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+Project Gutenberg's The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century, by John Ruskin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century
+       Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February
+       4th and 11th, 1884
+
+Author: John Ruskin
+
+Release Date: December 28, 2006 [EBook #20204]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORM-CLOUD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Suzan Flanagan and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                   THE COMPLETE WORKS
+
+                           OF
+
+                       JOHN RUSKIN
+
+                       VOLUME XXIV
+
+
+
+                 OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US
+
+          STORM-CLOUD OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
+
+                      HORTUS INCLUSUS
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+                THE STORM-CLOUD OF THE
+                  NINETEENTH CENTURY.
+
+                     TWO LECTURES
+
+          DELIVERED AT THE LONDON INSTITUTION
+
+             FEBRUARY 4TH AND 11TH, 1884.
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+                                                  PAGE
+
+PREFACE                                            iii
+
+LECTURE I. (FEBRUARY 4)                              1
+
+LECTURE II. (FEBRUARY 11)                           31
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The following lectures, drawn up under the pressure of more
+imperative and quite otherwise directed work, contain many passages
+which stand in need of support, and some, I do not doubt, more or
+less of correction, which I always prefer to receive openly from
+the better knowledge of friends, after setting down my own
+impressions of the matter in clearness as far as they reach, than
+to guard myself against by submitting my manuscript, before
+publication, to annotators whose stricture or suggestion I might
+often feel pain in refusing, yet hesitation in admitting.
+
+But though thus hastily, and to some extent incautiously, thrown
+into form, the statements in the text are founded on patient and,
+in all essential particulars, accurately recorded observations of
+the sky, during fifty years of a life of solitude and leisure; and
+in all they contain of what may seem to the reader questionable, or
+astonishing, are guardedly and absolutely true.
+
+In many of the reports given by the daily press, my assertion of
+radical change, during recent years, in weather aspect was scouted
+as imaginary, or insane. I am indeed, every day of my yet spared
+life, more and more grateful that my mind is capable of imaginative
+vision, and liable to the noble dangers of delusion which separate
+the speculative intellect of humanity from the dreamless instinct
+of brutes: but I have been able, during all active work, to use or
+refuse my power of contemplative imagination, with as easy command
+of it as a physicist's of his telescope: the times of morbid are
+just as easily distinguished by me from those of healthy vision, as
+by men of ordinary faculty, dream from waking; nor is there a
+single fact stated in the following pages which I have not
+verified with a chemist's analysis, and a geometer's precision.
+
+The first lecture is printed, with only addition here and there of
+an elucidatory word or phrase, precisely as it was given on the 4th
+February. In repeating it on the 11th, I amplified several
+passages, and substituted for the concluding one, which had been
+printed with accuracy in most of the leading journals, some
+observations which I thought calculated to be of more general
+interest. To these, with the additions in the first text, I have
+now prefixed a few explanatory notes, to which numeral references
+are given in the pages they explain, and have arranged the
+fragments in connection clear enough to allow of their being read
+with ease as a second Lecture.
+
+                         HERNE HILL, _12th March, 1884_.
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+THE STORM-CLOUD OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+THE STORM-CLOUD OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
+
+
+Let me first assure my audience that I have no _arrière pensée_ in
+the title chosen for this lecture. I might, indeed, have meant, and
+it would have been only too like me to mean, any number of things
+by such a title;--but, to-night, I mean simply what I have said,
+and propose to bring to your notice a series of cloud phenomena,
+which, so far as I can weigh existing evidence, are peculiar to our
+own times; yet which have not hitherto received any special notice
+or description from meteorologists.
+
+So far as the existing evidence, I say, of former literature can be
+interpreted, the storm-cloud--or more accurately plague-cloud, for
+it is not always stormy--which I am about to describe to you, never
+was seen but by now living, or _lately_ living eyes. It is not yet
+twenty years that this--I may well call it, wonderful, cloud has
+been, in its essence, recognizable. There is no description of it,
+so far as I have read, by any ancient observer. Neither Homer nor
+Virgil, neither Aristophanes nor Horace, acknowledge any such
+clouds among those compelled by Jove. Chaucer has no word of them,
+nor Dante;[1] Milton none, nor Thomson. In modern times, Scott,
+Wordsworth and Byron are alike unconscious of them; and the most
+observant and descriptive of scientific men, De Saussure, is
+utterly silent concerning them. Taking up the traditions of air
+from the year before Scott's death, I am able, by my own constant
+and close observation, to certify you that in the forty following
+years (1831 to 1871 approximately--for the phenomena in question
+came on gradually)--no such clouds as these are, and are now often
+for months without intermission, were ever seen in the skies of
+England, France, or Italy.
+
+In those old days, when weather was fine, it was luxuriously fine;
+when it was bad--it was often abominably bad, but it had its fit of
+temper and was done with it--it didn't sulk for three months
+without letting you see the sun,--nor send you one cyclone inside
+out, every Saturday afternoon, and another outside in, every Monday
+morning.
+
+In fine weather the sky was either blue or clear in its light; the
+clouds, either white or golden, adding to, not abating, the luster
+of the sky. In wet weather, there were two different species of
+clouds,--those of beneficent rain, which for distinction's sake I
+will call the non-electric rain-cloud, and those of storm, usually
+charged highly with electricity. The beneficent rain-cloud was
+indeed often extremely dull and gray for days together, but
+gracious nevertheless, felt to be doing good, and often to be
+delightful after drought; capable also of the most exquisite
+coloring, under certain conditions;[2] and continually traversed in
+clearing by the rainbow:--and, secondly, the storm-cloud, always
+majestic, often dazzlingly beautiful, and felt also to be
+beneficent in its own way, affecting the mass of the air with vital
+agitation, and purging it from the impurity of all morbific
+elements.
+
+In the entire system of the Firmament, thus seen and understood,
+there appeared to be, to all the thinkers of those ages, the
+incontrovertible and unmistakable evidence of a Divine Power in
+creation, which had fitted, as the air for human breath, so the
+clouds for human sight and nourishment;--the Father who was in
+heaven feeding day by day the souls of His children with marvels,
+and satisfying them with bread, and so filling their hearts with
+food and gladness.
+
+Their _hearts_, you will observe, it is said, not merely their
+bellies,--or indeed not at all, in this sense, their bellies--but
+the heart itself, with its blood for this life, and its faith for
+the next. The opposition between this idea and the notions of our
+own time may be more accurately expressed by modification of the
+Greek than of the English sentence. The old Greek is--
+
+          [Greek: empiplôn trophês kai euphrosynês
+          tas kardias hêmôn.]
+
+filling with meat, and cheerfulness, our hearts. The modern Greek
+should be--
+
+          [Greek: empiplôn anemou kai aphrosynês
+          tas gasteras hêmôn.]
+
+filling with wind, and foolishness, our stomachs.
+
+You will not think I waste your time in giving you two cardinal
+examples of the sort of evidence which the higher forms of
+literature furnish respecting the cloud-phenomena of former times.
+
+When, in the close of my lecture on landscape last year at Oxford,
+I spoke of stationary clouds as distinguished from passing ones,
+some blockheads wrote to the papers to say that clouds never were
+stationary. Those foolish letters were so far useful in causing a
+friend to write me the pretty one I am about to read to you,
+quoting a passage about clouds in Homer which I had myself never
+noticed, though perhaps the most beautiful of its kind in the
+Iliad. In the fifth book, after the truce is broken, and the
+aggressor Trojans are rushing to the onset in a tumult of clamor
+and charge, Homer says that the Greeks, abiding them "stood like
+clouds." My correspondent, giving the passage, writes as follows:--
+
+"SIR,--Last winter when I was at Ajaccio, I was one day reading
+Homer by the open window, and came upon the lines--
+
+          [Greek: All' emenon, nephelêsin eoikotes has te Kroniôn
+          Nênemiês estêsen ep' akropoloisin oressin,
+          Atremas, ophr' heudêsi menos Boreao kai allôn
+          Zachreiôn anemôn, hoite nephea skioenta
+          Pnoiêsin lygyrêsi diaskidnasin aentes;
+          Hôs Danaoi Trôas menon empedon, oud' ephebonto.]
+
+
+'But they stood, like the clouds which the Son of Kronos stablishes
+in calm upon the mountains, motionless, when the rage of the North
+and of all the fiery winds is asleep.' As I finished these lines, I
+raised my eyes, and looking across the gulf, saw a long line of
+clouds resting on the top of its hills. The day was windless, and
+there they stayed, hour after hour, without any stir or motion. I
+remember how I was delighted at the time, and have often since that
+day thought on the beauty and the truthfulness of Homer's simile.
+
+"Perhaps this little fact may interest you, at a time when you are
+attacked for your description of clouds.
+
+                         "I am, sir, yours faithfully,
+                                      G. B. HILL."
+
+With this bit of noonday from Homer, I will read you a sunset and a
+sunrise from Byron. That will enough express to you the scope and
+sweep of all glorious literature, from the orient of Greece herself
+to the death of the last Englishman who loved her.[3] I will read
+you from 'Sardanapalus' the address of the Chaldean priest Beleses
+to the sunset, and of the Greek slave, Myrrha, to the morning.
+
+    "The sun goes down: methinks he sets more slowly,
+     Taking his last look of Assyria's empire.
+     How red he glares amongst those deepening clouds,[4]
+     Like the blood he predicts.[5] If not in vain,
+     Thou sun that sinkest, and ye stars which rise,
+     I have outwatch'd ye, reading ray by ray
+     The edicts of your orbs, which make Time tremble
+     For what he brings the nations, 't is the furthest
+     Hour of Assyria's years. And yet how calm!
+     An earthquake should announce so great a fall--
+     A summer's sun discloses it. Yon disk
+     To the star-read Chaldean, bears upon
+     Its everlasting page the end of what
+     Seem'd everlasting; but oh! thou TRUE sun!
+     _The burning oracle of all that live_,
+     _As fountain of all life_, and _symbol of
+     Him who bestows it_, wherefore dost thou limit
+     Thy lore unto calamity?[6] Why not
+     Unfold the rise of days more worthy thine
+     All-glorious burst from ocean? why not dart
+     A beam of hope athwart the future years,
+     As of wrath to its days? Hear me! oh, hear me!
+     I am thy worshiper, thy priest, thy servant--
+     I have gazed on thee at thy rise and fall,
+     And bow'd my head beneath thy mid-day beams,
+     When my eye dared not meet thee. I have watch'd
+     For thee, and after thee, and pray'd to thee,
+     And sacrificed to thee, and read, and fear'd thee,
+     And ask'd of thee, and thou hast answer'd--but
+     Only to thus much. While I speak, he sinks--
+     Is gone--and leaves his beauty, not his knowledge,
+     To the delighted west, which revels in
+     Its hues of dying glory. Yet what is
+     Death, so it be but glorious? 'T is a sunset;
+     And mortals may be happy to resemble
+     The gods but in decay."
+
+Thus the Chaldean priest, to the brightness of the setting sun.
+Hear now the Greek girl, Myrrha, of his rising.
+
+    "The day at last has broken. What a night
+     Hath usher'd it! How beautiful in heaven!
+     Though varied with a transitory storm,
+     More beautiful in that variety:[7]
+     How hideous upon earth! where peace, and hope,
+     And love, and revel, in an hour were trampled
+     By human passions to a human chaos,
+     Not yet resolved to separate elements:--
+     'T is warring still! And can the sun so rise,
+     So bright, so rolling back the clouds into
+     _Vapors more lovely than the unclouded sky_,
+     With golden pinnacles, and snowy mountains,
+     And billows purpler than the ocean's, making
+     In heaven a glorious mockery of the earth,
+     So like,--we almost deem it permanent;
+     So fleeting,--we can scarcely call it aught
+     Beyond a vision, 't is so transiently
+     Scatter'd along the eternal vault: and yet
+     It dwells upon the soul, and soothes the soul,
+     And blends itself into the soul, until
+     Sunrise and sunset form the haunted epoch
+     Of sorrow and of love."
+
+How often _now_--young maids of London,--do you make _sunrise_ the
+'haunted epoch' of either?
+
+Thus much, then, of the skies that used to be, and clouds "more
+lovely than the unclouded sky," and of the temper of their
+observers. I pass to the account of clouds that _are_, and--I say
+it with sorrow--of the _dis_temper of _their_ observers.
+
+But the general division which I have instituted between
+bad-weather and fair-weather clouds must be more carefully carried
+out in the sub-species, before we can reason of it farther: and
+before we begin talk either of the sub-genera and sub-species, or
+super-genera and super-species of cloud, perhaps we had better
+define what _every_ cloud is, and must be, to begin with.
+
+Every cloud that can be, is thus primarily definable: "Visible
+vapor of water floating at a certain height in the air." The second
+clause of this definition, you see, at once implies that there is
+such a thing as visible vapor of water which does _not_ float at a
+certain height in the air. You are all familiar with one extremely
+cognizable variety of that sort of vapor--London Particular; but
+that especial blessing of metropolitan society is only a
+strongly-developed and highly-seasoned condition of a form of
+watery vapor which exists just as generally and widely at the
+bottom of the air, as the clouds do--on what, for convenience'
+sake, we may call the top of it;--only as yet, thanks to the
+sagacity of scientific men, we have got no general name for the
+bottom cloud, though the whole question of cloud nature begins in
+this broad fact, that you have one kind of vapor that lies to a
+certain depth on the ground, and another that floats at a certain
+height in the sky. Perfectly definite, in both cases, the surface
+level of the earthly vapor, and the roof level of the heavenly
+vapor, are each of them drawn within the depth of a fathom. Under
+_their_ line, drawn for the day and for the hour, the clouds will
+not stoop, and above _theirs,_ the mists will not rise. Each in
+their own region, high or deep, may expatiate at their pleasure;
+within that, they climb, or decline,--within that they congeal or
+melt away; but below their assigned horizon the surges of the cloud
+sea may not sink, and the floods of the mist lagoon may not be
+swollen.
+
+That is the first idea you have to get well into your minds
+concerning the abodes of this visible vapor; next, you have to
+consider the manner of its visibility. Is it, you have to ask, with
+cloud vapor, as with most other things, that they are seen when
+they are there, and not seen when they are not there? or has cloud
+vapor so much of the ghost in it, that it can be visible or
+invisible as it likes, and may perhaps be all unpleasantly and
+malignantly there, just as much when we don't see it, as when we
+do? To which I answer, comfortably and generally, that, on the
+whole, a cloud is where you see it, and isn't where you don't;
+that, when there's an evident and honest thundercloud in the
+northeast, you needn't suppose there's a surreptitious and slinking
+one in the northwest;--when there's a visible fog at Bermondsey, it
+doesn't follow there's a spiritual one, more than usual, at the
+West End: and when you get up to the clouds, and can walk into them
+or out of them, as you like, you find when you're in them they wet
+your whiskers, or take out your curls, and when you're out of them,
+they don't; and therefore you may with probability assume--not with
+certainty, observe, but with probability--that there's more water
+in the air where it damps your curls than where it doesn't. If it
+gets much denser than that, it will begin to rain; and then you
+may assert, certainly with safety, that there is a shower in one
+place, and not in another; and not allow the scientific people to
+tell you that the rain is everywhere, but palpable in Tooley
+Street, and impalpable in Grosvenor Square.
+
+That, I say, is broadly and comfortably so on the whole,--and yet
+with this kind of qualification and farther condition in the
+matter. If you watch the steam coming strongly out of an
+engine-funnel,[8]--at the top of the funnel it is transparent,--you
+can't see it, though it is more densely and intensely there
+than anywhere else. Six inches out of the funnel it becomes
+snow-white,--you see it, and you see it, observe, exactly where it
+is,--it is then a real and proper cloud. Twenty yards off the
+funnel it scatters and melts away; a little of it sprinkles you
+with rain if you are underneath it, but the rest disappears; yet it
+is still there;--the surrounding air does not absorb it all into
+space in a moment; there is a gradually diffusing current of
+invisible moisture at the end of the visible stream--an invisible,
+yet quite substantial, vapor; but not, according to our definition,
+a cloud, for a cloud is vapor _visible_.
+
+Then the next bit of the question, of course, is, What makes the
+vapor visible, when it is so? Why is the compressed steam
+transparent, the loose steam white, the dissolved steam transparent
+again?
+
+The scientific people tell you that the vapor becomes visible, and
+chilled, as it expands. Many thanks to them; but can they show us
+any reason why particles of water should be more opaque when they
+are separated than when they are close together, or give us any
+idea of the difference of the state of a particle of water, which
+won't _sink_ in the air, from that of one that won't _rise_ in
+it?[9]
+
+And here I must parenthetically give you a little word of, I will
+venture to say, extremely useful, advice about scientific people in
+general. Their first business is, of course, to tell you things
+that are so, and do happen,--as that, if you warm water, it will
+boil; if you cool it, it will freeze; and if you put a candle to a
+cask of gunpowder, it will blow you up. Their second, and far more
+important business, is to tell you what you had best do under the
+circumstances,--put the kettle on in time for tea; powder your ice
+and salt, if you have a mind for ices; and obviate the chance of
+explosion by not making the gunpowder. But if, beyond this safe and
+beneficial business, they ever try to _explain_ anything to you,
+you may be confident of one of two things,--either that they know
+nothing (to speak of) about it, or that they have only seen one
+side of it--and not only haven't seen, but usually have no mind to
+see, the other. When, for instance, Professor Tyndall explains the
+twisted beds of the Jungfrau to you by intimating that the
+Matterhorn is growing flat;[10] or the clouds on the lee side of
+the Matterhorn by the wind's rubbing against the windward side of
+it,[11]--you may be pretty sure the scientific people don't know
+much (to speak of) yet, either about rock-beds, or cloud-beds. And
+even if the explanation, so to call it, be sound on one side,
+windward or lee, you may, as I said, be nearly certain it won't do
+on the other. Take the very top and center of scientific
+interpretation by the greatest of its masters: Newton explained to
+you--or at least was once supposed to have explained--why an apple
+fell; but he never thought of explaining the exactly correlative,
+but infinitely more difficult question, how the apple got up there!
+
+You will not, therefore, so please you, expect me to explain
+anything to you,--I have come solely and simply to put before you a
+few facts, which you can't see by candlelight, or in railroad
+tunnels, but which are making themselves now so very distinctly
+felt as well as seen, that you may perhaps have to roof, if not
+wall, half London afresh before we are many years older.
+
+I go back to my point--the way in which clouds, as a matter of
+fact, become visible. I have defined the floating or sky cloud, and
+defined the falling, or earth cloud. But there's a sort of thing
+between the two, which needs a third definition: namely, Mist. In
+the 22d page of his 'Glaciers of the Alps,' Professor Tyndall says
+that "the marvelous blueness of the sky in the earlier part of the
+day indicated that the air was charged, almost to saturation, with
+transparent aqueous vapor." Well, in certain weather that is true.
+You all know the peculiar clearness which precedes rain,--when the
+distant hills are looking nigh. I take it on trust from the
+scientific people that there is then a quantity--almost to
+saturation--of aqueous vapor in the air, but it is aqueous vapor in
+a state which makes the air more transparent than it would be
+without it. What state of aqueous molecule is that, absolutely
+unreflective[12] of light--perfectly transmissive of light, and
+showing at once the color of blue water and blue air on the distant
+hills?
+
+I put the question--and pass round to the other side. Such a
+clearness, though a certain forerunner of rain, is not always its
+forerunner. Far the contrary. Thick air is a much more frequent
+forerunner of rain than clear air. In cool weather, you will often
+get the transparent prophecy: but in hot weather, or in certain not
+hitherto defined states of atmosphere, the forerunner of rain is
+mist. In a general way, after you have had two or three days of
+rain, the air and sky are healthily clear, and the sun bright. If
+it is hot also, the next day is a little mistier--the next misty
+and sultry,--and the next and the next, getting thicker and
+thicker--end in another storm, or period of rain.
+
+I suppose the thick air, as well as the transparent, is in both
+cases saturated with aqueous vapor;--but also in both, observe,
+vapor that floats everywhere, as if you mixed mud with the sea; and
+it takes no shape anywhere: you may have it with calm, or with
+wind, it makes no difference to it. You have a nasty haze with a
+bitter east wind, or a nasty haze with not a leaf stirring, and you
+may have the clear blue vapor with a fresh rainy breeze, or the
+clear blue vapor as still as the sky above. What difference is
+there between _these_ aqueous molecules that are clear, and those
+that are muddy, _these_ that must sink or rise, and those that must
+stay where they are, _these_ that have form and stature, that are
+bellied like whales and backed like weasels, and those that have
+neither backs nor fronts, nor feet nor faces, but are a mist--and
+no more--over two or three thousand square miles?
+
+I again leave the questions with you, and pass on.
+
+Hitherto I have spoken of all aqueous vapor as if it were either
+transparent or white--visible by becoming opaque like snow, but not
+by any accession of color. But even those of us who are least
+observant of skies, know that, irrespective of all supervening
+colors from the sun, there are white clouds, brown clouds, gray
+clouds, and black clouds. Are these indeed--what they appear to
+be--entirely distinct monastic disciplines of cloud: Black Friars,
+and White Friars, and Friars of Orders Gray? Or is it only their
+various nearness to us, their denseness, and the failing of the
+light upon them, that makes some clouds look black[13] and others
+snowy?
+
+I can only give you qualified and cautious answer. There are, by
+differences in their own character, Dominican clouds, and there are
+Franciscan;--there are the Black Hussars of the Bandiera della
+Morte, and there are the Scots Grays whose horses can run upon the
+rock. But if you ask me, as I would have you ask me, why argent and
+why sable, how baptized in white like a bride or a novice, and how
+hooded with blackness like a Judge of the Vehmgericht Tribunal,--I
+leave these questions with you, and pass on.
+
+Admitting degrees of darkness, we have next to ask what color, from
+sunshine can the white cloud receive, and what the black?
+
+You won't expect me to tell you all that, or even the little that
+is accurately known about that, in a quarter of an hour; yet note
+these main facts on the matter.
+
+On any pure white, and practically opaque, cloud, or thing like a
+cloud, as an Alp, or Milan Cathedral, you can have cast by rising
+or setting sunlight, any tints of amber, orange, or moderately deep
+rose--you can't have lemon yellows, or any kind of green except in
+negative hue by opposition; and though by stormlight you may
+sometimes get the reds cast very deep, beyond a certain limit you
+cannot go,--the Alps are never vermilion color, nor flamingo
+color, nor canary color; nor did you ever see a full scarlet
+cumulus of thundercloud.
+
+On opaque white vapor, then, remember, you can get a glow or a
+blush of color, never a flame of it.
+
+But when the cloud is transparent as well as pure, and can be
+filled with light through all the body of it, you then can have by
+the light reflected[14] from its atoms any force conceivable by
+human mind of the entire group of the golden and ruby colors, from
+intensely burnished gold color, through a scarlet for whose
+brightness there are no words, into any depth and any hue of Tyrian
+crimson and Byzantine purple. These with full blue breathed between
+them at the zenith, and green blue nearer the horizon, form the
+scales and chords of color possible to the morning and evening sky
+in pure and fine weather; the keynote of the opposition being
+vermilion against green blue, both of equal tone, and at such a
+height and acme of brilliancy that you cannot see the line where
+their edges pass into each other.
+
+No colors that can be fixed in earth can ever represent to you the
+luster of these cloudy ones. But the actual tints may be shown you
+in a lower key, and to a certain extent their power and relation to
+each other.
+
+I have painted the diagram here shown you with colors prepared for
+me lately by Messrs. Newman, which I find brilliant to the height
+that pigments can be; and the ready kindness of Mr. Wilson Barrett
+enables me to show you their effect by a white light as pure as
+that of the day. The diagram is enlarged from my careful sketch of
+the sunset of 1st October, 1868, at Abbeville, which was a
+beautiful example of what, in fine weather about to pass into
+storm, a sunset could then be, in the districts of Kent and Picardy
+unaffected by smoke. In reality, the ruby and vermilion clouds
+were, by myriads, more numerous than I have had time to paint: but
+the general character of their grouping is well enough expressed.
+All the illumined clouds are high in the air, and nearly
+motionless; beneath them, electric storm-cloud rises in a
+threatening cumulus on the right, and drifts in dark flakes across
+the horizon, casting from its broken masses radiating shadows on
+the upper clouds. These shadows are traced, in the first place by
+making the misty blue of the open sky more transparent, and
+therefore darker; and secondly, by entirely intercepting the
+sunbeams on the bars of cloud, which, within the shadowed spaces,
+show dark on the blue instead of light.
+
+But, mind, all that is done by reflected light--and in that light
+you never get a _green_ ray from the reflecting cloud; there is no
+such thing in nature as a green lighted cloud relieved from a red
+sky,--the cloud is always red, and the sky green, and green,
+observe, by transmitted, not reflected light.
+
+But now note, there is another kind of cloud, pure white, and
+exquisitely delicate; which acts not by reflecting, nor by
+refracting, but, as it is now called, _dif_fracting, the sun's
+rays. The particles of this cloud are said--with what truth I know
+not[15]--to send the sunbeams round them instead of through them;
+somehow or other, at any rate, they resolve them into their
+prismatic elements; and then you have literally a kaleidoscope in
+the sky, with every color of the prism in absolute purity; but
+above all in force, now, the ruby red and the _green_,--with
+purple, and violet-blue, in a virtual equality, more definite than
+that of the rainbow. The red in the rainbow is mostly brick red,
+the violet, though beautiful, often lost at the edge; but in the
+prismatic cloud the violet, the green, and the ruby are all more
+lovely than in any precious stones, and they are varied as in a
+bird's breast, changing their places, depths, and extent at every
+instant.
+
+The main cause of this change being, that the prismatic cloud
+itself is always in rapid, and generally in fluctuating motion. "A
+light veil of clouds had drawn itself," says Professor Tyndall, in
+describing his solitary ascent of Monte Rosa, "between me and the
+sun, and this was flooded with the most brilliant dyes. Orange,
+red, green, blue--all the hues produced by diffraction--were
+exhibited in the utmost splendor.
+
+"Three times during my ascent (the short ascent of the last peak)
+similar veils drew themselves across the sun, and at each passage
+the splendid phenomena were renewed. There seemed a tendency to
+form circular zones of color round the sun; but the clouds were not
+sufficiently uniform to permit of this, and they were consequently
+broken into spaces, each steeped with the color due to the
+condition of the cloud at the place."
+
+Three times, you observe, the veil passed, and three times another
+came, or the first faded and another formed; and so it is always,
+as far as I have registered prismatic cloud: and the most beautiful
+colors I ever saw were on those that flew fastest.
+
+This second diagram is enlarged admirably by Mr. Arthur Severn from
+my sketch of the sky in the afternoon of the 6th of August, 1880,
+at Brantwood, two hours before sunset. You are looking west by
+north, straight towards the sun, and nearly straight towards the
+wind. From the west the wind blows fiercely towards you out of the
+blue sky. Under the blue space is a flattened dome of earth-cloud
+clinging to, and altogether masking the form of, the mountain,
+known as the Old Man of Coniston.
+
+The top of that dome of cloud is two thousand eight hundred feet
+above the sea, the mountain two thousand six hundred, the cloud
+lying two hundred feet deep on it. Behind it, westward and seaward,
+all's clear; but when the wind out of that blue clearness comes
+over the ridge of the earth-cloud, at that moment and that line, its
+own moisture congeals into these white--I believe, _ice_-clouds;
+threads, and meshes, and tresses, and tapestries, flying, failing,
+melting, reappearing; spinning and unspinning themselves, coiling and
+uncoiling, winding and unwinding, faster than eye or thought can
+follow: and through all their dazzling maze of frosty filaments shines
+a painted window in palpitation; its pulses of color interwoven in
+motion, intermittent in fire,--emerald and ruby and pale purple and
+violet melting into a blue that is not of the sky, but of the
+sunbeam;--purer than the crystal, softer than the rainbow, and
+brighter than the snow.
+
+But you must please here observe that while my first diagram did
+with some adequateness represent to you the color facts there
+spoken of, the present diagram can only _explain_, not reproduce
+them. The bright reflected colors of clouds _can_ be represented in
+painting, because they are relieved against darker colors, or, in
+many cases, _are_ dark colors, the vermilion and ruby clouds being
+often much darker than the green or blue sky beyond them. But in
+the case of the phenomena now under your attention, the colors are
+all _brighter than pure white_,--the entire body of the cloud in
+which they show themselves being white by transmitted light, so
+that I can only show you what the colors are, and where they
+are,--but leaving them dark on the white ground. Only artificial,
+and very high illumination would give the real effect of
+them,--painting cannot.
+
+Enough, however, is here done to fix in your minds the distinction
+between those two species of cloud,--one, either stationary,[16] or
+slow in motion, _reflecting unresolved_ light; the other,
+fast-flying, and _transmitting resolved_ light. What difference is
+there in the nature of the atoms, between those two kinds of
+clouds? I leave the question with you for to-day, merely hinting to
+you my suspicion that the prismatic cloud is of finely-comminuted
+water, or ice,[17] instead of aqueous vapor; but the only clue I
+have to this idea is in the purity of the rainbow formed in frost
+mist, lying close to water surfaces. Such mist, however, only
+becomes prismatic as common rain does, when the sun is behind the
+spectator, while prismatic clouds are, on the contrary, always
+between the spectator and the sun.
+
+The main reason, however, why I can tell you nothing yet about
+these colors of diffraction or interference, is that, whenever I
+try to find anything firm for you to depend on, I am stopped by the
+quite frightful inaccuracy of the scientific people's terms, which
+is the consequence of their always trying to write mixed Latin and
+English, so losing the grace of the one and the sense of the other.
+And, in this point of the diffraction of light I am stopped dead by
+their confusion of idea also, in using the words undulation and
+vibration as synonyms. "When," says Professor Tyndall, "you are
+told that the atoms of the sun _vibrate_ at different rates, and
+produce _waves_ of different sizes,--your experience of water-waves
+will enable you to form a tolerably clear notion of what is meant."
+
+'Tolerably clear'!--your toleration must be considerable, then. Do
+you suppose a water-wave is like a harp-string? Vibration is the
+movement of a body in a state of tension,--undulation, that of a
+body absolutely lax. In vibration, not an atom of the body changes
+its place in relation to another,--in undulation, not an atom of
+the body remains in the same place with regard to another. In
+vibration, every particle of the body ignores gravitation, or
+defies it,--in undulation, every particle of the body is slavishly
+submitted to it. In undulation, not one wave is like another; in
+vibration, every pulse is alike. And of undulation itself, there
+are all manner of visible conditions, which are not true
+conditions. A flag ripples in the wind, but it does not undulate as
+the sea does,--for in the sea, the water is taken from the trough
+to put on to the ridge, but in the flag, though the motion is
+progressive, the bits of bunting keep their place. You see a field
+of corn undulating as if it was water,--it is different from the
+flag, for the ears of corn bow out of their places and return to
+them,--and yet, it is no more like the undulation of the sea, than
+the shaking of an aspen leaf in a storm, or the lowering of the
+lances in a battle.
+
+And the best of the jest is, that after mixing up these two notions
+in their heads inextricably, the scientific people apply both when
+neither will fit; and when all undulation known to us presumes
+weight, and all vibration, impact,--the undulating theory of light
+is proposed to you concerning a medium which you can neither weigh
+nor touch!
+
+All _communicable_ vibration--of course I mean--and in dead matter:
+_You_ may fall a shivering on your own account, if you like, but
+you can't get a billiard-ball to fall a shivering on _its_ own
+account.[18]
+
+Yet observe that in thus signalizing the inaccuracy of the terms in
+which they are taught, I neither accept, nor assail, the
+conclusions respecting the oscillatory states of light, heat, and
+sound, which have resulted from the postulate of an elastic, though
+impalpable and imponderable ether, possessing the elasticity of
+air. This only I desire you to mark with attention,--that both
+light and sound are _sensations_ of the animal frame, which remain,
+and must remain, wholly inexplicable, whatever manner of force,
+pulse, or palpitation may be instrumental in producing them: nor
+does any such force _become_ light or sound, except in its
+rencontre with an animal. The leaf hears no murmur in the wind to
+which it wavers on the branches, nor can the clay discern the
+vibration by which it is thrilled into a ruby. The Eye and the Ear
+are the creators alike of the ray and the tone; and the conclusion
+follows logically from the right conception of their living
+power,--"He that planted the Ear, shall He not hear? He that formed
+the Eye, shall not He see?"
+
+For security, therefore, and simplicity of definition of light, you
+will find no possibility of advancing beyond Plato's "the power
+that through the eye manifests color," but on that definition, you
+will find, alike by Plato and all great subsequent thinkers, a
+_moral_ Science of Light founded, far and away more important to
+you than all the physical laws ever learned by vitreous revelation.
+Concerning which I will refer you to the sixth lecture which I gave
+at Oxford in 1872, on the relation of Art to the Science of Light
+('The Eagle's Nest'), reading now only the sentence introducing its
+subject:--"The 'Fiat lux' of creation is therefore, in the deep
+sense, 'fiat anima,' and is as much, when you understand it, the
+ordering of Intelligence as the ordering of Vision. It is the
+appointment of change of what had been else only a mechanical
+effluence from things unseen to things unseeing,--from Stars, that
+did not shine, to Earth, that did not perceive,--the change, I say,
+of that blind vibration into the glory of the Sun and Moon for
+human eyes: so making possible the communication out of the
+unfathomable truth of that portion of truth which is good for us,
+and animating to us, and is set to rule over the day and over the
+night of our joy and our sorrow."
+
+Returning now to our subject at the point from which I permitted
+myself, I trust not without your pardon, to diverge; you may
+incidentally, but carefully, observe, that the effect of such a sky
+as that represented in the second diagram, so far as it can be
+abstracted or conveyed by painting at all, implies the total
+absence of any pervading warmth of tint, such as artists usually
+call 'tone.' Every tint must be the purest possible, and above all
+the white. Partly, lest you should think, from my treatment of
+these two phases of effect, that I am insensible to the quality of
+tone,--and partly to complete the representation of states of
+weather undefiled by plague-cloud, yet capable of the most solemn
+dignity in saddening color, I show you, Diagram 3, the record of an
+autumn twilight of the year 1845,--sketched while I was changing
+horses between Verona and Brescia. The distant sky in this drawing
+is in the glowing calm which is always taken by the great Italian
+painters for the background of their sacred pictures; a broad field
+of cloud is advancing upon it overhead, and meeting others
+enlarging in the distance; these are rain-clouds, which will
+certainly close over the clear sky, and bring on rain before
+midnight: but there is no power in them to pollute the sky beyond
+and above them: they do not darken the air, nor defile it, nor in
+any way mingle with it; their edges are burnished by the sun like
+the edges of golden shields, and their advancing march is as
+deliberate and majestic as the fading of the twilight itself into a
+darkness full of stars.
+
+These three instances are all I have time to give of the former
+conditions of serene weather, and of non-electric rain-cloud. But I
+must yet, to complete the sequence of my subject, show you one
+example of a good, old-fashioned, healthy, and mighty, storm.
+
+In Diagram 4, Mr. Severn has beautifully enlarged my sketch of a
+July thundercloud of the year 1858, on the Alps of the Val
+d'Aosta, seen from Turin, that is to say, some twenty-five or
+thirty miles distant. You see that no mistake is possible here
+about what is good weather and what bad, or which is cloud and
+which is sky; but I show you this sketch especially to give you the
+scale of heights for such clouds in the atmosphere. These thunder
+cumuli entirely _hide_ the higher Alps. It does not, however,
+follow that they have buried them, for most of their own aspect of
+height is owing to the approach of their nearer masses; but at all
+events, you have cumulus there rising from its base, at about three
+thousand feet above the plain, to a good ten thousand in the air.
+
+White cirri, in reality parallel, but by perspective radiating,
+catch the sunshine above, at a height of from fifteen to twenty
+thousand feet; but the storm on the mountains gathers itself into a
+full mile's depth of massy cloud, every fold of it involved with
+thunder, but every form of it, every action, every color,
+magnificent:--doing its mighty work in its own hour and its own
+dominion, nor snatching from you for an instant, nor defiling with
+a stain, the abiding blue of the transcendent sky, or the fretted
+silver of its passionless clouds.
+
+We so rarely now see cumulus cloud of this grand kind, that I will
+yet delay you by reading the description of its nearer aspect, in
+the 'Eagle's Nest.'
+
+"The rain which flooded our fields the Sunday before last, was
+followed, as you will remember, by bright days, of which Tuesday
+the 20th (February, 1872) was, in London, notable for the splendor,
+towards the afternoon, of its white cumulus clouds. There has been
+so much black east wind lately, and so much fog and artificial
+gloom, besides, that I find it is actually some two years since I
+last saw a noble cumulus cloud under full light. I chanced to be
+standing under the Victoria Tower at Westminster, when the largest
+mass of them floated past, that day, from the northwest; and I was
+more impressed than ever yet by the awfulness of the cloud-form,
+and its unaccountableness, in the present state of our knowledge.
+The Victoria Tower, seen against it, had no magnitude: it was like
+looking at Mont Blanc over a lamp-post. The domes of cloud-snow
+were heaped as definitely: their broken flanks were as gray and
+firm as rocks, and the whole mountain, of a compass and height in
+heaven which only became more and more inconceivable as the eye
+strove to ascend it, was passing behind the tower with a steady
+march, whose swiftness must in reality have been that of a tempest:
+yet, along all the ravines of vapor, precipice kept pace with
+precipice, and not one thrust another.
+
+"What is it that hews them out? Why is the blue sky pure
+there,--the cloud solid here; and edged like marble: and why does
+the state of the blue sky pass into the state of cloud, in that
+calm advance?
+
+"It is true that you can more or less imitate the forms of cloud
+with explosive vapor or steam; but the steam melts instantly, and
+the explosive vapor dissipates itself. The cloud, of perfect form,
+proceeds unchanged. It is not an explosion, but an enduring and
+advancing presence. The more you think of it, the less explicable
+it will become to you."
+
+Thus far then of clouds that were once familiar; now at last,
+entering on my immediate subject, I shall best introduce it to you
+by reading an entry in my diary which gives progressive description
+of the most gentle aspect of the modern plague-cloud.
+
+                                   "_Bolton Abbey, 4th July, 1875._
+
+Half-past eight, morning; the first bright morning for the last
+fortnight.
+
+At half-past five it was entirely clear, and entirely calm; the
+moorlands glowing, and the Wharfe glittering in sacred light, and
+even the thin-stemmed field-flowers quiet as stars, in the peace in
+which--
+
+    'All trees and simples, great and small,
+       That balmy leaf do bear,
+     Than they were painted on a wall,
+       No more do move, nor steir.'
+
+
+But, an hour ago, the leaves at my window first shook slightly.
+They are now trembling _continuously_, as those of all the trees,
+under a gradually rising wind, of which the tremulous action
+scarcely permits the direction to be defined,--but which falls and
+returns in fits of varying force, like those which precede a
+thunderstorm--never wholly ceasing: the direction of its upper
+current is shown by a few ragged white clouds, moving fast from the
+north, which rose, at the time of the first leaf-shaking, behind
+the edge of the moors in the east.
+
+This wind is the plague-wind of the eighth decade of years in the
+nineteenth century; a period which will assuredly be recognized in
+future meteorological history as one of phenomena hitherto unrecorded
+in the courses of nature, and characterized pre-eminently by the
+almost ceaseless action of this calamitous wind. While I have been
+writing these sentences, the white clouds above specified have
+increased to twice the size they had when I began to write; and in
+about two hours from this time--say by eleven o'clock, if the wind
+continue,--the whole sky will be dark with them, as it was yesterday,
+and has been through prolonged periods during the last five years. I
+first noticed the definite character of this wind, and of the clouds
+it brings with it, in the year 1871, describing it then in the July
+number of 'Fors Clavigera'; but little, at that time, apprehending
+either its universality, or any probability of its annual continuance.
+I am able now to state positively that its range of power extends from
+the North of England to Sicily; and that it blows more or less during
+the whole of the year, except the early autumn. This autumnal
+abdication is, I hope, beginning: it blew but feebly yesterday, though
+without intermission, from the north, making every shady place cold,
+while the sun was burning; its effect on the sky being only to dim the
+blue of it between masses of ragged cumulus. To-day it has entirely
+fallen; and there seems hope of bright weather, the first for me since
+the end of May, when I had two fine days at Aylesbury; the third,
+May 28th, being black again from morning to evening. There seems to be
+some reference to the blackness caused by the prevalence of this wind
+in the old French name of Bise, '_gray_ wind'; and, indeed, one of the
+darkest and bitterest days of it I ever saw was at Vevay in 1872."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first time I recognized the clouds brought by the plague-wind
+as distinct in character was in walking back from Oxford, after a
+hard day's work, to Abingdon, in the early spring of 1871: it would
+take too long to give you any account this evening of the
+particulars which drew my attention to them; but during the
+following months I had too frequent opportunities of verifying my
+first thoughts of them, and on the first of July in that year wrote
+the description of them which begins the 'Fors Clavigera' of
+August, thus:--
+
+"It is the first of July, and I sit down to write by the dismalest
+light that ever yet I wrote by; namely, the light of this midsummer
+morning, in mid-England, (Matlock, Derbyshire), in the year 1871.
+
+"For the sky is covered with gray cloud;--not rain-cloud, but a dry
+black veil, which no ray of sunshine can pierce; partly diffused in
+mist, feeble mist, enough to make distant objects unintelligible,
+yet without any substance, or wreathing, or color of its own. And
+everywhere the leaves of the trees are shaking fitfully, as they do
+before a thunder-storm; only not violently, but enough to show the
+passing to and fro of a strange, bitter, blighting wind. Dismal
+enough, had it been the first morning of its kind that summer had
+sent. But during all this spring, in London, and at Oxford, through
+meager March, through changelessly sullen April, through
+despondent May, and darkened June, morning after morning has
+come gray-shrouded thus.
+
+"And it is a new thing to me, and a very dreadful one. I am fifty
+years old, and more; and since I was five, have gleaned the best
+hours of my life in the sun of spring and summer mornings; and I
+never saw such as these, till now.
+
+"And the scientific men are busy as ants, examining the sun, and
+the moon, and the seven stars, and can tell me all about _them_, I
+believe, by this time; and how they move, and what they are made
+of.
+
+"And I do not care, for my part, two copper spangles how they move,
+nor what they are made of. I can't move them any other way than
+they go, nor make them of anything else, better than they are made.
+But I would care much and give much, if I could be told where this
+bitter wind comes from, and what _it_ is made of.
+
+"For, perhaps, with forethought, and fine laboratory science, one
+might make it of something else.
