That Nature is cruel is not to be denied; the evidences of that cruelty
are written out large and red in every woodland, under every hedgerow.
That she can be also unaccountably pitiful, or at all events take pains
to appear so, is fortunately equally true, and it is a truth that at
times comes very near to the heart. This morning at a very early hour
there was a tenderness, a kind of hovering serenity over everything,
that appealed to one like a benediction. The air itself seemed changed;
sanctified. The familiar little paths one walked along were like the
approaches to some as yet invisible Temple.
There are certain pictures of Jean Francois Millet’s in which this
quality of sanctity is the first thing that strikes one, the more so
that the obviously religious element is conspicuously absent from them.
His “Angelus” has always seemed to me a poorer composition in this
respect than some others. When one sees a man standing with his hat off
in the middle of a field, in the company of a woman, who clasps her
hands, and looks down, one knows what one is expected to feel. When on
the other hand one sees only a childish-looking farm-drudge knitting, a
number of greedy sheep feeding, and a rough dog watching them, where,
one asks oneself in perplexity, does the religious element come in? That
it is to be found in the “Bergère” is however, unmistakable, and equally
unmistakably was it to be found in the copse this morning, though how it
got there, or who implanted it, I were rash were I to attempt to
explain.
Assuredly man is by nature a devotional creature, however little of the
dogmatic may mingle with his devotions. He may avert his ear from the
church-going bell, he may refuse to label himself with the label of any
particular denomination, but it is only to be overtaken with awe in the
heart of a forest, and to fall on his knees, as it were, in some green
secluded spot of the wilderness. The sense of something benignant close
at hand, of some pitying eye surveying one, is so vivid at certain
moments of one’s life that it actually needs a rough conscious effort if
one would shake it off. Even the sense of the vastness of that arena
upon which our poor little drama is being played out, even this habitual
impression becomes less grimly crushing at such moments than usual. What
if it is colossal, one says to oneself, and what if, as compared to it,
ourselves and our troubles are infinitesimal? what if they count no more
in the scheme of things than do the afflictions of a broken-legged
mouse, or of a crushed beetle? Very well; be it so. The mouse and the
beetle have, after all, each their allotted place in that scheme. Nay
for aught we know to the contrary, each may have its own incalculable
hour; each may be susceptible of the same profound, if intangible,
consolation.