we want liberty, we want amusement, we want money. Which of
us feels, or knows, that he wants peace?
205. There are two ways of getting it, if you do want it. The first is
wholly in your own power; to make yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts.
Those are nests on the sea indeed, but safe beyond all others; only
they need much art in the building. None of us yet know, for none of us
have yet been taught in early youth, what fairy palaces we may build of
beautiful thought--proof against all adversity. Bright fancies,
satisfied memories, noble histories, faithful sayings, treasure-houses
of precious and restful thoughts, which care cannot disturb, nor pain
make gloomy, nor poverty take away from us--houses built without hands,
for our souls to live in.
206. And in actual life, let me assure you, in conclusion, the first
'wisdom of calm,' is to plan, and resolve to labour for, the comfort and
beauty of a home such as, if we could obtain it, we would quit no more.
Not a compartment of a model lodging-house, not the number so-and-so of
Paradise Row; but a cottage all of our own, with its little garden, its
pleasant view, its surrounding fields, its neighbouring stream, its
healthy air, and clean kitchen, parlours, and bedrooms. Less than this,
no man should be content with for his nest; more than this few should
seek: but if it seem to you impossible, or wildly imaginary, that such
houses should ever be obtained for the greater part of the English
people, again believe me, the obstacles which are in the way of our
obtaining them are the things which it must be the main object now of
all true science, true art, and true literature to overcome. Science
does its duty, not in telling us the causes of spots in the sun; but in
explaining to us the laws of our own life, and the consequences of their
violation. Art does its duty, not in filling monster galleries with
frivolous, or dreadful, or indecent pictures; but in completing the
comforts and refining the pleasures of daily occurrence, and familiar
service: and literature does its duty, not in wasting our hours in
political discussion, or in idle fiction; but in raising our fancy to
the height of what may be noble, honest, and felicitous in actual
life;--in giving us, though we may ourselves be poor and unknown, the
companionship of the wisest fellow-spirits of every age and
country,--and in aiding the communication of clear thoughts and faithful
purposes, among distant nations, which will at last breathe calm upon
the sea of lawless passion, and change into such halcyon days the winter
of the world, that the birds of the air may have their nests in peace,
and the Son of Man, where to lay His head.
LECTURE X.
THE HERALDIC ORDINARIES.
_March 9th, 1872._
207. In my last lecture, I endeavoured to illustrate to you the use of
art to the science of physiology. I am to-day to introduce to you its
elementary forms as an exponent of the science of history. Which,
speaking with perfect accuracy, we ought to call, also, "physiology," or
_natural_ history of man; for it ought to be in truth the history of his
Nature; and not merely of the accidents which have befallen him. Do we
not too much confuse the important part of the science with the
unimportant?
In giving the natural history of the lion, you do not care materially
where such and such a lion was trapped, or how many sheep it had eaten.
You want to know what sort of a minded and shaped creature it is, or
ought to be. But in all our books of human history we only care to tell
what has happened to men, and how many of each other they have, in a
manner, eaten, when they are, what Homer calls δημοβόροι, people-eaters;
and we scarcely understand, even to this day, how they are truly minded.
Nay, I am not sure that even this art of heraldry, which has for its
main object the telling and proclamation of our chief minds and
characters to each other, and keeping record of descent by race, as far
as it is possible, (or, under the present aspect of Darwinism,
pleasant,) to trace it;--I am not sure that even heraldry has always
understood clearly what it had to tell. But I am very sure it has not
been understood in the telling.
208. Some of you have, I hope, looked at this book[I] of Arthur Helps,
on 'War and Culture,' about which I cannot now say what I would, because
he has done me the grace of dedicating it to me; but you will find in
it, directly bearing on our present subject, this story about heraldry:
[I] Conversations on War and General Culture.
"A friend of mine, a physician, became entangled in the crowd at
Kennington on that memorable evening when a great Chartist row was
expected, and when Louis Napoleon armed himself with a constable's
staff to support the cause of order. My friend observed a young man of
pleasant appearance, who was very busy in the crowd, and appeared to be
a leader amongst them. Gradually, by the pressure of the crowd, the two
were brought near together, and the good doctor had some talk with this
fiery partisan. They exchanged confidences; and to his astonishment, the
doctor found that this furious young Chartist gained his livelihood, and
a very good livelihood too, by heraldic painting--by painting the
coats-of-arms upon carriages. Now, if you can imagine this young man's
darling enterprise to have been successful, if Chartism had prevailed,
what would have become of the painting of arms upon carriage-panels? I
believe that my good doctor insinuated this suggestion to the young man,
and that it was received with disdain. I must own, therefore, that the
_utile_, even when brought home to a man's self, has much less to do
with people's political opinions and desires, than might at first be
supposed. Indeed, I would venture to maintain, that _no great change has
ever been produced in the world by motives of self-interest_. Sentiment,
that thing which many wise people affect to despise, is the commanding
thing as regards popular impulses and popular action."