+
+"It looks partly as if it were made of poisonous smoke; very
+possibly it may be: there are at least two hundred furnace chimneys
+in a square of two miles on every side of me. But mere smoke would
+not blow to and fro in that wild way. It looks more to me as if it
+were made of dead men's souls--such of them as are not gone yet
+where they have to go, and may be flitting hither and thither,
+doubting, themselves, of the fittest place for them.
+
+"You know, if there _are_ such things as souls, and if ever any of
+them haunt places where they have been hurt, there must be many
+about us, just now, displeased enough!"
+
+The last sentence refers of course to the battles of the
+Franco-German campaign, which was especially horrible to me, in its
+digging, as the Germans should have known, a moat flooded with
+waters of death between the two nations for a century to come.
+
+Since that Midsummer day, my attention, however otherwise occupied,
+has never relaxed in its record of the phenomena characteristic of
+the plague-wind; and I now define for you, as briefly as possible,
+the essential signs of it.
+
+1. It is a wind of darkness,--all the former conditions of
+tormenting winds, whether from the north or east were more or less
+capable of co-existing with sunlight, and often with steady and
+bright sunlight; but whenever, and wherever the plague-wind blows,
+be it but for ten minutes, the sky is darkened instantly.
+
+2. It is a malignant _quality_ of wind, unconnected with any one
+quarter of the compass; it blows indifferently from all, attaching
+its own bitterness and malice to the worst characters of the proper
+winds of each quarter. It will blow either with drenching rain, or
+dry rage, from the south,--with ruinous blasts from the west,--with
+bitterest chills from the north,--and with venomous blight from the
+east.
+
+Its own favorite quarter, however, is the southwest, so that it is
+distinguished in its malignity equally from the Bise of Provence,
+which is a north wind always, and from our own old friend, the
+east.
+
+3. It always blows _tremulously_, making the leaves of the trees
+shudder as if they were all aspens, but with a peculiar fitfulness
+which gives them--and I watch them this moment as I write--an
+expression of anger as well as of fear and distress. You may see
+the kind of quivering, and hear the ominous whimpering, in the
+gusts that precede a great thunderstorm; but plague-wind is more
+panic-struck, and feverish; and its sound is a hiss instead of a
+wail.
+
+When I was last at Avallon, in South France, I went to see 'Faust'
+played at the little country theater: it was done with scarcely any
+means of pictorial effect, except a few old curtains, and a blue
+light or two. But the night on the Brocken was nevertheless
+extremely appalling to me,--a strange ghastliness being obtained in
+some of the witch scenes merely by fine management of gesture and
+drapery; and in the phantom scenes, by the half-palsied,
+half-furious, faltering or fluttering past of phantoms stumbling as
+into graves; as if of not only soulless, but senseless, Dead,
+moving with the very action, the rage, the decrepitude, and the
+trembling of the plague-wind.
+
+4. Not only tremulous at every moment, it is also _intermittent_
+with a rapidity quite unexampled in former weather. There are,
+indeed, days--and weeks, on which it blows without cessation, and
+is as inevitable as the Gulf Stream; but also there are days when
+it is contending with healthy weather, and on such days it will
+remit for half an hour, and the sun will begin to show itself, and
+then the wind will come back and cover the whole sky with clouds
+in ten minutes; and so on, every half-hour, through the whole day;
+so that it is often impossible to go on with any kind of drawing in
+color, the light being never for two seconds the same from morning
+till evening.
+
+5. It degrades, while it intensifies, ordinary storm; but before I
+read you any description of its efforts in this kind, I must
+correct an impression which has got abroad through the papers, that
+I speak as if the plague-wind blew now always, and there were no
+more any natural weather. On the contrary, the winter of 1878-9 was
+one of the most healthy and lovely I ever saw ice in;--Coniston
+lake shone under the calm clear frost in one marble field, as
+strong as the floor of Milan Cathedral, half a mile across and four
+miles down; and the first entries in my diary which I read you
+shall be from the 22d to 26th June, 1876, of perfectly lovely and
+natural weather.
+
+                                   "_Sunday, 25th June, 1876._
+
+Yesterday, an entirely glorious sunset, unmatched in beauty since
+that at Abbeville,--deep scarlet, and purest rose, on purple gray,
+in bars; and stationary, plumy, sweeping filaments above in upper
+sky, like '_using up the brush_,' said Joanie; remaining in glory,
+every moment best, changing from one good into another, (but only
+in color or light--_form steady_,) for half an hour full, and the
+clouds afterwards fading into the gray against amber twilight,
+_stationary in the same form for about two hours_, at least. The
+darkening rose tint remained till half-past ten, the grand time
+being at nine.
+
+The day had been fine,--exquisite green light on afternoon hills.
+
+                                   _Monday, 26th June, 1876._
+
+Yesterday an entirely perfect summer light on the Old Man;
+Lancaster Bay all clear; Ingleborough and the great Pennine fault
+as on a map. Divine beauty of western color on thyme and
+rose,--then twilight of clearest _warm_ amber far into night, of
+_pale_ amber all night long; hills dark-clear against it.
+
+And so it continued, only growing more intense in blue and
+sunlight, all day. After breakfast, I came in from the well under
+strawberry bed, to say I had never seen anything like it, so pure
+or intense, in Italy; and so it went glowing on, cloudless, with
+soft north wind, all day.
+
+                                   _16th July._
+
+The sunset almost too bright _through the blinds_ for me to read
+Humboldt at tea by,--finally, new moon like a lime-light, reflected
+on breeze-struck water; traces, across dark calm, of reflected
+hills."
+
+These extracts are, I hope, enough to guard you against the
+absurdity of supposing that it all only means that I am myself
+soured, or doting, in my old age, and always in an ill humor.
+Depend upon it, when old men are worth anything, they are better
+humored than young ones; and have learned to see what good there
+is, and pleasantness, in the world they are likely so soon to have
+orders to quit.
+
+Now then--take the following sequences of accurate description of
+thunderstorm, _with_ plague-wind.
+
+                                   _"22d June, 1876._
+
+Thunderstorm; pitch dark, with no _blackness_,--but deep, high,
+_filthiness_ of lurid, yet not sublimely lurid, smoke-cloud; dense
+manufacturing mist; fearful squalls of shivery wind, making Mr.
+Severn's sail quiver like a man in a fever fit--all about four,
+afternoon--but only two or three claps of thunder, and feeble,
+though near, flashes. I never saw such a dirty, weak, foul storm.
+It cleared suddenly, after raining all afternoon, at half-past
+eight to nine, into pure, natural weather,--low rain-clouds on
+quite clear, green, wet hills.
+
+                                   _Brantwood, 13th August, 1879._
+
+The most terrific and horrible thunderstorm, this morning, I ever
+remember. It waked me at six, or a little before--then rolling
+incessantly, like railway luggage trains, quite ghastly in its
+mockery of them--the air one loathsome mass of sultry and foul fog,
+like smoke; scarcely raining at all, but increasing to heavier
+rollings, with flashes quivering vaguely through all the air, and
+at last terrific double streams of reddish-violet fire, not forked
+or zigzag, but rippled rivulets--two at the same instant some
+twenty to thirty degrees apart, and lasting on the eye at least
+half a second, with grand artillery-peals following; not rattling
+crashes, or irregular cracklings, but delivered volleys. It lasted
+an hour, then passed off, clearing a little, without rain to speak
+of,--not a glimpse of blue,--and now, half-past seven, seems
+settling down again into Manchester devil's darkness.
+
+Quarter to eight, morning.--Thunder returned, all the air collapsed
+into one black fog, the hills invisible, and scarcely visible the
+opposite shore; heavy rain in short fits, and frequent, though less
+formidable, flashes, and shorter thunder. While I have written this
+sentence the cloud has again dissolved itself, like a nasty
+solution in a bottle, with miraculous and unnatural rapidity, and
+the hills are in sight again; a double-forked flash--rippled, I
+mean, like the others--starts into its frightful ladder of light
+between me and Wetherlam, as I raise my eyes. All black above, a
+rugged spray cloud on the Eaglet. (The 'Eaglet' is my own name for
+the bold and elevated crag to the west of the little lake above
+Coniston mines. It had no name among the country people, and is one
+of the most conspicuous features of the mountain chain, as seen
+from Brantwood.)
+
+Half-past eight.--Three times light and three times dark since last
+I wrote, and the darkness seeming each time as it settles more
+loathsome, at last stopping my reading in mere blindness. One lurid
+gleam of white cumulus in upper lead-blue sky, seen for half a
+minute through the sulphurous chimney-pot vomit of blackguardly
+cloud beneath, where its rags were thinnest.
+
+                                   _Thursday, 22d Feb. 1883._
+
+Yesterday a fearfully dark mist all afternoon, with steady, south
+plague-wind of the bitterest, nastiest, poisonous blight, and
+fretful flutter. I could scarcely stay in the wood for the horror
+of it. To-day, really rather bright blue, and bright semi-cumuli,
+with the frantic Old Man blowing sheaves of lancets and chisels
+across the lake--not in strength enough, or whirl enough, to raise
+it in spray, but tracing every squall's outline in black on the
+silver gray waves, and whistling meanly, and as if on a flute made
+of a file.
+
+                                   _Sunday, 17th August, 1879._
+
+Raining in foul drizzle, slow and steady; sky pitch-dark, and I
+just get a little light by sitting in the bow-window; diabolic
+clouds over everything: and looking over my kitchen garden
+yesterday, I found it one miserable mass of weeds gone to seed, the
+roses in the higher garden putrefied into brown sponges, feeling
+like dead snails; and the half-ripe strawberries all rotten at the
+stalks."
+
+6. And now I come to the most important sign of the plague-wind and
+the plague-cloud: that in bringing on their peculiar darkness, they
+_blanch_ the sun instead of reddening it. And here I must note
+briefly to you the uselessness of observation by instruments, or
+machines, instead of eyes. In the first year when I had begun to
+notice the specialty of the plague-wind, I went of course to the
+Oxford observatory to consult its registrars. They have their
+anemometer always on the twirl, and can tell you the force, or at
+least the pace, of a gale,[19] by day or night. But the anemometer
+can only record for you how often it has been driven round, not at
+all whether it went round _steadily_, or went round _trembling_.
+And on that point depends the entire question whether it is a
+plague breeze or a healthy one: and what's the use of telling you
+whether the wind's strong or not, when it can't tell you whether
+it's a strong medicine, or a strong poison?
+
+But again--you have your _sun_-measure, and can tell exactly at any
+moment how strong, or how weak, or how wanting, the sun is. But the
+sun-measurer can't tell you whether the rays are stopped by a dense
+_shallow_ cloud, or a thin _deep_ one. In healthy weather, the sun
+is hidden behind a cloud, as it is behind a tree; and, when the
+cloud is past, it comes out again, as bright as before. But in
+plague-wind, the sun is choked out of the whole heaven, all day
+long, by a cloud which may be a thousand miles square and five
+miles deep.
+
+And yet observe: that thin, scraggy, filthy, mangy, miserable
+cloud, for all the depth of it, can't turn the sun red, as a good,
+business-like fog does with a hundred feet or so of itself. By the
+plague-wind every breath of air you draw is polluted, half round
+the world; in a London fog the air itself is pure, though you
+choose to mix up dirt with it, and choke yourself with your own
+nastiness.
+
+Now I'm going to show you a diagram of a sunset in entirely pure
+weather, above London smoke. I saw it and sketched it from my old
+post of observation--the top garret of my father's house at Herne
+Hill. There, when the wind is south, we are outside of the smoke
+and above it; and this diagram, admirably enlarged from my own
+drawing by my, now in all things best aide-de-camp, Mr.
+Collingwood, shows you an old-fashioned sunset--the sort of thing
+Turner and I used to have to look at,--(nobody else ever would)
+constantly. Every sunset and every dawn, in fine weather, had
+something of the sort to show us. This is one of the last pure
+sunsets I ever saw, about the year 1876,--and the point I want you
+to note in it is, that the air being pure, the smoke on the
+horizon, though at last it hides the sun, yet hides it through gold
+and vermilion. Now, don't go away fancying there's any exaggeration
+in that study. The _prismatic_ colors, I told you, were simply
+impossible to paint; these, which are transmitted colors, can
+indeed be suggested, but no more. The brightest pigment we have
+would look dim beside the truth.
+
+I should have liked to have blotted down for you a bit of
+plague-cloud to put beside this; but Heaven knows, you can see
+enough of it now-a-days without any trouble of mine; and if you
+want, in a hurry, to see what the sun looks like through it, you've
+only to throw a bad half-crown into a basin of soap and water.
+
+Blanched Sun,--blighted grass,--blinded man.--If, in conclusion,
+you ask me for any conceivable cause or meaning of these things--I
+can tell you none, according to your modern beliefs; but I can tell
+you what meaning it would have borne to the men of old time.
+Remember, for the last twenty years, England, and all foreign
+nations, either tempting her, or following her, have blasphemed[20]
+the name of God deliberately and openly; and have done iniquity by
+proclamation, every man doing as much injustice to his brother as
+it is in his power to do. Of states in such moral gloom every seer
+of old predicted the physical gloom, saying, "The light shall be
+darkened in the heavens thereof, and the stars shall withdraw their
+shining." All Greek, all Christian, all Jewish prophecy insists on
+the same truth through a thousand myths; but of all the chief, to
+former thought, was the fable of the Jewish warrior and prophet,
+for whom the sun hasted not to go down, with which I leave you to
+compare at leisure the physical result of your own wars and
+prophecies, as declared by your own elect journal not fourteen days
+ago,--that the Empire of England, on which formerly the sun never
+set, has become one on which he never rises.
+
+What is best to be done, do you ask me? The answer is plain.
+Whether you can affect the signs of the sky or not, you _can_ the
+signs of the times. Whether you can bring the _sun_ back or not,
+you can assuredly bring back your own cheerfulness, and your own
+honesty. You may not be able to say to the winds, "Peace; be
+still," but you can cease from the insolence of your own lips, and
+the troubling of your own passions. And all _that_ it would be
+extremely well to do, even though the day _were_ coming when the
+sun should be as darkness, and the moon as blood. But, the paths of
+rectitude and piety once regained, who shall say that the promise
+of old time would not be found to hold for us also?--"Bring ye all
+the tithes into my storehouse, and prove me now herewith, saith the
+Lord God, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour
+you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive
+it."
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE II.
+
+                                   _March 11th, 1884._
+
+
+It was impossible for me, this spring, to prepare, as I wished to
+have done, two lectures for the London Institution: but finding its
+members more interested in the subject chosen than I had
+anticipated, I enlarged my lecture at its second reading by some
+explanations and parentheses, partly represented, and partly
+farther developed, in the following notes; which led me on,
+however, as I arranged them, into branches of the subject untouched
+in the former lecture, and it seems to me of no inferior interest.
+
+[Footnote 1: The vapor over the pool of Anger in the 'Inferno,' the
+clogging stench which rises from Caina, and the fog of the circle
+of Anger in the 'Purgatorio' resemble, indeed, the cloud of the
+Plague-wind very closely,--but are conceived only as supernatural.
+The reader will no doubt observe, throughout the following lecture,
+my own habit of speaking of beautiful things as 'natural,' and of
+ugly ones as 'unnatural.' In the conception of recent philosophy,
+the world is one Kosmos in which diphtheria is held to be as
+natural as song, and cholera as digestion. To my own mind, and the
+more distinctly the more I see, know, and feel, the Earth, as
+prepared for the abode of man, appears distinctly ruled by agencies
+of health and disease, of which the first may be aided by his
+industry, prudence, and piety; while the destroying laws are
+allowed to prevail against him, in the degree in which he allows
+himself in idleness, folly, and vice. Had the point been distinctly
+indicated where the degrees of adversity necessary for his
+discipline pass into those intended for his punishment, the world
+would have been put under a manifest theocracy; but the declaration
+of the principle is at least distinct enough to have convinced all
+sensitive and earnest persons, from the beginning of speculation in
+the eyes and mind of Man: and it has been put in my power by one
+of the singular chances which have always helped me in my work when
+it was in the right direction, to present to the University
+of Oxford the most distinct expression of this first principle
+of mediæval Theology which, so far as I know, exists in
+fifteenth-century art. It is one of the drawings of the Florentine
+book which I bought for a thousand pounds, against the British
+Museum, some ten or twelve years since; being a compendium of
+classic and mediæval religious symbolism. In the two pages of it,
+forming one picture, given to Oxford, the delivery of the Law on
+Sinai is represented on the left hand, (_contrary to the Scriptural
+narrative_, but in deeper expression of the benediction of the
+Sacred Law to all nations,) as in the midst of bright and calm
+light, the figure of the Deity being supported by luminous and
+level clouds, and attended by happy angels: while opposite, on the
+right hand, the worship of the Golden Calf is symbolized by a
+single decorated pillar, with the calf on its summit, surrounded by
+the clouds and darkness of a furious storm, issuing from the mouths
+of fiends;--uprooting the trees, and throwing down the rocks, above
+the broken tables of the Law, of which the fragments lie in the
+foreground.]
+
+[Footnote 2: These conditions are mainly in the arrangement of the
+lower rain-clouds in flakes thin and detached enough to be
+illuminated by early or late sunbeams: their textures are then more
+softly blended than those of the upper cirri, and have the
+qualities of painted, instead of burnished or inflamed, color.
+
+They were thus described in the 4th chapter of the 7th part of
+'Modern Painters':--
+
+"Often in our English mornings, the rain-clouds in the dawn form
+soft level fields, which melt imperceptibly into the blue; or when
+of less extent, gather into apparent bars, crossing the sheets of
+broader cloud above; and all these bathed throughout in an
+unspeakable light of pure rose-color, and purple, and amber, and
+blue, not shining, but misty-soft, the barred masses, when seen
+nearer, found to be woven in tresses of cloud, like floss silk,
+looking as if each knot were a little swathe or sheaf of lighted
+rain.
+
+"No clouds form such skies, none are so tender, various,
+inimitable; Turner himself never caught them. Correggio, putting
+out his whole strength, could have painted them,--no other man."]
+
+[Footnote 3: I did not, in writing this sentence, forget Mr.
+Gladstone's finely scholastic enthusiasm for Homer; nor Mr.
+Newton's for Athenian--(I wish it had not been also for
+Halicarnassian) sculpture. But Byron loved Greece herself--through
+her death--and _to_ his own; while the subsequent refusal of
+England to give Greece one of our own princes for a king, has
+always been held by me the most ignoble, cowardly, and lamentable,
+of all our base commercial _im_policies.]
+
+[Footnote 4: 'Deepening' clouds.--Byron never uses an epithet
+vainly,--he is the most accurate, and therefore the most powerful,
+of all modern describers. The deepening of the cloud is essentially
+necessary to the redness of the orb. Ordinary observers are
+continually unaware of this fact, and imagine that a red sun can be
+darker than the sky round it! Thus Mr. Gould, though a professed
+naturalist, and passing most of his life in the open air, over and
+over again, in his 'British Birds,' draws the setting sun dark on
+the sky!]
+
+[Footnote 5: 'Like the blood he predicts.'--The astrological power
+of the planet Mars was of course ascribed to it in the same
+connection with its red color. The reader may be interested to see
+the notice, in 'Modern Painters,' of Turner's constant use of the
+same symbol; partly an expression of his own personal feeling,
+partly, the employment of a symbolic language known to all careful
+readers of solar and stellar tradition.
+
+"He was very definitely in the habit of indicating the association
+of any subject with circumstances of death, especially the death of
+multitudes, by placing it under one of his most deeply _crimsoned_
+sunset skies.
+
+"The color of blood is thus plainly taken for the leading tone in
+the storm-clouds above the 'Slave-ship.' It occurs with similar
+distinctness in the much earlier picture of 'Ulysses and
+Polypheme,' in that of 'Napoleon at St. Helena,' and, subdued by
+softer hues, in the 'Old Téméraire.'
+
+"The sky of this Goldau is, in its scarlet and crimson, the deepest
+in tone of all that I know in Turner's drawings.
+
+"Another feeling, traceable in several of his former works, is an
+acute sense of the contrast between the careless interests and idle
+pleasures of daily life, and the state of those whose time for
+labor, or knowledge, or delight, is passed forever. There is
+evidence of this feeling in the introduction of the boys at play in
+the churchyard of Kirkby Lonsdale, and the boy climbing for his
+kite among the thickets above the little mountain churchyard of
+Brignal-bank; it is in the same tone of thought that he has placed
+here the two figures fishing, leaning against these shattered
+flanks of rock,--the sepulchral stones of the great mountain Field
+of Death."]
+
+[Footnote 6: 'Thy lore unto calamity.'--It is, I believe,
+recognized by all who have in any degree become interested in the
+traditions of Chaldean astrology, that its warnings were
+distinct,--its promises deceitful. Horace thus warns Leuconoe
+against reading the Babylonian numbers to learn the time of her
+death,--he does not imply their promise of previous happiness; and
+the continually deceptive character of the Delphic oracle itself,
+tempted always rather to fatal than to fortunate conduct, unless
+the inquirer were more than wise in his reading. Byron gathers into
+the bitter question all the sorrow of former superstition, while in
+the lines italicized, just above, he sums in the briefest and
+plainest English, all that we yet know, or may wisely think, about
+the Sun. It is the '_Burning_ oracle' (other oracles there are by
+sound, or feeling, but this by fire) of all that lives; the only
+means of our accurate knowledge of the things round us, and that
+affect our lives: it is the _fountain_ of all life,--Byron does not
+say the _origin_;--the origin of life would be the origin of the
+sun itself; but it is the visible _source_ of vital energy, as the
+spring is of a stream, though the origin is the sea. "And symbol of
+Him who bestows it."--This the sun has always been, to every one
+who believes there is a bestower; and a symbol so perfect and
+beautiful that it may also be thought of as partly an apocalypse.]
+
+[Footnote 7: 'More beautiful in that variety.'--This line, with the
+one italicized beneath, expresses in Myrrha's mind, the feeling
+which I said, in the outset, every thoughtful watcher of heaven
+necessarily had in those old days; whereas now, the variety is for
+the most part, only in modes of disagreeableness; and the vapor,
+instead of adding light to the unclouded sky, takes away the aspect
+and destroys the functions of sky altogether.]
+
+[Footnote 8: 'Steam out of an engine funnel.'--Compare the sixth
+paragraph of Professor Tyndall's 'Forms of Water,' and the
+following seventh one, in which the phenomenon of transparent steam
+becoming opaque is thus explained. "Every bit of steam shrinks,
+when chilled, to a much more minute particle of water. The liquid
+particles thus produced form a kind of water dust of exceeding
+fineness, which floats in the air, and is called a cloud."
+
+But the author does not tell us, in the first place, what is the
+shape or nature of a 'bit of steam,' nor, in the second place, how
+the contraction of the individual bits of steam is effected without
+any diminution of the whole mass of them, but on the contrary,
+during its steady _expansion_; in the third place he assumes that
+the particles of water dust are solid, not vesicular, which is not
+yet ascertained; in the fourth place, he does not tell us how their
+number and size are related to the quantity of invisible moisture
+in the air; in the fifth place, he does not tell us how cool
+invisible moisture differs from hot invisible moisture; and in the
+sixth, he does not tell us why the cool visible moisture stays
+while the hot visible moisture melts away. So much for the present
+state of 'scientific' information, or at least communicativeness,
+on the first and simplest conditions of the problem before us!
+
+In its wider range that problem embraces the total mystery of
+volatile power in substance; and of the visible states consequent
+on sudden--and presumably, therefore, imperfect--vaporization; as
+the smoke of frankincense, or the sacred fume of modern devotion
+which now fills the inhabited world, as that of the rose and violet
+its deserts. What,--it would be useful to know, is the actual bulk
+of an atom of orange perfume?--what of one of vaporized tobacco, or
+gunpowder?--and where do _these_ artificial vapors fall back in
+beneficent rain? or through what areas of atmosphere exist, as
+invisible, though perhaps not innocuous, cloud?
+
+All these questions were put, closely and precisely,
+four-and-twenty years ago, in the 1st chapter of the 7th part of
+'Modern Painters,' paragraphs 4 to 9, of which I can here allow
+space only for the last, which expresses the final difficulties of
+the matter better than anything said in this lecture:--
+
+"But farther: these questions of volatility, and visibility, and
+hue, are all complicated with those of shape. How is a cloud
+outlined? Granted whatever you choose to ask, concerning its
+material, or its aspect, its loftiness and luminousness,--how of
+its limitation? What hews it into a heap, or spins it into a web?
+Cold is usually shapeless, I suppose, extending over large spaces
+equally, or with gradual diminution. You cannot have in the open
+air, angles, and wedges, and coils, and cliffs, of cold. Yet the
+vapor stops suddenly, sharp and steep as a rock, or thrusts itself
+across the gates of heaven in likeness of a brazen bar; or braids
+itself in and out, and across and across, like a tissue of
+tapestry; or falls into ripples, like sand; or into waving shreds
+and tongues, as fire. On what anvils and wheels is the vapor
+pointed, twisted, hammered, whirled, as the potter's clay? By what
+hands is the incense of the sea built up into domes of marble?"]
+
+[Footnote 9: The opposed conditions of the higher and lower orders
+of cloud, with the balanced intermediate one, are beautifully seen
+on mountain summits of rock or earth. On snowy ones they are far
+more complex: but on rock summits there are three distinct forms of
+attached cloud in serene weather; the first that of cloud veil
+laid over them, and _falling_ in folds through their ravines,
+(the obliquely descending clouds of the entering chorus in
+Aristophanes); secondly, the ascending cloud, which develops itself
+loosely and independently as it rises, and does not attach itself
+to the hill-side, while the falling veil cloud clings to it close
+all the way down;--and lastly the throned cloud, which rests indeed
+on the mountain summit, with its base, but rises high above into
+the sky, continually changing its outlines, but holding its seat
+perhaps all day long.
+
+These three forms of cloud belong exclusively to calm weather;
+attached drift cloud, (see Note 11) can only be formed in the
+wind.]
+
+[Footnote 10: 'Glaciers of the Alps,' page 10.--"Let a pound weight
+be placed upon a cube of granite" (size of supposed cube not
+mentioned), "the cube is flattened, though in an infinitesimal
+degree. Let the weight be removed, the cube remains a little
+flattened. Let us call the cube thus flattened No. 1. Starting with
+No. 1 as a new mass, let the pound weight be laid upon it. We have
+a more flattened mass, No. 2.... Apply this to squeezed rocks, to
+those, for example, which form the base of an obelisk like the
+Matterhorn,--the conclusion seems inevitable _that the mountain is
+sinking by its own weight_," etc., etc. Similarly the Nelson statue
+must be gradually flattening the Nelson column, and in time
+Cleopatra's needle will be as flat as her pincushion?]
+
+[Footnote 11: 'Glaciers of the Alps,' page 146.--"The sun was near
+the western horizon, and I remained alone upon the Grat to see his
+last beams illuminate the mountains, which, with one exception,
+were without a trace of cloud.
+
+"This exception was the Matterhorn, the appearance of which was
+extremely instructive. The obelisk appeared to be divided in two
+halves by a vertical line, drawn from its summit half-way down, to
+the windward of which we had the bare cliffs of the mountain; and
+to the left of it a cloud which appeared to cling tenaciously to
+the rocks.
+
+"In reality, however, there was no clinging; the condensed vapor
+incessantly got away, but it was ever renewed, and thus a river of
+cloud had been sent from the mountain over the valley of Aosta. The
+wind, in fact, blew lightly up the valley of St. Nicholas, charged
+with moisture, and when the air that held it _rubbed against the
+cold cone_ of the Matterhorn, the vapor was chilled and
+precipitated in his lee."
+
+It is not explained, why the wind was not chilled by rubbing
+against any of the neighboring mountains, nor why the cone of the
+Matterhorn, mostly of rock, should be colder than cones of snow.
+The phenomenon was first described by De Saussure, who gives the
+same explanation as Tyndall; and from whom, in the first volume of
+'Modern Painters,' I adopted it without sufficient examination.
+Afterwards I re-examined it, and showed its fallacy, with respect
+to the cap or helmet cloud, in the fifth volume of 'Modern
+Painters,' page 124, in the terms given in the subjoined note,[A]
+but I still retained the explanation of Saussure for the lee-side
+cloud, engraving in plate 69 the modes of its occurrence on the
+Aiguille Dru, of which the most ordinary one was afterwards
+represented by Tyndall in his 'Glaciers of the Alps,' under the
+title of 'Banner-cloud.' Its less imaginative title, in 'Modern
+Painters,' of 'Lee-side cloud,' is more comprehensive, for this
+cloud forms often under the brows of far-terraced precipices, where
+it has no resemblance to a banner. No true explanation of it has
+ever yet been given; for the first condition of the problem has
+hitherto been unobserved,--namely, that such cloud is constant in
+certain states of weather, under precipitous rocks;--but never
+developed with distinctness by domes of snow.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+But my former expansion of Saussure's theory is at least closer to
+the facts than Professor Tyndall's "rubbing against the rocks," and
+I therefore allow room for it here, with its illustrative wood-cut.
+
+"When a moist wind blows in clear weather over a cold summit, it
+has not time to get chilled as it approaches the rock, and
+therefore the air remains clear, and the sky bright on the windward
+side; but under the lee of the peak, there is partly a back eddy,
+and partly still air; and in that lull and eddy the wind gets time
+to be chilled by the rock, and the cloud appears, as a boiling mass
+of white vapor, rising continually with the return current to the
+upper edge of the mountain, where it is caught by the straight wind
+and partly torn, partly melted away in broken fragments.
+
+"In the accompanying figure, the dark mass represents the mountain
+peak, the arrow the main direction of the wind, the curved lines
+show the directions of such current and its concentration, and the
+dotted line encloses the space in which cloud forms densely,
+floating away beyond and above in irregular tongues and flakes."
+
+[Footnote A: "But both Saussure and I ought to have known,--we did
+know, but did not think of it,--that the covering or cap-cloud
+forms on hot summits as well as cold ones;--that the red and bare
+rocks of Mont Pilate, hotter, certainly, after a day's sunshine
+than the cold storm-wind which sweeps to them from the Alps,
+nevertheless have been renowned for their helmet of cloud, ever
+since the Romans watched the cloven summit, gray against the south,
+from the ramparts of Vindonissa, giving it the name from which the
+good Catholics of Lucerne have warped out their favorite piece of
+terrific sacred biography. And both my master and I should also
+have reflected that if our theory about its formation had been
+generally true, the helmet cloud ought to form on every cold
+summit, at the approach of rain, in approximating proportions to
+the bulk of the glaciers; which is so far from being the case that
+not only (A) the cap-cloud may often be seen on lower summits of
+grass or rock, while the higher ones are splendidly clear (which
+may be accounted for by supposing the wind containing the moisture
+not to have risen so high); but (B) the cap-cloud always shows a
+preference for hills of a conical form, such as the Mole or Niesen,
+which can have very little power in chilling the air, even
+supposing they were cold themselves; while it will entirely refuse
+to form huge masses of mountain, which, supposing them of chilly
+temperament, must have discomforted the atmosphere in their
+neighborhood for leagues."]]
+
+[Footnote 12: See below, on the different uses of the word
+'reflection,' note 14, and note that throughout this lecture I use
+the words 'aqueous molecules,' alike of water liquid or vaporized,
+not knowing under what conditions or at what temperatures
+water-dust becomes water-gas; and still less, supposing pure
+water-gas blue, and pure air blue, what are the changes in either
+which make them what sailors call "dirty "; but it is one of the
+worst omissions of the previous lecture, that I have not stated
+among the characters of the plague-cloud that it is _always_
+dirty,[A] and _never blue under any conditions_, neither when deep
+in the distance, nor when in the electric states which produce
+sulphurous blues in natural cloud. But see the next note.
+
+[Footnote A: In my final collation of the lectures given at Oxford
+last year on the Art of England, I shall have occasion to take
+notice of the effect of this character of plague-cloud on our
+younger painters, who have perhaps never in their lives seen a
+_clean_ sky!]]
+
+[Footnote 13: Black clouds.--For the sudden and extreme local
+blackness of thundercloud, see Turner's drawing of Winchelsea,
+(England series), and compare Homer, of the Ajaces, in the 4th book
+of the Iliad,--(I came on the passage in verifying Mr. Hill's
+quotation from the 5th.)
+
+                    "[Greek: hama de nephos eipeto pezôn.
+     Hôs d' hot' apo skopiês eiden nephos aipolos anêr
+     Erchomenon kata ponton hypo Zephyroio iôês,
+     Tô de t', aneuthen eonti, melanteron, êute pissa
+     Phainet', ion kata ponton, agei de te lailapa pollên;
+     Rhigêsen te idôn, hypo te speos êlase mêla;
+     Toiai ham Aiantessin arêithoôn aizêôn
+     Dêion es polemon pykinai kinynto phalanges
+     Kyaneai,]"
+
+I give Chapman's version--noting only that his _breath_ of
+Zephyrus, ought to have been 'cry' or 'roar' of Zephyrus, the
+blackness of the cloud being as much connected with the wildness of
+the wind as, in the formerly quoted passage, its brightness with
+calm of air.
+
+                            "Behind them hid the ground
+    A cloud of foot, that seemed to smoke. And as a Goatherd spies
+    On some hill top, out of the sea a rainy vapor rise,
+    Driven by the breath of Zephyrus, which though far off he rests,
+    Comes on as black as pitch, and brings a tempest in his breast
+    Whereat he, frighted, drives his herds apace into a den;
+    So, darkening earth, with swords and shields, showed these with
+        all their men."
+
+I add here Chapman's version of the other passage, which is
+extremely beautiful and close to the text, while Pope's is
+hopelessly erroneous.
+
+                            "Their ground they still made good,
+    And in their silence and set powers, like fair still clouds they stood,
+    With which Jove crowns the tops of hills in any quiet day
+    When Boreas, and the ruder winds that use to drive away
+    Air's _dusky vapors_, being _loose_, in many a whistling gale,
+    Are pleasingly bound up and calm, and not a breath exhale."]
+
+[Footnote 14: 'Reflected.'--The reader must be warned in this place
+of the difference implied by my use of the word 'cast' in page 11,
+and 'reflected' here: that is to say, between light or color which
+an object possesses, whatever the angle it is seen at, and the
+light which it reverberates at one angle only. The Alps, under the
+rose[A] of sunset, are exactly of the same color whether you see
+them from Berne or Schaffhausen. But the gilding to our eyes of a
+burnished cloud depends, I believe, at least for a measure of its
+luster, upon the angle at which the rays incident upon it are
+reflected to the eye, just as much as the glittering of the sea
+beneath it--or the sparkling of the windows of the houses on the
+shore.
+
+Previously, at page 10, in calling the molecules of transparent
+atmospheric 'absolutely' unreflective of light, I mean, in like
+manner, unreflective from their _surfaces_. Their blue color seen
+against a dark ground is indeed a kind of reflection, but one of
+which I do not understand the nature. It is seen most simply in
+wood smoke, blue against trees, brown against clear light; but in
+both cases the color is communicated to (or left in) the
+_transmitted_ rays.
+
+So also the green of the sky (p. 13) is said to be given by
+transmitted light, yellow rays passing through blue air: much yet
+remains to be known respecting translucent colors of this kind;
+only let them always be clearly distinguished in our minds from the
+firmly possessed color of opaque substances, like grass or
+malachite.
+
+[Footnote A: In speaking, at p. 11 of the first lecture, of the
+limits of depth in the rose-color cast on snow, I ought to have
+noted the greater strength of the tint possible under the light of
+the tropics. The following passage, in Mr. Cunningham's 'Natural
+History of the Strait of Magellan,' is to me of the greatest
+interest, because of the beautiful effect described as seen on the
+occasion of his visit to "the small town of Santa Rosa," (near
+Valparaiso.) "The day, though clear, had not been sunny, so that,
+although the snowy heights of the Andes had been distinctly visible
+throughout the greater part of our journey, they had not been
+illuminated by the rays of the sun. But now, as we turned the
+corner of a street, the chain of the Cordillera suddenly burst on
+our gaze in such a blaze of splendor that it almost seemed as if
+the windows of heaven had been opened for a moment, permitting a
+flood of _crimson_ light to stream forth upon the snow. The sight
+was so unexpected, and so transcendently magnificent, that a
+breathless silence fell upon us for a few moments, while even the
+driver stopped his horses. This deep red glow lasted for three or
+four minutes, and then rapidly faded into that lovely rosy hue so
+characteristic of snow at sunset among the Alps."]]
+
+[Footnote 15: Diffraction.--Since these passages were written, I
+have been led, in conversation with a scientific friend, to doubt
+my statement that the colored portions of the lighted clouds were
+brighter than the white ones. He was convinced that the resolution
+of the rays would diminish their power, and in _thinking_ over the
+matter, I am disposed to agree with him, although my impression at
+the time has been always that the diffracted colors rose out of the
+white, as a rainbow does out of the gray. But whatever the facts
+may be, in this respect the statement in the text of the
+impossibility of representing diffracted color in painting is
+equally true. It may be that the resolved hues are darker than the
+white, as colored panes in a window are darker than the colorless
+glass, but all are alike in a key which no artifice of painting can
+approach.
+
+For the rest, the phenomena of diffraction are not yet arranged
+systematically enough to be usefully discussed; some of them
+involving the resolution of the light, and others merely its
+intensification. My attention was first drawn to them near St.
+Laurent, on the Jura mountains, by the vivid reflection, (so it
+seemed), of the image of the sun from a particular point of a cloud
+in the west, after the sun itself was beneath the horizon: but in
+this image there were no prismatic colors, neither is the
+constantly seen metamorphosis of pine forests into silver filigree
+on ridges behind which the sun is rising or setting, accompanied
+with any prismatic hue; the trees become luminous, but not
+iridescent: on the other hand, in his great account of his ascent
+of Mont Blanc with Mr. Huxley, Professor Tyndall thus describes the
+sun's remarkable behavior on that occasion:--"As we attained the
+brow which forms the entrance to the Grand Plateau, he _hung his
+disk upon a spike of rock_ to our left, and, surrounded by a glory
+of interference spectra of the most gorgeous colors, blazed down
+upon us." ('Glaciers of the Alps,' p. 76.)
+
+Nothing irritates me more, myself, than having the color of my own
+descriptions of phenomena in anywise attributed by the reader to
+accidental states either of my mind or body;--but I cannot, for
+once, forbear at least the innocent question to Professor Tyndall,
+whether the extreme beauty of these 'interference spectra' may not
+have been partly owing to the extreme _sobriety_ of the observer?
+no refreshment, it appears, having been attainable the night before
+at the Grands Mulets, except the beverage diluted with dirty snow,
+of which I have elsewhere quoted the Professor's pensive
+report,--"my memory of that tea is not pleasant."]
+
+[Footnote 16: 'Either stationary or slow in motion, reflecting
+unresolved light.'
+
+The rate of motion is of course not essentially connected with the
+method of illumination; their connection, in this instance, needs
+explanation of some points which could not be dealt with in the
+time of a single lecture.
+
+It is before said, with reserve only, that "a cloud is where it is
+seen, and is not where it is not seen." But thirty years ago, in
+'Modern Painters,' I pointed out (see the paragraph quoted in note
+8th), the extreme difficulty of arriving at the cause of cloud
+outline, or explaining how, if we admitted at any given moment the
+atmospheric moisture to be generally diffused, it could be chilled
+by formal _chills_ into formal clouds. How, for instance, in the
+upper cirri, a thousand little chills, alternating with a thousand
+little warmths, could stand still as a thousand little feathers.
+
+But the first step to any elucidation of the matter is in the
+firmly fixing in our minds the difference between windless clouds,
+unaffected by any conceivable local accident, and windy clouds,
+affected by some change in their circumstances as they move.
+
+In the sunset at Abbeville, represented in my first diagram, the
+air is absolutely calm at the ground surface, and the motion of its
+upper currents extremely slow. There is no local reason assignable
+for the presence of the cirri above, or of the thundercloud below.
+There is no conceivable cause either in the geology, or the moral
+character, of the two sides of the town of Abbeville, to explain
+why there should be decorative fresco on the sky over the southern
+suburb, and a muttering heap of gloom and danger over the northern.
+The electric cloud is as calm in motion as the harmless one; it
+changes its forms, indeed; but imperceptibly; and, so far as can
+be discerned, only at its own will is exalted, and with its own
+consent abased.
+
+But in my second diagram are shown forms of vapor sustaining at
+every instant all kinds of varying local influences; beneath,
+fastened down by mountain attraction, above, flung afar by
+distracting winds; here, spread abroad into blanched sheets beneath
+the sunshine, and presently gathered into strands of coiled cordage
+in the shade. Their total existence is in metamorphosis, and their
+every aspect a surprise, or a deceit.]
+
+[Footnote 17: 'Finely comminuted water or _ice_.'
+
+My impression that these clouds were glacial was at once confirmed
+by a member of my audience, Dr. John Rae, in conversation after the
+lecture, in which he communicated to me the perfectly definite
+observations which he has had the kindness to set down with their
+dates for me, in the following letter:--
+
+                    "4, ADDISON GARDENS, KENSINGTON, _4th Feb., 1884._
+
+DEAR SIR,--I have looked up my old journal of thirty years ago,
+written in pencil because it was impossible to keep ink unfrozen in
+the snow-hut in which I passed the winter of 1853-4, at Repulse
+Bay, on the Arctic Circle.[A]
+
+On the 1st of February, 1854, I find the following:--
+
+'A beautiful appearance of some cirrus clouds near the sun, the
+central part of the cloud being of a fine pink or red, then green,
+and pink fringe. This continued for about a quarter of an hour. The
+same was observed on the 27th of the month, but not so bright.
+Distance of clouds from sun, from 3° to 6°.'
+
+On the 1st February the temperature was 38° below zero, and on the
+27th February 26° below.
+
+'On the 23d and 30th (of March) the same splendid appearance of
+clouds as mentioned in last month's journal was observed. On the
+first of these days, about 10.30 a.m., it was extremely beautiful.
+The clouds were about 8° or 10° from the sun, below him and
+slightly to the eastward,--having a green fringe all round, then
+pink; the center part at first green, and then pink or red.'
+
+The temperature was 21° below zero, Fahrenheit.
+
+There may have been other colors--blue, perhaps--but I merely noted
+the most prominent; and what I call green may have been bluish,
+although I do not mention this last color in my notes.
+
+From the lowness of the temperature at the time, the clouds _must_
+have been frozen moisture.
+
+The phenomenon is by no means common, even in the Arctic zone.
+
+The second beautiful cloud-picture shown this afternoon brought so
+visibly to my memory the appearance seen by me as above described,
+that I could not avoid remarking upon it.
+
+                         Believe me very truly yours,
+                         JOHN RAE." (M.D., F.R.S.)
+
+Now this letter enables me to leave the elements of your problem
+for you in very clear terms.
+
+Your sky--altogether--may be composed of one or more of four
+things:--
+
+     Molecules of water in warm weather.
+     Molecules of ice in cold weather.
+     Molecules of water-vapor in warm weather.
+     Molecules of ice-vapor in cold weather.
+
+But of the size, distances, or modes of attraction between these
+different kinds of particles, I find no definite information
+anywhere, except the somewhat vague statement by Sir William
+Thomson, that "if a drop of water could be magnified so as to be as
+large as the earth, and have a diameter of eight thousand miles,
+then a molecule of this water in it would appear _somewhat larger
+than a shot_." (What kind of shot?) "_and somewhat smaller than a
+cricket-ball_"!
+
+And as I finally review the common accounts given of cloud
+formation, I find it quite hopeless for the general reader to deal
+with the quantity of points which have to be kept in mind and
+severally valued, before he can account for any given phenomena. I
+have myself, in many of the passages of 'Modern Painters' before
+referred to, conceived of cloud too narrowly as always produced by
+_cold_, whereas the temperature of a cloud must continually, like
+that of our visible breath in frosty weather, or of the visible
+current of steam, or the smoking of a warm lake surface under
+sudden frost, be above that of the surrounding atmosphere; and yet
+I never remember entering a cloud without being chilled by it, and
+the darkness of the plague-wind, unless in electric states of the
+air, is always accompanied by deadly chill.
+
+Nor, so far as I can read, has any proper account yet been given of
+the balance, in serene air, of the warm air under the cold, in
+which the warm air is at once compressed by weight, and expanded by
+heat, and the cold air is thinned by its elevation, yet contracted
+by its cold. There is indeed no possibility of embracing the
+conditions in a single sentence, any more than in a single thought.
+But the practical balance is effected in calm air, so that its
+lower strata have no tendency to rise, like the air in a fire
+balloon, nor its higher strata to fall, unless they congeal into
+rain or snow.
+
+I believe it will be an extreme benefit to my younger readers if I
+write for them a little 'Grammar of Ice and Air,' collecting the
+known facts on all these matters, and I am much minded to put by my
+ecclesiastical history for a while, in order to relate what is
+legible of the history of the visible Heaven.
+
+[Footnote A: I trust that Dr. Rae will forgive my making the reader
+better aware of the real value of this communication by allowing
+him to see also the following passage from the kind private letter
+by which it was supplemented:--
+
+"Many years in the Hudson's Bay Company's service, I and my men
+became educated for Arctic work, in which I was five different
+times employed, in two of which expeditions we lived wholly by our
+own hunting and fishing for twelve months, once in a stone house
+(very disagreeable), and another winter in a snow hut (better),
+_without fire of any kind to warm us_. On the first of these
+expeditions, 1846-7, my little party, there being no officer but
+myself, surveyed seven hundred miles of coast of Arctic America by
+a sledge journey, which Parry, Ross, Bach, and Lyon had failed to
+accomplish, costing the country about £70,000 or £80,000 at the
+lowest computation. The total expense of my little party, including
+my own pay, was under fourteen hundred pounds sterling.
+
+"My Arctic work has been recognized by the award of the founder's
+gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society (before the completion
+of the whole of it)."]]
+
+[Footnote 18: 'You can't get a billiard ball to fall a shivering on
+its own account.'--I am under correction in this statement by the
+Lucasian professor of Cambridge, with respect to the molecules of
+bodies capable of 'epipolizing' light. "Nothing seems more natural
+than to suppose that the incident vibrations of the luminiferous
+ether produce vibratory movements among the ultimate molecules of
+sensitive substances, and that the molecules in return, _swinging
+on their own account_, produce vibrations in the luminous ether,
+and thus cause the sensation of light. The periodic times of these
+vibrations depend upon the periods in which the molecules are
+_disposed to swing_." ('On the Changes of Refrangibility of Light,'
+p. 549.)
+
+It seems to me a pleasant conclusion, this, of recent science, and
+suggestive of a perfectly regenerate theology. The 'Let there be
+light' of the former Creation is first expanded into 'Let there be
+a disposition of the molecules to swing,' and the destinies of
+mankind, no less than the vitality of the universe, depend
+thereafter upon this amiable, but perhaps capricious, and at all
+events not easily influenced or anticipated, disposition!
+
+Is it not also strange that in a treatise entering into so high
+mathematical analysis as that from which I quote, the false word
+'swing,' expressing the action of a body liable to continuous
+arrest by gravitation, should be employed to signify the
+oscillation, wholly unaffected by gravity, of substance in which
+the motion once originated, may cease only with the essence of the
+body?
+
+It is true that in men of high scientific caliber, such as the
+writer in this instance, carelessness in expression does not affect
+the security of their conclusions. But in men of lower rank, mental
+defects in language indicate fatal flaws in thought. And although
+the constant habit to which I owe my (often foolishly praised)
+"command of language"--of never allowing a sentence to pass proof
+in which I have not considered whether, for the vital word in it, a
+better could be found in the dictionary, makes me somewhat morbidly
+intolerant of careless diction, it may be taken for an extremely
+useful and practical rule, that if a man can think clearly he will
+write well, and that no good science was ever written in bad
+English. So that, before you consider whether a scientific author
+says a true or a false thing, you had better first look if he is
+able properly to say _any_thing,--and secondly, whether his conceit
+permits him to say anything properly.
+
+Thus, when Professor Tyndall, endeavoring to write poetically of
+the sun, tells you that "The Lilies of the field are his
+workmanship," you may observe, first, that since the sun is not a
+man, nothing that he does is workmanship; while even the figurative
+statement that he rejoices _as_ a strong man to run his course, is
+one which Professor Tyndall has no intention whatever of admitting.
+And you may then observe, in the second place, that, if even in
+that figurative sense, the lilies of the field are the sun's
+workmanship, in the same sense the lilies of the hothouse are the
+stove's workmanship,--and in perfectly logical parallel, you, who
+are alive here to listen to me, because you have been warmed and
+fed through the winter, are the workmanship of your own
+coal-scuttles.
+
+Again, when Mr. Balfour Stewart begins a treatise on the
+'Conservation of Energy,' which is to conclude, as we shall see
+presently, with the prophecy of its total extinction as far as the
+present world is concerned,--by clothing in a "properly scientific
+garb," our innocent impression that there is some difference
+between the blow of a rifle stock and a rifle ball; he prepares for
+the scientific toilet by telling us in italics that "the something
+which the rifle ball possesses in contradistinction to the rifle
+stock is clearly the power of overcoming resistance," since "it can
+penetrate through oak-wood or through water--or (alas! that it
+should be so often tried) through the human body; and _this power
+of penetration_" (italics now mine) "_is the distinguishing
+characteristic of a substance moving with very great velocity_. Let
+us define by the term 'Energy,' this power which the rifle ball
+possesses of overcoming obstacles, or of doing work."
+
+Now, had Mr. Stewart been a better scholar, he would have felt,
+even if he had not known, that the Greek word 'energy' could only
+be applied to the living--and of living, with perfect propriety
+only to the _mental_, action of animals, and that it could no more
+be applied as a 'scientific garb,' to the flight of a rifle ball,
+than to the fall of a dead body. And, if he had attained thus much,
+even of the science of language, it is just possible that the small
+forte and faculty of thought he himself possesses might have been
+energized so far as to perceive that the force of all inertly
+moving bodies, whether rifle stock, rifle ball, or rolling world,
+is under precisely one and the same relation to their weights and
+velocities; that the effect of their impact depends--not merely on
+their pace, but their constitution; and on the relative forms and
+stability of the substances they encounter, and that there is no
+more quality of Energy, though much less quality of Art, in the
+swiftly penetrating shot, or crushing ball, than in the
+deliberately contemplative and administrative puncture by a gnat's
+proboscis, or a seamstress' needle.
+
+Mistakes of this kind, beginning with affectations of diction, do
+not always invalidate general statements or conclusions,--for a bad
+writer often equivocates out of a blunder as he equivocates into
+one,--but I have been strict in pointing out the confusions of idea
+admitted in scientific books between the movement of a swing, that
+of a sounding violin chord, and that of an agitated liquid, because
+these confusions have actually enabled Professor Tyndall to keep
+the scientific world in darkness as to the real nature of glacier
+motion for the last twenty years; and to induce a resultant
+quantity of aberration in the scientific mind concerning glacial
+erosion, of which another twenty years will scarcely undo the
+damage.]
+
+[Footnote 19: 'Force and pace.'--Among the nearer questions which
+the careless terminology on which I have dwelt in the above note
+has left unsettled, I believe the reader will be surprised, as much
+as I am myself, to find that of the mode of impulse in a common
+gust of wind! Whence is its strength communicated to it, and how
+gathered in it? and what is the difference of manner in the impulse
+between compressible gas and incompressible fluid? For instance:
+The water at the head of a weir is passing every instant from
+slower into quicker motion; but (until broken in the air) the fast
+flowing water is just as dense as the slowly flowing water. But a
+fan alternately compresses and rarefies the air between it and the
+cheek, and the violence of a destructive gust in a gale of wind
+means a momentary increase in velocity and density of which I
+cannot myself in the least explain,--and find in no book on
+dynamics explained,--the mechanical causation.
+
+The following letter, from a friend whose observations on natural
+history for the last seven or eight years have been consistently
+valuable and instructive to me, will be found, with that subjoined
+in the note, in various ways interesting; but especially in its
+notice of the inefficiency of ordinary instrumental registry in
+such matters:--
+
+                    "6, MOIRA PLACE, SOUTHAMPTON, _Feb. 8th, 1884_.
+
+DEAR MR. RUSKIN,--Some time since I troubled you with a note or two
+about sea-birds, etc.... but perhaps I should never have ventured
+to trouble you again, had not your lecture on the 'Storm Clouds'
+touched a subject which has deeply interested me for years past. I
+had, of course, no idea that you had noticed this thing, though I
+might have known that, living the life you do, you must have done
+so. As for me, it has been a source of perplexity for years: so
+much so, that I began to wonder at times whether I was not under
+some mental delusion about it, until the strange theatrical
+displays, of the last few months, for which I was more or less
+prepared, led so many to use their eyes, unmuzzled by brass or
+glass, for a time. I know you do not bother, or care much to read
+newspapers, but I have taken the liberty of cutting out and
+sending a letter of mine, sent on the 1st January to an evening
+paper,[A] upon this subject, thinking you might like to know that
+one person, at any rate, has seen that strange, bleared look about
+the sun, shining so seldom except through a ghastly glare of pale,
+persistent haze. May it be that the singular coloring of the
+sunsets marks an end of this long period of plague-cloud, and that
+in them we have promise of steadier weather? (No: those sunsets
+were entirely distinct phenomena, and promised, if anything, only
+evil.--R.)
+
+I was glad to see that in your lecture you gave the dependants upon
+the instrument-makers a warning. On the 26th I had a heavy
+sailing-boat lifted and blown, from where she lay hauled up, a
+distance of four feet, which, as the boat has four hundred-weight
+of iron upon her keel, gives a wind-gust, or force, not easily
+measured by instruments.
+
+                         Believe me, dear Mr. Ruskin,
+                                   Yours sincerely,
+                                   ROBT. C. LESLIE."
+
+I am especially delighted, in this letter, by my friend's
+vigorously accurate expression, eyes "unmuzzled by brass or glass."
+I have had occasion continually, in my art-lectures, to dwell on
+the great law of human perception and power, that the beauty which
+is good for us is prepared for the natural focus of the sight, and
+the sounds which are delightful to us for the natural power of the
+nerves of the ear; and the art which is admirable in us, is the
+exercise of our own bodily powers, and not carving by sand-blast,
+nor oratorizing through a speaking trumpet, nor dancing with spring
+heels. But more recently, I have become convinced that even in
+matters of science, although every added mechanical power has its
+proper use and sphere, yet the things which are vital to our
+happiness and prosperity can only be known by the rational use and
+subtle skill of our natural powers. We may trust the instrument
+with the prophecy of storm, or registry of rainfall; but the
+conditions of atmospheric change, on which depend the health of
+animals and fruitfulness of seeds, can only be discerned by the eye
+and the bodily sense.
+
+Take, for simplest and nearest example, this question of the stress
+of wind. It is not the actual _power_ that is immeasurable, if only
+it would stand to be measured! Instruments could easily now be
+invented which would register not only a blast that could lift a
+sailing boat, but one that would sink a ship of the line. But,
+lucklessly--the blast won't pose to the instrument! nor can the
+instrument be adjusted to the blast. In the gale of which my friend
+speaks in his next letter, 26th January, a gust came down the hill
+above Coniston village upon two old oaks, which were well rooted in
+the slate rock, and some fifty or sixty feet high--the one, some
+twenty yards below the other. The blast tore the highest out of the
+ground, peeling its roots from the rock as one peels an
+orange--swept the head of the lower tree away with it in one ruin,
+and snapped the two leader branches of the upper one over the
+other's stump, as one would break one's cane over some people's
+heads, if one got the chance. In wind action of this kind the
+amount of actual force used is the least part of the business;--it
+is the suddenness of its concentration, and the lifting and
+twisting strength, as of a wrestler, which make the blast fatal;
+none of which elements of storm-power can be recognized by
+mechanical tests. In my friend's next letter, however, he gives us
+some evidence of the _consistent_ strength of this same gale, and
+of the electric conditions which attended it:--the prefatory notice
+of his pet bird I had meant for 'Love's Meinie,' but it will help
+us through the grimness of our studies here.
+
+                                   "_March 3d, 1884._
+
+My small blackheaded gull Jack is still flourishing, and the time
+is coming when I look for that singularly sudden change in the
+plumage of his head which took place last March. I have asked all
+my ocean-going friends to note whether these little birds are not
+the gulls _par excellence_ of the sea; and so far all I have heard
+from them confirms this. It seems almost incredible; but my son, a
+sailor, who met that hurricane of the 26th of January, writes to me
+to say that out in the Bay of Biscay on the morning after the gale,
+'though it was blowing like blazes, I observed some little gulls of
+Jacky's species, and they followed us half way across the Bay,
+seeming to find shelter under the lee of our ship. Some alighted
+now and then, and rested upon the water as if tired.' When one
+considers that these birds must have been at sea all that night
+somewhere, it gives one a great idea of their strength and
+endurance. My son's ship, though a powerful ocean steamer, was for
+two whole hours battling head to sea off the Eddystone that night,
+and for that time the lead gave no increase of soundings, so that
+she could have made no headway during those two hours; while all
+the time her yards had the St. Elmo's fire at their ends, looking
+as though a blue light was burning at each yard-arm, and this was
+about all they could see.
+
+                         Yours sincerely,
+                         ROBT. C. LESLIE."
+
+The next letter, from a correspondent with whom I have the most
+complete sympathy in some expressions of his postscript which are
+yet, I consider, more for my own private ear than for the public
+eye, describes one of the more malignant phases of the plague-wind,
+which I forgot to notice in my lecture.
+
+                         "BURNHAM, SOMERSET, _February 7th, 1884_.
+
+DEAR SIR,--I read with great interest your first lecture at Oxford
+on cloud and wind (very indifferently reported in 'The Times'). You
+have given a name to a wind I've known for years. You call it the
+plague--I call it the devil-wind: _e. g._, on April 29th, 1882,
+morning warmer, then rain storms from east; afternoon, rain
+squalls; wind, west by south, rough; barometer falling awfully;
+4.30 p.m., tremendous wind.--April 30th, all the leaves of the
+trees, all plants black and dead, as if a fiery blast had swept
+over them. _All the hedges on windward side black as black tea._
+
+Another devil-wind came towards the end of last summer. The next
+day, all the leaves were falling sere and yellow, as if it were
+late autumn.
+
+                         I am, dear sir,
+                                   Yours faithfully,
+                                     A. H. BIRKETT."
+
+I remember both these blights well; they were entirely terrific;
+but only sudden maxima of the constant morbific power of this
+wind;--which, if Mr. Birkett saw my _personal_ notices of,
+intercalated among the scientific ones, he would find alluded to in
+terms quite as vigorously damning as he could desire: and the
+actual effect of it upon my thoughts and work has been precisely
+that which would have resulted from the visible phantom of an evil
+spirit, the absolute opponent of the Queen of the Air,--Typhon
+against Athena,--in a sense of which I had neither the experience
+nor the conception when I wrote the illustrations of the myth of
+Perseus in 'Modern Painters.' Not a word of all those explanations
+of Homer and Pindar could have been written in weather like that
+of the last twelve years; and I am most thankful to have got them
+written, before the shadow came, and I could still see what Homer
+and Pindar saw. I quote one passage only--Vol. v., p. 141--for the
+sake of a similitude which reminds me of one more thing I have to
+say here--and a bit of its note--which I think is a precious little
+piece, not of word-painting, but of simply told feeling--(_that_,
+if people knew it, is my real power).
+
+"On the Yorkshire and Derbyshire hills, when the rain-cloud is low
+and much broken, and the steady west wind fills all space with its
+strength,[B] the sun-gleams fly like golden vultures; they are
+flashes rather than shinings; the dark spaces and the dazzling race
+and skim along the acclivities, and dart and _dip from crag to
+dell, swallow-like_."
+
+The dipping of the shadows here described of course is caused only
+by that of the dingles they cross; but I have not in any of my
+books yet dwelt enough on the difference of character between the
+dipping and the mounting winds. Our wildest phase of the west wind
+here at Coniston is 'swallow-like' with a vengeance, coming down on
+the lake in swirls which spurn the spray under them as a fiery
+horse does the dust. On the other hand, the softly ascending winds
+express themselves in the grace of their cloud motion, as if set to
+the continuous music of a distant song.[C]
+
+The reader will please note also that whenever, either in 'Modern
+Painters' or elsewhere, I speak of rate of flight in clouds, I am
+thinking of it as measured by the horizontal distance overpast in
+given time, and not as apparent only, owing to the nearness of the
+spectator. All low clouds appear to move faster than high ones, the
+pace being supposed equal in both: but when I speak of quick or
+slow cloud, it is always with respect to a given altitude. In a
+fine summer morning, a cloud will wait for you among the pines,
+folded to and fro among their stems, with a branch or two coming
+out here, and a spire or two there: you walk through it, and look
+back to it. At another time, on the same spot, the fury of
+cloud-flood drifts past you like the Rhine at Schaffhausen.
+
+The space even of the doubled lecture does not admit of my entering
+into any general statement of the action of the plague-cloud in
+Switzerland and Italy; but I must not omit the following notes of
+its aspect in the high Alps.
+
+                              "SALLENCHES, _11th September, 1882_.
+
+This morning, at half-past five, the Mont Blanc summit was clear,
+and the greater part of the Aiguilles du Plan and Midi clear
+dark--all, against pure cirri, lighted beneath by sunrise; the sun
+of course not visible yet from the valley.
+
+By seven o'clock, the plague-clouds had formed in _brown_ flakes,
+down to the base of the Aiguille de Bionassay; entirely covering
+the snowy ranges; the sun, as it rose to us here, shone only for
+about ten minutes--gilding in its old glory the range of the
+Dorons,--before one had time to look from peak to peak of it, the
+plague-cloud formed from the west, hid Mont Joli, and steadily
+choked the valley with advancing streaks of dun-colored mist.
+Now--twenty minutes to nine--there is not _one ray_ of sunshine on
+the whole valley, or on its mountains, from the Forclaz down to
+Cluse.
+
+These phenomena are only the sequel of a series of still more
+strange and sad conditions of the air, which have continued among
+the Savoy Alps for the last eight days, (themselves the sequel of
+others yet more general, prolonged, and harmful). But the weather
+was perfectly fine at Dijon, and I doubt not at Chamouni, on the
+1st of this month. On the 2d, in the evening, I saw, from the Jura,
+heavy thunderclouds in the west; on the 3d, the weather broke at
+Morez, in hot thunder-showers, with intervals of scorching sun; on
+the 4th, 5th, and 6th there was nearly continuous rain at St.
+Cergues, the Alps being totally invisible all the time. The sky
+cleared on the night of the 6th, and on the 7th I saw from the top
+of the Dole all the western plateaux of Jura quite clearly; but
+_the entire range of the Alps_, from the Moleson to the Salève, and
+all beyond,--snow, crag and hill-side,--were wrapped and buried in
+one unbroken gray-brown winding-sheet, of such cloud _as I had
+never seen till that day touch an Alpine summit_.
+
+The wind, from the east, (so that it blew _up_ over the edge of the
+Dole cliff, and admitted of perfect shelter on the slope to the
+west,) was bitter cold, and extremely violent: the sun overhead,
+bright enough, and remained so during the afternoon; the
+plague-cloud reaching from the Alps only about as far as the
+southern shore of the lake of Geneva; but we could not see the
+Salève; nor even the north shore, farther than to Morges! I reached
+the Col de la Faucille at sunset, when, for a few minutes, the Mont
+Blanc and Aiguille Verte showed themselves in dull red light, but
+were buried again, before the sun was quite down, in the rising
+deluge of cloud-poison. I saw no farther than the Voirons and
+Brezon--and scarcely those, during the electric heat of the 9th at
+Geneva; and last Saturday and Sunday have been mere whirls and
+drifts of indecisive, but always sullen, storm. This morning I saw
+the snows clear for the first time, having been, during the whole
+past week, on steady watch for them.
+
+I have written that the clouds of the 7th were such as I never
+before saw on the Alps. Often, during the past ten years, I have
+seen them on my own hills, and in Italy in 1874; but it has always
+chanced to be fine weather, or common rain and cold, when I have
+been among the snowy chains; and now from the Dole for the first
+time I saw the plague-cloud on _them_."
+
+[Footnote A: 'THE LOOK OF THE SKY.
+
+'_To the_ EDITOR _of the_ ST. JAMES'S GAZETTE.
+
+'SIR,--I have been a very constant though not a scientific observer
+of the sky for a period of forty years; and I confess to a certain
+feeling of astonishment at the way in which the "recent celestial
+phenomena" seem to have taken the whole body of scientific
+observers by surprise. It would even appear that something like
+these extraordinary sunsets was necessary to call the attention of
+such observers to what has long been a source of perplexity to a
+variety of common folk, like sailors, farmers, and fishermen. But
+to such people the look of the weather, and what comes of that
+look, is of far more consequence than the exact amount of ozone or
+the depth or width of a band of the spectrum.
+
+'Now, to all such observers, including myself, it has been plain
+that of late neither the look of the sky nor the character of the
+weather has been, as we should say, what it used to be; and those
+whose eyes were strong enough to look now and then toward the sun
+have noticed a very marked increase of what some would call a
+watery look about him, which might perhaps be better expressed as a
+white sheen or glare, at times developing into solar halo or mock
+suns, as noted in your paper of the 2d of October last year. A
+fisherman would describe it as "white and davery-like." So far as
+my observation goes, this appearance was only absent here for a
+limited period during the present summer, when we had a week or two
+of nearly normal weather; the summer before it was seldom absent.
+
+'Again, those whose business or pleasure has depended on the use of
+wind-power have all remarked the strange persistence of hard
+westerly and easterly winds, the westerly ones at times partaking
+of an almost trade-wind-like force and character. The summer of
+1882 was especially remarkable for these winds, while each stormy
+November has been followed by a period about mid-winter of mild
+calm weather with dense fog. During these strong winds in summer
+and early autumn the weather would remain bright and sunny, and to
+a landsman would be not remarkable in any way, while the barometer
+has been little affected by them; but it has been often observed by
+those employed on the water that when it ceased blowing half a gale
+the sky at once became overcast, with damp weather or rain. This
+may all seem common enough to most people; but to those accustomed
+to gauge the wind by the number of reefs wanted in a mainsail or
+foresail it was not so; and the number of consecutive days when two
+or more reefs have been kept tied down during the last few summers
+has been remarkable--alternating at times with equally persistent
+spells of calm and fog such as we are now passing through. Again,
+we have had an unusually early appearance of ice in the Atlantic,
+and most abnormal weather over Central Europe; while in a letter I
+have just received from an old hand on board a large Australian
+clipper, he speaks of heavy gales and big seas off that coast in
+almost the height of their summer.
+
+'Now, upon all this, in our season of long twilights, we have
+bursting upon us some clear weather; with a display of cloud-forms
+or vapor at such an elevation that, looking at them one day through
+an opening in the nearer clouds, they seemed so distant as to
+resemble nothing but the delicate grain of ivory upon a
+billiard-ball. And yet with the fact that two-thirds of this earth
+is covered with water, and bearing in mind the effect which a very
+small increase of sun-power would have in producing cloud and
+lifting it above its normal level for a time, we are asked to
+believe that this sheen is all dust of some kind or other, in order
+to explain what are now known as the "recent sunsets": though I
+venture to think that we shall see more of them yet when the sun
+comes our way again.
+
+'At first sight, increased sun-power would seem to mean more
+sunshine; but a little reflection would show us that this would not
+be for long, while any considerable addition to the sun's power
+would be followed by such a vast increase of vapor that we should
+only see him, in our latitudes, at very short intervals. I am aware
+that all this is most unscientific; but I have read column after
+column of explanation written by those who are supposed to know all
+about such things, and find myself not a jot the wiser for it. Do
+you know anybody who is?--I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
+
+                              'AN UNSCIENTIFIC OBSERVER. (R. LESLIE.)
+                              _January 1_.']
+
+[Footnote B: "I have been often at great heights on the Alps in
+rough weather, and have seen strong gusts of storm in the plains of
+the south. But, to get full expression of the very heart and
+meaning of wind, there is no place like a Yorkshire moor. I think
+Scottish breezes are thinner, very bleak and piercing, but not
+substantial. If you lean on them they will let you fall, but one
+may rest against a Yorkshire breeze as one would on a quickset
+hedge. I shall not soon forget,--having had the good fortune to
+meet a vigorous one on an April morning, between Hawes and Settle,
+just on the flat under Wharnside,--the vague sense of wonder _with
+which I watched Ingleborough stand without rocking_."]
+
+[Footnote C: Compare Wordsworth's
+
+    "Oh beauteous birds, methinks ye measure
+     Your movements to some heavenly tune."
+
+And again--
+
+                         "While the mists,
+    Flying and rainy vapors, call out shapes,
+    And phantoms from the crags and solid earth,
+    As fast as a musician scatters sounds
+    Out of an instrument."
+
+And again--
+
+    "The Knight had ridden down from Wensley moor,
+     With the slow motion of a summer cloud."]]
+
+[Footnote 20: 'Blasphemy.'--If the reader can refer to my papers on
+Fiction in the 'Nineteenth Century,' he will find this word
+carefully defined in its Scriptural, and evermore necessary,
+meaning,--'Harmful speaking'--not against God only, but against
+man, and against all the good works and purposes of Nature. The
+word is accurately opposed to 'Euphemy,' the right or well-speaking
+of God and His world; and the two modes of speech are those which
+going out of the mouth sanctify or defile the man.
+
+Going out of the mouth, that is to say, deliberately and of
+purpose. A French postilion's 'Sacr-r-ré'--loud, with the low 'Nom
+de Dieu' following between his teeth, is not blasphemy, unless
+against his horse;--but Mr. Thackeray's close of his Waterloo
+chapter in 'Vanity Fair,' "And all the night long Amelia was
+praying for George, who was lying on his face dead with a bullet
+through his heart," is blasphemy of the most fatal and subtle kind.
+
+And the universal instinct of blasphemy in the modern vulgar
+scientific mind is above all manifested in its love of what is
+ugly, and natural inthrallment by the abominable;--so that it is
+ten to one if, in the description of a new bird, you learn much
+more of it than the enumerated species of vermin that stick to its
+feathers; and in the natural history museum of Oxford, humanity has
+been hitherto taught, not by portraits of great men, but by the
+skulls of cretins.
+
+But the _deliberate_ blasphemy of science, the assertion of its own
+virtue and dignity against the always implied, and often asserted,
+vileness of all men and--Gods,--heretofore, is the most wonderful
+phenomenon, so far as I can read or perceive, that hitherto has
+arisen in the always marvelous course of the world's mental
+history.
+
+Take, for brief general type, the following 92d paragraph of the
+'Forms of Water':--
+
+"But while we thus acknowledge our limits, there is also reason for
+wonder at the extent to which Science has mastered the system of
+nature. From age to age and from generation to generation, fact has
+been added to fact and law to law, the true method and order of the
+Universe being thereby more and more revealed. In doing this,
+Science has encountered and overthrown various forms of
+superstition and deceit, of credulity and imposture. But the world
+continually produces weak persons and wicked persons, and as long
+as they continue to exist side by side, as they do in this our day,
+very debasing beliefs will also continue to infest the world."
+
+The debasing beliefs meant being simply those of Homer, David, and
+St. John[A]--as against a modern French gamin's. And what the
+results of the intended education of English gamins of every degree
+in that new higher theology will be, England is I suppose by this
+time beginning to discern.
+
+In the last 'Fors'[B] which I have written, on education of a safer
+kind, still possible, one practical point is insisted on
+chiefly,--that learning by heart, and repetition with perfect
+accent and cultivated voice, should be made quite principal
+branches of school discipline up to the time of going to the
+university.
+
+And of writings to be learned by heart, among other passages of
+indisputable philosophy and perfect poetry, I include certain
+chapters of the--now for the most part forgotten--wisdom of
+Solomon; and of these, there is one selected portion which I
+should recommend not only school-boys and girls, but persons of
+every age, if they don't know it, to learn forthwith, as the
+shortest summary of Solomon's wisdom;--namely, the seventeenth
+chapter of Proverbs, which being only twenty-eight verses long, may
+be fastened in the dullest memory at the rate of a verse a day in
+the shortest month of the year. Out of the twenty-eight verses, I
+will read you seven, for example of their tenor,--the last of the
+seven I will with your good leave dwell somewhat upon. You have
+heard the verses often before, but probably without remembering
+that they are all in this concentrated chapter.
+
+1. Verse 1.--Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than
+a house full of good eating, with strife.
+
+(Remember, in reading this verse, that though England has chosen
+the strife, and set every man's hand against his neighbor, her
+house is not yet so full of good eating as she expected, even
+though she gets half of her victuals from America.)
+
+2. Verse 3.--The fining pot is for silver, the furnace for gold,
+but the Lord tries the heart.
+
+(Notice the increasing strength of trial for the more precious
+thing: only the melting-pot for the silver--the fierce furnace for
+the gold--but the Fire of the Lord for the heart.)
+
+3. Verse 4.--A wicked doer giveth heed to false lips.
+
+(That means, for _you_, that, intending to live by usury and
+swindling, you read Mr. Adam Smith and Mr. Stuart Mill, and other
+such political economists.)
+
+4. Verse 5.--Whoso mocketh the poor, reproacheth his Maker.
+
+(Mocketh,--by saying that his poverty is his fault, no less than
+his misfortune,--England's favorite theory now-a-days.)
+
+5. Verse 12.--Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man, rather
+than a fool in his folly.
+
+(Carlyle is often now accused of false scorn in his calling the
+passengers over London Bridge, "mostly fools,"--on the ground that
+men are only to be justly held foolish if their intellect is under,
+as only wise when it is above, the average. But the reader will
+please observe that the essential function of modern education is
+to develop what capacity of mistake a man has. Leave him at his
+forge and plow,--and those tutors teach him his true value, indulge
+him in no error, and provoke him to no vice. But take him up to
+London,--give him her papers to read, and her talk to hear,--and it
+is fifty to one you send him presently on a fool's errand over
+London Bridge.)
+
+6. Now listen, for this verse is the question you have mainly to
+ask yourselves about your beautiful all-over-England system of
+competitive examination:--
+
+Verse 16. Wherefore is there a price in the hand of a fool to get
+wisdom, seeing he hath no heart to it?
+
+(You know perfectly well it isn't the wisdom you want, but the
+"station in life,"--and the money!)
+
+7. Lastly, Verse 7.--Wisdom is before him that hath understanding,
+but the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth.
+
+"And in the beginnings of it"! Solomon would have written, had he
+lived in our day; but we will be content with the ends at present.
+No scientific people, as I told you at first, have taken any notice
+of the more or less temporary phenomena of which I have to-night
+given you register. But, from the constant arrangements of the
+universe, the same respecting which the thinkers of former time
+came to the conclusion that they were essentially good, and to end
+in good, the modern speculator arrives at the quite opposite and
+extremely uncomfortable conclusion that they are essentially evil,
+and to end--in nothing.
+
+And I have here a volume,[C] before quoted, by a very foolish and
+very lugubrious author, who in his concluding chapter gives
+us,--founded, you will observe, on a series of 'ifs,'--the latest
+scientific views concerning the order of creation. "We have spoken
+already about a medium pervading space"--this is the Scientific
+God, you observe, differing from the unscientific one, in that the
+purest in heart cannot see--nor the softest in heart feel--this
+spacious Deity--a _Medium_, pervading space--"the office of which"
+(italics all mine) "appears to be to _degrade_ and ultimately
+_extinguish_, all differential motion. It has been well pointed out
+by Thomson, that, looked at _in this light_, the universe is a
+system that had a beginning and must have an end, for a process of
+degradation cannot be eternal. If we could view the Universe as a
+candle not lit, then it is perhaps conceivable to regard it as
+having been always in existence; but if we regard it rather as a
+candle that has been lit, we become absolutely certain that it
+cannot have been burning from eternity, and that a time will come
+when it will cease to burn. We are led to look to a beginning in
+which the particles of matter were in a diffuse chaotic state, but
+endowed with the power of gravitation; and we are led to look to an
+end in which the whole Universe will be one equally heated inert
+mass, _and from which everything like life, or motion, or beauty,
+will have utterly gone away_."
+
+Do you wish me to congratulate you on this extremely cheerful
+result of telescopic and microscopic observation, and so at once
+close my lecture? or may I venture yet to trespass on your time by
+stating to you any of the more comfortable views held by persons
+who did not regard the universe in what my author humorously calls
+"this _light_"?
+
+In the peculiarly characteristic notice with which the 'Daily News'
+honored my last week's lecture, that courteous journal charged me,
+in the metaphorical term now classical on Exchange, with "hedging,"
+to conceal my own opinions. The charge was not prudently chosen,
+since, of all men now obtaining any portion of popular regard, I am
+pretty well known to be precisely the one who cares least either
+for hedge or ditch, when he chooses to go across country. It is
+certainly true that I have not the least mind to pin my heart on my
+sleeve, for the daily daw, or nightly owl, to peck at; but the
+essential reason for my not telling you my own opinions on this
+matter is--that I do not consider them of material consequence to
+you.
+
+It _might_ possibly be of some advantage for you to know what--were
+he now living, Orpheus would have thought, or Æschylus, or a Daniel
+come to judgment, or John the Baptist, or John the Son of Thunder;
+but what either you, or I, or any other Jack or Tom of us all,
+think,--even if we knew what to think,--is of extremely small
+moment either to the Gods, the clouds, or ourselves.
+
+Of myself, however, if you care to hear it, I will tell you thus
+much: that had the weather when I was young been such as it is now,
+no book such as 'Modern Painters' ever would or _could_ have been
+written; for every argument, and every sentiment in that book, was
+founded on the personal experience of the beauty and blessing of
+nature, all spring and summer long; and on the then demonstrable
+fact that over a great portion of the world's surface the air and
+the earth were fitted to the education of the spirit of man as
+closely as a school-boy's primer is to his labor, and as gloriously
+as a lover's mistress is to his eyes.
+
+That harmony is now broken, and broken the world round: fragments,
+indeed, of what existed still exist, and hours of what is past
+still return; but month by month the darkness gains upon the day,
+and the ashes of the Antipodes glare through the night.[D]
+
+What consolation, or what courage, through plague, danger, or
+darkness, you can find in the conviction that you are nothing more
+than brute beasts driven by brute forces, your other tutors can
+tell you--not I: but _this_ I can tell you--and with the authority
+of all the masters of thought since time was time,--that, while by
+no manner of vivisection you can learn what a _Beast_ is, by only
+looking into your own hearts you may know what a _Man_ is,--and
+know that his only true happiness is to live in Hope of something
+to be won by him, in Reverence of something to be worshiped by him,
+and in Love of something to be cherished by him, and cherished--forever.
+
+Having these instincts, his only rational conclusion is that the
+objects which can fulfill them may be by his effort gained, and by
+his faith discerned; and his only earthly wisdom is to accept the
+united testimony of the men who have sought these things in the way
+they were commanded. Of whom no single one has ever said that his
+obedience or his faith had been vain, or found himself cast out
+from the choir of the living souls, whether here, or departed, for
+whom the song was written:--
+
+    God be merciful unto us, and bless us, and cause His face to shine
+        upon us;
+    That Thy way may be known upon earth, Thy saving health among all
+        nations.
+
+    Oh let the nations rejoice and sing for joy, for Thou shalt judge
+        the people righteously and govern the nations upon earth.
+    _Then_ shall the earth yield her increase, and God, even our own God,
+        shall bless us.
+    God shall bless us, and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him.
+
+[Footnote A: With all who died in Faith, not having received the
+Promises, nor--according to your modern teachers--ever to receive.]
+
+[Footnote B: Hence to the end the text is that read in termination
+of the lecture on its second delivery, only with an added word or
+two of comment on Proverbs xvii.]
+
+[Footnote C: 'The Conservation of Energy.' King and Co., 1873.]
+
+[Footnote D: Written under the impression that the lurid and
+prolonged sunsets of last autumn had been proved to be connected
+with the flight of volcanic ashes. This has been since, I hear,
+disproved again. Whatever their cause, those sunsets were, in the
+sense in which I myself use the word, altogether 'unnatural' and
+terrific: but they have no connection with the far more fearful,
+because protracted and increasing, power of the Plague-wind. The
+letter from White's 'History of Selborne,' quoted by the Rev. W. R.
+Andrews in his letter to the 'Times,' (dated January 8th) seems to
+describe aspects of the sky like these of 1883, just a hundred
+years before, in 1783: and also some of the circumstances noted,
+especially the variation of the wind to all quarters without
+alteration in the air, correspond with the character of the
+plague-wind; but the fog of 1783 made the sun dark, with
+iron-colored rays--not pale, with blanching rays. I subjoin Mr.
+Andrews' letter, extremely valuable in its collation of the records
+of simultaneous volcanic phenomena; praying the reader also to
+observe the instantaneous acknowledgment, by the true 'Naturalist,'
+of horror in the violation of beneficent natural law.
+
+"THE RECENT SUNSETS AND VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS.
+
+"SIR,--It may, perhaps, be interesting at the present time, when so
+much attention has been given to the late brilliant sunsets and
+sunrises, to be reminded that almost identically the same
+appearances were observed just a hundred years ago.
+
+Gilbert White writes in the year 1783, in his 109th letter,
+published in his 'Natural History of Selborne':--
+
+'The summer of the year 1783 was an amazing and portentous one, and
+full of horrible phenomena; for besides the alarming meteors and
+tremendous thunderstorms that affrighted and distressed the
+different counties of this kingdom, the peculiar haze or smoky fog
+that prevailed for many weeks in this island and in every part of
+Europe, and even beyond its limits, was a most extraordinary
+appearance, unlike anything known within the memory of man. By my
+journal I find that I had noticed this strange occurrence from June
+23d to July 20th inclusive, during which period the wind varied to
+every quarter without making any alteration in the air. The sun at
+noon looked as black as a clouded moon, and shed a ferruginous
+light on the ground and floors of rooms, but was particularly lurid
+and blood-colored at rising and setting. The country people began
+to look with a superstitious awe at the red lowering aspect of the
+sun; and, indeed, there was reason for the most enlightened person
+to be apprehensive, for all the while Calabria and part of the Isle
+of Sicily were torn and convulsed with earthquakes, and about that
+juncture a volcano sprang out of the sea on the coast of Norway.'
+
+Other writers also mention volcanic disturbances in this same year,
+1783. We are told by Lyell and Geikie, that there were great
+volcanic eruptions in and near Iceland. A submarine volcano burst
+forth in the sea, thirty miles southwest of Iceland, which ejected
+so much pumice that the ocean was covered with this substance, to
+the distance of 150 miles, and ships were considerably impeded in
+their course; and a new island was formed, from which fire and
+smoke and pumice were emitted.
+
+Besides this submarine eruption, the volcano Skaptar-Jökull, on the
+mainland, on June 11th, 1783, threw out a torrent of lava, so
+immense as to surpass in magnitude the bulk of Mont Blanc, and
+ejected so vast an amount of fine dust, that the atmosphere over
+Iceland continued loaded with it for months afterwards. It fell in
+such quantities over parts of Caithness--a distance of 600
+miles--as to destroy the crops, and that year is still spoken of by
+the inhabitants as the year of 'the ashie.'
+
+These particulars are gathered from the text-books of Lyell and
+Geikie.
+
+I am not aware whether the coincidence in time of the Icelandic
+eruptions, and of the peculiar appearance of the sun, described by
+Gilbert White, has yet been noticed; but this coincidence may very
+well be taken as some little evidence towards explaining the
+connection between the recent beautiful sunsets and the tremendous
+volcanic explosion of the Isle of Krakatoa in August last.
+
+               W. R. ANDREWS, F. G. S.
+               Teffont Ewyas Rectory, Salisbury, January 8th."]]
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
+
+Pages 7 & 18: Standardized spelling of "thundercloud."
+
+Page 20: Standardized quotation marks surrounding poem.
+
+Page 22: Retained inconsistent hyphenation of "thunder-storm" in
+quoted material.
+
+Pages 26, 58 & 70: Retained inconsistent hyphenation of "billiard-ball".
+
+Pages 29 & 62: Standardized hyphenation of "now-a-days."
+
+Pages 31-68: Adjusted placement of footnotes.
+
+Pages 37 & 59: Standardized spelling of "hill-side."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth
+Century, by John Ruskin
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORM-CLOUD ***
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+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century, by John Ruskin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century
+       Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February
+              4th and 11th, 1884
+
+Author: John Ruskin
+
+Release Date: December 28, 2006 [EBook #20204]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORM-CLOUD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Suzan Flanagan and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<p><br /></p>
+<table border="1" cellpadding="8" cellspacing="0" summary="Transcriber's Note">
+<tr><td align='left'>TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
+<p>
+This e-text includes accented Greek letters. If any of these characters do not display properly&mdash;in particular,
+if the diacritic does not appear directly above or below the
+letter&mdash;you may have an incompatible browser or unavailable fonts.