209. This last sentence would have been wholly true, had Mr. Helps
written 'no great _living_ change.' The changes of Dissolution are
continually produced by self-interest,--for instance, a great number of
the changes in your methods of life in England just now, and many of
those in your moral temper, are produced by the percentage on the sale
of iron. And I should have otherwise interpreted the heroism of the
young Chartist, and said that he was moved on the 10th of April, by a
deep under-current of self-interest; that by overthrowing Lordship, he
expected to get much more for himself than his salary as an heraldic
painter; and that he had not, in painting his carriage-panels, sentiment
enough, or even sentiment at all.
"Paint me my arms,--" said Giotto, as the youth threw him his white
shield with that order--"he speaks as if he were one of the Bardi!" Our
English panel-painter had lost the consciousness that there yet remained
above him, so much as one, of the Bardi.
May not that be somewhat the Bardi's fault? in that they have not taught
their Giottos, lately, the function of heraldry, or of any other higher
historical painting.
We have, especially, to-day, to consider what that function is.
210. I said that the function of historical painting, in representing
animals, is to discern and record what is best and most beautiful in
their ways of life, and their forms; so also, in representing man, it is
to record of man what has been best in his acts and way of life, and
fairest in his form.
But this way of the life of man has been a long one. It is difficult to
know it--more difficult to judge; to do either with complete equity is
impossible; but it is always possible to do it with the charity which
does not rejoice in iniquity.
211. Among the many mistakes we have lately fallen into, touching that
same charity, one of the worst is our careless habit of always thinking
of her as pitiful, and to be concerned only with miserable and wretched
persons; whereas her chief joy is in being reverent, and concerned
mainly with noble and venerable persons. Her poorest function is the
giving of pity; her highest is the giving of _praise_. For there are
many men, who, however fallen, do not like to be pitied; but all men,
however far risen, like to be praised.
212. I had occasion in my last lecture to express my regret that the
method of education in this country has become so distinctly
competitive. It is necessary, however, to distinguish carefully between
the competition which is for the means of existence, and that which is
for the praise of learning. For my own part, so far as they affect our
studies here, I equally regret both: but competition for money I regret
absolutely; competition for praise, only when it sets the reward for too
short and narrow a race. I want you to compete, not for the praise of
what you know, but for the praise of what you become; and to compete
only in that great school, where death is the examiner, and God the
judge. For you will find, if you look into your own hearts, that the two
great delights, in loving and praising, and the two great thirsts, to be
loved and praised, are the roots of all that is strong in the deeds of
men, and happy in their repose. We yet, thank Heaven, are not ashamed to
acknowledge the power of love; but we confusedly and doubtfully allege
that of honour; and though we cannot but instinctively triumph still,
over a won boat-race, I suppose the best of us would shrink somewhat
from declaring that the love of praise was to be one of the chief
motives of their future lives.
213. But I believe you will find it, if you think, not only one of the
chief, but absolutely the chief, motive of human action; nay, that love
itself is, in its highest state, the rendering of an exquisite praise to
body and soul; and our English tongue is very sacred in this; for its
Saxon word, love, is connected, through the old French verb, loer,
(whence louange), with the Latin, 'laus,' not 'amor.'
And you may sum the duty of your life in the giving of praise worthily,
and being yourselves worthy of it.
214. Therefore in the reading of all history, your first purpose must be
to seek what is to be praised; and disdain the rest: and in doing so,
remember always that the most important part of the history of man is
that of his imagination. What he actually does, is always in great part
accidental; it is at best a partial fulfilment of his purpose; and what
we call history is often, as I said, merely a record of the external
accidents which befall men getting together in large crowds. The real
history of mankind is that of the slow advance of resolved deed
following laboriously just thought: and all the greatest men live in
their purpose and effort more than it is possible for them to live in
reality. If you would praise them more worthily, it is for what they
conceived and felt; not merely for what they have done.
215. It is therefore a true historian's work diligently to separate the
deed from the imagination; and when these become inconsistent, to
remember that the imagination, if precious at all, is indeed the most
precious. It is no matter how much, or how little of the two first books
of Livy may be literally true. The history of the Romans is the history
of the nation which could _conceive_ the battle of the Lake Regillus. I
have rowed in rough weather on the Lake of the four cantons often enough
to know that the legend of Tell is, in literal detail, absurd: but the
history of Switzerland is that of the people who expressed their
imagination of resistance to injustice by that legend, so as to animate
their character vitally to this day.
216. But in no part of history does the ideal separate itself so far
from the reality; and in no part of it is the ideal so necessary and
noble, as in your own inherited history--that of Christian Chivalry.
For all English gentlemen this is the part of the tale of the race of
man which it is most essential for them to know. They may be proud that
it is also the greatest part. All that hitherto has been achieved of
best,--all that has been in noble preparation instituted,--is begun in
the period, and rooted in the conception, of Chivalry.
You must always carefully distinguish that conception from the base
strength of the resultless passions which distort and confuse it.
Infinitely weaker, the ideal is eternal and creative; the clamorous
rages pass away,--ruinous it may be, prosperous it may be, for their
time;--but insignificant for ever. You find kings and priests alike,
always inventing expedients to get money; you find kings and priests
alike, always inventing pretexts to gain power. If you want to write a
practical history of the Middle Ages, and to trace the real reasons of
the things that actually happened, investigate first the history of the
money; and then of the quarrels for office and territory. But the
things that actually happened were of small consequence--the thoughts
that were developed are of infinite consequence.