+If the problem cannot be resolved, use the plain-text file instead.</p>
+<p>
+Corrections are noted in the <a href="#TRANSCRIBERS_NOTES">Transcriber's Notes</a> at the end of the e-text,
+and typos are shown with <ins title="like this">popups</ins> underlined in red.<br />
+</p></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 95%;" />
+<h3>THE COMPLETE WORKS</h3>
+<h4><span class="smcap">of</span></h4>
+<h2>JOHN RUSKIN</h2>
+<h4>VOLUME XXIV</h4>
+<hr style="width: 10%;" />
+<h3>OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US</h3>
+<h3>STORM-CLOUD OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY</h3>
+<h3>HORTUS INCLUSUS</h3>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 95%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i" href="#Page_i">[i]</a></span></p>
+<h2 style="margin-bottom: .5em">THE STORM-CLOUD OF THE</h2>
+<h2 style="margin-top: .5em">NINETEENTH CENTURY.</h2>
+<p><br /></p>
+<h3>TWO LECTURES</h3>
+
+<h4>DELIVERED AT THE LONDON INSTITUTION</h4>
+
+<h4>FEBRUARY <span class="smcap">4th AND 11th</span>, 1884.</h4>
+
+<hr style="width: 95%;" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii" href="#Page_ii">[ii]</a></span></p>
+<h3>CONTENTS.</h3>
+<table border="0" width="500" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<col style="width:60%;" />
+<col style="width:40%;" />
+<tr><td></td><td align="right"><span class="smcap">page</span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Preface</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_iii">iii</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Lecture I. (February 4)</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Lecture II. (February 11)</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_31">31</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 95%;" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii" href="#Page_iii">[iii]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>PREFACE.</h3>
+
+<p>The following lectures, drawn up under the pressure of
+more imperative and quite otherwise directed work, contain
+many passages which stand in need of support, and some, I
+do not doubt, more or less of correction, which I always prefer
+to receive openly from the better knowledge of friends,
+after setting down my own impressions of the matter in
+clearness as far as they reach, than to guard myself against
+by submitting my manuscript, before publication, to annotators
+whose stricture or suggestion I might often feel pain in
+refusing, yet hesitation in admitting.</p>
+
+<p>But though thus hastily, and to some extent incautiously,
+thrown into form, the statements in the text are founded on
+patient and, in all essential particulars, accurately recorded
+observations of the sky, during fifty years of a life of solitude
+and leisure; and in all they contain of what may seem to
+the reader questionable, or astonishing, are guardedly and
+absolutely true.</p>
+
+<p>In many of the reports given by the daily press, my assertion
+of radical change, during recent years, in weather aspect
+was scouted as imaginary, or insane. I am indeed, every day
+of my yet spared life, more and more grateful that my mind
+is capable of imaginative vision, and liable to the noble
+dangers of delusion which separate the speculative intellect
+of humanity from the dreamless instinct of brutes: but I
+have been able, during all active work, to use or refuse my
+power of contemplative imagination, with as easy command
+of it as a physicist's of his telescope: the times of morbid are
+just as easily distinguished by me from those of healthy
+vision, as by men of ordinary faculty, dream from waking;
+nor is there a single fact stated in the following pages which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv" href="#Page_iv">[iv]</a></span>
+I have not verified with a chemist's analysis, and a geometer's
+precision.</p>
+
+<p>The first lecture is printed, with only addition here and
+there of an elucidatory word or phrase, precisely as it was
+given on the 4th February. In repeating it on the 11th, I
+amplified several passages, and substituted for the concluding
+one, which had been printed with accuracy in most of the
+leading journals, some observations which I thought calculated
+to be of more general interest. To these, with the
+additions in the first text, I have now prefixed a few explanatory
+notes, to which numeral references are given in the
+pages they explain, and have arranged the fragments in connection
+clear enough to allow of their being read with ease
+as a second Lecture.</p>
+
+<p class="quotsig">
+<span class="smcap">Herne Hill</span>, <i>12th March, 1884</i>.<br />
+</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<hr style="width: 95%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v" href="#Page_v">[v]</a></span></p>
+<h3>THE STORM-CLOUD OF THE NINETEENTH<br />
+CENTURY.</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 95%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1" href="#Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>THE STORM-CLOUD OF THE NINETEENTH<br />
+CENTURY.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 15%;" />
+
+<p>Let me first assure my audience that I have no <i>arri&egrave;re
+pens&eacute;e</i> in the title chosen for this lecture. I might, indeed,
+have meant, and it would have been only too like me to mean,
+any number of things by such a title;&mdash;but, to-night, I mean
+simply what I have said, and propose to bring to your notice
+a series of cloud phenomena, which, so far as I can weigh
+existing evidence, are peculiar to our own times; yet which
+have not hitherto received any special notice or description
+from meteorologists.</p>
+
+<p>So far as the existing evidence, I say, of former literature
+can be interpreted, the storm-cloud&mdash;or more accurately
+plague-cloud, for it is not always stormy&mdash;which I am about
+to describe to you, never was seen but by now living, or
+<i>lately</i> living eyes. It is not yet twenty years that this&mdash;I
+may well call it, wonderful, cloud has been, in its essence,
+recognizable. There is no description of it, so far as I have
+read, by any ancient observer. Neither Homer nor Virgil,
+neither Aristophanes nor Horace, acknowledge any such
+clouds among those compelled by Jove. Chaucer has no
+word of them, nor Dante;<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Milton none, nor Thomson. In
+modern times, Scott, Wordsworth and Byron are alike unconscious
+of them; and the most observant and descriptive
+of scientific men, De Saussure, is utterly silent concerning
+them. Taking up the traditions of air from the year before
+Scott's death, I am able, by my own constant and close
+observation, to certify you that in the forty following years
+(1831 to 1871 approximately&mdash;for the phenomena in ques<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2" href="#Page_2">[2]</a></span>tion
+came on gradually)&mdash;no such clouds as these are, and
+are now often for months without intermission, were ever
+seen in the skies of England, France, or Italy.</p>
+
+<p>In those old days, when weather was fine, it was luxuriously
+fine; when it was bad&mdash;it was often abominably
+bad, but it had its fit of temper and was done with it&mdash;it
+didn't sulk for three months without letting you see the sun,&mdash;nor
+send you one cyclone inside out, every Saturday afternoon,
+and another outside in, every Monday morning.</p>
+
+<p>In fine weather the sky was either blue or clear in its light;
+the clouds, either white or golden, adding to, not abating, the
+luster of the sky. In wet weather, there were two different
+species of clouds,&mdash;those of beneficent rain, which for distinction's
+sake I will call the non-electric rain-cloud, and
+those of storm, usually charged highly with electricity. The
+beneficent rain-cloud was indeed often extremely dull and
+gray for days together, but gracious nevertheless, felt to be
+doing good, and often to be delightful after drought; capable
+also of the most exquisite coloring, under certain conditions;<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>
+and continually traversed in clearing by the rainbow:&mdash;and,
+secondly, the storm-cloud, always majestic, often
+dazzlingly beautiful, and felt also to be beneficent in its own
+way, affecting the mass of the air with vital agitation, and
+purging it from the impurity of all morbific elements.</p>
+
+<p>In the entire system of the Firmament, thus seen and
+understood, there appeared to be, to all the thinkers of those
+ages, the incontrovertible and unmistakable evidence of a
+Divine Power in creation, which had fitted, as the air for
+human breath, so the clouds for human sight and nourishment;&mdash;the
+Father who was in heaven feeding day by day
+the souls of His children with marvels, and satisfying them
+with bread, and so filling their hearts with food and gladness.</p>
+
+<p>Their <i>hearts</i>, you will observe, it is said, not merely their
+bellies,&mdash;or indeed not at all, in this sense, their bellies&mdash;but
+the heart itself, with its blood for this life, and its faith
+for the next. The opposition between this idea and the
+notions of our own time may be more accurately expressed by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3" href="#Page_3">[3]</a></span>
+modification of the Greek than of the English sentence. The
+old Greek is&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="greek">&#7952;&#956;&#960;&#953;&#960;&#955;&#8182;&#957;
+&#964;&#961;&#959;&#966;&#8134;&#962; &#954;&#945;&#8054;
+&#7952;&#965;&#966;&#961;&#959;&#963;&#8059;&#957;&#951;&#962;<br />
+&#964;&#8048;&#962; &#954;&#945;&#961;&#948;&#8055;&#945;&#962;
+&#8053;&#956;&#8182;&#957;.</p>
+
+<p>filling with meat, and cheerfulness, our hearts. The modern
+Greek should be&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="greek">
+&#7952;&#956;&#960;&#953;&#960;&#955;&#8182;&#957;
+&#7936;&#957;&#8051;&#956;&#959;&#965; &#954;&#945;&#8054;
+&#7936;&#966;&#961;&#959;&#963;&#8059;&#957;&#951;&#962;<br />
+&#964;&#8048;&#962; &#947;&#945;&#963;&#964;&#8051;&#961;&#945;&#962;
+&#7969;&#956;&#8182;&#957;.
+</p>
+
+<p>filling with wind, and foolishness, our stomachs.</p>
+
+<p>You will not think I waste your time in giving you two
+cardinal examples of the sort of evidence which the higher
+forms of literature furnish respecting the cloud-phenomena
+of former times.</p>
+
+<p>When, in the close of my lecture on landscape last year at
+Oxford, I spoke of stationary clouds as distinguished from
+passing ones, some blockheads wrote to the papers to say that
+clouds never were stationary. Those foolish letters were so
+far useful in causing a friend to write me the pretty one I
+am about to read to you, quoting a passage about clouds in
+Homer which I had myself never noticed, though perhaps
+the most beautiful of its kind in the Iliad. In the fifth
+book, after the truce is broken, and the aggressor Trojans are
+rushing to the onset in a tumult of clamor and charge,
+Homer says that the Greeks, abiding them "stood like
+clouds." My correspondent, giving the passage, writes as
+follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Sir</span>,&mdash;Last winter when I was at Ajaccio, I was one day
+reading Homer by the open window, and came upon the
+lines&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="greek2">
+&#7944;&#955;&#955;&#8125; &#7956;&#956;&#949;&#957;&#959;&#957;, &#957;&#949;&#966;&#8051;&#955;&#8131;&#963;&#953;&#957; &#7952;&#959;&#953;&#954;&#8057;&#964;&#949;&#962; &#7941;&#962; &#964;&#949; &#922;&#961;&#959;&#957;&#8055;&#969;&#957;<br />
+&#925;&#951;&#957;&#949;&#956;&#8055;&#951;&#962; &#7956;&#963;&#964;&#951;&#963;&#949;&#957; &#7952;&#960;&#8125; &#7936;&#954;&#961;&#959;&#960;&#8057;&#955;&#959;&#953;&#963;&#953;&#957; &#8004;&#961;&#949;&#963;&#963;&#953;&#957;,<br />
+&#7944;&#964;&#961;&#8051;&#956;&#945;&#962;, &#8004;&#966;&#961;&#8125; &#949;&#8021;&#948;&#8131;&#963;&#953; &#956;&#8051;&#957;&#959;&#962; &#914;&#959;&#961;&#8051;&#945;&#959; &#954;&#945;&#8054; &#7940;&#955;&#955;&#969;&#957;<br />
+&#918;&#945;&#967;&#961;&#949;&#953;&#8182;&#957; &#7936;&#957;&#8051;&#956;&#969;&#957;, &#959;&#7989; &#964;&#949; &#957;&#8051;&#966;&#949;&#945; &#963;&#954;&#953;&#8057;&#949;&#957;&#964;&#945;<br />
+&#928;&#957;&#959;&#953;&#8135;&#963;&#953;&#957; &#955;&#965;&#947;&#965;&#961;&#8135;&#963;&#953; &#948;&#953;&#945;&#963;&#954;&#953;&#948;&#957;&#8118;&#963;&#953;&#957; &#7936;&#8051;&#957;&#964;&#949;&#962;&#8231;<br />
+<ins title="Transcriber's Note:typo for &#8041;&#962;">&#8041;&#963;</ins> &#916;&#945;&#957;&#945;&#959;&#8054; &#932;&#961;&#8182;&#945;&#962; &#956;&#8051;&#957;&#959;&#957; &#7956;&#956;&#960;&#949;&#948;&#959;&#957;, &#959;&#8016;&#948;&#8125; &#7952;&#966;&#8051;&#946;&#959;&#957;&#964;&#959;.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4" href="#Page_4">[4]</a></span></p>
+<p>'But they stood, like the clouds which the Son of Kronos
+stablishes in calm upon the mountains, motionless, when the
+rage of the North and of all the fiery winds is asleep.' As I
+finished these lines, I raised my eyes, and looking across the
+gulf, saw a long line of clouds resting on the top of its hills.
+The day was windless, and there they stayed, hour after
+hour, without any stir or motion. I remember how I was
+delighted at the time, and have often since that day thought
+on the beauty and the truthfulness of Homer's simile.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps this little fact may interest you, at a time when
+you are attacked for your description of clouds.</p>
+
+<p class="quotsig2">
+"I am, sir, yours faithfully,<br />
+<span class="smcap">G. B. Hill</span>."<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>With this bit of noonday from Homer, I will read you a
+sunset and a sunrise from Byron. That will enough express
+to you the scope and sweep of all glorious literature, from the
+orient of Greece herself to the death of the last Englishman
+who loved her.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> I will read you from 'Sardanapalus' the
+address of the Chaldean priest Beleses to the sunset, and of
+the Greek slave, Myrrha, to the morning.</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<p style="margin-left: 3em;">"The sun goes down: methinks he sets more slowly,<br />
+Taking his last look of Assyria's empire.<br />
+How red he glares amongst those deepening clouds,<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a><br />
+Like the blood he predicts.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> If not in vain,<br />
+Thou sun that sinkest, and ye stars which rise,<br />
+I have outwatch'd ye, reading ray by ray<br />
+The edicts of your orbs, which make Time tremble<br />
+For what he brings the nations, 't is the furthest<br />
+Hour of Assyria's years. And yet how calm!<br />
+An earthquake should announce so great a fall&mdash;<br />
+A summer's sun discloses it. Yon disk<br />
+To the star-read Chaldean, bears upon<br />
+Its everlasting page the end of what<br />
+Seem'd everlasting; but oh! thou <span class="smcap">true</span> sun!<br />
+<i>The burning oracle of all that live</i>,<br />
+<i>As fountain of all life</i>, and <i>symbol of</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5" href="#Page_5">[5]</a></span><br />
+<i>Him who bestows it</i>, wherefore dost thou limit<br />
+Thy lore unto calamity?<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> Why not<br />
+Unfold the rise of days more worthy thine<br />
+All-glorious burst from ocean? why not dart<br />
+A beam of hope athwart the future years,<br />
+As of wrath to its days? Hear me! oh, hear me!<br />
+I am thy worshiper, thy priest, thy servant&mdash;<br />
+I have gazed on thee at thy rise and fall,<br />
+And bow'd my head beneath thy mid-day beams,<br />
+When my eye dared not meet thee. I have watch'd<br />
+For thee, and after thee, and pray'd to thee,<br />
+And sacrificed to thee, and read, and fear'd thee,<br />
+And ask'd of thee, and thou hast answer'd&mdash;but<br />
+Only to thus much. While I speak, he sinks&mdash;<br />
+Is gone&mdash;and leaves his beauty, not his knowledge,<br />
+To the delighted west, which revels in<br />
+Its hues of dying glory. Yet what is<br />
+Death, so it be but glorious? 'T is a sunset;<br />
+And mortals may be happy to resemble<br />
+The gods but in decay."<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Thus the Chaldean priest, to the brightness of the setting
+sun. Hear now the Greek girl, Myrrha, of his rising.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The day at last has broken. What a night<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hath usher'd it! How beautiful in heaven!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though varied with a transitory storm,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More beautiful in that variety:<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How hideous upon earth! where peace, and hope,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And love, and revel, in an hour were trampled<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By human passions to a human chaos,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not yet resolved to separate elements:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'T is warring still! And can the sun so rise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So bright, so rolling back the clouds into<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Vapors more lovely than the unclouded sky</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With golden pinnacles, and snowy mountains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And billows purpler than the ocean's, making<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6" href="#Page_6">[6]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In heaven a glorious mockery of the earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So like,&mdash;we almost deem it permanent;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So fleeting,&mdash;we can scarcely call it aught<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beyond a vision, 't is so transiently<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Scatter'd along the eternal vault: and yet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It dwells upon the soul, and soothes the soul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And blends itself into the soul, until<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sunrise and sunset form the haunted epoch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of sorrow and of love."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>How often <i>now</i>&mdash;young maids of London,&mdash;do you make
+<i>sunrise</i> the 'haunted epoch' of either?</p>
+
+<p>Thus much, then, of the skies that used to be, and clouds
+"more lovely than the unclouded sky," and of the temper of
+their observers. I pass to the account of clouds that <i>are</i>,
+and&mdash;I say it with sorrow&mdash;of the <i>dis</i>temper of <i>their</i> observers.</p>
+
+<p>But the general division which I have instituted between
+bad-weather and fair-weather clouds must be more carefully
+carried out in the sub-species, before we can reason of it
+farther: and before we begin talk either of the sub-genera
+and sub-species, or super-genera and super-species of cloud,
+perhaps we had better define what <i>every</i> cloud is, and must
+be, to begin with.</p>
+
+<p>Every cloud that can be, is thus primarily definable:
+"Visible vapor of water floating at a certain height in the
+air." The second clause of this definition, you see, at once
+implies that there is such a thing as visible vapor of water
+which does <i>not</i> float at a certain height in the air. You are
+all familiar with one extremely cognizable variety of that
+sort of vapor&mdash;London Particular; but that especial blessing
+of metropolitan society is only a strongly-developed and
+highly-seasoned condition of a form of watery vapor which
+exists just as generally and widely at the bottom of the air,
+as the clouds do&mdash;on what, for convenience' sake, we may
+call the top of it;&mdash;only as yet, thanks to the sagacity of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7" href="#Page_7">[7]</a></span>
+scientific men, we have got no general name for the bottom
+cloud, though the whole question of cloud nature begins in
+this broad fact, that you have one kind of vapor that lies to
+a certain depth on the ground, and another that floats at a
+certain height in the sky. Perfectly definite, in both cases,
+the surface level of the earthly vapor, and the roof level of
+the heavenly vapor, are each of them drawn within the depth
+of a fathom. Under <i>their</i> line, drawn for the day and for
+the hour, the clouds will not stoop, and above <i>theirs,</i> the
+mists will not rise. Each in their own region, high or deep,
+may expatiate at their pleasure; within that, they climb, or
+decline,&mdash;within that they congeal or melt away; but below
+their assigned horizon the surges of the cloud sea may not
+sink, and the floods of the mist lagoon may not be swollen.</p>
+
+<p>That is the first idea you have to get well into your minds
+concerning the abodes of this visible vapor; next, you have
+to consider the manner of its visibility. Is it, you have to
+ask, with cloud vapor, as with most other things, that they
+are seen when they are there, and not seen when they are
+not there? or has cloud vapor so much of the ghost in it, that
+it can be visible or invisible as it likes, and may perhaps be
+all unpleasantly and malignantly there, just as much when
+we don't see it, as when we do? To which I answer, comfortably
+and generally, that, on the whole, a cloud is where
+you see it, and isn't where you don't; that, when there's an
+evident and honest thundercloud in the northeast, you
+needn't suppose there's a surreptitious and slinking one in the
+northwest;&mdash;when there's a visible fog at Bermondsey, it
+doesn't follow there's a spiritual one, more than usual, at the
+West End: and when you get up to the clouds, and can
+walk into them or out of them, as you like, you find when
+you're in them they wet your whiskers, or take out your
+curls, and when you're out of them, they don't; and therefore
+you may with probability assume&mdash;not with certainty, observe,
+but with probability&mdash;that there's more water in the
+air where it damps your curls than where it doesn't. If
+it gets much denser than that, it will begin to rain; and
+then you may assert, certainly with safety, that there is a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8" href="#Page_8">[8]</a></span>
+shower in one place, and not in another; and not allow the
+scientific people to tell you that the rain is everywhere, but
+palpable in Tooley Street, and impalpable in Grosvenor
+Square.</p>
+
+<p>That, I say, is broadly and comfortably so on the whole,&mdash;and
+yet with this kind of qualification and farther condition
+in the matter. If you watch the steam coming strongly out
+of an engine-funnel,<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a>&mdash;at the top of the funnel it is transparent,&mdash;you
+can't see it, though it is more densely and intensely
+there than anywhere else. Six inches out of the funnel it
+becomes snow-white,&mdash;you see it, and you see it, observe,
+exactly where it is,&mdash;it is then a real and proper cloud.
+Twenty yards off the funnel it scatters and melts away; a
+little of it sprinkles you with rain if you are underneath it,
+but the rest disappears; yet it is still there;&mdash;the surrounding
+air does not absorb it all into space in a moment; there
+is a gradually diffusing current of invisible moisture at the
+end of the visible stream&mdash;an invisible, yet quite substantial,
+vapor; but not, according to our definition, a cloud, for a
+cloud is vapor <i>visible</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Then the next bit of the question, of course, is, What
+makes the vapor visible, when it is so? Why is the compressed
+steam transparent, the loose steam white, the dissolved
+steam transparent again?</p>
+
+<p>The scientific people tell you that the vapor becomes visible,
+and chilled, as it expands. Many thanks to them; but
+can they show us any reason why particles of water should
+be more opaque when they are separated than when they are
+close together, or give us any idea of the difference of the
+state of a particle of water, which won't <i>sink</i> in the air,
+from that of one that won't <i>rise</i> in it?<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>
+
+<p>And here I must parenthetically give you a little word of,
+I will venture to say, extremely useful, advice about scientific
+people in general. Their first business is, of course, to tell
+you things that are so, and do happen,&mdash;as that, if you warm
+water, it will boil; if you cool it, it will freeze; and if you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9" href="#Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+put a candle to a cask of gunpowder, it will blow you up.
+Their second, and far more important business, is to tell you
+what you had best do under the circumstances,&mdash;put the
+kettle on in time for tea; powder your ice and salt, if you
+have a mind for ices; and obviate the chance of explosion
+by not making the gunpowder. But if, beyond this safe
+and beneficial business, they ever try to <i>explain</i> anything to
+you, you may be confident of one of two things,&mdash;either that
+they know nothing (to speak of) about it, or that they have
+only seen one side of it&mdash;and not only haven't seen, but
+usually have no mind to see, the other. When, for instance,
+Professor Tyndall explains the twisted beds of the Jungfrau
+to you by intimating that the Matterhorn is growing flat;<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> or
+the clouds on the lee side of the Matterhorn by the wind's rubbing
+against the windward side of it,<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a>&mdash;you may be pretty
+sure the scientific people don't know much (to speak of) yet,
+either about rock-beds, or cloud-beds. And even if the explanation,
+so to call it, be sound on one side, windward or lee,
+you may, as I said, be nearly certain it won't do on the other.
+Take the very top and center of scientific interpretation by
+the greatest of its masters: Newton explained to you&mdash;or at
+least was once supposed to have explained&mdash;why an apple
+fell; but he never thought of explaining the exactly correlative,
+but infinitely more difficult question, how the apple got
+up there!</p>
+
+<p>You will not, therefore, so please you, expect me to explain
+anything to you,&mdash;I have come solely and simply to put
+before you a few facts, which you can't see by candlelight, or
+in railroad tunnels, but which are making themselves now so
+very distinctly felt as well as seen, that you may perhaps
+have to roof, if not wall, half London afresh before we are
+many years older.</p>
+
+<p>I go back to my point&mdash;the way in which clouds, as a matter
+of fact, become visible. I have defined the floating or sky
+cloud, and defined the falling, or earth cloud. But there's
+a sort of thing between the two, which needs a third definition:
+namely, Mist. In the 22d page of his 'Glaciers of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10" href="#Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+the Alps,' Professor Tyndall says that "the marvelous blueness
+of the sky in the earlier part of the day indicated that
+the air was charged, almost to saturation, with transparent
+aqueous vapor." Well, in certain weather that is true. You
+all know the peculiar clearness which precedes rain,&mdash;when
+the distant hills are looking nigh. I take it on trust from the
+scientific people that there is then a quantity&mdash;almost to saturation&mdash;of
+aqueous vapor in the air, but it is aqueous vapor
+in a state which makes the air more transparent than it
+would be without it. What state of aqueous molecule is that,
+absolutely unreflective<a name="FNanchor_12_13" id="FNanchor_12_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_13" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> of light&mdash;perfectly transmissive of
+light, and showing at once the color of blue water and blue air
+on the distant hills?</p>
+
+<p>I put the question&mdash;and pass round to the other side.
+Such a clearness, though a certain forerunner of rain, is not
+always its forerunner. Far the contrary. Thick air is a much
+more frequent forerunner of rain than clear air. In cool
+weather, you will often get the transparent prophecy: but in
+hot weather, or in certain not hitherto defined states of atmosphere,
+the forerunner of rain is mist. In a general way,
+after you have had two or three days of rain, the air and sky
+are healthily clear, and the sun bright. If it is hot also, the
+next day is a little mistier&mdash;the next misty and sultry,&mdash;and
+the next and the next, getting thicker and thicker&mdash;end in
+another storm, or period of rain.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose the thick air, as well as the transparent, is in
+both cases saturated with aqueous vapor;&mdash;but also in both,
+observe, vapor that floats everywhere, as if you mixed mud
+with the sea; and it takes no shape anywhere: you may have
+it with calm, or with wind, it makes no difference to it. You
+have a nasty haze with a bitter east wind, or a nasty haze
+with not a leaf stirring, and you may have the clear blue vapor
+with a fresh rainy breeze, or the clear blue vapor as still
+as the sky above. What difference is there between <i>these</i>
+aqueous molecules that are clear, and those that are muddy,
+<i>these</i> that must sink or rise, and those that must stay where
+they are, <i>these</i> that have form and stature, that are bellied<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11" href="#Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+like whales and backed like weasels, and those that have
+neither backs nor fronts, nor feet nor faces, but are a mist&mdash;and
+no more&mdash;over two or three thousand square miles?</p>
+
+<p>I again leave the questions with you, and pass on.</p>
+
+<p>Hitherto I have spoken of all aqueous vapor as if it were
+either transparent or white&mdash;visible by becoming opaque
+like snow, but not by any accession of color. But even those
+of us who are least observant of skies, know that, irrespective
+of all supervening colors from the sun, there are white
+clouds, brown clouds, gray clouds, and black clouds. Are
+these indeed&mdash;what they appear to be&mdash;entirely distinct monastic
+disciplines of cloud: Black Friars, and White Friars,
+and Friars of Orders Gray? Or is it only their various nearness
+to us, their denseness, and the failing of the light upon
+them, that makes some clouds look black<a name="FNanchor_13_15" id="FNanchor_13_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_15" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> and others snowy?</p>
+
+<p>I can only give you qualified and cautious answer. There
+are, by differences in their own character, Dominican clouds,
+and there are Franciscan;&mdash;there are the Black Hussars of
+the Bandiera della Morte, and there are the Scots Grays
+whose horses can run upon the rock. But if you ask me, as
+I would have you ask me, why argent and why sable, how
+baptized in white like a bride or a novice, and how hooded
+with blackness like a Judge of the Vehmgericht Tribunal,&mdash;I
+leave these questions with you, and pass on.</p>
+
+<p>Admitting degrees of darkness, we have next to ask what
+color, from sunshine can the white cloud receive, and what
+the black?</p>
+
+<p>You won't expect me to tell you all that, or even the little
+that is accurately known about that, in a quarter of an hour;
+yet note these main facts on the matter.</p>
+
+<p>On any pure white, and practically opaque, cloud, or thing
+like a cloud, as an Alp, or Milan Cathedral, you can have cast
+by rising or setting sunlight, any tints of amber, orange, or
+moderately deep rose&mdash;you can't have lemon yellows, or any
+kind of green except in negative hue by opposition; and
+though by stormlight you may sometimes get the reds cast
+very deep, beyond a certain limit you cannot go,&mdash;the Alps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12" href="#Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+are never vermilion color, nor flamingo color, nor canary
+color; nor did you ever see a full scarlet cumulus of thundercloud.</p>
+
+<p>On opaque white vapor, then, remember, you can get a glow
+or a blush of color, never a flame of it.</p>
+
+<p>But when the cloud is transparent as well as pure, and can
+be filled with light through all the body of it, you then can
+have by the light reflected<a name="FNanchor_14_16" id="FNanchor_14_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_16" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> from its atoms any force conceivable
+by human mind of the entire group of the golden and
+ruby colors, from intensely burnished gold color, through a
+scarlet for whose brightness there are no words, into any
+depth and any hue of Tyrian crimson and Byzantine purple.
+These with full blue breathed between them at the zenith, and
+green blue nearer the horizon, form the scales and chords of
+color possible to the morning and evening sky in pure and
+fine weather; the keynote of the opposition being vermilion
+against green blue, both of equal tone, and at such a height
+and acme of brilliancy that you cannot see the line where
+their edges pass into each other.</p>
+
+<p>No colors that can be fixed in earth can ever represent to
+you the luster of these cloudy ones. But the actual tints may
+be shown you in a lower key, and to a certain extent their
+power and relation to each other.</p>
+
+<p>I have painted the diagram here shown you with colors
+prepared for me lately by Messrs. Newman, which I find
+brilliant to the height that pigments can be; and the ready
+kindness of Mr. Wilson Barrett enables me to show you their
+effect by a white light as pure as that of the day. The diagram
+is enlarged from my careful sketch of the sunset of 1st
+October, 1868, at Abbeville, which was a beautiful example of
+what, in fine weather about to pass into storm, a sunset could
+then be, in the districts of Kent and Picardy unaffected by
+smoke. In reality, the ruby and vermilion clouds were, by
+myriads, more numerous than I have had time to paint: but
+the general character of their grouping is well enough expressed.
+All the illumined clouds are high in the air, and
+nearly motionless; beneath them, electric storm-cloud rises in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13" href="#Page_13">[13]</a></span>
+a threatening cumulus on the right, and drifts in dark flakes
+across the horizon, casting from its broken masses radiating
+shadows on the upper clouds. These shadows are traced, in
+the first place by making the misty blue of the open sky more
+transparent, and therefore darker; and secondly, by entirely
+intercepting the sunbeams on the bars of cloud, which, within
+the shadowed spaces, show dark on the blue instead of light.</p>
+
+<p>But, mind, all that is done by reflected light&mdash;and in that
+light you never get a <i>green</i> ray from the reflecting cloud;
+there is no such thing in nature as a green lighted cloud relieved
+from a red sky,&mdash;the cloud is always red, and the sky
+green, and green, observe, by transmitted, not reflected light.</p>
+
+<p>But now note, there is another kind of cloud, pure white,
+and exquisitely delicate; which acts not by reflecting, nor by
+refracting, but, as it is now called, <i>dif</i>fracting, the sun's
+rays. The particles of this cloud are said&mdash;with what truth
+I know not<a name="FNanchor_15_18" id="FNanchor_15_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_18" class="fnanchor">[15]</a>&mdash;to send the sunbeams round them instead
+of through them; somehow or other, at any rate, they resolve
+them into their prismatic elements; and then you have literally
+a kaleidoscope in the sky, with every color of the prism
+in absolute purity; but above all in force, now, the ruby red
+and the <i>green</i>,&mdash;with purple, and violet-blue, in a virtual
+equality, more definite than that of the rainbow. The red
+in the rainbow is mostly brick red, the violet, though beautiful,
+often lost at the edge; but in the prismatic cloud the
+violet, the green, and the ruby are all more lovely than in any
+precious stones, and they are varied as in a bird's breast,
+changing their places, depths, and extent at every instant.</p>
+
+<p>The main cause of this change being, that the prismatic
+cloud itself is always in rapid, and generally in fluctuating
+motion. "A light veil of clouds had drawn itself," says Professor
+Tyndall, in describing his solitary ascent of Monte
+Rosa, "between me and the sun, and this was flooded with the
+most brilliant dyes. Orange, red, green, blue&mdash;all the hues
+produced by diffraction&mdash;were exhibited in the utmost splendor.</p>
+
+<p>"Three times during my ascent (the short ascent of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14" href="#Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+the last peak) similar veils drew themselves across the sun,
+and at each passage the splendid phenomena were renewed.
+There seemed a tendency to form circular zones of color
+round the sun; but the clouds were not sufficiently uniform
+to permit of this, and they were consequently broken into
+spaces, each steeped with the color due to the condition of the
+cloud at the place."</p>
+
+<p>Three times, you observe, the veil passed, and three times
+another came, or the first faded and another formed; and so
+it is always, as far as I have registered prismatic cloud: and
+the most beautiful colors I ever saw were on those that flew
+fastest.</p>
+
+<p>This second diagram is enlarged admirably by Mr. Arthur
+Severn from my sketch of the sky in the afternoon of the 6th
+of August, 1880, at Brantwood, two hours before sunset.
+You are looking west by north, straight towards the sun, and
+nearly straight towards the wind. From the west the wind
+blows fiercely towards you out of the blue sky. Under the
+blue space is a flattened dome of earth-cloud clinging to, and
+altogether masking the form of, the mountain, known as the
+Old Man of Coniston.</p>
+
+<p>The top of that dome of cloud is two thousand eight hundred
+feet above the sea, the mountain two thousand six
+hundred, the cloud lying two hundred feet deep on it. Behind
+it, westward and seaward, all's clear; but when the wind
+out of that blue clearness comes over the ridge of the earth-cloud,
+at that moment and that line, its own moisture congeals
+into these white&mdash;I believe, <i>ice</i>-clouds; threads, and
+meshes, and tresses, and tapestries, flying, failing, melting,
+reappearing; spinning and unspinning themselves, coiling
+and uncoiling, winding and unwinding, faster than eye or
+thought can follow: and through all their dazzling maze of
+frosty filaments shines a painted window in palpitation; its
+pulses of color interwoven in motion, intermittent in fire,&mdash;emerald
+and ruby and pale purple and violet melting into a
+blue that is not of the sky, but of the sunbeam;&mdash;purer than
+the crystal, softer than the rainbow, and brighter than the
+snow.</p>
+
+<p>But you must please here observe that while my first diagram<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15" href="#Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+did with some adequateness represent to you the color
+facts there spoken of, the present diagram can only <i>explain</i>,
+not reproduce them. The bright reflected colors of clouds
+<i>can</i> be represented in painting, because they are relieved
+against darker colors, or, in many cases, <i>are</i> dark colors, the
+vermilion and ruby clouds being often much darker than the
+green or blue sky beyond them. But in the case of the phenomena
+now under your attention, the colors are all <i>brighter
+than pure white</i>,&mdash;the entire body of the cloud in which they
+show themselves being white by transmitted light, so that I
+can only show you what the colors are, and where they are,&mdash;but
+leaving them dark on the white ground. Only artificial,
+and very high illumination would give the real effect of them,&mdash;painting
+cannot.</p>
+
+<p>Enough, however, is here done to fix in your minds the
+distinction between those two species of cloud,&mdash;one, either
+stationary,<a name="FNanchor_16_19" id="FNanchor_16_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_19" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> or slow in motion, <i>reflecting unresolved</i> light;
+the other, fast-flying, and <i>transmitting resolved</i> light. What
+difference is there in the nature of the atoms, between those
+two kinds of clouds? I leave the question with you for to-day,
+merely hinting to you my suspicion that the prismatic
+cloud is of finely-comminuted water, or ice,<a name="FNanchor_17_20" id="FNanchor_17_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_20" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> instead of aqueous
+vapor; but the only clue I have to this idea is in the purity
+of the rainbow formed in frost mist, lying close to water
+surfaces. Such mist, however, only becomes prismatic as
+common rain does, when the sun is behind the spectator,
+while prismatic clouds are, on the contrary, always between
+the spectator and the sun.</p>
+
+<p>The main reason, however, why I can tell you nothing yet
+about these colors of diffraction or interference, is that, whenever
+I try to find anything firm for you to depend on, I am
+stopped by the quite frightful inaccuracy of the scientific
+people's terms, which is the consequence of their always trying
+to write mixed Latin and English, so losing the grace of
+the one and the sense of the other. And, in this point of the
+diffraction of light I am stopped dead by their confusion of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16" href="#Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+idea also, in using the words undulation and vibration as
+synonyms. "When," says Professor Tyndall, "you are told
+that the atoms of the sun <i>vibrate</i> at different rates, and produce
+<i>waves</i> of different sizes,&mdash;your experience of water-waves
+will enable you to form a tolerably clear notion of what
+is meant."</p>
+
+<p>'Tolerably clear'!&mdash;your toleration must be considerable,
+then. Do you suppose a water-wave is like a harp-string?
+Vibration is the movement of a body in a state of tension,&mdash;undulation,
+that of a body absolutely lax. In vibration, not
+an atom of the body changes its place in relation to another,&mdash;in
+undulation, not an atom of the body remains in the same
+place with regard to another. In vibration, every particle
+of the body ignores gravitation, or defies it,&mdash;in undulation,
+every particle of the body is slavishly submitted to it. In
+undulation, not one wave is like another; in vibration, every
+pulse is alike. And of undulation itself, there are all manner
+of visible conditions, which are not true conditions. A
+flag ripples in the wind, but it does not undulate as the sea
+does,&mdash;for in the sea, the water is taken from the trough to
+put on to the ridge, but in the flag, though the motion is progressive,
+the bits of bunting keep their place. You see a field
+of corn undulating as if it was water,&mdash;it is different from
+the flag, for the ears of corn bow out of their places and return
+to them,&mdash;and yet, it is no more like the undulation of
+the sea, than the shaking of an aspen leaf in a storm, or the
+lowering of the lances in a battle.</p>
+
+<p>And the best of the jest is, that after mixing up these two
+notions in their heads inextricably, the scientific people apply
+both when neither will fit; and when all undulation known to
+us presumes weight, and all vibration, impact,&mdash;the undulating
+theory of light is proposed to you concerning a medium
+which you can neither weigh nor touch!</p>
+
+<p>All <i>communicable</i> vibration&mdash;of course I mean&mdash;and in
+dead matter: <i>You</i> may fall a shivering on your own account,
+if you like, but you can't get a billiard-ball to fall a shivering
+on <i>its</i> own account.<a name="FNanchor_18_22" id="FNanchor_18_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_22" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>
+
+<p>Yet observe that in thus signalizing the inaccuracy of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17" href="#Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+terms in which they are taught, I neither accept, nor assail,
+the conclusions respecting the oscillatory states of light, heat,
+and sound, which have resulted from the postulate of an elastic,
+though impalpable and imponderable ether, possessing
+the elasticity of air. This only I desire you to mark with
+attention,&mdash;that both light and sound are <i>sensations</i> of the animal
+frame, which remain, and must remain, wholly inexplicable,
+whatever manner of force, pulse, or palpitation may
+be instrumental in producing them: nor does any such force
+<i>become</i> light or sound, except in its rencontre with an animal.
+The leaf hears no murmur in the wind to which it wavers on
+the branches, nor can the clay discern the vibration by which
+it is thrilled into a ruby. The Eye and the Ear are the
+creators alike of the ray and the tone; and the conclusion
+follows logically from the right conception of their living
+power,&mdash;"He that planted the Ear, shall He not hear? He
+that formed the Eye, shall not He see?"</p>
+
+<p>For security, therefore, and simplicity of definition of
+light, you will find no possibility of advancing beyond Plato's
+"the power that through the eye manifests color," but on
+that definition, you will find, alike by Plato and all great
+subsequent thinkers, a <i>moral</i> Science of Light founded, far
+and away more important to you than all the physical laws
+ever learned by vitreous revelation. Concerning which I
+will refer you to the sixth lecture which I gave at Oxford in
+1872, on the relation of Art to the Science of Light ('The
+Eagle's Nest'), reading now only the sentence introducing its
+subject:&mdash;"The 'Fiat lux' of creation is therefore, in the
+deep sense, 'fiat anima,' and is as much, when you understand
+it, the ordering of Intelligence as the ordering of Vision.
+It is the appointment of change of what had been else
+only a mechanical effluence from things unseen to things unseeing,&mdash;from
+Stars, that did not shine, to Earth, that did not
+perceive,&mdash;the change, I say, of that blind vibration into
+the glory of the Sun and Moon for human eyes: so making
+possible the communication out of the unfathomable truth of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18" href="#Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+that portion of truth which is good for us, and animating to
+us, and is set to rule over the day and over the night of our
+joy and our sorrow."</p>
+
+<p>Returning now to our subject at the point from which I
+permitted myself, I trust not without your pardon, to diverge;
+you may incidentally, but carefully, observe, that the
+effect of such a sky as that represented in the second diagram,
+so far as it can be abstracted or conveyed by painting at all,
+implies the total absence of any pervading warmth of tint,
+such as artists usually call 'tone.' Every tint must be the
+purest possible, and above all the white. Partly, lest you
+should think, from my treatment of these two phases of effect,
+that I am insensible to the quality of tone,&mdash;and partly to
+complete the representation of states of weather undefiled by
+plague-cloud, yet capable of the most solemn dignity in saddening
+color, I show you, Diagram 3, the record of an autumn
+twilight of the year 1845,&mdash;sketched while I was changing
+horses between Verona and Brescia. The distant sky in
+this drawing is in the glowing calm which is always taken
+by the great Italian painters for the background of their
+sacred pictures; a broad field of cloud is advancing upon it
+overhead, and meeting others enlarging in the distance; these
+are rain-clouds, which will certainly close over the clear sky,
+and bring on rain before midnight: but there is no power in
+them to pollute the sky beyond and above them: they do not
+darken the air, nor defile it, nor in any way mingle with it;
+their edges are burnished by the sun like the edges of golden
+shields, and their advancing march is as deliberate and majestic
+as the fading of the twilight itself into a darkness full
+of stars.</p>
+
+<p>These three instances are all I have time to give of the
+former conditions of serene weather, and of non-electric rain-cloud.
+But I must yet, to complete the sequence of my subject,
+show you one example of a good, old-fashioned, healthy,
+and mighty, storm.</p>
+
+<p>In Diagram 4, Mr. Severn has beautifully enlarged my
+sketch of a July thundercloud of the year 1858, on the Alps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19" href="#Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+of the Val d'Aosta, seen from Turin, that is to say, some
+twenty-five or thirty miles distant. You see that no mistake
+is possible here about what is good weather and what
+bad, or which is cloud and which is sky; but I show you this
+sketch especially to give you the scale of heights for such
+clouds in the atmosphere. These thunder cumuli entirely
+<i>hide</i> the higher Alps. It does not, however, follow that they
+have buried them, for most of their own aspect of height is
+owing to the approach of their nearer masses; but at all
+events, you have cumulus there rising from its base, at about
+three thousand feet above the plain, to a good ten thousand
+in the air.</p>
+
+<p>White cirri, in reality parallel, but by perspective radiating,
+catch the sunshine above, at a height of from fifteen to
+twenty thousand feet; but the storm on the mountains gathers
+itself into a full mile's depth of massy cloud, every fold of
+it involved with thunder, but every form of it, every action,
+every color, magnificent:&mdash;doing its mighty work in its own
+hour and its own dominion, nor snatching from you for an
+instant, nor defiling with a stain, the abiding blue of the
+transcendent sky, or the fretted silver of its passionless
+clouds.</p>
+
+<p>We so rarely now see cumulus cloud of this grand kind,
+that I will yet delay you by reading the description of its
+nearer aspect, in the 'Eagle's Nest.'</p>
+
+<p>"The rain which flooded our fields the Sunday before last,
+was followed, as you will remember, by bright days, of which
+Tuesday the 20th (February, 1872) was, in London, notable
+for the splendor, towards the afternoon, of its white cumulus
+clouds. There has been so much black east wind lately, and
+so much fog and artificial gloom, besides, that I find it is
+actually some two years since I last saw a noble cumulus
+cloud under full light. I chanced to be standing under the
+Victoria Tower at Westminster, when the largest mass of
+them floated past, that day, from the northwest; and I was
+more impressed than ever yet by the awfulness of the cloud-form,
+and its unaccountableness, in the present state of our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20" href="#Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+knowledge. The Victoria Tower, seen against it, had no
+magnitude: it was like looking at Mont Blanc over a lamp-post.
+The domes of cloud-snow were heaped as definitely:
+their broken flanks were as gray and firm as rocks, and the
+whole mountain, of a compass and height in heaven which
+only became more and more inconceivable as the eye strove to
+ascend it, was passing behind the tower with a steady march,
+whose swiftness must in reality have been that of a tempest:
+yet, along all the ravines of vapor, precipice kept pace with
+precipice, and not one thrust another.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it that hews them out? Why is the blue sky
+pure there,&mdash;the cloud solid here; and edged like marble: and
+why does the state of the blue sky pass into the state of cloud,
+in that calm advance?</p>
+
+<p>"It is true that you can more or less imitate the forms of
+cloud with explosive vapor or steam; but the steam melts
+instantly, and the explosive vapor dissipates itself. The
+cloud, of perfect form, proceeds unchanged. It is not an
+explosion, but an enduring and advancing presence. The
+more you think of it, the less explicable it will become to
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Thus far then of clouds that were once familiar; now at
+last, entering on my immediate subject, I shall best introduce
+it to you by reading an entry in my diary which gives progressive
+description of the most gentle aspect of the modern
+plague-cloud.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="quotdate">
+"<i>Bolton Abbey, 4th July, 1875.</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Half-past eight, morning; the first bright morning for
+the last fortnight.</p>
+
+<p>At half-past five it was entirely clear, and entirely calm;
+the moorlands glowing, and the Wharfe glittering in sacred
+light, and even the thin-stemmed field-flowers quiet as stars,
+in the peace in which&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'All trees and simples, great and small,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That balmy leaf do bear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than they were painted on a wall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No more do move, nor steir.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21" href="#Page_21">[21]</a></span></p>
+<p>But, an hour ago, the leaves at my window first shook
+slightly. They are now trembling <i>continuously</i>, as those of
+all the trees, under a gradually rising wind, of which the
+tremulous action scarcely permits the direction to be defined,&mdash;but
+which falls and returns in fits of varying force, like
+those which precede a thunderstorm&mdash;never wholly ceasing:
+the direction of its upper current is shown by a few ragged
+white clouds, moving fast from the north, which rose, at the
+time of the first leaf-shaking, behind the edge of the moors in
+the east.</p>
+
+<p>This wind is the plague-wind of the eighth decade of years
+in the nineteenth century; a period which will assuredly be
+recognized in future meteorological history as one of phenomena
+hitherto unrecorded in the courses of nature, and characterized
+pre-eminently by the almost ceaseless action of this
+calamitous wind. While I have been writing these sentences,
+the white clouds above specified have increased to twice
+the size they had when I began to write; and in about two
+hours from this time&mdash;say by eleven o'clock, if the wind continue,&mdash;the
+whole sky will be dark with them, as it was yesterday,
+and has been through prolonged periods during the
+last five years. I first noticed the definite character of this
+wind, and of the clouds it brings with it, in the year 1871,
+describing it then in the July number of 'Fors Clavigera';
+but little, at that time, apprehending either its universality, or
+any probability of its annual continuance. I am able now to
+state positively that its range of power extends from the
+North of England to Sicily; and that it blows more or less
+during the whole of the year, except the early autumn. This
+autumnal abdication is, I hope, beginning: it blew but feebly
+yesterday, though without intermission, from the north, making
+every shady place cold, while the sun was burning; its
+effect on the sky being only to dim the blue of it between
+masses of ragged cumulus. To-day it has entirely fallen;
+and there seems hope of bright weather, the first for me since
+the end of May, when I had two fine days at Aylesbury; the
+third, May 28th, being black again from morning to evening.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22" href="#Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+There seems to be some reference to the blackness caused by
+the prevalence of this wind in the old French name of Bise,
+'<i>gray</i> wind'; and, indeed, one of the darkest and bitterest
+days of it I ever saw was at Vevay in 1872."</p>
+</div>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The first time I recognized the clouds brought by the
+plague-wind as distinct in character was in walking back
+from Oxford, after a hard day's work, to Abingdon, in the
+early spring of 1871: it would take too long to give you any
+account this evening of the particulars which drew my attention
+to them; but during the following months I had too
+frequent opportunities of verifying my first thoughts of them,
+and on the first of July in that year wrote the description of
+them which begins the 'Fors Clavigera' of August, thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It is the first of July, and I sit down to write by the dismalest
+light that ever yet I wrote by; namely, the light of this
+midsummer morning, in mid-England, (Matlock, Derbyshire),
+in the year 1871.</p>
+
+<p>"For the sky is covered with gray cloud;&mdash;not rain-cloud,
+but a dry black veil, which no ray of sunshine can pierce;
+partly diffused in mist, feeble mist, enough to make distant
+objects unintelligible, yet without any substance, or wreathing,
+or color of its own. And everywhere the leaves of the
+trees are shaking fitfully, as they do before a thunder-storm;
+only not violently, but enough to show the passing to and fro
+of a strange, bitter, blighting wind. Dismal enough, had it
+been the first morning of its kind that summer had sent.
+But during all this spring, in London, and at Oxford, through
+meager March, through changelessly sullen April, through
+despondent May, and darkened June, morning after morning
+has come gray-shrouded thus.</p>
+
+<p>"And it is a new thing to me, and a very dreadful one. I
+am fifty years old, and more; and since I was five, have
+gleaned the best hours of my life in the sun of spring and
+summer mornings; and I never saw such as these, till now.</p>
+
+<p>"And the scientific men are busy as ants, examining the
+sun, and the moon, and the seven stars, and can tell me all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23" href="#Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+about <i>them</i>, I believe, by this time; and how they move, and
+what they are made of.</p>
+
+<p>"And I do not care, for my part, two copper spangles how
+they move, nor what they are made of. I can't move them
+any other way than they go, nor make them of anything else,
+better than they are made. But I would care much and give
+much, if I could be told where this bitter wind comes from,
+and what <i>it</i> is made of.</p>
+
+<p>"For, perhaps, with forethought, and fine laboratory
+science, one might make it of something else.</p>
+
+<p>"It looks partly as if it were made of poisonous smoke;
+very possibly it may be: there are at least two hundred
+furnace chimneys in a square of two miles on every side of
+me. But mere smoke would not blow to and fro in that wild
+way. It looks more to me as if it were made of dead men's
+souls&mdash;such of them as are not gone yet where they have to
+go, and may be flitting hither and thither, doubting, themselves,
+of the fittest place for them.</p>
+
+<p>"You know, if there <i>are</i> such things as souls, and if ever
+any of them haunt places where they have been hurt, there
+must be many about us, just now, displeased enough!"</p>
+
+<p>The last sentence refers of course to the battles of the
+Franco-German campaign, which was especially horrible to
+me, in its digging, as the Germans should have known, a
+moat flooded with waters of death between the two nations for
+a century to come.</p>
+
+<p>Since that Midsummer day, my attention, however otherwise
+occupied, has never relaxed in its record of the phenomena
+characteristic of the plague-wind; and I now define for
+you, as briefly as possible, the essential signs of it.</p>
+
+<p>1. It is a wind of darkness,&mdash;all the former conditions of
+tormenting winds, whether from the north or east were more
+or less capable of co-existing with sunlight, and often with
+steady and bright sunlight; but whenever, and wherever the
+plague-wind blows, be it but for ten minutes, the sky is darkened
+instantly.</p>
+
+<p>2. It is a malignant <i>quality</i> of wind, unconnected with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24" href="#Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+any one quarter of the compass; it blows indifferently from
+all, attaching its own bitterness and malice to the worst characters
+of the proper winds of each quarter. It will blow
+either with drenching rain, or dry rage, from the south,&mdash;with
+ruinous blasts from the west,&mdash;with bitterest chills
+from the north,&mdash;and with venomous blight from the east.</p>
+
+<p>Its own favorite quarter, however, is the southwest, so that
+it is distinguished in its malignity equally from the Bise of
+Provence, which is a north wind always, and from our own
+old friend, the east.</p>
+
+<p>3. It always blows <i>tremulously</i>, making the leaves of the
+trees shudder as if they were all aspens, but with a peculiar
+fitfulness which gives them&mdash;and I watch them this moment
+as I write&mdash;an expression of anger as well as of fear and distress.
+You may see the kind of quivering, and hear the ominous
+whimpering, in the gusts that precede a great thunderstorm;
+but plague-wind is more panic-struck, and feverish;
+and its sound is a hiss instead of a wail.</p>
+
+<p>When I was last at Avallon, in South France, I went to see
+'Faust' played at the little country theater: it was done with
+scarcely any means of pictorial effect, except a few old curtains,
+and a blue light or two. But the night on the Brocken
+was nevertheless extremely appalling to me,&mdash;a strange
+ghastliness being obtained in some of the witch scenes merely
+by fine management of gesture and drapery; and in the phantom
+scenes, by the half-palsied, half-furious, faltering or
+fluttering past of phantoms stumbling as into graves; as if of
+not only soulless, but senseless, Dead, moving with the very
+action, the rage, the decrepitude, and the trembling of the
+plague-wind.</p>
+
+<p>4. Not only tremulous at every moment, it is also <i>intermittent</i>
+with a rapidity quite unexampled in former
+weather. There are, indeed, days&mdash;and weeks, on which it
+blows without cessation, and is as inevitable as the Gulf
+Stream; but also there are days when it is contending with
+healthy weather, and on such days it will remit for half an
+hour, and the sun will begin to show itself, and then the wind
+will come back and cover the whole sky with clouds in ten<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25" href="#Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+minutes; and so on, every half-hour, through the whole day;
+so that it is often impossible to go on with any kind of drawing
+in color, the light being never for two seconds the same
+from morning till evening.</p>
+
+<p>5. It degrades, while it intensifies, ordinary storm; but
+before I read you any description of its efforts in this kind, I
+must correct an impression which has got abroad through the
+papers, that I speak as if the plague-wind blew now always,
+and there were no more any natural weather. On the contrary,
+the winter of 1878-9 was one of the most healthy and
+lovely I ever saw ice in;&mdash;Coniston lake shone under the
+calm clear frost in one marble field, as strong as the floor of
+Milan Cathedral, half a mile across and four miles down;
+and the first entries in my diary which I read you shall be
+from the 22d to 26th June, 1876, of perfectly lovely and
+natural weather.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="quotdate">
+"<i>Sunday, 25th June, 1876.</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday, an entirely glorious sunset, unmatched in
+beauty since that at Abbeville,&mdash;deep scarlet, and purest
+rose, on purple gray, in bars; and stationary, plumy, sweeping
+filaments above in upper sky, like '<i>using up the brush</i>,'
+said Joanie; remaining in glory, every moment best, changing
+from one good into another, (but only in color or light&mdash;<i>form
+steady</i>,) for half an hour full, and the clouds afterwards
+fading into the gray against amber twilight, <i>stationary in the
+same form for about two hours</i>, at least. The darkening
+rose tint remained till half-past ten, the grand time being at
+nine.</p>
+
+<p>The day had been fine,&mdash;exquisite green light on afternoon
+hills.</p></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="quotdate">
+<i>Monday, 26th June, 1876.</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday an entirely perfect summer light on the Old
+Man; Lancaster Bay all clear; Ingleborough and the great
+Pennine fault as on a map. Divine beauty of western color
+on thyme and rose,&mdash;then twilight of clearest <i>warm</i> amber<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26" href="#Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+far into night, of <i>pale</i> amber all night long; hills dark-clear
+against it.</p>
+
+<p>And so it continued, only growing more intense in blue
+and sunlight, all day. After breakfast, I came in from the
+well under strawberry bed, to say I had never seen anything
+like it, so pure or intense, in Italy; and so it went glowing
+on, cloudless, with soft north wind, all day.</p></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="quotdate">
+<i>16th July.</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The sunset almost too bright <i>through the blinds</i> for me
+to read Humboldt at tea by,&mdash;finally, new moon like a lime-light,
+reflected on breeze-struck water; traces, across dark
+calm, of reflected hills."</p></div>
+
+<p>These extracts are, I hope, enough to guard you against the
+absurdity of supposing that it all only means that I am myself
+soured, or doting, in my old age, and always in an ill
+humor. Depend upon it, when old men are worth anything,
+they are better humored than young ones; and have learned
+to see what good there is, and pleasantness, in the world they
+are likely so soon to have orders to quit.</p>
+
+<p>Now then&mdash;take the following sequences of accurate description
+of thunderstorm, <i>with</i> plague-wind.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="quotdate">
+<i>"22d June, 1876.</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Thunderstorm; pitch dark, with no <i>blackness</i>,&mdash;but deep,
+high, <i>filthiness</i> of lurid, yet not sublimely lurid, smoke-cloud;
+dense manufacturing mist; fearful squalls of shivery
+wind, making Mr. Severn's sail quiver like a man in a fever
+fit&mdash;all about four, afternoon&mdash;but only two or three claps of
+thunder, and feeble, though near, flashes. I never saw such
+a dirty, weak, foul storm. It cleared suddenly, after raining
+all afternoon, at half-past eight to nine, into pure, natural
+weather,&mdash;low rain-clouds on quite clear, green, wet hills.</p></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="quotdate">
+<i>Brantwood, 13th August, 1879.</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The most terrific and horrible thunderstorm, this morning,
+I ever remember. It waked me at six, or a little before&mdash;then
+rolling incessantly, like railway luggage trains, quite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27" href="#Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+ghastly in its mockery of them&mdash;the air one loathsome mass
+of sultry and foul fog, like smoke; scarcely raining at all, but
+increasing to heavier rollings, with flashes quivering vaguely
+through all the air, and at last terrific double streams of reddish-violet
+fire, not forked or zigzag, but rippled rivulets&mdash;two
+at the same instant some twenty to thirty degrees apart,
+and lasting on the eye at least half a second, with grand artillery-peals
+following; not rattling crashes, or irregular
+cracklings, but delivered volleys. It lasted an hour, then
+passed off, clearing a little, without rain to speak of,&mdash;not a
+glimpse of blue,&mdash;and now, half-past seven, seems settling
+down again into Manchester devil's darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Quarter to eight, morning.&mdash;Thunder returned, all the air
+collapsed into one black fog, the hills invisible, and scarcely
+visible the opposite shore; heavy rain in short fits, and frequent,
+though less formidable, flashes, and shorter thunder.
+While I have written this sentence the cloud has again dissolved
+itself, like a nasty solution in a bottle, with miraculous
+and unnatural rapidity, and the hills are in sight again;
+a double-forked flash&mdash;rippled, I mean, like the others&mdash;starts
+into its frightful ladder of light between me and
+Wetherlam, as I raise my eyes. All black above, a rugged
+spray cloud on the Eaglet. (The 'Eaglet' is my own name
+for the bold and elevated crag to the west of the little lake
+above Coniston mines. It had no name among the country
+people, and is one of the most conspicuous features of the
+mountain chain, as seen from Brantwood.)</p>
+
+<p>Half-past eight.&mdash;Three times light and three times dark
+since last I wrote, and the darkness seeming each time as it
+settles more loathsome, at last stopping my reading in mere
+blindness. One lurid gleam of white cumulus in upper
+lead-blue sky, seen for half a minute through the sulphurous
+chimney-pot vomit of blackguardly cloud beneath, where its
+rags were thinnest.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="quotdate">
+<i>Thursday, 22d Feb. 1883.</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday a fearfully dark mist all afternoon, with steady,
+south plague-wind of the bitterest, nastiest, poisonous blight,
+and fretful flutter. I could scarcely stay in the wood for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28" href="#Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+the horror of it. To-day, really rather bright blue, and
+bright semi-cumuli, with the frantic Old Man blowing
+sheaves of lancets and chisels across the lake&mdash;not in strength
+enough, or whirl enough, to raise it in spray, but tracing
+every squall's outline in black on the silver gray waves, and
+whistling meanly, and as if on a flute made of a file.</p></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="quotdate">
+<i>Sunday, 17th August, 1879.</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Raining in foul drizzle, slow and steady; sky pitch-dark,
+and I just get a little light by sitting in the bow-window;
+diabolic clouds over everything: and looking over my kitchen
+garden yesterday, I found it one miserable mass of weeds
+gone to seed, the roses in the higher garden putrefied into
+brown sponges, feeling like dead snails; and the half-ripe
+strawberries all rotten at the stalks."</p></div>
+
+<p>6. And now I come to the most important sign of the
+plague-wind and the plague-cloud: that in bringing on their
+peculiar darkness, they <i>blanch</i> the sun instead of reddening
+it. And here I must note briefly to you the uselessness of
+observation by instruments, or machines, instead of eyes. In
+the first year when I had begun to notice the specialty of the
+plague-wind, I went of course to the Oxford observatory to
+consult its registrars. They have their anemometer always
+on the twirl, and can tell you the force, or at least the pace, of
+a gale,<a name="FNanchor_19_23" id="FNanchor_19_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_23" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> by day or night. But the anemometer can only
+record for you how often it has been driven round, not at all
+whether it went round <i>steadily</i>, or went round <i>trembling</i>.
+And on that point depends the entire question whether it is a
+plague breeze or a healthy one: and what's the use of telling
+you whether the wind's strong or not, when it can't tell you
+whether it's a strong medicine, or a strong poison?</p>
+
+<p>But again&mdash;you have your <i>sun</i>-measure, and can tell exactly
+at any moment how strong, or how weak, or how wanting,
+the sun is. But the sun-measurer can't tell you whether
+the rays are stopped by a dense <i>shallow</i> cloud, or a thin <i>deep</i>
+one. In healthy weather, the sun is hidden behind a cloud, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29" href="#Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+it is behind a tree; and, when the cloud is past, it comes out
+again, as bright as before. But in plague-wind, the sun is
+choked out of the whole heaven, all day long, by a cloud which
+may be a thousand miles square and five miles deep.</p>
+
+<p>And yet observe: that thin, scraggy, filthy, mangy, miserable
+cloud, for all the depth of it, can't turn the sun red, as a
+good, business-like fog does with a hundred feet or so of
+itself. By the plague-wind every breath of air you draw is
+polluted, half round the world; in a London fog the air
+itself is pure, though you choose to mix up dirt with it, and
+choke yourself with your own nastiness.</p>
+
+<p>Now I'm going to show you a diagram of a sunset in
+entirely pure weather, above London smoke. I saw it and
+sketched it from my old post of observation&mdash;the top garret of
+my father's house at Herne Hill. There, when the wind is
+south, we are outside of the smoke and above it; and this
+diagram, admirably enlarged from my own drawing by my,
+now in all things best aide-de-camp, Mr. Collingwood, shows
+you an old-fashioned sunset&mdash;the sort of thing Turner and
+I used to have to look at,&mdash;(nobody else ever would) constantly.
+Every sunset and every dawn, in fine weather,
+had something of the sort to show us. This is one of the
+last pure sunsets I ever saw, about the year 1876,&mdash;and the
+point I want you to note in it is, that the air being pure,
+the smoke on the horizon, though at last it hides the sun, yet
+hides it through gold and vermilion. Now, don't go away
+fancying there's any exaggeration in that study. The <i>prismatic</i>
+colors, I told you, were simply impossible to paint;
+these, which are transmitted colors, can indeed be suggested,
+but no more. The brightest pigment we have would look dim
+beside the truth.</p>
+
+<p>I should have liked to have blotted down for you a bit of
+plague-cloud to put beside this; but Heaven knows, you can
+see enough of it now-a-days without any trouble of mine; and
+if you want, in a hurry, to see what the sun looks like
+through it, you've only to throw a bad half-crown into a basin
+of soap and water.</p>
+
+<p>Blanched Sun,&mdash;blighted grass,&mdash;blinded man.&mdash;If, in conclusion,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30" href="#Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+you ask me for any conceivable cause or meaning of
+these things&mdash;I can tell you none, according to your modern
+beliefs; but I can tell you what meaning it would have borne
+to the men of old time. Remember, for the last twenty years,
+England, and all foreign nations, either tempting her, or following
+her, have blasphemed<a name="FNanchor_20_27" id="FNanchor_20_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_27" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> the name of God deliberately
+and openly; and have done iniquity by proclamation, every
+man doing as much injustice to his brother as it is in his
+power to do. Of states in such moral gloom every seer of
+old predicted the physical gloom, saying, "The light shall
+be darkened in the heavens thereof, and the stars shall withdraw
+their shining." All Greek, all Christian, all Jewish
+prophecy insists on the same truth through a thousand myths;
+but of all the chief, to former thought, was the fable of the
+Jewish warrior and prophet, for whom the sun hasted not to
+go down, with which I leave you to compare at leisure the
+physical result of your own wars and prophecies, as declared
+by your own elect journal not fourteen days ago,&mdash;that the
+Empire of England, on which formerly the sun never set,
+has become one on which he never rises.</p>
+
+<p>What is best to be done, do you ask me? The answer is
+plain. Whether you can affect the signs of the sky or not,
+you <i>can</i> the signs of the times. Whether you can bring the
+<i>sun</i> back or not, you can assuredly bring back your own cheerfulness,
+and your own honesty. You may not be able to say
+to the winds, "Peace; be still," but you can cease from the
+insolence of your own lips, and the troubling of your own
+passions. And all <i>that</i> it would be extremely well to do,
+even though the day <i>were</i> coming when the sun should be as
+darkness, and the moon as blood. But, the paths of rectitude
+and piety once regained, who shall say that the promise of
+old time would not be found to hold for us also?&mdash;"Bring
+ye all the tithes into my storehouse, and prove me now herewith,
+saith the Lord God, if I will not open you the windows
+of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not
+be room enough to receive it."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31" href="#Page_31">[31]</a></span></p>
+<h2>LECTURE II.</h2>
+
+<p class="quotdate">
+<i>March 11th, 1884.</i><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<p>It was impossible for me, this spring, to prepare, as I
+wished to have done, two lectures for the London Institution:
+but finding its members more interested in the subject chosen
+than I had anticipated, I enlarged my lecture at its second
+reading by some explanations and parentheses, partly represented,
+and partly farther developed, in the following notes;
+which led me on, however, as I arranged them, into branches
+of the subject untouched in the former lecture, and it seems
+to me of no inferior interest.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p>
+<a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The vapor over the pool of Anger in the 'Inferno,' the
+clogging stench which rises from Caina, and the fog of the
+circle of Anger in the 'Purgatorio' resemble, indeed, the
+cloud of the Plague-wind very closely,&mdash;but are conceived
+only as supernatural. The reader will no doubt observe,
+throughout the following lecture, my own habit of speaking of
+beautiful things as 'natural,' and of ugly ones as 'unnatural.'
+In the conception of recent philosophy, the world is one Kosmos
+in which diphtheria is held to be as natural as song,
+and cholera as digestion. To my own mind, and the more
+distinctly the more I see, know, and feel, the Earth, as prepared
+for the abode of man, appears distinctly ruled by
+agencies of health and disease, of which the first may be
+aided by his industry, prudence, and piety; while the destroying
+laws are allowed to prevail against him, in the degree in
+which he allows himself in idleness, folly, and vice. Had
+the point been distinctly indicated where the degrees of adversity
+necessary for his discipline pass into those intended
+for his punishment, the world would have been put under a
+manifest theocracy; but the declaration of the principle is at
+least distinct enough to have convinced all sensitive and
+earnest persons, from the beginning of speculation in the eyes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32" href="#Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+and mind of Man: and it has been put in my power by one
+of the singular chances which have always helped me in my
+work when it was in the right direction, to present to the
+University of Oxford the most distinct expression of this
+first principle of medi&aelig;val Theology which, so far as I know,
+exists in fifteenth-century art. It is one of the drawings of
+the Florentine book which I bought for a thousand pounds,
+against the British Museum, some ten or twelve years since;
+being a compendium of classic and medi&aelig;val religious symbolism.
+In the two pages of it, forming one picture, given to
+Oxford, the delivery of the Law on Sinai is represented on
+the left hand, (<i>contrary to the Scriptural narrative</i>, but in
+deeper expression of the benediction of the Sacred Law to all
+nations,) as in the midst of bright and calm light, the figure
+of the Deity being supported by luminous and level clouds,
+and attended by happy angels: while opposite, on the right
+hand, the worship of the Golden Calf is symbolized by a
+single decorated pillar, with the calf on its summit, surrounded
+by the clouds and darkness of a furious storm, issuing
+from the mouths of fiends;&mdash;uprooting the trees, and
+throwing down the rocks, above the broken tables of the Law,
+of which the fragments lie in the foreground.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> These conditions are mainly in the arrangement of the
+lower rain-clouds in flakes thin and detached enough to be
+illuminated by early or late sunbeams: their textures are
+then more softly blended than those of the upper cirri, and
+have the qualities of painted, instead of burnished or inflamed,
+color.
+</p><p>
+They were thus described in the 4th chapter of the 7th
+part of 'Modern Painters':&mdash;
+</p><p>
+"Often in our English mornings, the rain-clouds in the
+dawn form soft level fields, which melt imperceptibly into
+the blue; or when of less extent, gather into apparent bars,
+crossing the sheets of broader cloud above; and all these
+bathed throughout in an unspeakable light of pure rose-color,
+and purple, and amber, and blue, not shining, but misty-soft,
+the barred masses, when seen nearer, found to be woven<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33" href="#Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+in tresses of cloud, like floss silk, looking as if each knot
+were a little swathe or sheaf of lighted rain.
+</p><p>
+"No clouds form such skies, none are so tender, various,
+inimitable; Turner himself never caught them. Correggio,
+putting out his whole strength, could have painted them,&mdash;no
+other man."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> I did not, in writing this sentence, forget Mr. Gladstone's
+finely scholastic enthusiasm for Homer; nor Mr.
+Newton's for Athenian&mdash;(I wish it had not been also for
+Halicarnassian) sculpture. But Byron loved Greece herself&mdash;through
+her death&mdash;and <i>to</i> his own; while the subsequent
+refusal of England to give Greece one of our own princes for
+a king, has always been held by me the most ignoble,
+cowardly, and lamentable, of all our base commercial <i>im</i>policies.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> 'Deepening' clouds.&mdash;Byron never uses an epithet
+vainly,&mdash;he is the most accurate, and therefore the most
+powerful, of all modern describers. The deepening of the
+cloud is essentially necessary to the redness of the orb.
+Ordinary observers are continually unaware of this fact,
+and imagine that a red sun can be darker than the sky
+round it! Thus Mr. Gould, though a professed naturalist,
+and passing most of his life in the open air, over and over
+again, in his 'British Birds,' draws the setting sun dark on
+the sky!</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> 'Like the blood he predicts.'&mdash;The astrological power of
+the planet Mars was of course ascribed to it in the same connection
+with its red color. The reader may be interested to
+see the notice, in 'Modern Painters,' of Turner's constant
+use of the same symbol; partly an expression of his own
+personal feeling, partly, the employment of a symbolic language
+known to all careful readers of solar and stellar
+tradition.
+</p><p>
+"He was very definitely in the habit of indicating the
+association of any subject with circumstances of death,
+especially the death of multitudes, by placing it under one
+of his most deeply <i>crimsoned</i> sunset skies.
+</p><p>
+"The color of blood is thus plainly taken for the leading<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34" href="#Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+tone in the storm-clouds above the 'Slave-ship.' It occurs
+with similar distinctness in the much earlier picture of
+'Ulysses and Polypheme,' in that of 'Napoleon at St.
+Helena,' and, subdued by softer hues, in the 'Old T&eacute;m&eacute;raire.'
+</p><p>
+"The sky of this Goldau is, in its scarlet and crimson, the
+deepest in tone of all that I know in Turner's drawings.
+</p><p>
+"Another feeling, traceable in several of his former works,
+is an acute sense of the contrast between the careless interests
+and idle pleasures of daily life, and the state of those whose
+time for labor, or knowledge, or delight, is passed forever.
+There is evidence of this feeling in the introduction of the
+boys at play in the churchyard of Kirkby Lonsdale, and the
+boy climbing for his kite among the thickets above the little
+mountain churchyard of Brignal-bank; it is in the same tone
+of thought that he has placed here the two figures fishing,
+leaning against these shattered flanks of rock,&mdash;the sepulchral
+stones of the great mountain Field of Death."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> 'Thy lore unto calamity.'&mdash;It is, I believe, recognized
+by all who have in any degree become interested in the
+traditions of Chaldean astrology, that its warnings were distinct,&mdash;its
+promises deceitful. Horace thus warns Leuconoe
+against reading the Babylonian numbers to learn the time of
+her death,&mdash;he does not imply their promise of previous
+happiness; and the continually deceptive character of the
+Delphic oracle itself, tempted always rather to fatal than to
+fortunate conduct, unless the inquirer were more than wise in
+his reading. Byron gathers into the bitter question all the
+sorrow of former superstition, while in the lines italicized,
+just above, he sums in the briefest and plainest English, all
+that we yet know, or may wisely think, about the Sun. It is
+the '<i>Burning</i> oracle' (other oracles there are by sound, or
+feeling, but this by fire) of all that lives; the only means of
+our accurate knowledge of the things round us, and that
+affect our lives: it is the <i>fountain</i> of all life,&mdash;Byron does
+not say the <i>origin</i>;&mdash;the origin of life would be the origin of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35" href="#Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+the sun itself; but it is the visible <i>source</i> of vital energy, as
+the spring is of a stream, though the origin is the sea. "And
+symbol of Him who bestows it."&mdash;This the sun has always
+been, to every one who believes there is a bestower; and a
+symbol so perfect and beautiful that it may also be thought
+of as partly an apocalypse.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> 'More beautiful in that variety.'&mdash;This line, with the
+one italicized beneath, expresses in Myrrha's mind, the feeling
+which I said, in the outset, every thoughtful watcher of
+heaven necessarily had in those old days; whereas now, the
+variety is for the most part, only in modes of disagreeableness;
+and the vapor, instead of adding light to the unclouded
+sky, takes away the aspect and destroys the functions of sky
+altogether.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> 'Steam out of an engine funnel.'&mdash;Compare the sixth
+paragraph of Professor Tyndall's 'Forms of Water,' and the
+following seventh one, in which the phenomenon of transparent
+steam becoming opaque is thus explained. "Every
+bit of steam shrinks, when chilled, to a much more minute
+particle of water. The liquid particles thus produced form
+a kind of water dust of exceeding fineness, which floats in
+the air, and is called a cloud."
+</p><p>
+But the author does not tell us, in the first place, what is
+the shape or nature of a 'bit of steam,' nor, in the second
+place, how the contraction of the individual bits of steam is
+effected without any diminution of the whole mass of them,
+but on the contrary, during its steady <i>expansion</i>; in the
+third place he assumes that the particles of water dust are
+solid, not vesicular, which is not yet ascertained; in the
+fourth place, he does not tell us how their number and size
+are related to the quantity of invisible moisture in the air; in
+the fifth place, he does not tell us how cool invisible moisture
+differs from hot invisible moisture; and in the sixth, he does
+not tell us why the cool visible moisture stays while the hot
+visible moisture melts away. So much for the present state
+of 'scientific' information, or at least communicativeness, on
+the first and simplest conditions of the problem before us!
+</p><p>
+In its wider range that problem embraces the total mystery<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36" href="#Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+of volatile power in substance; and of the visible states consequent
+on sudden&mdash;and presumably, therefore, imperfect&mdash;vaporization;
+as the smoke of frankincense, or the sacred
+fume of modern devotion which now fills the inhabited
+world, as that of the rose and violet its deserts. What,&mdash;it
+would be useful to know, is the actual bulk of an atom of
+orange perfume?&mdash;what of one of vaporized tobacco, or gunpowder?&mdash;and
+where do <i>these</i> artificial vapors fall back in
+beneficent rain? or through what areas of atmosphere exist,
+as invisible, though perhaps not innocuous, cloud?
+</p><p>
+All these questions were put, closely and precisely, four-and-twenty
+years ago, in the 1st chapter of the 7th part of
+'Modern Painters,' paragraphs 4 to 9, of which I can here
+allow space only for the last, which expresses the final difficulties
+of the matter better than anything said in this lecture:&mdash;
+</p><p>
+"But farther: these questions of volatility, and visibility,
+and hue, are all complicated with those of shape. How is a
+cloud outlined? Granted whatever you choose to ask, concerning
+its material, or its aspect, its loftiness and luminousness,&mdash;how
+of its limitation? What hews it into a heap,
+or spins it into a web? Cold is usually shapeless, I suppose,
+extending over large spaces equally, or with gradual diminution.
+You cannot have in the open air, angles, and
+wedges, and coils, and cliffs, of cold. Yet the vapor stops
+suddenly, sharp and steep as a rock, or thrusts itself across the
+gates of heaven in likeness of a brazen bar; or braids itself
+in and out, and across and across, like a tissue of tapestry;
+or falls into ripples, like sand; or into waving shreds and
+tongues, as fire. On what anvils and wheels is the vapor
+pointed, twisted, hammered, whirled, as the potter's clay?
+By what hands is the incense of the sea built up into domes
+of marble?"</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> The opposed conditions of the higher and lower orders
+of cloud, with the balanced intermediate one, are beautifully
+seen on mountain summits of rock or earth. On snowy ones<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37" href="#Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+they are far more complex: but on rock summits there are
+three distinct forms of attached cloud in serene weather; the
+first that of cloud veil laid over them, and <i>falling</i> in folds
+through their ravines, (the obliquely descending clouds of
+the entering chorus in Aristophanes); secondly, the ascending
+cloud, which develops itself loosely and independently
+as it rises, and does not attach itself to the hill-side, while the
+falling veil cloud clings to it close all the way down;&mdash;and
+lastly the throned cloud, which rests indeed on the mountain
+summit, with its base, but rises high above into the sky, continually
+changing its outlines, but holding its seat perhaps
+all day long.
+</p><p>
+These three forms of cloud belong exclusively to calm
+weather; attached drift cloud, (see <a href="#FNanchor_11_11">Note 11</a>) can only be
+formed in the wind.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> 'Glaciers of the Alps,' page 10.&mdash;"Let a pound
+weight be placed upon a cube of granite" (size of supposed
+cube not mentioned), "the cube is flattened, though in an
+infinitesimal degree. Let the weight be removed, the cube
+remains a little flattened. Let us call the cube thus flattened
+No. 1. Starting with No. 1 as a new mass, let the pound
+weight be laid upon it. We have a more flattened mass, No. 2....
+Apply this to squeezed rocks, to those, for example,
+which form the base of an obelisk like the Matterhorn,&mdash;the
+conclusion seems inevitable <i>that the mountain is sinking by
+its own weight</i>," etc., etc. Similarly the Nelson statue must
+be gradually flattening the Nelson column, and in time
+Cleopatra's needle will be as flat as her pincushion?</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> 'Glaciers of the Alps,' page 146.&mdash;"The sun was near
+the western horizon, and I remained alone upon the Grat to
+see his last beams illuminate the mountains, which, with one
+exception, were without a trace of cloud.
+</p><p>
+"This exception was the Matterhorn, the appearance of
+which was extremely instructive. The obelisk appeared to
+be divided in two halves by a vertical line, drawn from its
+summit half-way down, to the windward of which we had the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38" href="#Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+bare cliffs of the mountain; and to the left of it a cloud which
+appeared to cling tenaciously to the rocks.
+</p><p>
+"In reality, however, there was no clinging; the condensed
+vapor incessantly got away, but it was ever renewed, and
+thus a river of cloud had been sent from the mountain over
+the valley of Aosta. The wind, in fact, blew lightly up the
+valley of St. Nicholas, charged with moisture, and when the
+air that held it <i>rubbed against the cold cone</i> of the Matterhorn,
+the vapor was chilled and precipitated in his lee."
+</p><p>
+It is not explained, why the wind was not chilled by rubbing
+against any of the neighboring mountains, nor why the
+cone of the Matterhorn, mostly of rock, should be colder
+than cones of snow. The phenomenon was first described
+by De Saussure, who gives the same explanation as Tyndall;
+and from whom, in the first volume of 'Modern Painters,' I
+adopted it without sufficient examination. Afterwards I
+re-examined it, and showed its fallacy, with respect to the cap
+or helmet cloud, in the fifth volume of 'Modern Painters,'
+page 124, in the terms given in the subjoined note,<a name="FNanchor_A_12" id="FNanchor_A_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_12" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> but I
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39" href="#Page_39">[39]</a></span>still retained the explanation of Saussure for the lee-side
+cloud, engraving in plate 69 the modes of its occurrence on
+the Aiguille Dru, of which the most ordinary one was afterwards
+represented by Tyndall in his 'Glaciers of the Alps,'
+under the title of 'Banner-cloud.' Its less imaginative
+title, in 'Modern Painters,' of 'Lee-side cloud,' is more comprehensive,
+for this cloud forms often under the brows of
+far-terraced precipices, where it has no resemblance to a banner.
+No true explanation of it has ever yet been given; for
+the first condition of the problem has hitherto been unobserved,&mdash;namely,
+that such cloud is constant in certain states
+of weather, under precipitous rocks;&mdash;but never developed
+with distinctness by domes of snow.
+</p>
+<p class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/19th-illus.jpg" width="468" height="260" alt="Wind flow diagram" title="Wind flow diagram" />
+</p>
+<p>
+But my former expansion of Saussure's theory is at least
+closer to the facts than Professor Tyndall's "rubbing against
+the rocks," and I therefore allow room for it here, with its
+illustrative wood-cut.
+</p><p>
+"When a moist wind blows in clear weather over a cold
+summit, it has not time to get chilled as it approaches the
+rock, and therefore the air remains clear, and the sky bright
+on the windward side; but under the lee of the peak, there is
+partly a back eddy, and partly still air; and in that lull and
+eddy the wind gets time to be chilled by the rock, and the
+cloud appears, as a boiling mass of white vapor, rising continually
+with the return current to the upper edge of the
+mountain, where it is caught by the straight wind and
+partly torn, partly melted away in broken fragments.
+</p><p>
+"In the accompanying figure, the dark mass represents the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40" href="#Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+mountain peak, the arrow the main direction of the wind,
+the curved lines show the directions of such current and its
+concentration, and the dotted line encloses the space in which
+cloud forms densely, floating away beyond and above in
+irregular tongues and flakes."
+</p></div>
+<div class="footnote2"><p><a name="Footnote_A_12" id="Footnote_A_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_12"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> "But both Saussure and I ought to have known,&mdash;we did know, but
+did not think of it,&mdash;that the covering or cap-cloud forms on hot summits
+as well as cold ones;&mdash;that the red and bare rocks of Mont Pilate, hotter,
+certainly, after a day's sunshine than the cold storm-wind which sweeps
+to them from the Alps, nevertheless have been renowned for their helmet
+of cloud, ever since the Romans watched the cloven summit, gray against
+the south, from the ramparts of Vindonissa, giving it the name from
+which the good Catholics of Lucerne have warped out their favorite piece
+of terrific sacred biography. And both my master and I should also have
+reflected that if our theory about its formation had been generally true,
+the helmet cloud ought to form on every cold summit, at the approach of
+rain, in approximating proportions to the bulk of the glaciers; which is
+so far from being the case that not only (<span class="smcap">A</span>) the cap-cloud may often be
+seen on lower summits of grass or rock, while the higher ones are splendidly
+clear (which may be accounted for by supposing the wind containing
+the moisture not to have risen so high); but (<span class="smcap">B</span>) the cap-cloud
+always shows a preference for hills of a conical form, such as the Mole or
+Niesen, which can have very little power in chilling the air, even supposing
+they were cold themselves; while it will entirely refuse to form
+huge masses of mountain, which, supposing them of chilly temperament,
+must have discomforted the atmosphere in their neighborhood for leagues."
+</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_13" id="Footnote_12_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_13"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> See below, on the different uses of the word 'reflection,'
+<a href="#FNanchor_14_16">note 14</a>, and note that throughout this lecture I use
+the words 'aqueous molecules,' alike of water liquid or
+vaporized, not knowing under what conditions or at what
+temperatures water-dust becomes water-gas; and still less,
+supposing pure water-gas blue, and pure air blue, what are
+the changes in either which make them what sailors call
+"dirty "; but it is one of the worst omissions of the previous
+lecture, that I have not stated among the characters of the
+plague-cloud that it is <i>always</i> dirty,<a name="FNanchor_A_14" id="FNanchor_A_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_14" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> and <i>never blue under
+any conditions</i>, neither when deep in the distance, nor when
+in the electric states which produce sulphurous blues in
+natural cloud. But see the next note.
+</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote2"><p><a name="Footnote_A_14" id="Footnote_A_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_14"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> In my final collation of the lectures given at Oxford last year on the
+Art of England, I shall have occasion to take notice of the effect of this
+character of plague-cloud on our younger painters, who have perhaps
+never in their lives seen a <i>clean</i> sky!</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_15" id="Footnote_13_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_15"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Black clouds.&mdash;For the sudden and extreme local
+blackness of thundercloud, see Turner's drawing of Winchelsea,
+(England series), and compare Homer, of the Ajaces, in
+the 4th book of the Iliad,&mdash;(I came on the passage in verifying
+Mr. Hill's quotation from the 5th.)
+</p>
+<p></p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 3em;">
+<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">"&#7941;&#956;&#945; &#948;&#8050; &#957;&#8051;&#966;&#959;&#962; &#949;&#7988;&#960;&#949;&#964;&#959; &#960;&#949;&#950;&#8182;&#957;.<br />
+&#8041;&#962; &#948;' &#8005;&#964;' &#7936;&#960;&#8056; &#963;&#954;&#959;&#960;&#953;&#8134;&#962; &#949;&#7990;&#948;&#949;&#957; &#957;&#8051;&#966;&#959;&#962; &#7936;&#953;&#960;&#8057;&#955;&#959;&#962; &#7936;&#957;&#8052;&#961;<br />
+&#7960;&#961;&#967;&#8057;&#956;&#949;&#957;&#959;&#957; &#954;&#945;&#964;&#8048; &#960;&#8057;&#957;&#964;&#959;&#957; &#8017;&#960;&#8056; &#918;&#949;&#966;&#8059;&#961;&#959;&#953;&#959; &#7984;&#969;&#8134;&#962;,<br />
+&#932;&#8182; &#948;&#8051; &#964;', &#7940;&#957;&#949;&#965;&#952;&#949;&#957; &#7956;&#959;&#957;&#964;&#953;, &#956;&#949;&#955;&#8049;&#957;&#964;&#949;&#961;&#959;&#957;, &#7968;&#8059;&#964;&#949; &#960;&#8055;&#963;&#963;&#945;<br />
+&#934;&#945;&#8055;&#957;&#949;&#964;', &#7984;&#8056;&#957; &#954;&#945;&#964;&#8048; &#960;&#8057;&#957;&#964;&#959;&#957;, &#7940;&#947;&#949;&#953; &#948;&#8051; &#964;&#949; &#955;&#8049;&#953;&#955;&#945;&#960;&#945; &#960;&#959;&#955;&#955;&#8053;&#957;&#8231;<br />
+&#8172;&#953;&#947;&#951;&#963;&#8051;&#957; &#964;&#949; &#7984;&#948;&#8060;&#957;, &#8017;&#960;&#8057; &#964;&#949; &#963;&#960;&#8051;&#959;&#962; &#7972;&#955;&#945;&#963;&#949; &#956;&#8134;&#955;&#945;&#8231;<br />
+&#932;&#959;&#8150;&#945;&#953; &#7941;&#956; &#913;&#7984;&#8049;&#957;&#964;&#949;&#963;&#963;&#953;&#957; &#7936;&#961;&#951;&#970;&#952;&#8057;&#969;&#957; &#945;&#7984;&#950;&#951;&#8182;&#957;<br />
+&#916;&#8053;&#970;&#959;&#957; <ins title="Transcriber's Note:typo for &#7952;&#962;">&#7952;&#963;</ins> &#960;&#8057;&#955;&#949;&#956;&#959;&#957; &#960;&#965;&#954;&#953;&#957;&#945;&#8054; &#954;&#8055;&#957;&#965;&#957;&#964;&#959; &#966;&#8049;&#955;&#945;&#947;&#947;&#949;&#962;<br />
+&#922;&#965;&#8049;&#957;&#949;&#945;&#953;,"<br />
+</span></p>
+
+<p>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41" href="#Page_41">[41]</a></span>I give Chapman's version&mdash;noting only that his <i>breath</i>
+of Zephyrus, ought to have been 'cry' or 'roar' of Zephyrus,
+the blackness of the cloud being as much connected with the
+wildness of the wind as, in the formerly quoted passage, its
+brightness with calm of air.
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><p>
+<span class="i10">"Behind them hid the ground<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A cloud of foot, that seemed to smoke. And as a Goatherd spies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On some hill top, out of the sea a rainy vapor rise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Driven by the breath of Zephyrus, which though far off he rests,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Comes on as black as pitch, and brings a tempest in his breast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whereat he, frighted, drives his herds apace into a den;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So, darkening earth, with swords and shields, showed these with all their men."<br /></span>
+</p></div></div>
+<p>
+I add here Chapman's version of the other passage, which
+is extremely beautiful and close to the text, while Pope's is
+hopelessly erroneous.
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><p>
+<span class="i10">"Their ground they still made good,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in their silence and set powers, like fair still clouds they stood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With which Jove crowns the tops of hills in any quiet day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When Boreas, and the ruder winds that use to drive away<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Air's <i>dusky vapors</i>, being <i>loose</i>, in many a whistling gale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are pleasingly bound up and calm, and not a breath exhale."<br /></span>
+</p></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_16" id="Footnote_14_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_16"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> 'Reflected.'&mdash;The reader must be warned in this place
+of the difference implied by my use of the word 'cast' in
+<a href="#Page_11">page 11</a>, and 'reflected' here: that is to say, between light or
+color which an object possesses, whatever the angle it is seen
+at, and the light which it reverberates at one angle only.
+The Alps, under the rose<a name="FNanchor_A_17" id="FNanchor_A_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_17" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> of sunset, are exactly of the same
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42" href="#Page_42">[42]</a></span>color whether you see them from Berne or Schaffhausen.
+But the gilding to our eyes of a burnished cloud depends, I
+believe, at least for a measure of its luster, upon the angle
+at which the rays incident upon it are reflected to the eye,
+just as much as the glittering of the sea beneath it&mdash;or the
+sparkling of the windows of the houses on the shore.
+</p><p>
+Previously, at <a href="#Page_10">page 10</a>, in calling the molecules of transparent
+atmospheric 'absolutely' unreflective of light, I mean,
+in like manner, unreflective from their <i>surfaces</i>. Their blue
+color seen against a dark ground is indeed a kind of reflection,
+but one of which I do not understand the nature. It is seen
+most simply in wood smoke, blue against trees, brown against
+clear light; but in both cases the color is communicated to
+(or left in) the <i>transmitted</i> rays.
+</p><p>
+So also the green of the sky (<a href="#Page_13">p. 13</a>) is said to be given by
+transmitted light, yellow rays passing through blue air: much
+yet remains to be known respecting translucent colors of this
+kind; only let them always be clearly distinguished in our
+minds from the firmly possessed color of opaque substances,
+like grass or malachite.
+</p></div>
+<div class="footnote2"><p><a name="Footnote_A_17" id="Footnote_A_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_17"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> In speaking, at <a href="#Page_11">p. 11</a> of the first lecture, of the limits of depth in the
+rose-color cast on snow, I ought to have noted the greater strength of the
+tint possible under the light of the tropics. The following passage, in
+Mr. Cunningham's 'Natural History of the Strait of Magellan,' is to me
+of the greatest interest, because of the beautiful effect described as seen
+on the occasion of his visit to "the small town of Santa Rosa," (near
+Valparaiso.) "The day, though clear, had not been sunny, so that,
+although the snowy heights of the Andes had been distinctly visible
+throughout the greater part of our journey, they had not been illuminated
+by the rays of the sun. But now, as we turned the corner of a street, the
+chain of the Cordillera suddenly burst on our gaze in such a blaze of
+splendor that it almost seemed as if the windows of heaven had been
+opened for a moment, permitting a flood of <i>crimson</i> light to stream forth
+upon the snow. The sight was so unexpected, and so transcendently
+magnificent, that a breathless silence fell upon us for a few moments,
+while even the driver stopped his horses. This deep red glow lasted for
+three or four minutes, and then rapidly faded into that lovely rosy hue so
+characteristic of snow at sunset among the Alps."
+</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_18" id="Footnote_15_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_18"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Diffraction.&mdash;Since these passages were written, I
+have been led, in conversation with a scientific friend, to
+doubt my statement that the colored portions of the lighted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43" href="#Page_43">[43]</a></span>
+clouds were brighter than the white ones. He was convinced
+that the resolution of the rays would diminish their power,
+and in <i>thinking</i> over the matter, I am disposed to agree with
+him, although my impression at the time has been always
+that the diffracted colors rose out of the white, as a rainbow
+does out of the gray. But whatever the facts may be, in this
+respect the statement in the text of the impossibility of
+representing diffracted color in painting is equally true. It
+may be that the resolved hues are darker than the white, as
+colored panes in a window are darker than the colorless glass,
+but all are alike in a key which no artifice of painting can
+approach.
+</p><p>
+For the rest, the phenomena of diffraction are not yet
+arranged systematically enough to be usefully discussed;
+some of them involving the resolution of the light, and others
+merely its intensification. My attention was first drawn to
+them near St. Laurent, on the Jura mountains, by the vivid
+reflection, (so it seemed), of the image of the sun from a
+particular point of a cloud in the west, after the sun itself
+was beneath the horizon: but in this image there were no
+prismatic colors, neither is the constantly seen metamorphosis
+of pine forests into silver filigree on ridges behind which the
+sun is rising or setting, accompanied with any prismatic hue;
+the trees become luminous, but not iridescent: on the other
+hand, in his great account of his ascent of Mont Blanc with
+Mr. Huxley, Professor Tyndall thus describes the sun's remarkable
+behavior on that occasion:&mdash;"As we attained the
+brow which forms the entrance to the Grand Plateau, he
+<i>hung his disk upon a spike of rock</i> to our left, and, surrounded
+by a glory of interference spectra of the most gorgeous colors,
+blazed down upon us." ('Glaciers of the Alps,' p. 76.)
+</p><p>
+Nothing irritates me more, myself, than having the color
+of my own descriptions of phenomena in anywise attributed
+by the reader to accidental states either of my mind or
+body;&mdash;but I cannot, for once, forbear at least the innocent
+question to Professor Tyndall, whether the extreme beauty
+of these 'interference spectra' may not have been partly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44" href="#Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+owing to the extreme <i>sobriety</i> of the observer? no refreshment,
+it appears, having been attainable the night before at the
+Grands Mulets, except the beverage diluted with dirty snow,
+of which I have elsewhere quoted the Professor's pensive
+report,&mdash;"my memory of that tea is not pleasant."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_19" id="Footnote_16_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_19"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> 'Either stationary or slow in motion, reflecting unresolved
+light.'
+</p><p>
+The rate of motion is of course not essentially connected
+with the method of illumination; their connection, in this
+instance, needs explanation of some points which could not
+be dealt with in the time of a single lecture.
+</p><p>
+It is before said, with reserve only, that "a cloud is where
+it is seen, and is not where it is not seen." But thirty years
+ago, in 'Modern Painters,' I pointed out (see the paragraph
+quoted in note 8th), the extreme difficulty of arriving at the
+cause of cloud outline, or explaining how, if we admitted at
+any given moment the atmospheric moisture to be generally
+diffused, it could be chilled by formal <i>chills</i> into formal
+clouds. How, for instance, in the upper cirri, a thousand
+little chills, alternating with a thousand little warmths,
+could stand still as a thousand little feathers.
+</p><p>
+But the first step to any elucidation of the matter is in the
+firmly fixing in our minds the difference between windless
+clouds, unaffected by any conceivable local accident, and
+windy clouds, affected by some change in their circumstances
+as they move.
+</p><p>
+In the sunset at Abbeville, represented in my first diagram,
+the air is absolutely calm at the ground surface, and the
+motion of its upper currents extremely slow. There is no
+local reason assignable for the presence of the cirri above, or
+of the thundercloud below. There is no conceivable cause
+either in the geology, or the moral character, of the two sides
+of the town of Abbeville, to explain why there should be
+decorative fresco on the sky over the southern suburb, and a
+muttering heap of gloom and danger over the northern. The
+electric cloud is as calm in motion as the harmless one; it
+changes its forms, indeed; but imperceptibly; and, so far as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45" href="#Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+can be discerned, only at its own will is exalted, and with its
+own consent abased.
+</p><p>
+But in my second diagram are shown forms of vapor
+sustaining at every instant all kinds of varying local influences;
+beneath, fastened down by mountain attraction, above,
+flung afar by distracting winds; here, spread abroad into
+blanched sheets beneath the sunshine, and presently gathered
+into strands of coiled cordage in the shade. Their total
+existence is in metamorphosis, and their every aspect a surprise,
+or a deceit.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_20" id="Footnote_17_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_20"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> 'Finely comminuted water or <i>ice</i>.'
+</p><p>
+My impression that these clouds were glacial was at once
+confirmed by a member of my audience, Dr. John Rae, in
+conversation after the lecture, in which he communicated
+to me the perfectly definite observations which he has had the
+kindness to set down with their dates for me, in the following
+letter:&mdash;
+</p><p>
+</p><div class="blockquot"><p class="quotdate"><br />
+"4, <span class="smcap">Addison Gardens, Kensington</span>, <i>4th Feb., 1884.</i><br />
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,&mdash;I have looked up my old journal of thirty
+years ago, written in pencil because it was impossible to keep
+ink unfrozen in the snow-hut in which I passed the winter
+of 1853-4, at Repulse Bay, on the Arctic Circle.<a name="FNanchor_A_21" id="FNanchor_A_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_21" class="fnanchor">[A]</a>
+</p><p>
+On the 1st of February, 1854, I find the following:&mdash;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46" href="#Page_46">[46]</a></span>
+</p><p>
+'A beautiful appearance of some cirrus clouds near the
+sun, the central part of the cloud being of a fine pink or red,
+then green, and pink fringe. This continued for about a
+quarter of an hour. The same was observed on the 27th of
+the month, but not so bright. Distance of clouds from sun,
+from 3&deg; to 6&deg;.'
+</p><p>
+On the 1st February the temperature was 38&deg; below zero,
+and on the 27th February 26&deg; below.
+</p><p>
+'On the 23d and 30th (of March) the same splendid
+appearance of clouds as mentioned in last month's journal
+was observed. On the first of these days, about 10.30 a.m.,
+it was extremely beautiful. The clouds were about 8&deg; or 10&deg;
+from the sun, below him and slightly to the eastward,&mdash;having
+a green fringe all round, then pink; the center part at
+first green, and then pink or red.'
+</p><p>
+The temperature was 21&deg; below zero, Fahrenheit.
+</p><p>
+There may have been other colors&mdash;blue, perhaps&mdash;but I
+merely noted the most prominent; and what I call green may
+have been bluish, although I do not mention this last color
+in my notes.
+</p><p>
+From the lowness of the temperature at the time, the
+clouds <i>must</i> have been frozen moisture.
+</p><p>
+The phenomenon is by no means common, even in the
+Arctic zone.
+</p><p>
+The second beautiful cloud-picture shown this afternoon
+brought so visibly to my memory the appearance seen by
+me as above described, that I could not avoid remarking
+upon it.
+</p><p>
+</p>
+<p class="quotsig2">
+Believe me very truly yours,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: -3.5em;"><span class="smcap">John Rae</span>." (M.D., F.R.S.)</span><br />
+</p></div>
+<p>
+Now this letter enables me to leave the elements of your
+problem for you in very clear terms.
+</p><p>
+Your sky&mdash;altogether&mdash;may be composed of one or more
+of four things:&mdash;
+</p>
+<div class="blockquot"><p>
+Molecules of water in warm weather.<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47" href="#Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+Molecules of ice in cold weather.<br />
+Molecules of water-vapor in warm weather.<br />
+Molecules of ice-vapor in cold weather.<br />
+</p></div>
+<p>
+But of the size, distances, or modes of attraction between
+these different kinds of particles, I find no definite information
+anywhere, except the somewhat vague statement by
+Sir William Thomson, that "if a drop of water could be
+magnified so as to be as large as the earth, and have a diameter
+of eight thousand miles, then a molecule of this water
+in it would appear <i>somewhat larger than a shot</i>." (What
+kind of shot?) "<i>and somewhat smaller than a cricket-ball</i>"!
+</p><p>
+And as I finally review the common accounts given of cloud
+formation, I find it quite hopeless for the general reader to
+deal with the quantity of points which have to be kept in
+mind and severally valued, before he can account for any
+given phenomena. I have myself, in many of the passages
+of 'Modern Painters' before referred to, conceived of cloud
+too narrowly as always produced by <i>cold</i>, whereas the temperature
+of a cloud must continually, like that of our visible
+breath in frosty weather, or of the visible current of steam,
+or the smoking of a warm lake surface under sudden frost,
+be above that of the surrounding atmosphere; and yet I never
+remember entering a cloud without being chilled by it, and
+the darkness of the plague-wind, unless in electric states of
+the air, is always accompanied by deadly chill.
+</p><p>
+Nor, so far as I can read, has any proper account yet been
+given of the balance, in serene air, of the warm air under the
+cold, in which the warm air is at once compressed by weight,
+and expanded by heat, and the cold air is thinned by its
+elevation, yet contracted by its cold. There is indeed no
+possibility of embracing the conditions in a single sentence,
+any more than in a single thought. But the practical balance
+is effected in calm air, so that its lower strata have no tendency
+to rise, like the air in a fire balloon, nor its higher
+strata to fall, unless they congeal into rain or snow.
+</p><p>
+I believe it will be an extreme benefit to my younger
+readers if I write for them a little 'Grammar of Ice and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48" href="#Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+Air,' collecting the known facts on all these matters, and I
+am much minded to put by my ecclesiastical history for a
+while, in order to relate what is legible of the history of the
+visible Heaven.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote2"><p><a name="Footnote_A_21" id="Footnote_A_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_21"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> I trust that Dr. Rae will forgive my making the reader better aware
+of the real value of this communication by allowing him to see also the
+following passage from the kind private letter by which it was supplemented:&mdash;
+</p><p>
+"Many years in the Hudson's Bay Company's service, I and my men
+became educated for Arctic work, in which I was five different times
+employed, in two of which expeditions we lived wholly by our own hunting
+and fishing for twelve months, once in a stone house (very disagreeable),
+and another winter in a snow hut (better), <i>without fire of any
+kind to warm us</i>. On the first of these expeditions, 1846-7, my little party,
+there being no officer but myself, surveyed seven hundred miles of coast
+of Arctic America by a sledge journey, which Parry, Ross, Bach, and
+Lyon had failed to accomplish, costing the country about &pound;70,000 or
+&pound;80,000 at the lowest computation. The total expense of my little party,
+including my own pay, was under fourteen hundred pounds sterling.
+</p><p>
+"My Arctic work has been recognized by the award of the founder's
+gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society (before the completion of
+the whole of it)."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_22" id="Footnote_18_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_22"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> 'You can't get a billiard ball to fall a shivering on its
+own account.'&mdash;I am under correction in this statement by
+the Lucasian professor of Cambridge, with respect to the
+molecules of bodies capable of 'epipolizing' light. "Nothing
+seems more natural than to suppose that the incident
+vibrations of the luminiferous ether produce vibratory movements
+among the ultimate molecules of sensitive substances,
+and that the molecules in return, <i>swinging on their own
+account</i>, produce vibrations in the luminous ether, and thus
+cause the sensation of light. The periodic times of these
+vibrations depend upon the periods in which the molecules
+are <i>disposed to swing</i>." ('On the Changes of Refrangibility
+of Light,' p. 549.)
+</p><p>
+It seems to me a pleasant conclusion, this, of recent
+science, and suggestive of a perfectly regenerate theology.
+The 'Let there be light' of the former Creation is first
+expanded into 'Let there be a disposition of the molecules
+to swing,' and the destinies of mankind, no less than the
+vitality of the universe, depend thereafter upon this amiable,
+but perhaps capricious, and at all events not easily influenced
+or anticipated, disposition!
+</p><p>
+Is it not also strange that in a treatise entering into so
+high mathematical analysis as that from which I quote, the
+false word 'swing,' expressing the action of a body liable
+to continuous arrest by gravitation, should be employed to
+signify the oscillation, wholly unaffected by gravity, of substance
+in which the motion once originated, may cease only
+with the essence of the body?
+</p><p>
+It is true that in men of high scientific caliber, such as
+the writer in this instance, carelessness in expression does
+not affect the security of their conclusions. But in men of
+lower rank, mental defects in language indicate fatal flaws in
+thought. And although the constant habit to which I owe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49" href="#Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+my (often foolishly praised) "command of language"&mdash;of
+never allowing a sentence to pass proof in which I have not
+considered whether, for the vital word in it, a better could
+be found in the dictionary, makes me somewhat morbidly
+intolerant of careless diction, it may be taken for an
+extremely useful and practical rule, that if a man can think
+clearly he will write well, and that no good science was ever
+written in bad English. So that, before you consider whether
+a scientific author says a true or a false thing, you had better
+first look if he is able properly to say <i>any</i>thing,&mdash;and
+secondly, whether his conceit permits him to say anything
+properly.
+</p><p>
+Thus, when Professor Tyndall, endeavoring to write
+poetically of the sun, tells you that "The Lilies of the field
+are his workmanship," you may observe, first, that since the
+sun is not a man, nothing that he does is workmanship;
+while even the figurative statement that he rejoices <i>as</i> a
+strong man to run his course, is one which Professor Tyndall
+has no intention whatever of admitting. And you may then
+observe, in the second place, that, if even in that figurative
+sense, the lilies of the field are the sun's workmanship, in the
+same sense the lilies of the hothouse are the stove's workmanship,&mdash;and
+in perfectly logical parallel, you, who are alive
+here to listen to me, because you have been warmed and fed
+through the winter, are the workmanship of your own coal-scuttles.
+</p><p>
+Again, when Mr. Balfour Stewart begins a treatise on the
+'Conservation of Energy,' which is to conclude, as we shall
+see presently, with the prophecy of its total extinction as
+far as the present world is concerned,&mdash;by clothing in a
+"properly scientific garb," our innocent impression that
+there is some difference between the blow of a rifle stock and a
+rifle ball; he prepares for the scientific toilet by telling us
+in italics that "the something which the rifle ball possesses
+in contradistinction to the rifle stock is clearly the power of
+overcoming resistance," since "it can penetrate through oak-wood
+or through water&mdash;or (alas! that it should be so often<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50" href="#Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+tried) through the human body; and <i>this power of penetration</i>"
+(italics now mine) "<i>is the distinguishing characteristic
+of a substance moving with very great velocity</i>. Let
+us define by the term 'Energy,' this power which the rifle
+ball possesses of overcoming obstacles, or of doing work."
+</p><p>
+Now, had Mr. Stewart been a better scholar, he would have
+felt, even if he had not known, that the Greek word 'energy'
+could only be applied to the living&mdash;and of living, with
+perfect propriety only to the <i>mental</i>, action of animals, and
+that it could no more be applied as a 'scientific garb,' to the
+flight of a rifle ball, than to the fall of a dead body. And, if
+he had attained thus much, even of the science of language,
+it is just possible that the small forte and faculty of thought
+he himself possesses might have been energized so far as to
+perceive that the force of all inertly moving bodies, whether
+rifle stock, rifle ball, or rolling world, is under precisely one
+and the same relation to their weights and velocities; that
+the effect of their impact depends&mdash;not merely on their pace,
+but their constitution; and on the relative forms and stability
+of the substances they encounter, and that there is no
+more quality of Energy, though much less quality of Art,
+in the swiftly penetrating shot, or crushing ball, than in the
+deliberately contemplative and administrative puncture by a
+gnat's proboscis, or a seamstress' needle.
+</p><p>
+Mistakes of this kind, beginning with affectations of diction,
+do not always invalidate general statements or conclusions,&mdash;for
+a bad writer often equivocates out of a blunder
+as he equivocates into one,&mdash;but I have been strict in pointing
+out the confusions of idea admitted in scientific books between
+the movement of a swing, that of a sounding violin chord,
+and that of an agitated liquid, because these confusions have
+actually enabled Professor Tyndall to keep the scientific
+world in darkness as to the real nature of glacier motion for
+the last twenty years; and to induce a resultant quantity of
+aberration in the scientific mind concerning glacial erosion,
+of which another twenty years will scarcely undo the damage.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_23" id="Footnote_19_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_23"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> 'Force and pace.'&mdash;Among the nearer questions which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51" href="#Page_51">[51]</a></span>
+the careless terminology on which I have dwelt in the above
+note has left unsettled, I believe the reader will be surprised,
+as much as I am myself, to find that of the mode of impulse in
+a common gust of wind! Whence is its strength communicated
+to it, and how gathered in it? and what is the difference
+of manner in the impulse between compressible gas and incompressible
+fluid? For instance: The water at the head of a
+weir is passing every instant from slower into quicker motion;
+but (until broken in the air) the fast flowing water is just as
+dense as the slowly flowing water. But a fan alternately compresses
+and rarefies the air between it and the cheek, and the
+violence of a destructive gust in a gale of wind means a
+momentary increase in velocity and density of which I cannot
+myself in the least explain,&mdash;and find in no book on dynamics
+explained,&mdash;the mechanical causation.
+</p><p>
+The following letter, from a friend whose observations on
+natural history for the last seven or eight years have been
+consistently valuable and instructive to me, will be found,
+with that subjoined in the note, in various ways interesting;
+but especially in its notice of the inefficiency of ordinary
+instrumental registry in such matters:&mdash;
+</p><p>
+</p><div class="blockquot"><p class="quotdate"><br />
+"6, <span class="smcap">Moira Place, Southampton</span>, <i>Feb. 8th, 1884</i>.<br />
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="smcap">Dear Mr. Ruskin</span>,&mdash;Some time since I troubled you
+with a note or two about sea-birds, etc.... but perhaps
+I should never have ventured to trouble you again, had not
+your lecture on the 'Storm Clouds' touched a subject which
+has deeply interested me for years past. I had, of course, no
+idea that you had noticed this thing, though I might have
+known that, living the life you do, you must have done so. As
+for me, it has been a source of perplexity for years: so much
+so, that I began to wonder at times whether I was not under
+some mental delusion about it, until the strange theatrical
+displays, of the last few months, for which I was more or less
+prepared, led so many to use their eyes, unmuzzled by brass or
+glass, for a time. I know you do not bother, or care much to
+read newspapers, but I have taken the liberty of cutting out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52" href="#Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+and sending a letter of mine, sent on the 1st January to an
+evening paper,<a name="FNanchor_A_24" id="FNanchor_A_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_24" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> upon this subject, thinking you might like to
+know that one person, at any rate, has seen that strange,
+bleared look about the sun, shining so seldom except through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53" href="#Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+a ghastly glare of pale, persistent haze. May it be that the
+singular coloring of the sunsets marks an end of this long
+period of plague-cloud, and that in them we have promise of
+steadier weather? (No: those sunsets were entirely distinct
+phenomena, and promised, if anything, only evil.&mdash;R.)
+</p><p>
+I was glad to see that in your lecture you gave the dependants
+upon the instrument-makers a warning. On the 26th I
+had a heavy sailing-boat lifted and blown, from where she lay
+hauled up, a distance of four feet, which, as the boat has four
+hundred-weight of iron upon her keel, gives a wind-gust, or
+force, not easily measured by instruments.
+</p><p>
+</p><p class="quotsig2">
+Believe me, dear Mr. Ruskin,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: -3em;">Yours sincerely,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: -1.5em;"><span class="smcap">Robt. C. Leslie</span>."</span></span><br />
+</p></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54" href="#Page_54">[54]</a></span></p><p>
+</p><p>
+I am especially delighted, in this letter, by my friend's
+vigorously accurate expression, eyes "unmuzzled by brass or
+glass." I have had occasion continually, in my art-lectures,
+to dwell on the great law of human perception and power, that
+the beauty which is good for us is prepared for the natural
+focus of the sight, and the sounds which are delightful to us
+for the natural power of the nerves of the ear; and the art
+which is admirable in us, is the exercise of our own bodily
+powers, and not carving by sand-blast, nor oratorizing through
+a speaking trumpet, nor dancing with spring heels. But
+more recently, I have become convinced that even in matters
+of science, although every added mechanical power has its
+proper use and sphere, yet the things which are vital to our
+happiness and prosperity can only be known by the rational
+use and subtle skill of our natural powers. We may trust the
+instrument with the prophecy of storm, or registry of rainfall;
+but the conditions of atmospheric change, on which
+depend the health of animals and fruitfulness of seeds, can
+only be discerned by the eye and the bodily sense.
+</p><p>
+Take, for simplest and nearest example, this question of the
+stress of wind. It is not the actual <i>power</i> that is immeasurable,
+if only it would stand to be measured! Instruments
+could easily now be invented which would register not only a
+blast that could lift a sailing boat, but one that would sink
+a ship of the line. But, lucklessly&mdash;the blast won't pose to
+the instrument! nor can the instrument be adjusted to the
+blast. In the gale of which my friend speaks in his next
+letter, 26th January, a gust came down the hill above Coniston
+village upon two old oaks, which were well rooted in the slate
+rock, and some fifty or sixty feet high&mdash;the one, some twenty
+yards below the other. The blast tore the highest out of the
+ground, peeling its roots from the rock as one peels an orange&mdash;swept
+the head of the lower tree away with it in one ruin,
+and snapped the two leader branches of the upper one over
+the other's stump, as one would break one's cane over some
+people's heads, if one got the chance. In wind action of this
+kind the amount of actual force used is the least part of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55" href="#Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+business;&mdash;it is the suddenness of its concentration, and the
+lifting and twisting strength, as of a wrestler, which make
+the blast fatal; none of which elements of storm-power can
+be recognized by mechanical tests. In my friend's next letter,
+however, he gives us some evidence of the <i>consistent</i>
+strength of this same gale, and of the electric conditions which
+attended it:&mdash;the prefatory notice of his pet bird I had meant
+for 'Love's Meinie,' but it will help us through the grimness
+of our studies here.
+</p>
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="quotdate"><br />
+"<i>March 3d, 1884.</i><br />
+</p>
+<p>
+My small blackheaded gull Jack is still flourishing, and
+the time is coming when I look for that singularly sudden
+change in the plumage of his head which took place last
+March. I have asked all my ocean-going friends to note
+whether these little birds are not the gulls <i>par excellence</i> of
+the sea; and so far all I have heard from them confirms this.
+It seems almost incredible; but my son, a sailor, who met
+that hurricane of the 26th of January, writes to me to say
+that out in the Bay of Biscay on the morning after the gale,
+'though it was blowing like blazes, I observed some little
+gulls of Jacky's species, and they followed us half way across
+the Bay, seeming to find shelter under the lee of our ship.
+Some alighted now and then, and rested upon the water as if
+tired.' When one considers that these birds must have been
+at sea all that night somewhere, it gives one a great idea of
+their strength and endurance. My son's ship, though a
+powerful ocean steamer, was for two whole hours battling
+head to sea off the Eddystone that night, and for that time
+the lead gave no increase of soundings, so that she could have
+made no headway during those two hours; while all the time
+her yards had the St. Elmo's fire at their ends, looking as
+though a blue light was burning at each yard-arm, and this
+was about all they could see.
+</p><p>
+</p><p class="quotsig2">
+Yours sincerely,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: -2em;"><span class="smcap">Robt. C. Leslie</span>."</span><br />
+</p></div><p>
+The next letter, from a correspondent with whom I have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56" href="#Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+the most complete sympathy in some expressions of his postscript
+which are yet, I consider, more for my own private ear
+than for the public eye, describes one of the more malignant
+phases of the plague-wind, which I forgot to notice in my
+lecture.
+</p><p>
+</p><div class="blockquot"><p class="quotdate"><br />
+"<span class="smcap">Burnham, Somerset</span>, <i>February 7th, 1884</i>.<br />
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,&mdash;I read with great interest your first lecture
+at Oxford on cloud and wind (very indifferently reported in
+'The Times'). You have given a name to a wind I've known
+for years. You call it the plague&mdash;I call it the devil-wind:
+<i>e. g.</i>, on April 29th, 1882, morning warmer, then rain storms
+from east; afternoon, rain squalls; wind, west by south,
+rough; barometer falling awfully; 4.30 p.m., tremendous
+wind.&mdash;April 30th, all the leaves of the trees, all plants black
+and dead, as if a fiery blast had swept over them. <i>All the
+hedges on windward side black as black tea.</i>
+</p><p>
+Another devil-wind came towards the end of last summer.
+The next day, all the leaves were falling sere and yellow, as
+if it were late autumn.
+</p><p>
+</p><p class="quotsig2">
+I am, dear sir,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: -3em;">Yours faithfully,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: -1.5em;"><span class="smcap">A. H. Birkett</span>."</span></span><br />
+</p></div>
+<p>
+I remember both these blights well; they were entirely
+terrific; but only sudden maxima of the constant morbific
+power of this wind;&mdash;which, if Mr. Birkett saw my <i>personal</i>
+notices of, intercalated among the scientific ones, he would
+find alluded to in terms quite as vigorously damning as he
+could desire: and the actual effect of it upon my thoughts and
+work has been precisely that which would have resulted from
+the visible phantom of an evil spirit, the absolute opponent
+of the Queen of the Air,&mdash;Typhon against Athena,&mdash;in a
+sense of which I had neither the experience nor the conception
+when I wrote the illustrations of the myth of Perseus in
+'Modern Painters.' Not a word of all those explanations of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57" href="#Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+Homer and Pindar could have been written in weather like
+that of the last twelve years; and I am most thankful to have
+got them written, before the shadow came, and I could still
+see what Homer and Pindar saw. I quote one passage only&mdash;Vol.
+v., p. 141&mdash;for the sake of a similitude which reminds
+me of one more thing I have to say here&mdash;and a bit of its
+note&mdash;which I think is a precious little piece, not of word-painting,
+but of simply told feeling&mdash;(<i>that</i>, if people knew
+it, is my real power).
+</p><p>
+"On the Yorkshire and Derbyshire hills, when the rain-cloud
+is low and much broken, and the steady west wind fills
+all space with its strength,<a name="FNanchor_B_25" id="FNanchor_B_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_25" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> the sun-gleams fly like golden
+vultures; they are flashes rather than shinings; the dark
+spaces and the dazzling race and skim along the acclivities,
+and dart and <i>dip from crag to dell, swallow-like</i>."
+</p><p>
+The dipping of the shadows here described of course is
+caused only by that of the dingles they cross; but I have not
+in any of my books yet dwelt enough on the difference of
+character between the dipping and the mounting winds. Our
+wildest phase of the west wind here at Coniston is 'swallow-like'
+with a vengeance, coming down on the lake in swirls
+which spurn the spray under them as a fiery horse does the
+dust. On the other hand, the softly ascending winds express
+themselves in the grace of their cloud motion, as if set to the
+continuous music of a distant song.<a name="FNanchor_C_26" id="FNanchor_C_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_26" class="fnanchor">[C]</a>
+</p><p>
+The reader will please note also that whenever, either in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58" href="#Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+'Modern Painters' or elsewhere, I speak of rate of flight in
+clouds, I am thinking of it as measured by the horizontal
+distance overpast in given time, and not as apparent only,
+owing to the nearness of the spectator. All low clouds appear
+to move faster than high ones, the pace being supposed equal
+in both: but when I speak of quick or slow cloud, it is always
+with respect to a given altitude. In a fine summer morning,
+a cloud will wait for you among the pines, folded to and fro
+among their stems, with a branch or two coming out here, and
+a spire or two there: you walk through it, and look back to it.
+At another time, on the same spot, the fury of cloud-flood
+drifts past you like the Rhine at Schaffhausen.
+</p><p>
+The space even of the doubled lecture does not admit of
+my entering into any general statement of the action of the
+plague-cloud in Switzerland and Italy; but I must not omit
+the following notes of its aspect in the high Alps.
+</p><div class="blockquot"><p class="quotdate">
+"<span class="smcap">Sallenches</span>, <i>11th September, 1882</i>.<br />
+</p>
+<p>
+This morning, at half-past five, the Mont Blanc summit
+was clear, and the greater part of the Aiguilles du Plan and
+Midi clear dark&mdash;all, against pure cirri, lighted beneath by
+sunrise; the sun of course not visible yet from the valley.
+</p><p>
+By seven o'clock, the plague-clouds had formed in <i>brown</i>
+flakes, down to the base of the Aiguille de Bionassay; entirely
+covering the snowy ranges; the sun, as it rose to us here, shone
+only for about ten minutes&mdash;gilding in its old glory the range
+of the Dorons,&mdash;before one had time to look from peak to
+peak of it, the plague-cloud formed from the west, hid Mont<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59" href="#Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+Joli, and steadily choked the valley with advancing streaks
+of dun-colored mist. Now&mdash;twenty minutes to nine&mdash;there is
+not <i>one ray</i> of sunshine on the whole valley, or on its mountains,
+from the Forclaz down to Cluse.
+</p><p>
+These phenomena are only the sequel of a series of still
+more strange and sad conditions of the air, which have continued
+among the Savoy Alps for the last eight days, (themselves
+the sequel of others yet more general, prolonged, and
+harmful). But the weather was perfectly fine at Dijon, and
+I doubt not at Chamouni, on the 1st of this month. On the
+2d, in the evening, I saw, from the Jura, heavy thunderclouds
+in the west; on the 3d, the weather broke at Morez,
+in hot thunder-showers, with intervals of scorching sun; on
+the 4th, 5th, and 6th there was nearly continuous rain at St.
+Cergues, the Alps being totally invisible all the time. The
+sky cleared on the night of the 6th, and on the 7th I saw from
+the top of the Dole all the western plateaux of Jura quite
+clearly; but <i>the entire range of the Alps</i>, from the Moleson
+to the Sal&egrave;ve, and all beyond,&mdash;snow, crag and hill-side,&mdash;were
+wrapped and buried in one unbroken gray-brown winding-sheet,
+of such cloud <i>as I had never seen till that day touch
+an Alpine summit</i>.
+</p><p>
+The wind, from the east, (so that it blew <i>up</i> over the edge
+of the Dole cliff, and admitted of perfect shelter on the slope
+to the west,) was bitter cold, and extremely violent: the sun
+overhead, bright enough, and remained so during the afternoon;
+the plague-cloud reaching from the Alps only about as
+far as the southern shore of the lake of Geneva; but we could
+not see the Sal&egrave;ve; nor even the north shore, farther than
+to Morges! I reached the Col de la Faucille at sunset, when,
+for a few minutes, the Mont Blanc and Aiguille Verte
+showed themselves in dull red light, but were buried again,
+before the sun was quite down, in the rising deluge of cloud-poison.
+I saw no farther than the Voirons and Brezon&mdash;and
+scarcely those, during the electric heat of the 9th at Geneva;
+and last Saturday and Sunday have been mere whirls and
+drifts of indecisive, but always sullen, storm. This morning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60" href="#Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+I saw the snows clear for the first time, having been, during
+the whole past week, on steady watch for them.
+</p><p>
+I have written that the clouds of the 7th were such as I
+never before saw on the Alps. Often, during the past ten
+years, I have seen them on my own hills, and in Italy in
+1874; but it has always chanced to be fine weather, or common
+rain and cold, when I have been among the snowy chains;
+and now from the Dole for the first time I saw the plague-cloud
+on <i>them</i>."
+</p></div></div>
+<div class="footnote2"><p><br /><a name="Footnote_A_24" id="Footnote_A_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_24"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> '<span class="smcap">The Look of the Sky</span>.
+</p><p class="center">
+'<i>To the</i> <span class="smcap">Editor</span> <i>of the</i> <span class="smcap">St. James's Gazette</span>.
+</p><p>
+'<span class="smcap">Sir</span>,&mdash;I have been a very constant though not a scientific observer of
+the sky for a period of forty years; and I confess to a certain feeling of
+astonishment at the way in which the "recent celestial phenomena"
+seem to have taken the whole body of scientific observers by surprise. It
+would even appear that something like these extraordinary sunsets was
+necessary to call the attention of such observers to what has long been a
+source of perplexity to a variety of common folk, like sailors, farmers,
+and fishermen. But to such people the look of the weather, and what
+comes of that look, is of far more consequence than the exact amount of
+ozone or the depth or width of a band of the spectrum.
+</p><p>
+'Now, to all such observers, including myself, it has been plain that of
+late neither the look of the sky nor the character of the weather has been,
+as we should say, what it used to be; and those whose eyes were strong
+enough to look now and then toward the sun have noticed a very marked
+increase of what some would call a watery look about him, which might
+perhaps be better expressed as a white sheen or glare, at times developing
+into solar halo or mock suns, as noted in your paper of the 2d of October
+last year. A fisherman would describe it as "white and davery-like."
+So far as my observation goes, this appearance was only absent here for
+a limited period during the present summer, when we had a week or
+two of nearly normal weather; the summer before it was seldom absent.
+</p><p>
+'Again, those whose business or pleasure has depended on the use of
+wind-power have all remarked the strange persistence of hard westerly
+and easterly winds, the westerly ones at times partaking of an almost
+trade-wind-like force and character. The summer of 1882 was especially
+remarkable for these winds, while each stormy November has been followed
+by a period about mid-winter of mild calm weather with dense fog. During
+these strong winds in summer and early autumn the weather would
+remain bright and sunny, and to a landsman would be not remarkable in
+any way, while the barometer has been little affected by them; but it has
+been often observed by those employed on the water that when it ceased
+blowing half a gale the sky at once became overcast, with damp weather
+or rain. This may all seem common enough to most people; but to those
+accustomed to gauge the wind by the number of reefs wanted in a mainsail
+or foresail it was not so; and the number of consecutive days when two
+or more reefs have been kept tied down during the last few summers has
+been remarkable&mdash;alternating at times with equally persistent spells of
+calm and fog such as we are now passing through. Again, we have had
+an unusually early appearance of ice in the Atlantic, and most abnormal
+weather over Central Europe; while in a letter I have just received from
+an old hand on board a large Australian clipper, he speaks of heavy gales
+and big seas off that coast in almost the height of their summer.
+</p><p>
+'Now, upon all this, in our season of long twilights, we have bursting
+upon us some clear weather; with a display of cloud-forms or vapor at
+such an elevation that, looking at them one day through an opening in
+the nearer clouds, they seemed so distant as to resemble nothing but the
+delicate grain of ivory upon a billiard-ball. And yet with the fact that
+two-thirds of this earth is covered with water, and bearing in mind the
+effect which a very small increase of sun-power would have in producing
+cloud and lifting it above its normal level for a time, we are asked to
+believe that this sheen is all dust of some kind or other, in order to explain
+what are now known as the "recent sunsets": though I venture to
+think that we shall see more of them yet when the sun comes our way
+again.
+</p><p>
+'At first sight, increased sun-power would seem to mean more sunshine;
+but a little reflection would show us that this would not be for long, while
+any considerable addition to the sun's power would be followed by such
+a vast increase of vapor that we should only see him, in our latitudes, at
+very short intervals. I am aware that all this is most unscientific; but
+I have read column after column of explanation written by those who are
+supposed to know all about such things, and find myself not a jot the
+wiser for it. Do you know anybody who is?&mdash;I am, Sir, your obedient
+servant,
+</p>
+<p class="quotdate"><br />
+'<span class="smcap">An Unscientific Observer</span>. (<span class="smcap">R. Leslie</span>.)<br />
+<i>January 1</i>.'<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote2"><p><br /><a name="Footnote_B_25" id="Footnote_B_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_25"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> "I have been often at great heights on the Alps in rough weather,
+and have seen strong gusts of storm in the plains of the south. But, to
+get full expression of the very heart and meaning of wind, there is no
+place like a Yorkshire moor. I think Scottish breezes are thinner, very
+bleak and piercing, but not substantial. If you lean on them they will
+let you fall, but one may rest against a Yorkshire breeze as one would on
+a quickset hedge. I shall not soon forget,&mdash;having had the good fortune
+to meet a vigorous one on an April morning, between Hawes and Settle,
+just on the flat under Wharnside,&mdash;the vague sense of wonder <i>with which
+I watched Ingleborough stand without rocking</i>."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote2"><p><br /><a name="Footnote_C_26" id="Footnote_C_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_26"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> Compare Wordsworth's
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><p>
+<span class="i0">"Oh beauteous birds, methinks ye measure<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your movements to some heavenly tune."<br /></span>
+</p></div></div>
+<p>
+And again&mdash;
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><p>
+<span class="i10">"While the mists,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flying and rainy vapors, call out shapes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And phantoms from the crags and solid earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As fast as a musician scatters sounds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of an instrument."<br /></span>
+</p></div></div>
+<p>
+And again&mdash;
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><p>
+<span class="i0">"The Knight had ridden down from Wensley moor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the slow motion of a summer cloud."<br /></span>
+</p></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_27" id="Footnote_20_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_27"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> 'Blasphemy.'&mdash;If the reader can refer to my papers on
+Fiction in the 'Nineteenth Century,' he will find this word
+carefully defined in its Scriptural, and evermore necessary,
+meaning,&mdash;'Harmful speaking'&mdash;not against God only, but
+against man, and against all the good works and purposes of
+Nature. The word is accurately opposed to 'Euphemy,' the
+right or well-speaking of God and His world; and the two
+modes of speech are those which going out of the mouth
+sanctify or defile the man.
+</p><p>
+Going out of the mouth, that is to say, deliberately and of
+purpose. A French postilion's 'Sacr-r-r&eacute;'&mdash;loud, with the
+low 'Nom de Dieu' following between his teeth, is not blasphemy,
+unless against his horse;&mdash;but Mr. Thackeray's close
+of his Waterloo chapter in 'Vanity Fair,' "And all the night
+long Amelia was praying for George, who was lying on his
+face dead with a bullet through his heart," is blasphemy of
+the most fatal and subtle kind.
+</p><p>
+And the universal instinct of blasphemy in the modern
+vulgar scientific mind is above all manifested in its love of
+what is ugly, and natural inthrallment by the abominable;&mdash;so
+that it is ten to one if, in the description of a new bird,
+you learn much more of it than the enumerated species of
+vermin that stick to its feathers; and in the natural history
+museum of Oxford, humanity has been hitherto taught, not by
+portraits of great men, but by the skulls of cretins.
+</p><p>
+But the <i>deliberate</i> blasphemy of science, the assertion of its
+own virtue and dignity against the always implied, and often<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61" href="#Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+asserted, vileness of all men and&mdash;Gods,&mdash;heretofore, is the
+most wonderful phenomenon, so far as I can read or perceive,
+that hitherto has arisen in the always marvelous course of
+the world's mental history.
+</p><p>
+Take, for brief general type, the following 92d paragraph
+of the 'Forms of Water':&mdash;
+</p><p>
+"But while we thus acknowledge our limits, there is also
+reason for wonder at the extent to which Science has mastered
+the system of nature. From age to age and from generation
+to generation, fact has been added to fact and law to law,
+the true method and order of the Universe being thereby more
+and more revealed. In doing this, Science has encountered
+and overthrown various forms of superstition and deceit, of
+credulity and imposture. But the world continually produces
+weak persons and wicked persons, and as long as they continue
+to exist side by side, as they do in this our day, very
+debasing beliefs will also continue to infest the world."
+</p><p>
+The debasing beliefs meant being simply those of Homer,
+David, and St. John<a name="FNanchor_A_28" id="FNanchor_A_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_28" class="fnanchor">[A]</a>&mdash;as against a modern French gamin's.
+And what the results of the intended education of English
+gamins of every degree in that new higher theology will be,
+England is I suppose by this time beginning to discern.
+</p><p>
+In the last 'Fors'<a name="FNanchor_B_29" id="FNanchor_B_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_29" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> which I have written, on education
+of a safer kind, still possible, one practical point is insisted
+on chiefly,&mdash;that learning by heart, and repetition with perfect
+accent and cultivated voice, should be made quite principal
+branches of school discipline up to the time of going to
+the university.
+</p><p>
+And of writings to be learned by heart, among other passages
+of indisputable philosophy and perfect poetry, I include
+certain chapters of the&mdash;now for the most part forgotten&mdash;wisdom
+of Solomon; and of these, there is one selected por<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62" href="#Page_62">[62]</a></span>tion
+which I should recommend not only school-boys and girls,
+but persons of every age, if they don't know it, to learn
+forthwith, as the shortest summary of Solomon's wisdom;&mdash;namely,
+the seventeenth chapter of Proverbs, which being
+only twenty-eight verses long, may be fastened in the dullest
+memory at the rate of a verse a day in the shortest month of
+the year. Out of the twenty-eight verses, I will read you
+seven, for example of their tenor,&mdash;the last of the seven I will
+with your good leave dwell somewhat upon. You have heard
+the verses often before, but probably without remembering
+that they are all in this concentrated chapter.
+</p>
+<div><ol>
+<li><p>Verse 1.&mdash;Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith,
+than a house full of good eating, with strife.
+</p><p>
+(Remember, in reading this verse, that though
+England has chosen the strife, and set every man's
+hand against his neighbor, her house is not yet so full
+of good eating as she expected, even though she gets
+half of her victuals from America.)
+</p></li>
+<li><p>Verse 3.&mdash;The fining pot is for silver, the furnace for
+gold, but the Lord tries the heart.
+</p><p>
+(Notice the increasing strength of trial for the more
+precious thing: only the melting-pot for the silver&mdash;the
+fierce furnace for the gold&mdash;but the Fire of the
+Lord for the heart.)
+</p></li>
+<li><p>Verse 4.&mdash;A wicked doer giveth heed to false lips.
+</p><p>
+(That means, for <i>you</i>, that, intending to live by
+usury and swindling, you read Mr. Adam Smith and
+Mr. Stuart Mill, and other such political economists.)
+</p></li>
+<li><p>Verse 5.&mdash;Whoso mocketh the poor, reproacheth his
+Maker.
+</p><p>
+(Mocketh,&mdash;by saying that his poverty is his fault,
+no less than his misfortune,&mdash;England's favorite
+theory now-a-days.)
+</p></li>
+<li><p>Verse 12.&mdash;Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man,
+rather than a fool in his folly.
+</p><p>
+(Carlyle is often now accused of false scorn in his
+calling the passengers over London Bridge, "mostly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63" href="#Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+fools,"&mdash;on the ground that men are only to be justly
+held foolish if their intellect is under, as only wise
+when it is above, the average. But the reader will
+please observe that the essential function of modern
+education is to develop what capacity of mistake a
+man has. Leave him at his forge and plow,&mdash;and
+those tutors teach him his true value, indulge him in
+no error, and provoke him to no vice. But take him
+up to London,&mdash;give him her papers to read, and her
+talk to hear,&mdash;and it is fifty to one you send him
+presently on a fool's errand over London Bridge.)
+</p></li>
+<li><p>Now listen, for this verse is the question you have
+mainly to ask yourselves about your beautiful all-over-England
+system of competitive examination:&mdash;
+</p><p>
+Verse 16. Wherefore is there a price in the hand of a
+fool to get wisdom, seeing he hath no heart to it?
+</p><p>
+(You know perfectly well it isn't the wisdom you
+want, but the "station in life,"&mdash;and the money!)
+</p></li>
+<li><p>Lastly, Verse 7.&mdash;Wisdom is before him that hath understanding,
+but the eyes of a fool are in the ends of
+the earth.
+</p><p>
+"And in the beginnings of it"! Solomon would
+have written, had he lived in our day; but we will be
+content with the ends at present. No scientific people,
+as I told you at first, have taken any notice of the
+more or less temporary phenomena of which I have
+to-night given you register. But, from the constant
+arrangements of the universe, the same respecting
+which the thinkers of former time came to the conclusion
+that they were essentially good, and to end
+in good, the modern speculator arrives at the quite
+opposite and extremely uncomfortable conclusion that
+they are essentially evil, and to end&mdash;in nothing.
+</p></li>
+</ol>
+</div>
+<p>And I have here a volume,<a name="FNanchor_C_30" id="FNanchor_C_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_30" class="fnanchor">[C]</a> before quoted, by a very foolish
+and very lugubrious author, who in his concluding chapter
+gives us,&mdash;founded, you will observe, on a series of 'ifs,'&mdash;the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64" href="#Page_64">[64]</a></span>
+latest scientific views concerning the order of creation. "We
+have spoken already about a medium pervading space"&mdash;this
+is the Scientific God, you observe, differing from the unscientific
+one, in that the purest in heart cannot see&mdash;nor the
+softest in heart feel&mdash;this spacious Deity&mdash;a <i>Medium</i>, pervading
+space&mdash;"the office of which" (italics all mine) "appears
+to be to <i>degrade</i> and ultimately <i>extinguish</i>, all differential
+motion. It has been well pointed out by Thomson, that,
+looked at <i>in this light</i>, the universe is a system that had a
+beginning and must have an end, for a process of degradation
+cannot be eternal. If we could view the Universe as a candle
+not lit, then it is perhaps conceivable to regard it as having
+been always in existence; but if we regard it rather as a
+candle that has been lit, we become absolutely certain that it
+cannot have been burning from eternity, and that a time
+will come when it will cease to burn. We are led to look to
+a beginning in which the particles of matter were in a diffuse
+chaotic state, but endowed with the power of gravitation; and
+we are led to look to an end in which the whole Universe will
+be one equally heated inert mass, <i>and from which everything
+like life, or motion, or beauty, will have utterly gone away</i>."
+</p><p>
+Do you wish me to congratulate you on this extremely
+cheerful result of telescopic and microscopic observation, and
+so at once close my lecture? or may I venture yet to trespass
+on your time by stating to you any of the more comfortable
+views held by persons who did not regard the universe in
+what my author humorously calls "this <i>light</i>"?
+</p><p>
+In the peculiarly characteristic notice with which the
+'Daily News' honored my last week's lecture, that courteous
+journal charged me, in the metaphorical term now classical
+on Exchange, with "hedging," to conceal my own opinions.
+The charge was not prudently chosen, since, of all men now
+obtaining any portion of popular regard, I am pretty well
+known to be precisely the one who cares least either for hedge
+or ditch, when he chooses to go across country. It is certainly
+true that I have not the least mind to pin my heart on
+my sleeve, for the daily daw, or nightly owl, to peck at; but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65" href="#Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+the essential reason for my not telling you my own opinions
+on this matter is&mdash;that I do not consider them of material
+consequence to you.
+</p><p>
+It <i>might</i> possibly be of some advantage for you to know
+what&mdash;were he now living, Orpheus would have thought, or
+&AElig;schylus, or a Daniel come to judgment, or John the Baptist,
+or John the Son of Thunder; but what either you, or I, or any
+other Jack or Tom of us all, think,&mdash;even if we knew what to
+think,&mdash;is of extremely small moment either to the Gods, the
+clouds, or ourselves.
+</p><p>
+Of myself, however, if you care to hear it, I will tell you
+thus much: that had the weather when I was young been such
+as it is now, no book such as 'Modern Painters' ever would
+or <i>could</i> have been written; for every argument, and every
+sentiment in that book, was founded on the personal experience
+of the beauty and blessing of nature, all spring and
+summer long; and on the then demonstrable fact that over a
+great portion of the world's surface the air and the earth
+were fitted to the education of the spirit of man as closely as
+a school-boy's primer is to his labor, and as gloriously as a
+lover's mistress is to his eyes.
+</p><p>
+That harmony is now broken, and broken the world round:
+fragments, indeed, of what existed still exist, and hours of
+what is past still return; but month by month the darkness
+gains upon the day, and the ashes of the Antipodes glare
+through the night.<a name="FNanchor_D_31" id="FNanchor_D_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_31" class="fnanchor">[D]</a>
+</p><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66" href="#Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+What consolation, or what courage, through plague, danger,
+or darkness, you can find in the conviction that you are nothing
+more than brute beasts driven by brute forces, your other
+tutors can tell you&mdash;not I: but <i>this</i> I can tell you&mdash;and with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67" href="#Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+the authority of all the masters of thought since time was
+time,&mdash;that, while by no manner of vivisection you can learn
+what a <i>Beast</i> is, by only looking into your own hearts you
+may know what a <i>Man</i> is,&mdash;and know that his only true
+happiness is to live in Hope of something to be won by him,
+in Reverence of something to be worshiped by him, and in
+Love of something to be cherished by him, and cherished&mdash;forever.
+</p><p>
+Having these instincts, his only rational conclusion is that
+the objects which can fulfill them may be by his effort gained,
+and by his faith discerned; and his only earthly wisdom is to
+accept the united testimony of the men who have sought these
+things in the way they were commanded. Of whom no single
+one has ever said that his obedience or his faith had been
+vain, or found himself cast out from the choir of the living
+souls, whether here, or departed, for whom the song was
+written:&mdash;
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><p>
+<span class="i0">God be merciful unto us, and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That Thy way may be known upon earth, Thy saving health among all nations.<br /></span>
+</p></div></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68" href="#Page_68">[68]</a></span></p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><p>
+<span class="i0">Oh let the nations rejoice and sing for joy, for Thou shalt judge the people righteously and govern the nations upon earth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Then</i> shall the earth yield her increase, and God, even our own God, shall bless us.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God shall bless us, and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him.<br /></span>
+</p></div></div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote2"><p><a name="Footnote_A_28" id="Footnote_A_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_28"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> With all who died in Faith, not having received the Promises, nor&mdash;according
+to your modern teachers&mdash;ever to receive.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote2"><p><a name="Footnote_B_29" id="Footnote_B_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_29"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> Hence to the end the text is that read in termination of the lecture
+on its second delivery, only with an added word or two of comment on
+Proverbs xvii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote2"><p><a name="Footnote_C_30" id="Footnote_C_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_30"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> 'The Conservation of Energy.' King and Co., 1873.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote2"><p><a name="Footnote_D_31" id="Footnote_D_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_D_31"><span class="label">[D]</span></a> Written under the impression that the lurid and prolonged sunsets
+of last autumn had been proved to be connected with the flight of volcanic
+ashes. This has been since, I hear, disproved again. Whatever
+their cause, those sunsets were, in the sense in which I myself use the
+word, altogether 'unnatural' and terrific: but they have no connection
+with the far more fearful, because protracted and increasing, power of the
+Plague-wind. The letter from White's 'History of Selborne,' quoted by
+the Rev. W. R. Andrews in his letter to the 'Times,' (dated January 8th)
+seems to describe aspects of the sky like these of 1883, just a hundred
+years before, in 1783: and also some of the circumstances noted, especially
+the variation of the wind to all quarters without alteration in the air, correspond
+with the character of the plague-wind; but the fog of 1783 made
+the sun dark, with iron-colored rays&mdash;not pale, with blanching rays. I
+subjoin Mr. Andrews' letter, extremely valuable in its collation of the
+records of simultaneous volcanic phenomena; praying the reader also to
+observe the instantaneous acknowledgment, by the true 'Naturalist,' of
+horror in the violation of beneficent natural law.
+</p><div class="blockquot"><p class="center">
+"<span class="smcap">The Recent Sunsets and Volcanic Eruptions</span>.
+</p><p>
+"<span class="smcap">Sir</span>,&mdash;It may, perhaps, be interesting at the present time, when so
+much attention has been given to the late brilliant sunsets and sunrises,
+to be reminded that almost identically the same appearances were observed
+just a hundred years ago.
+</p><p>
+Gilbert White writes in the year 1783, in his 109th letter, published in
+his 'Natural History of Selborne':&mdash;
+</p><div class="blockquot3"><p>
+'The summer of the year 1783 was an amazing and portentous one,
+and full of horrible phenomena; for besides the alarming meteors and
+tremendous thunderstorms that affrighted and distressed the different
+counties of this kingdom, the peculiar haze or smoky fog that prevailed
+for many weeks in this island and in every part of Europe, and even
+beyond its limits, was a most extraordinary appearance, unlike anything
+known within the memory of man. By my journal I find that I had
+noticed this strange occurrence from June 23d to July 20th inclusive,
+during which period the wind varied to every quarter without making
+any alteration in the air. The sun at noon looked as black as a clouded
+moon, and shed a ferruginous light on the ground and floors of rooms, but
+was particularly lurid and blood-colored at rising and setting. The
+country people began to look with a superstitious awe at the red lowering
+aspect of the sun; and, indeed, there was reason for the most enlightened
+person to be apprehensive, for all the while Calabria and part of the Isle
+of Sicily were torn and convulsed with earthquakes, and about that juncture
+a volcano sprang out of the sea on the coast of Norway.'
+</p><p>
+Other writers also mention volcanic disturbances in this same year,
+1783. We are told by Lyell and Geikie, that there were great volcanic
+eruptions in and near Iceland. A submarine volcano burst forth in the
+sea, thirty miles southwest of Iceland, which ejected so much pumice
+that the ocean was covered with this substance, to the distance of 150
+miles, and ships were considerably impeded in their course; and a new
+island was formed, from which fire and smoke and pumice were emitted.
+</p><p>
+Besides this submarine eruption, the volcano Skaptar-J&ouml;kull, on the
+mainland, on June 11th, 1783, threw out a torrent of lava, so immense as
+to surpass in magnitude the bulk of Mont Blanc, and ejected so vast an
+amount of fine dust, that the atmosphere over Iceland continued loaded
+with it for months afterwards. It fell in such quantities over parts of
+Caithness&mdash;a distance of 600 miles&mdash;as to destroy the crops, and that year
+is still spoken of by the inhabitants as the year of 'the ashie.'
+</p><p>
+These particulars are gathered from the text-books of Lyell and Geikie.
+</p><p>
+I am not aware whether the coincidence in time of the Icelandic eruptions,
+and of the peculiar appearance of the sun, described by Gilbert
+White, has yet been noticed; but this coincidence may very well be taken
+as some little evidence towards explaining the connection between the
+recent beautiful sunsets and the tremendous volcanic explosion of the Isle
+of Krakatoa in August last.
+</p><p>
+</p><p class="quotsig">
+<span style="margin-left: -2em;"><span class="smcap">W. R. Andrews</span>, F. G. S.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: -3em;">Teffont Ewyas Rectory, Salisbury, January 8th."</span></span><br />
+</p></div></div></div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<p><br /></p>
+<table border="1" cellpadding="8" cellspacing="0" summary="Transcriber's Notes">
+<tr><td align='left'><a name="TRANSCRIBERS_NOTES" id="TRANSCRIBERS_NOTES"></a>TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
+<p>Pages 31-68: Adjusted placement of footnotes.</p>
+<p>Pages 7 &amp; 18: Standardized spelling of "thundercloud."</p>
+<p>Pages 26, 58 &amp; 70: Retained inconsistent hyphenation of "billiard-ball".</p>
+<p>Page 20: Standardized quotation marks surrounding poem.</p>
+<p>Page 22: Retained inconsistent hyphenation of "thunder-storm" in quoted material.</p>
+<p>Pages 29 &amp; 62: Standardized hyphenation of "now-a-days."</p>
+<p>Pages 37 &amp; 59: Standardized spelling of "hill-side."</p></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth
+Century, by John Ruskin
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+Project Gutenberg's The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century, by John Ruskin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century
+       Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February
+       4th and 11th, 1884
+
+Author: John Ruskin
+
+Release Date: December 28, 2006 [EBook #20204]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORM-CLOUD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Suzan Flanagan and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                   THE COMPLETE WORKS
+
+                           OF
+
+                       JOHN RUSKIN
+
+                       VOLUME XXIV
+
+
+
+                 OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US
+
+          STORM-CLOUD OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
+
+                      HORTUS INCLUSUS
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+                THE STORM-CLOUD OF THE
+                  NINETEENTH CENTURY.
+
+                     TWO LECTURES
+
+          DELIVERED AT THE LONDON INSTITUTION
+
+             FEBRUARY 4TH AND 11TH, 1884.
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+                                                  PAGE
+
+PREFACE                                            iii
+
+LECTURE I. (FEBRUARY 4)                              1
+
+LECTURE II. (FEBRUARY 11)                           31
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The following lectures, drawn up under the pressure of more
+imperative and quite otherwise directed work, contain many passages
+which stand in need of support, and some, I do not doubt, more or
+less of correction, which I always prefer to receive openly from
+the better knowledge of friends, after setting down my own
+impressions of the matter in clearness as far as they reach, than
+to guard myself against by submitting my manuscript, before
+publication, to annotators whose stricture or suggestion I might
+often feel pain in refusing, yet hesitation in admitting.
+
+But though thus hastily, and to some extent incautiously, thrown
+into form, the statements in the text are founded on patient and,
+in all essential particulars, accurately recorded observations of
+the sky, during fifty years of a life of solitude and leisure; and
+in all they contain of what may seem to the reader questionable, or
+astonishing, are guardedly and absolutely true.
+
+In many of the reports given by the daily press, my assertion of
+radical change, during recent years, in weather aspect was scouted
+as imaginary, or insane. I am indeed, every day of my yet spared
+life, more and more grateful that my mind is capable of imaginative
+vision, and liable to the noble dangers of delusion which separate
+the speculative intellect of humanity from the dreamless instinct
+of brutes: but I have been able, during all active work, to use or
+refuse my power of contemplative imagination, with as easy command
+of it as a physicist's of his telescope: the times of morbid are
+just as easily distinguished by me from those of healthy vision, as
+by men of ordinary faculty, dream from waking; nor is there a
+single fact stated in the following pages which I have not
+verified with a chemist's analysis, and a geometer's precision.
+
+The first lecture is printed, with only addition here and there of
+an elucidatory word or phrase, precisely as it was given on the 4th
+February. In repeating it on the 11th, I amplified several
+passages, and substituted for the concluding one, which had been
+printed with accuracy in most of the leading journals, some
+observations which I thought calculated to be of more general
+interest. To these, with the additions in the first text, I have
+now prefixed a few explanatory notes, to which numeral references
+are given in the pages they explain, and have arranged the
+fragments in connection clear enough to allow of their being read
+with ease as a second Lecture.
+
+                         HERNE HILL, _12th March, 1884_.
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+THE STORM-CLOUD OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+THE STORM-CLOUD OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
+
+
+Let me first assure my audience that I have no _arriere pensee_ in
+the title chosen for this lecture. I might, indeed, have meant, and
+it would have been only too like me to mean, any number of things
+by such a title;--but, to-night, I mean simply what I have said,
+and propose to bring to your notice a series of cloud phenomena,
+which, so far as I can weigh existing evidence, are peculiar to our
+own times; yet which have not hitherto received any special notice
+or description from meteorologists.
+
+So far as the existing evidence, I say, of former literature can be
+interpreted, the storm-cloud--or more accurately plague-cloud, for
+it is not always stormy--which I am about to describe to you, never
+was seen but by now living, or _lately_ living eyes. It is not yet
+twenty years that this--I may well call it, wonderful, cloud has
+been, in its essence, recognizable. There is no description of it,
+so far as I have read, by any ancient observer. Neither Homer nor
+Virgil, neither Aristophanes nor Horace, acknowledge any such
+clouds among those compelled by Jove. Chaucer has no word of them,
+nor Dante;[1] Milton none, nor Thomson. In modern times, Scott,
+Wordsworth and Byron are alike unconscious of them; and the most
+observant and descriptive of scientific men, De Saussure, is
+utterly silent concerning them. Taking up the traditions of air
+from the year before Scott's death, I am able, by my own constant
+and close observation, to certify you that in the forty following
+years (1831 to 1871 approximately--for the phenomena in question
+came on gradually)--no such clouds as these are, and are now often
+for months without intermission, were ever seen in the skies of
+England, France, or Italy.
+
+In those old days, when weather was fine, it was luxuriously fine;
+when it was bad--it was often abominably bad, but it had its fit of
+temper and was done with it--it didn't sulk for three months
+without letting you see the sun,--nor send you one cyclone inside
+out, every Saturday afternoon, and another outside in, every Monday
+morning.
+
+In fine weather the sky was either blue or clear in its light; the
+clouds, either white or golden, adding to, not abating, the luster
+of the sky. In wet weather, there were two different species of
+clouds,--those of beneficent rain, which for distinction's sake I
+will call the non-electric rain-cloud, and those of storm, usually
+charged highly with electricity. The beneficent rain-cloud was
+indeed often extremely dull and gray for days together, but
+gracious nevertheless, felt to be doing good, and often to be
+delightful after drought; capable also of the most exquisite
+coloring, under certain conditions;[2] and continually traversed in
+clearing by the rainbow:--and, secondly, the storm-cloud, always
+majestic, often dazzlingly beautiful, and felt also to be
+beneficent in its own way, affecting the mass of the air with vital
+agitation, and purging it from the impurity of all morbific
+elements.
+
+In the entire system of the Firmament, thus seen and understood,
+there appeared to be, to all the thinkers of those ages, the
+incontrovertible and unmistakable evidence of a Divine Power in
+creation, which had fitted, as the air for human breath, so the
+clouds for human sight and nourishment;--the Father who was in
+heaven feeding day by day the souls of His children with marvels,
+and satisfying them with bread, and so filling their hearts with
+food and gladness.
+
+Their _hearts_, you will observe, it is said, not merely their
+bellies,--or indeed not at all, in this sense, their bellies--but
+the heart itself, with its blood for this life, and its faith for
+the next. The opposition between this idea and the notions of our
+own time may be more accurately expressed by modification of the
+Greek than of the English sentence. The old Greek is--
+
+          [Greek: empiplon trophes kai euphrosynes
+          tas kardias hemon.]
+
+filling with meat, and cheerfulness, our hearts. The modern Greek
+should be--
+
+          [Greek: empiplon anemou kai aphrosynes
+          tas gasteras hemon.]
+
+filling with wind, and foolishness, our stomachs.
+
+You will not think I waste your time in giving you two cardinal
+examples of the sort of evidence which the higher forms of
+literature furnish respecting the cloud-phenomena of former times.
+
+When, in the close of my lecture on landscape last year at Oxford,
+I spoke of stationary clouds as distinguished from passing ones,
+some blockheads wrote to the papers to say that clouds never were
+stationary. Those foolish letters were so far useful in causing a
+friend to write me the pretty one I am about to read to you,
+quoting a passage about clouds in Homer which I had myself never
+noticed, though perhaps the most beautiful of its kind in the
+Iliad. In the fifth book, after the truce is broken, and the
+aggressor Trojans are rushing to the onset in a tumult of clamor
+and charge, Homer says that the Greeks, abiding them "stood like
+clouds." My correspondent, giving the passage, writes as follows:--
+
+"SIR,--Last winter when I was at Ajaccio, I was one day reading
+Homer by the open window, and came upon the lines--
+
+          [Greek: All' emenon, nephelesin eoikotes has te Kronion
+          Nenemies estesen ep' akropoloisin oressin,
+          Atremas, ophr' heudesi menos Boreao kai allon
+          Zachreion anemon, hoite nephea skioenta
+          Pnoiesin lygyresi diaskidnasin aentes;
+          Hos Danaoi Troas menon empedon, oud' ephebonto.]
+
+
+'But they stood, like the clouds which the Son of Kronos stablishes
+in calm upon the mountains, motionless, when the rage of the North
+and of all the fiery winds is asleep.' As I finished these lines, I
+raised my eyes, and looking across the gulf, saw a long line of
+clouds resting on the top of its hills. The day was windless, and
+there they stayed, hour after hour, without any stir or motion. I
+remember how I was delighted at the time, and have often since that
+day thought on the beauty and the truthfulness of Homer's simile.
+
+"Perhaps this little fact may interest you, at a time when you are
+attacked for your description of clouds.
+
+                         "I am, sir, yours faithfully,
+                                      G. B. HILL."
+
+With this bit of noonday from Homer, I will read you a sunset and a
+sunrise from Byron. That will enough express to you the scope and
+sweep of all glorious literature, from the orient of Greece herself
+to the death of the last Englishman who loved her.[3] I will read
+you from 'Sardanapalus' the address of the Chaldean priest Beleses
+to the sunset, and of the Greek slave, Myrrha, to the morning.
+
+    "The sun goes down: methinks he sets more slowly,
+     Taking his last look of Assyria's empire.
+     How red he glares amongst those deepening clouds,[4]
+     Like the blood he predicts.[5] If not in vain,
+     Thou sun that sinkest, and ye stars which rise,
+     I have outwatch'd ye, reading ray by ray
+     The edicts of your orbs, which make Time tremble
+     For what he brings the nations, 't is the furthest
+     Hour of Assyria's years. And yet how calm!
+     An earthquake should announce so great a fall--
+     A summer's sun discloses it. Yon disk
+     To the star-read Chaldean, bears upon
+     Its everlasting page the end of what
+     Seem'd everlasting; but oh! thou TRUE sun!
+     _The burning oracle of all that live_,
+     _As fountain of all life_, and _symbol of
+     Him who bestows it_, wherefore dost thou limit
+     Thy lore unto calamity?[6] Why not
+     Unfold the rise of days more worthy thine
+     All-glorious burst from ocean? why not dart
+     A beam of hope athwart the future years,
+     As of wrath to its days? Hear me! oh, hear me!
+     I am thy worshiper, thy priest, thy servant--
+     I have gazed on thee at thy rise and fall,
+     And bow'd my head beneath thy mid-day beams,
+     When my eye dared not meet thee. I have watch'd
+     For thee, and after thee, and pray'd to thee,
+     And sacrificed to thee, and read, and fear'd thee,
+     And ask'd of thee, and thou hast answer'd--but
+     Only to thus much. While I speak, he sinks--
+     Is gone--and leaves his beauty, not his knowledge,
+     To the delighted west, which revels in
+     Its hues of dying glory. Yet what is
+     Death, so it be but glorious? 'T is a sunset;
+     And mortals may be happy to resemble
+     The gods but in decay."
+
+Thus the Chaldean priest, to the brightness of the setting sun.
+Hear now the Greek girl, Myrrha, of his rising.
+
+    "The day at last has broken. What a night
+     Hath usher'd it! How beautiful in heaven!
+     Though varied with a transitory storm,
+     More beautiful in that variety:[7]
+     How hideous upon earth! where peace, and hope,
+     And love, and revel, in an hour were trampled
+     By human passions to a human chaos,
+     Not yet resolved to separate elements:--
+     'T is warring still! And can the sun so rise,
+     So bright, so rolling back the clouds into
+     _Vapors more lovely than the unclouded sky_,
+     With golden pinnacles, and snowy mountains,
+     And billows purpler than the ocean's, making
+     In heaven a glorious mockery of the earth,
+     So like,--we almost deem it permanent;
+     So fleeting,--we can scarcely call it aught
+     Beyond a vision, 't is so transiently
+     Scatter'd along the eternal vault: and yet
+     It dwells upon the soul, and soothes the soul,
+     And blends itself into the soul, until
+     Sunrise and sunset form the haunted epoch
+     Of sorrow and of love."
+
+How often _now_--young maids of London,--do you make _sunrise_ the
+'haunted epoch' of either?
+
+Thus much, then, of the skies that used to be, and clouds "more
+lovely than the unclouded sky," and of the temper of their
+observers. I pass to the account of clouds that _are_, and--I say
+it with sorrow--of the _dis_temper of _their_ observers.
+
+But the general division which I have instituted between
+bad-weather and fair-weather clouds must be more carefully carried
+out in the sub-species, before we can reason of it farther: and
+before we begin talk either of the sub-genera and sub-species, or
+super-genera and super-species of cloud, perhaps we had better
+define what _every_ cloud is, and must be, to begin with.
+
+Every cloud that can be, is thus primarily definable: "Visible
+vapor of water floating at a certain height in the air." The second
+clause of this definition, you see, at once implies that there is
+such a thing as visible vapor of water which does _not_ float at a
+certain height in the air. You are all familiar with one extremely
+cognizable variety of that sort of vapor--London Particular; but
+that especial blessing of metropolitan society is only a
+strongly-developed and highly-seasoned condition of a form of
+watery vapor which exists just as generally and widely at the
+bottom of the air, as the clouds do--on what, for convenience'
+sake, we may call the top of it;--only as yet, thanks to the
+sagacity of scientific men, we have got no general name for the
+bottom cloud, though the whole question of cloud nature begins in
+this broad fact, that you have one kind of vapor that lies to a
+certain depth on the ground, and another that floats at a certain
+height in the sky. Perfectly definite, in both cases, the surface
+level of the earthly vapor, and the roof level of the heavenly
+vapor, are each of them drawn within the depth of a fathom. Under
+_their_ line, drawn for the day and for the hour, the clouds will
+not stoop, and above _theirs,_ the mists will not rise. Each in
+their own region, high or deep, may expatiate at their pleasure;
+within that, they climb, or decline,--within that they congeal or
+melt away; but below their assigned horizon the surges of the cloud
+sea may not sink, and the floods of the mist lagoon may not be
+swollen.
+
+That is the first idea you have to get well into your minds
+concerning the abodes of this visible vapor; next, you have to
+consider the manner of its visibility. Is it, you have to ask, with
+cloud vapor, as with most other things, that they are seen when
+they are there, and not seen when they are not there? or has cloud
+vapor so much of the ghost in it, that it can be visible or
+invisible as it likes, and may perhaps be all unpleasantly and
+malignantly there, just as much when we don't see it, as when we
+do? To which I answer, comfortably and generally, that, on the
+whole, a cloud is where you see it, and isn't where you don't;
+that, when there's an evident and honest thundercloud in the
+northeast, you needn't suppose there's a surreptitious and slinking
+one in the northwest;--when there's a visible fog at Bermondsey, it
+doesn't follow there's a spiritual one, more than usual, at the
+West End: and when you get up to the clouds, and can walk into them
+or out of them, as you like, you find when you're in them they wet
+your whiskers, or take out your curls, and when you're out of them,
+they don't; and therefore you may with probability assume--not with
+certainty, observe, but with probability--that there's more water
+in the air where it damps your curls than where it doesn't. If it
+gets much denser than that, it will begin to rain; and then you
+may assert, certainly with safety, that there is a shower in one
+place, and not in another; and not allow the scientific people to
+tell you that the rain is everywhere, but palpable in Tooley
+Street, and impalpable in Grosvenor Square.
+
+That, I say, is broadly and comfortably so on the whole,--and yet
+with this kind of qualification and farther condition in the
+matter. If you watch the steam coming strongly out of an
+engine-funnel,[8]--at the top of the funnel it is transparent,--you
+can't see it, though it is more densely and intensely there
+than anywhere else. Six inches out of the funnel it becomes
+snow-white,--you see it, and you see it, observe, exactly where it
+is,--it is then a real and proper cloud. Twenty yards off the
+funnel it scatters and melts away; a little of it sprinkles you
+with rain if you are underneath it, but the rest disappears; yet it
+is still there;--the surrounding air does not absorb it all into
+space in a moment; there is a gradually diffusing current of
+invisible moisture at the end of the visible stream--an invisible,
+yet quite substantial, vapor; but not, according to our definition,
+a cloud, for a cloud is vapor _visible_.
+
+Then the next bit of the question, of course, is, What makes the
+vapor visible, when it is so? Why is the compressed steam
+transparent, the loose steam white, the dissolved steam transparent
+again?
+
+The scientific people tell you that the vapor becomes visible, and
+chilled, as it expands. Many thanks to them; but can they show us
+any reason why particles of water should be more opaque when they
+are separated than when they are close together, or give us any
+idea of the difference of the state of a particle of water, which
+won't _sink_ in the air, from that of one that won't _rise_ in
+it?[9]
+
+And here I must parenthetically give you a little word of, I will
+venture to say, extremely useful, advice about scientific people in
+general. Their first business is, of course, to tell you things
+that are so, and do happen,--as that, if you warm water, it will
+boil; if you cool it, it will freeze; and if you put a candle to a
+cask of gunpowder, it will blow you up. Their second, and far more
+important business, is to tell you what you had best do under the
+circumstances,--put the kettle on in time for tea; powder your ice
+and salt, if you have a mind for ices; and obviate the chance of
+explosion by not making the gunpowder. But if, beyond this safe and
+beneficial business, they ever try to _explain_ anything to you,
+you may be confident of one of two things,--either that they know
+nothing (to speak of) about it, or that they have only seen one
+side of it--and not only haven't seen, but usually have no mind to
+see, the other. When, for instance, Professor Tyndall explains the
+twisted beds of the Jungfrau to you by intimating that the
+Matterhorn is growing flat;[10] or the clouds on the lee side of
+the Matterhorn by the wind's rubbing against the windward side of
+it,[11]--you may be pretty sure the scientific people don't know
+much (to speak of) yet, either about rock-beds, or cloud-beds. And
+even if the explanation, so to call it, be sound on one side,
+windward or lee, you may, as I said, be nearly certain it won't do
+on the other. Take the very top and center of scientific
+interpretation by the greatest of its masters: Newton explained to
+you--or at least was once supposed to have explained--why an apple
+fell; but he never thought of explaining the exactly correlative,
+but infinitely more difficult question, how the apple got up there!
+
+You will not, therefore, so please you, expect me to explain
+anything to you,--I have come solely and simply to put before you a
+few facts, which you can't see by candlelight, or in railroad
+tunnels, but which are making themselves now so very distinctly
+felt as well as seen, that you may perhaps have to roof, if not
+wall, half London afresh before we are many years older.
+
+I go back to my point--the way in which clouds, as a matter of
+fact, become visible. I have defined the floating or sky cloud, and
+defined the falling, or earth cloud. But there's a sort of thing
+between the two, which needs a third definition: namely, Mist. In
+the 22d page of his 'Glaciers of the Alps,' Professor Tyndall says
+that "the marvelous blueness of the sky in the earlier part of the
+day indicated that the air was charged, almost to saturation, with
+transparent aqueous vapor." Well, in certain weather that is true.
+You all know the peculiar clearness which precedes rain,--when the
+distant hills are looking nigh. I take it on trust from the
+scientific people that there is then a quantity--almost to
+saturation--of aqueous vapor in the air, but it is aqueous vapor in
+a state which makes the air more transparent than it would be
+without it. What state of aqueous molecule is that, absolutely
+unreflective[12] of light--perfectly transmissive of light, and
+showing at once the color of blue water and blue air on the distant
+hills?
+
+I put the question--and pass round to the other side. Such a
+clearness, though a certain forerunner of rain, is not always its
+forerunner. Far the contrary. Thick air is a much more frequent
+forerunner of rain than clear air. In cool weather, you will often
+get the transparent prophecy: but in hot weather, or in certain not
+hitherto defined states of atmosphere, the forerunner of rain is
+mist. In a general way, after you have had two or three days of
+rain, the air and sky are healthily clear, and the sun bright. If
+it is hot also, the next day is a little mistier--the next misty
+and sultry,--and the next and the next, getting thicker and
+thicker--end in another storm, or period of rain.
+
+I suppose the thick air, as well as the transparent, is in both
+cases saturated with aqueous vapor;--but also in both, observe,
+vapor that floats everywhere, as if you mixed mud with the sea; and
+it takes no shape anywhere: you may have it with calm, or with
+wind, it makes no difference to it. You have a nasty haze with a
+bitter east wind, or a nasty haze with not a leaf stirring, and you
+may have the clear blue vapor with a fresh rainy breeze, or the
+clear blue vapor as still as the sky above. What difference is
+there between _these_ aqueous molecules that are clear, and those
+that are muddy, _these_ that must sink or rise, and those that must
+stay where they are, _these_ that have form and stature, that are
+bellied like whales and backed like weasels, and those that have
+neither backs nor fronts, nor feet nor faces, but are a mist--and
+no more--over two or three thousand square miles?
+
+I again leave the questions with you, and pass on.
+
+Hitherto I have spoken of all aqueous vapor as if it were either
+transparent or white--visible by becoming opaque like snow, but not
+by any accession of color. But even those of us who are least
+observant of skies, know that, irrespective of all supervening
+colors from the sun, there are white clouds, brown clouds, gray
+clouds, and black clouds. Are these indeed--what they appear to
+be--entirely distinct monastic disciplines of cloud: Black Friars,
+and White Friars, and Friars of Orders Gray? Or is it only their
+various nearness to us, their denseness, and the failing of the
+light upon them, that makes some clouds look black[13] and others
+snowy?
+
+I can only give you qualified and cautious answer. There are, by
+differences in their own character, Dominican clouds, and there are
+Franciscan;--there are the Black Hussars of the Bandiera della
+Morte, and there are the Scots Grays whose horses can run upon the
+rock. But if you ask me, as I would have you ask me, why argent and
+why sable, how baptized in white like a bride or a novice, and how
+hooded with blackness like a Judge of the Vehmgericht Tribunal,--I
+leave these questions with you, and pass on.
+
+Admitting degrees of darkness, we have next to ask what color, from
+sunshine can the white cloud receive, and what the black?
+
+You won't expect me to tell you all that, or even the little that
+is accurately known about that, in a quarter of an hour; yet note
+these main facts on the matter.
+
+On any pure white, and practically opaque, cloud, or thing like a
+cloud, as an Alp, or Milan Cathedral, you can have cast by rising
+or setting sunlight, any tints of amber, orange, or moderately deep
+rose--you can't have lemon yellows, or any kind of green except in
+negative hue by opposition; and though by stormlight you may
+sometimes get the reds cast very deep, beyond a certain limit you
+cannot go,--the Alps are never vermilion color, nor flamingo
+color, nor canary color; nor did you ever see a full scarlet
+cumulus of thundercloud.
+
+On opaque white vapor, then, remember, you can get a glow or a
+blush of color, never a flame of it.
+
+But when the cloud is transparent as well as pure, and can be
+filled with light through all the body of it, you then can have by
+the light reflected[14] from its atoms any force conceivable by
+human mind of the entire group of the golden and ruby colors, from
+intensely burnished gold color, through a scarlet for whose
+brightness there are no words, into any depth and any hue of Tyrian
+crimson and Byzantine purple. These with full blue breathed between
+them at the zenith, and green blue nearer the horizon, form the
+scales and chords of color possible to the morning and evening sky
+in pure and fine weather; the keynote of the opposition being
+vermilion against green blue, both of equal tone, and at such a
+height and acme of brilliancy that you cannot see the line where
+their edges pass into each other.
+
+No colors that can be fixed in earth can ever represent to you the
+luster of these cloudy ones. But the actual tints may be shown you
+in a lower key, and to a certain extent their power and relation to
+each other.
+
+I have painted the diagram here shown you with colors prepared for
+me lately by Messrs. Newman, which I find brilliant to the height
+that pigments can be; and the ready kindness of Mr. Wilson Barrett
+enables me to show you their effect by a white light as pure as
+that of the day. The diagram is enlarged from my careful sketch of
+the sunset of 1st October, 1868, at Abbeville, which was a
+beautiful example of what, in fine weather about to pass into
+storm, a sunset could then be, in the districts of Kent and Picardy
+unaffected by smoke. In reality, the ruby and vermilion clouds
+were, by myriads, more numerous than I have had time to paint: but
+the general character of their grouping is well enough expressed.
+All the illumined clouds are high in the air, and nearly
+motionless; beneath them, electric storm-cloud rises in a
+threatening cumulus on the right, and drifts in dark flakes across
+the horizon, casting from its broken masses radiating shadows on
+the upper clouds. These shadows are traced, in the first place by
+making the misty blue of the open sky more transparent, and
+therefore darker; and secondly, by entirely intercepting the
+sunbeams on the bars of cloud, which, within the shadowed spaces,
+show dark on the blue instead of light.
+
+But, mind, all that is done by reflected light--and in that light
+you never get a _green_ ray from the reflecting cloud; there is no
+such thing in nature as a green lighted cloud relieved from a red
+sky,--the cloud is always red, and the sky green, and green,
+observe, by transmitted, not reflected light.
+
+But now note, there is another kind of cloud, pure white, and
+exquisitely delicate; which acts not by reflecting, nor by
+refracting, but, as it is now called, _dif_fracting, the sun's
+rays. The particles of this cloud are said--with what truth I know
+not[15]--to send the sunbeams round them instead of through them;
+somehow or other, at any rate, they resolve them into their
+prismatic elements; and then you have literally a kaleidoscope in
+the sky, with every color of the prism in absolute purity; but
+above all in force, now, the ruby red and the _green_,--with
+purple, and violet-blue, in a virtual equality, more definite than
+that of the rainbow. The red in the rainbow is mostly brick red,
+the violet, though beautiful, often lost at the edge; but in the
+prismatic cloud the violet, the green, and the ruby are all more
+lovely than in any precious stones, and they are varied as in a
+bird's breast, changing their places, depths, and extent at every
+instant.
+
+The main cause of this change being, that the prismatic cloud
+itself is always in rapid, and generally in fluctuating motion. "A
+light veil of clouds had drawn itself," says Professor Tyndall, in
+describing his solitary ascent of Monte Rosa, "between me and the
+sun, and this was flooded with the most brilliant dyes. Orange,
+red, green, blue--all the hues produced by diffraction--were
+exhibited in the utmost splendor.
+
+"Three times during my ascent (the short ascent of the last peak)
+similar veils drew themselves across the sun, and at each passage
+the splendid phenomena were renewed. There seemed a tendency to
+form circular zones of color round the sun; but the clouds were not
+sufficiently uniform to permit of this, and they were consequently
+broken into spaces, each steeped with the color due to the
+condition of the cloud at the place."
+
+Three times, you observe, the veil passed, and three times another
+came, or the first faded and another formed; and so it is always,
+as far as I have registered prismatic cloud: and the most beautiful
+colors I ever saw were on those that flew fastest.
+
+This second diagram is enlarged admirably by Mr. Arthur Severn from
+my sketch of the sky in the afternoon of the 6th of August, 1880,
+at Brantwood, two hours before sunset. You are looking west by
+north, straight towards the sun, and nearly straight towards the
+wind. From the west the wind blows fiercely towards you out of the
+blue sky. Under the blue space is a flattened dome of earth-cloud
+clinging to, and altogether masking the form of, the mountain,
+known as the Old Man of Coniston.
+
+The top of that dome of cloud is two thousand eight hundred feet
+above the sea, the mountain two thousand six hundred, the cloud
+lying two hundred feet deep on it. Behind it, westward and seaward,
+all's clear; but when the wind out of that blue clearness comes
+over the ridge of the earth-cloud, at that moment and that line, its
+own moisture congeals into these white--I believe, _ice_-clouds;
+threads, and meshes, and tresses, and tapestries, flying, failing,
+melting, reappearing; spinning and unspinning themselves, coiling and
+uncoiling, winding and unwinding, faster than eye or thought can
+follow: and through all their dazzling maze of frosty filaments shines
+a painted window in palpitation; its pulses of color interwoven in
+motion, intermittent in fire,--emerald and ruby and pale purple and
+violet melting into a blue that is not of the sky, but of the
+sunbeam;--purer than the crystal, softer than the rainbow, and
+brighter than the snow.
+
+But you must please here observe that while my first diagram did
+with some adequateness represent to you the color facts there
+spoken of, the present diagram can only _explain_, not reproduce
+them. The bright reflected colors of clouds _can_ be represented in
+painting, because they are relieved against darker colors, or, in
+many cases, _are_ dark colors, the vermilion and ruby clouds being
+often much darker than the green or blue sky beyond them. But in
+the case of the phenomena now under your attention, the colors are
+all _brighter than pure white_,--the entire body of the cloud in
+which they show themselves being white by transmitted light, so
+that I can only show you what the colors are, and where they
+are,--but leaving them dark on the white ground. Only artificial,
+and very high illumination would give the real effect of
+them,--painting cannot.
+
+Enough, however, is here done to fix in your minds the distinction
+between those two species of cloud,--one, either stationary,[16] or
+slow in motion, _reflecting unresolved_ light; the other,
+fast-flying, and _transmitting resolved_ light. What difference is
+there in the nature of the atoms, between those two kinds of
+clouds? I leave the question with you for to-day, merely hinting to
+you my suspicion that the prismatic cloud is of finely-comminuted
+water, or ice,[17] instead of aqueous vapor; but the only clue I
+have to this idea is in the purity of the rainbow formed in frost
+mist, lying close to water surfaces. Such mist, however, only
+becomes prismatic as common rain does, when the sun is behind the
+spectator, while prismatic clouds are, on the contrary, always
+between the spectator and the sun.
+
+The main reason, however, why I can tell you nothing yet about
+these colors of diffraction or interference, is that, whenever I
+try to find anything firm for you to depend on, I am stopped by the
+quite frightful inaccuracy of the scientific people's terms, which
+is the consequence of their always trying to write mixed Latin and
+English, so losing the grace of the one and the sense of the other.
+And, in this point of the diffraction of light I am stopped dead by
+their confusion of idea also, in using the words undulation and
+vibration as synonyms. "When," says Professor Tyndall, "you are
+told that the atoms of the sun _vibrate_ at different rates, and
+produce _waves_ of different sizes,--your experience of water-waves
+will enable you to form a tolerably clear notion of what is meant."
+
+'Tolerably clear'!--your toleration must be considerable, then. Do
+you suppose a water-wave is like a harp-string? Vibration is the
+movement of a body in a state of tension,--undulation, that of a
+body absolutely lax. In vibration, not an atom of the body changes
+its place in relation to another,--in undulation, not an atom of
+the body remains in the same place with regard to another. In
+vibration, every particle of the body ignores gravitation, or
+defies it,--in undulation, every particle of the body is slavishly
+submitted to it. In undulation, not one wave is like another; in
+vibration, every pulse is alike. And of undulation itself, there
+are all manner of visible conditions, which are not true
+conditions. A flag ripples in the wind, but it does not undulate as
+the sea does,--for in the sea, the water is taken from the trough
+to put on to the ridge, but in the flag, though the motion is
+progressive, the bits of bunting keep their place. You see a field
+of corn undulating as if it was water,--it is different from the
+flag, for the ears of corn bow out of their places and return to
+them,--and yet, it is no more like the undulation of the sea, than
+the shaking of an aspen leaf in a storm, or the lowering of the
+lances in a battle.
+
+And the best of the jest is, that after mixing up these two notions
+in their heads inextricably, the scientific people apply both when
+neither will fit; and when all undulation known to us presumes
+weight, and all vibration, impact,--the undulating theory of light
+is proposed to you concerning a medium which you can neither weigh
+nor touch!
+
+All _communicable_ vibration--of course I mean--and in dead matter:
+_You_ may fall a shivering on your own account, if you like, but
+you can't get a billiard-ball to fall a shivering on _its_ own
+account.[18]
+
+Yet observe that in thus signalizing the inaccuracy of the terms in
+which they are taught, I neither accept, nor assail, the
+conclusions respecting the oscillatory states of light, heat, and
+sound, which have resulted from the postulate of an elastic, though
+impalpable and imponderable ether, possessing the elasticity of
+air. This only I desire you to mark with attention,--that both
+light and sound are _sensations_ of the animal frame, which remain,
+and must remain, wholly inexplicable, whatever manner of force,
+pulse, or palpitation may be instrumental in producing them: nor
+does any such force _become_ light or sound, except in its
+rencontre with an animal. The leaf hears no murmur in the wind to
+which it wavers on the branches, nor can the clay discern the
+vibration by which it is thrilled into a ruby. The Eye and the Ear
+are the creators alike of the ray and the tone; and the conclusion
+follows logically from the right conception of their living
+power,--"He that planted the Ear, shall He not hear? He that formed
+the Eye, shall not He see?"
+
+For security, therefore, and simplicity of definition of light, you
+will find no possibility of advancing beyond Plato's "the power
+that through the eye manifests color," but on that definition, you
+will find, alike by Plato and all great subsequent thinkers, a
+_moral_ Science of Light founded, far and away more important to
+you than all the physical laws ever learned by vitreous revelation.
+Concerning which I will refer you to the sixth lecture which I gave
+at Oxford in 1872, on the relation of Art to the Science of Light
+('The Eagle's Nest'), reading now only the sentence introducing its
+subject:--"The 'Fiat lux' of creation is therefore, in the deep
+sense, 'fiat anima,' and is as much, when you understand it, the
+ordering of Intelligence as the ordering of Vision. It is the
+appointment of change of what had been else only a mechanical
+effluence from things unseen to things unseeing,--from Stars, that
+did not shine, to Earth, that did not perceive,--the change, I say,
+of that blind vibration into the glory of the Sun and Moon for
+human eyes: so making possible the communication out of the
+unfathomable truth of that portion of truth which is good for us,
+and animating to us, and is set to rule over the day and over the
+night of our joy and our sorrow."
+
+Returning now to our subject at the point from which I permitted
+myself, I trust not without your pardon, to diverge; you may
+incidentally, but carefully, observe, that the effect of such a sky
+as that represented in the second diagram, so far as it can be
+abstracted or conveyed by painting at all, implies the total
+absence of any pervading warmth of tint, such as artists usually
+call 'tone.' Every tint must be the purest possible, and above all
+the white. Partly, lest you should think, from my treatment of
+these two phases of effect, that I am insensible to the quality of
+tone,--and partly to complete the representation of states of
+weather undefiled by plague-cloud, yet capable of the most solemn
+dignity in saddening color, I show you, Diagram 3, the record of an
+autumn twilight of the year 1845,--sketched while I was changing
+horses between Verona and Brescia. The distant sky in this drawing
+is in the glowing calm which is always taken by the great Italian
+painters for the background of their sacred pictures; a broad field
+of cloud is advancing upon it overhead, and meeting others
+enlarging in the distance; these are rain-clouds, which will
+certainly close over the clear sky, and bring on rain before
+midnight: but there is no power in them to pollute the sky beyond
+and above them: they do not darken the air, nor defile it, nor in
+any way mingle with it; their edges are burnished by the sun like
+the edges of golden shields, and their advancing march is as
+deliberate and majestic as the fading of the twilight itself into a
+darkness full of stars.
+
+These three instances are all I have time to give of the former
+conditions of serene weather, and of non-electric rain-cloud. But I
+must yet, to complete the sequence of my subject, show you one
+example of a good, old-fashioned, healthy, and mighty, storm.
+
+In Diagram 4, Mr. Severn has beautifully enlarged my sketch of a
+July thundercloud of the year 1858, on the Alps of the Val
+d'Aosta, seen from Turin, that is to say, some twenty-five or
+thirty miles distant. You see that no mistake is possible here
+about what is good weather and what bad, or which is cloud and
+which is sky; but I show you this sketch especially to give you the
+scale of heights for such clouds in the atmosphere. These thunder
+cumuli entirely _hide_ the higher Alps. It does not, however,
+follow that they have buried them, for most of their own aspect of
+height is owing to the approach of their nearer masses; but at all
+events, you have cumulus there rising from its base, at about three
+thousand feet above the plain, to a good ten thousand in the air.
+
+White cirri, in reality parallel, but by perspective radiating,
+catch the sunshine above, at a height of from fifteen to twenty
+thousand feet; but the storm on the mountains gathers itself into a
+full mile's depth of massy cloud, every fold of it involved with
+thunder, but every form of it, every action, every color,
+magnificent:--doing its mighty work in its own hour and its own
+dominion, nor snatching from you for an instant, nor defiling with
+a stain, the abiding blue of the transcendent sky, or the fretted
+silver of its passionless clouds.
+
+We so rarely now see cumulus cloud of this grand kind, that I will
+yet delay you by reading the description of its nearer aspect, in
+the 'Eagle's Nest.'
+
+"The rain which flooded our fields the Sunday before last, was
+followed, as you will remember, by bright days, of which Tuesday
+the 20th (February, 1872) was, in London, notable for the splendor,
+towards the afternoon, of its white cumulus clouds. There has been
+so much black east wind lately, and so much fog and artificial
+gloom, besides, that I find it is actually some two years since I
+last saw a noble cumulus cloud under full light. I chanced to be
+standing under the Victoria Tower at Westminster, when the largest
+mass of them floated past, that day, from the northwest; and I was
+more impressed than ever yet by the awfulness of the cloud-form,
+and its unaccountableness, in the present state of our knowledge.
+The Victoria Tower, seen against it, had no magnitude: it was like
+looking at Mont Blanc over a lamp-post. The domes of cloud-snow
+were heaped as definitely: their broken flanks were as gray and
+firm as rocks, and the whole mountain, of a compass and height in
+heaven which only became more and more inconceivable as the eye
+strove to ascend it, was passing behind the tower with a steady
+march, whose swiftness must in reality have been that of a tempest:
+yet, along all the ravines of vapor, precipice kept pace with
+precipice, and not one thrust another.
+
+"What is it that hews them out? Why is the blue sky pure
+there,--the cloud solid here; and edged like marble: and why does
+the state of the blue sky pass into the state of cloud, in that
+calm advance?
+
+"It is true that you can more or less imitate the forms of cloud
+with explosive vapor or steam; but the steam melts instantly, and
+the explosive vapor dissipates itself. The cloud, of perfect form,
+proceeds unchanged. It is not an explosion, but an enduring and
+advancing presence. The more you think of it, the less explicable
+it will become to you."
+
+Thus far then of clouds that were once familiar; now at last,
+entering on my immediate subject, I shall best introduce it to you
+by reading an entry in my diary which gives progressive description
+of the most gentle aspect of the modern plague-cloud.
+
+                                   "_Bolton Abbey, 4th July, 1875._
+
+Half-past eight, morning; the first bright morning for the last
+fortnight.
+
+At half-past five it was entirely clear, and entirely calm; the
+moorlands glowing, and the Wharfe glittering in sacred light, and
+even the thin-stemmed field-flowers quiet as stars, in the peace in
+which--
+
+    'All trees and simples, great and small,
+       That balmy leaf do bear,
+     Than they were painted on a wall,
+       No more do move, nor steir.'
+
+
+But, an hour ago, the leaves at my window first shook slightly.
+They are now trembling _continuously_, as those of all the trees,
+under a gradually rising wind, of which the tremulous action
+scarcely permits the direction to be defined,--but which falls and
+returns in fits of varying force, like those which precede a
+thunderstorm--never wholly ceasing: the direction of its upper
+current is shown by a few ragged white clouds, moving fast from the
+north, which rose, at the time of the first leaf-shaking, behind
+the edge of the moors in the east.
+
+This wind is the plague-wind of the eighth decade of years in the
+nineteenth century; a period which will assuredly be recognized in
+future meteorological history as one of phenomena hitherto unrecorded
+in the courses of nature, and characterized pre-eminently by the
+almost ceaseless action of this calamitous wind. While I have been
+writing these sentences, the white clouds above specified have
+increased to twice the size they had when I began to write; and in
+about two hours from this time--say by eleven o'clock, if the wind
+continue,--the whole sky will be dark with them, as it was yesterday,
+and has been through prolonged periods during the last five years. I
+first noticed the definite character of this wind, and of the clouds
+it brings with it, in the year 1871, describing it then in the July
+number of 'Fors Clavigera'; but little, at that time, apprehending
+either its universality, or any probability of its annual continuance.
+I am able now to state positively that its range of power extends from
+the North of England to Sicily; and that it blows more or less during
+the whole of the year, except the early autumn. This autumnal
+abdication is, I hope, beginning: it blew but feebly yesterday, though
+without intermission, from the north, making every shady place cold,
+while the sun was burning; its effect on the sky being only to dim the
+blue of it between masses of ragged cumulus. To-day it has entirely
+fallen; and there seems hope of bright weather, the first for me since
+the end of May, when I had two fine days at Aylesbury; the third,
+May 28th, being black again from morning to evening. There seems to be
+some reference to the blackness caused by the prevalence of this wind
+in the old French name of Bise, '_gray_ wind'; and, indeed, one of the
+darkest and bitterest days of it I ever saw was at Vevay in 1872."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first time I recognized the clouds brought by the plague-wind
+as distinct in character was in walking back from Oxford, after a
+hard day's work, to Abingdon, in the early spring of 1871: it would
+take too long to give you any account this evening of the
+particulars which drew my attention to them; but during the
+following months I had too frequent opportunities of verifying my
+first thoughts of them, and on the first of July in that year wrote
+the description of them which begins the 'Fors Clavigera' of
+August, thus:--
+
+"It is the first of July, and I sit down to write by the dismalest
+light that ever yet I wrote by; namely, the light of this midsummer
+morning, in mid-England, (Matlock, Derbyshire), in the year 1871.
+
+"For the sky is covered with gray cloud;--not rain-cloud, but a dry
+black veil, which no ray of sunshine can pierce; partly diffused in
+mist, feeble mist, enough to make distant objects unintelligible,
+yet without any substance, or wreathing, or color of its own. And
+everywhere the leaves of the trees are shaking fitfully, as they do
+before a thunder-storm; only not violently, but enough to show the
+passing to and fro of a strange, bitter, blighting wind. Dismal
+enough, had it been the first morning of its kind that summer had
+sent. But during all this spring, in London, and at Oxford, through
+meager March, through changelessly sullen April, through
+despondent May, and darkened June, morning after morning has
+come gray-shrouded thus.
+
+"And it is a new thing to me, and a very dreadful one. I am fifty
+years old, and more; and since I was five, have gleaned the best
+hours of my life in the sun of spring and summer mornings; and I
+never saw such as these, till now.
+
+"And the scientific men are busy as ants, examining the sun, and
+the moon, and the seven stars, and can tell me all about _them_, I
+believe, by this time; and how they move, and what they are made
+of.
+
+"And I do not care, for my part, two copper spangles how they move,
+nor what they are made of. I can't move them any other way than
+they go, nor make them of anything else, better than they are made.
+But I would care much and give much, if I could be told where this
+bitter wind comes from, and what _it_ is made of.
+
+"For, perhaps, with forethought, and fine laboratory science, one
+might make it of something else.
+
+"It looks partly as if it were made of poisonous smoke; very
+possibly it may be: there are at least two hundred furnace chimneys
+in a square of two miles on every side of me. But mere smoke would
+not blow to and fro in that wild way. It looks more to me as if it
+were made of dead men's souls--such of them as are not gone yet
+where they have to go, and may be flitting hither and thither,
+doubting, themselves, of the fittest place for them.
+
+"You know, if there _are_ such things as souls, and if ever any of
+them haunt places where they have been hurt, there must be many
+about us, just now, displeased enough!"
+
+The last sentence refers of course to the battles of the
+Franco-German campaign, which was especially horrible to me, in its
+digging, as the Germans should have known, a moat flooded with
+waters of death between the two nations for a century to come.
+
+Since that Midsummer day, my attention, however otherwise occupied,
+has never relaxed in its record of the phenomena characteristic of
+the plague-wind; and I now define for you, as briefly as possible,
+the essential signs of it.
+
+1. It is a wind of darkness,--all the former conditions of
+tormenting winds, whether from the north or east were more or less
+capable of co-existing with sunlight, and often with steady and
+bright sunlight; but whenever, and wherever the plague-wind blows,
+be it but for ten minutes, the sky is darkened instantly.
+
+2. It is a malignant _quality_ of wind, unconnected with any one
+quarter of the compass; it blows indifferently from all, attaching
+its own bitterness and malice to the worst characters of the proper
+winds of each quarter. It will blow either with drenching rain, or
+dry rage, from the south,--with ruinous blasts from the west,--with
+bitterest chills from the north,--and with venomous blight from the
+east.
+
+Its own favorite quarter, however, is the southwest, so that it is
+distinguished in its malignity equally from the Bise of Provence,
+which is a north wind always, and from our own old friend, the
+east.
+
+3. It always blows _tremulously_, making the leaves of the trees
+shudder as if they were all aspens, but with a peculiar fitfulness
+which gives them--and I watch them this moment as I write--an
+expression of anger as well as of fear and distress. You may see
+the kind of quivering, and hear the ominous whimpering, in the
+gusts that precede a great thunderstorm; but plague-wind is more
+panic-struck, and feverish; and its sound is a hiss instead of a
+wail.
+
+When I was last at Avallon, in South France, I went to see 'Faust'
+played at the little country theater: it was done with scarcely any
+means of pictorial effect, except a few old curtains, and a blue
+light or two. But the night on the Brocken was nevertheless
+extremely appalling to me,--a strange ghastliness being obtained in
+some of the witch scenes merely by fine management of gesture and
+drapery; and in the phantom scenes, by the half-palsied,
+half-furious, faltering or fluttering past of phantoms stumbling as
+into graves; as if of not only soulless, but senseless, Dead,
+moving with the very action, the rage, the decrepitude, and the
+trembling of the plague-wind.
+
+4. Not only tremulous at every moment, it is also _intermittent_
+with a rapidity quite unexampled in former weather. There are,
+indeed, days--and weeks, on which it blows without cessation, and
+is as inevitable as the Gulf Stream; but also there are days when
+it is contending with healthy weather, and on such days it will
+remit for half an hour, and the sun will begin to show itself, and
+then the wind will come back and cover the whole sky with clouds
+in ten minutes; and so on, every half-hour, through the whole day;
+so that it is often impossible to go on with any kind of drawing in
+color, the light being never for two seconds the same from morning
+till evening.
+
+5. It degrades, while it intensifies, ordinary storm; but before I
+read you any description of its efforts in this kind, I must
+correct an impression which has got abroad through the papers, that
+I speak as if the plague-wind blew now always, and there were no
+more any natural weather. On the contrary, the winter of 1878-9 was
+one of the most healthy and lovely I ever saw ice in;--Coniston
+lake shone under the calm clear frost in one marble field, as
+strong as the floor of Milan Cathedral, half a mile across and four
+miles down; and the first entries in my diary which I read you
+shall be from the 22d to 26th June, 1876, of perfectly lovely and
+natural weather.
+
+                                   "_Sunday, 25th June, 1876._
+
+Yesterday, an entirely glorious sunset, unmatched in beauty since
+that at Abbeville,--deep scarlet, and purest rose, on purple gray,
+in bars; and stationary, plumy, sweeping filaments above in upper
+sky, like '_using up the brush_,' said Joanie; remaining in glory,
+every moment best, changing from one good into another, (but only
+in color or light--_form steady_,) for half an hour full, and the
+clouds afterwards fading into the gray against amber twilight,
+_stationary in the same form for about two hours_, at least. The
+darkening rose tint remained till half-past ten, the grand time
+being at nine.
+
+The day had been fine,--exquisite green light on afternoon hills.
+
+                                   _Monday, 26th June, 1876._
+
+Yesterday an entirely perfect summer light on the Old Man;
+Lancaster Bay all clear; Ingleborough and the great Pennine fault
+as on a map. Divine beauty of western color on thyme and
+rose,--then twilight of clearest _warm_ amber far into night, of
+_pale_ amber all night long; hills dark-clear against it.
+
+And so it continued, only growing more intense in blue and
+sunlight, all day. After breakfast, I came in from the well under
+strawberry bed, to say I had never seen anything like it, so pure
+or intense, in Italy; and so it went glowing on, cloudless, with
+soft north wind, all day.
+
+                                   _16th July._
+
+The sunset almost too bright _through the blinds_ for me to read
+Humboldt at tea by,--finally, new moon like a lime-light, reflected
+on breeze-struck water; traces, across dark calm, of reflected
+hills."
+
+These extracts are, I hope, enough to guard you against the
+absurdity of supposing that it all only means that I am myself
+soured, or doting, in my old age, and always in an ill humor.
+Depend upon it, when old men are worth anything, they are better
+humored than young ones; and have learned to see what good there
+is, and pleasantness, in the world they are likely so soon to have
+orders to quit.
+
+Now then--take the following sequences of accurate description of
+thunderstorm, _with_ plague-wind.
+
+                                   _"22d June, 1876._
+
+Thunderstorm; pitch dark, with no _blackness_,--but deep, high,
+_filthiness_ of lurid, yet not sublimely lurid, smoke-cloud; dense
+manufacturing mist; fearful squalls of shivery wind, making Mr.
+Severn's sail quiver like a man in a fever fit--all about four,
+afternoon--but only two or three claps of thunder, and feeble,
+though near, flashes. I never saw such a dirty, weak, foul storm.
+It cleared suddenly, after raining all afternoon, at half-past
+eight to nine, into pure, natural weather,--low rain-clouds on
+quite clear, green, wet hills.
+
+                                   _Brantwood, 13th August, 1879._
+
+The most terrific and horrible thunderstorm, this morning, I ever
+remember. It waked me at six, or a little before--then rolling
+incessantly, like railway luggage trains, quite ghastly in its
+mockery of them--the air one loathsome mass of sultry and foul fog,
+like smoke; scarcely raining at all, but increasing to heavier
+rollings, with flashes quivering vaguely through all the air, and
+at last terrific double streams of reddish-violet fire, not forked
+or zigzag, but rippled rivulets--two at the same instant some
+twenty to thirty degrees apart, and lasting on the eye at least
+half a second, with grand artillery-peals following; not rattling
+crashes, or irregular cracklings, but delivered volleys. It lasted
+an hour, then passed off, clearing a little, without rain to speak
+of,--not a glimpse of blue,--and now, half-past seven, seems
+settling down again into Manchester devil's darkness.
+
+Quarter to eight, morning.--Thunder returned, all the air collapsed
+into one black fog, the hills invisible, and scarcely visible the
+opposite shore; heavy rain in short fits, and frequent, though less
+formidable, flashes, and shorter thunder. While I have written this
+sentence the cloud has again dissolved itself, like a nasty
+solution in a bottle, with miraculous and unnatural rapidity, and
+the hills are in sight again; a double-forked flash--rippled, I
+mean, like the others--starts into its frightful ladder of light
+between me and Wetherlam, as I raise my eyes. All black above, a
+rugged spray cloud on the Eaglet. (The 'Eaglet' is my own name for
+the bold and elevated crag to the west of the little lake above
+Coniston mines. It had no name among the country people, and is one
+of the most conspicuous features of the mountain chain, as seen
+from Brantwood.)
+
+Half-past eight.--Three times light and three times dark since last
+I wrote, and the darkness seeming each time as it settles more
+loathsome, at last stopping my reading in mere blindness. One lurid
+gleam of white cumulus in upper lead-blue sky, seen for half a
+minute through the sulphurous chimney-pot vomit of blackguardly
+cloud beneath, where its rags were thinnest.
+
+                                   _Thursday, 22d Feb. 1883._
+
+Yesterday a fearfully dark mist all afternoon, with steady, south
+plague-wind of the bitterest, nastiest, poisonous blight, and
+fretful flutter. I could scarcely stay in the wood for the horror
+of it. To-day, really rather bright blue, and bright semi-cumuli,
+with the frantic Old Man blowing sheaves of lancets and chisels
+across the lake--not in strength enough, or whirl enough, to raise
+it in spray, but tracing every squall's outline in black on the
+silver gray waves, and whistling meanly, and as if on a flute made
+of a file.
+
+                                   _Sunday, 17th August, 1879._
+
+Raining in foul drizzle, slow and steady; sky pitch-dark, and I
+just get a little light by sitting in the bow-window; diabolic
+clouds over everything: and looking over my kitchen garden
+yesterday, I found it one miserable mass of weeds gone to seed, the
+roses in the higher garden putrefied into brown sponges, feeling
+like dead snails; and the half-ripe strawberries all rotten at the
+stalks."
+
+6. And now I come to the most important sign of the plague-wind and
+the plague-cloud: that in bringing on their peculiar darkness, they
+_blanch_ the sun instead of reddening it. And here I must note
+briefly to you the uselessness of observation by instruments, or
+machines, instead of eyes. In the first year when I had begun to
+notice the specialty of the plague-wind, I went of course to the
+Oxford observatory to consult its registrars. They have their
+anemometer always on the twirl, and can tell you the force, or at
+least the pace, of a gale,[19] by day or night. But the anemometer
+can only record for you how often it has been driven round, not at
+all whether it went round _steadily_, or went round _trembling_.
+And on that point depends the entire question whether it is a
+plague breeze or a healthy one: and what's the use of telling you
+whether the wind's strong or not, when it can't tell you whether
+it's a strong medicine, or a strong poison?
+
+But again--you have your _sun_-measure, and can tell exactly at any
+moment how strong, or how weak, or how wanting, the sun is. But the
+sun-measurer can't tell you whether the rays are stopped by a dense
+_shallow_ cloud, or a thin _deep_ one. In healthy weather, the sun
+is hidden behind a cloud, as it is behind a tree; and, when the
+cloud is past, it comes out again, as bright as before. But in
+plague-wind, the sun is choked out of the whole heaven, all day
+long, by a cloud which may be a thousand miles square and five
+miles deep.
+
+And yet observe: that thin, scraggy, filthy, mangy, miserable
+cloud, for all the depth of it, can't turn the sun red, as a good,
+business-like fog does with a hundred feet or so of itself. By the
+plague-wind every breath of air you draw is polluted, half round
+the world; in a London fog the air itself is pure, though you
+choose to mix up dirt with it, and choke yourself with your own
+nastiness.
+
+Now I'm going to show you a diagram of a sunset in entirely pure
+weather, above London smoke. I saw it and sketched it from my old
+post of observation--the top garret of my father's house at Herne
+Hill. There, when the wind is south, we are outside of the smoke
+and above it; and this diagram, admirably enlarged from my own
+drawing by my, now in all things best aide-de-camp, Mr.
+Collingwood, shows you an old-fashioned sunset--the sort of thing
+Turner and I used to have to look at,--(nobody else ever would)
+constantly. Every sunset and every dawn, in fine weather, had
+something of the sort to show us. This is one of the last pure
+sunsets I ever saw, about the year 1876,--and the point I want you
+to note in it is, that the air being pure, the smoke on the
+horizon, though at last it hides the sun, yet hides it through gold
+and vermilion. Now, don't go away fancying there's any exaggeration
+in that study. The _prismatic_ colors, I told you, were simply
+impossible to paint; these, which are transmitted colors, can
+indeed be suggested, but no more. The brightest pigment we have
+would look dim beside the truth.
+
+I should have liked to have blotted down for you a bit of
+plague-cloud to put beside this; but Heaven knows, you can see
+enough of it now-a-days without any trouble of mine; and if you
+want, in a hurry, to see what the sun looks like through it, you've
+only to throw a bad half-crown into a basin of soap and water.
+
+Blanched Sun,--blighted grass,--blinded man.--If, in conclusion,
+you ask me for any conceivable cause or meaning of these things--I
+can tell you none, according to your modern beliefs; but I can tell
+you what meaning it would have borne to the men of old time.
+Remember, for the last twenty years, England, and all foreign
+nations, either tempting her, or following her, have blasphemed[20]
+the name of God deliberately and openly; and have done iniquity by
+proclamation, every man doing as much injustice to his brother as
+it is in his power to do. Of states in such moral gloom every seer
+of old predicted the physical gloom, saying, "The light shall be
+darkened in the heavens thereof, and the stars shall withdraw their
+shining." All Greek, all Christian, all Jewish prophecy insists on
+the same truth through a thousand myths; but of all the chief, to
+former thought, was the fable of the Jewish warrior and prophet,
+for whom the sun hasted not to go down, with which I leave you to
+compare at leisure the physical result of your own wars and
+prophecies, as declared by your own elect journal not fourteen days
+ago,--that the Empire of England, on which formerly the sun never
+set, has become one on which he never rises.
+
+What is best to be done, do you ask me? The answer is plain.
+Whether you can affect the signs of the sky or not, you _can_ the
+signs of the times. Whether you can bring the _sun_ back or not,
+you can assuredly bring back your own cheerfulness, and your own
+honesty. You may not be able to say to the winds, "Peace; be
+still," but you can cease from the insolence of your own lips, and
+the troubling of your own passions. And all _that_ it would be
+extremely well to do, even though the day _were_ coming when the
+sun should be as darkness, and the moon as blood. But, the paths of
+rectitude and piety once regained, who shall say that the promise
+of old time would not be found to hold for us also?--"Bring ye all
+the tithes into my storehouse, and prove me now herewith, saith the
+Lord God, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour
+you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive
+it."
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE II.
+
+                                   _March 11th, 1884._
+
+
+It was impossible for me, this spring, to prepare, as I wished to
+have done, two lectures for the London Institution: but finding its
+members more interested in the subject chosen than I had
+anticipated, I enlarged my lecture at its second reading by some
+explanations and parentheses, partly represented, and partly
+farther developed, in the following notes; which led me on,
+however, as I arranged them, into branches of the subject untouched
+in the former lecture, and it seems to me of no inferior interest.
+
+[Footnote 1: The vapor over the pool of Anger in the 'Inferno,' the
+clogging stench which rises from Caina, and the fog of the circle
+of Anger in the 'Purgatorio' resemble, indeed, the cloud of the
+Plague-wind very closely,--but are conceived only as supernatural.
+The reader will no doubt observe, throughout the following lecture,
+my own habit of speaking of beautiful things as 'natural,' and of
+ugly ones as 'unnatural.' In the conception of recent philosophy,
+the world is one Kosmos in which diphtheria is held to be as
+natural as song, and cholera as digestion. To my own mind, and the
+more distinctly the more I see, know, and feel, the Earth, as
+prepared for the abode of man, appears distinctly ruled by agencies
+of health and disease, of which the first may be aided by his
+industry, prudence, and piety; while the destroying laws are
+allowed to prevail against him, in the degree in which he allows
+himself in idleness, folly, and vice. Had the point been distinctly
+indicated where the degrees of adversity necessary for his
+discipline pass into those intended for his punishment, the world
+would have been put under a manifest theocracy; but the declaration
+of the principle is at least distinct enough to have convinced all
+sensitive and earnest persons, from the beginning of speculation in
+the eyes and mind of Man: and it has been put in my power by one
+of the singular chances which have always helped me in my work when
+it was in the right direction, to present to the University
+of Oxford the most distinct expression of this first principle
+of mediaeval Theology which, so far as I know, exists in
+fifteenth-century art. It is one of the drawings of the Florentine
+book which I bought for a thousand pounds, against the British
+Museum, some ten or twelve years since; being a compendium of
+classic and mediaeval religious symbolism. In the two pages of it,
+forming one picture, given to Oxford, the delivery of the Law on
+Sinai is represented on the left hand, (_contrary to the Scriptural
+narrative_, but in deeper expression of the benediction of the
+Sacred Law to all nations,) as in the midst of bright and calm
+light, the figure of the Deity being supported by luminous and
+level clouds, and attended by happy angels: while opposite, on the
+right hand, the worship of the Golden Calf is symbolized by a
+single decorated pillar, with the calf on its summit, surrounded by
+the clouds and darkness of a furious storm, issuing from the mouths
+of fiends;--uprooting the trees, and throwing down the rocks, above
+the broken tables of the Law, of which the fragments lie in the
+foreground.]
+
+[Footnote 2: These conditions are mainly in the arrangement of the
+lower rain-clouds in flakes thin and detached enough to be
+illuminated by early or late sunbeams: their textures are then more
+softly blended than those of the upper cirri, and have the
+qualities of painted, instead of burnished or inflamed, color.
+
+They were thus described in the 4th chapter of the 7th part of
+'Modern Painters':--
+
+"Often in our English mornings, the rain-clouds in the dawn form
+soft level fields, which melt imperceptibly into the blue; or when
+of less extent, gather into apparent bars, crossing the sheets of
+broader cloud above; and all these bathed throughout in an
+unspeakable light of pure rose-color, and purple, and amber, and
+blue, not shining, but misty-soft, the barred masses, when seen
+nearer, found to be woven in tresses of cloud, like floss silk,
+looking as if each knot were a little swathe or sheaf of lighted
+rain.
+
+"No clouds form such skies, none are so tender, various,
+inimitable; Turner himself never caught them. Correggio, putting
+out his whole strength, could have painted them,--no other man."]
+
+[Footnote 3: I did not, in writing this sentence, forget Mr.
+Gladstone's finely scholastic enthusiasm for Homer; nor Mr.
+Newton's for Athenian--(I wish it had not been also for
+Halicarnassian) sculpture. But Byron loved Greece herself--through
+her death--and _to_ his own; while the subsequent refusal of
+England to give Greece one of our own princes for a king, has
+always been held by me the most ignoble, cowardly, and lamentable,
+of all our base commercial _im_policies.]
+
+[Footnote 4: 'Deepening' clouds.--Byron never uses an epithet
+vainly,--he is the most accurate, and therefore the most powerful,
+of all modern describers. The deepening of the cloud is essentially
+necessary to the redness of the orb. Ordinary observers are
+continually unaware of this fact, and imagine that a red sun can be
+darker than the sky round it! Thus Mr. Gould, though a professed
+naturalist, and passing most of his life in the open air, over and
+over again, in his 'British Birds,' draws the setting sun dark on
+the sky!]
+
+[Footnote 5: 'Like the blood he predicts.'--The astrological power
+of the planet Mars was of course ascribed to it in the same
+connection with its red color. The reader may be interested to see
+the notice, in 'Modern Painters,' of Turner's constant use of the
+same symbol; partly an expression of his own personal feeling,
+partly, the employment of a symbolic language known to all careful
+readers of solar and stellar tradition.
+
+"He was very definitely in the habit of indicating the association
+of any subject with circumstances of death, especially the death of
+multitudes, by placing it under one of his most deeply _crimsoned_
+sunset skies.
+
+"The color of blood is thus plainly taken for the leading tone in
+the storm-clouds above the 'Slave-ship.' It occurs with similar
+distinctness in the much earlier picture of 'Ulysses and
+Polypheme,' in that of 'Napoleon at St. Helena,' and, subdued by
+softer hues, in the 'Old Temeraire.'
+
+"The sky of this Goldau is, in its scarlet and crimson, the deepest
+in tone of all that I know in Turner's drawings.
+
+"Another feeling, traceable in several of his former works, is an
+acute sense of the contrast between the careless interests and idle
+pleasures of daily life, and the state of those whose time for
+labor, or knowledge, or delight, is passed forever. There is
+evidence of this feeling in the introduction of the boys at play in
+the churchyard of Kirkby Lonsdale, and the boy climbing for his
+kite among the thickets above the little mountain churchyard of
+Brignal-bank; it is in the same tone of thought that he has placed
+here the two figures fishing, leaning against these shattered
+flanks of rock,--the sepulchral stones of the great mountain Field
+of Death."]
+
+[Footnote 6: 'Thy lore unto calamity.'--It is, I believe,
+recognized by all who have in any degree become interested in the
+traditions of Chaldean astrology, that its warnings were
+distinct,--its promises deceitful. Horace thus warns Leuconoe
+against reading the Babylonian numbers to learn the time of her
+death,--he does not imply their promise of previous happiness; and
+the continually deceptive character of the Delphic oracle itself,
+tempted always rather to fatal than to fortunate conduct, unless
+the inquirer were more than wise in his reading. Byron gathers into
+the bitter question all the sorrow of former superstition, while in
+the lines italicized, just above, he sums in the briefest and
+plainest English, all that we yet know, or may wisely think, about
+the Sun. It is the '_Burning_ oracle' (other oracles there are by
+sound, or feeling, but this by fire) of all that lives; the only
+means of our accurate knowledge of the things round us, and that
+affect our lives: it is the _fountain_ of all life,--Byron does not
+say the _origin_;--the origin of life would be the origin of the
+sun itself; but it is the visible _source_ of vital energy, as the
+spring is of a stream, though the origin is the sea. "And symbol of
+Him who bestows it."--This the sun has always been, to every one
+who believes there is a bestower; and a symbol so perfect and
+beautiful that it may also be thought of as partly an apocalypse.]
+
+[Footnote 7: 'More beautiful in that variety.'--This line, with the
+one italicized beneath, expresses in Myrrha's mind, the feeling
+which I said, in the outset, every thoughtful watcher of heaven
+necessarily had in those old days; whereas now, the variety is for
+the most part, only in modes of disagreeableness; and the vapor,
+instead of adding light to the unclouded sky, takes away the aspect
+and destroys the functions of sky altogether.]
+
+[Footnote 8: 'Steam out of an engine funnel.'--Compare the sixth
+paragraph of Professor Tyndall's 'Forms of Water,' and the
+following seventh one, in which the phenomenon of transparent steam
+becoming opaque is thus explained. "Every bit of steam shrinks,
+when chilled, to a much more minute particle of water. The liquid
+particles thus produced form a kind of water dust of exceeding
+fineness, which floats in the air, and is called a cloud."
+
+But the author does not tell us, in the first place, what is the
+shape or nature of a 'bit of steam,' nor, in the second place, how
+the contraction of the individual bits of steam is effected without
+any diminution of the whole mass of them, but on the contrary,
+during its steady _expansion_; in the third place he assumes that
+the particles of water dust are solid, not vesicular, which is not
+yet ascertained; in the fourth place, he does not tell us how their
+number and size are related to the quantity of invisible moisture
+in the air; in the fifth place, he does not tell us how cool
+invisible moisture differs from hot invisible moisture; and in the
+sixth, he does not tell us why the cool visible moisture stays
+while the hot visible moisture melts away. So much for the present
+state of 'scientific' information, or at least communicativeness,
+on the first and simplest conditions of the problem before us!
+
+In its wider range that problem embraces the total mystery of
+volatile power in substance; and of the visible states consequent
+on sudden--and presumably, therefore, imperfect--vaporization; as
+the smoke of frankincense, or the sacred fume of modern devotion
+which now fills the inhabited world, as that of the rose and violet
+its deserts. What,--it would be useful to know, is the actual bulk
+of an atom of orange perfume?--what of one of vaporized tobacco, or
+gunpowder?--and where do _these_ artificial vapors fall back in
+beneficent rain? or through what areas of atmosphere exist, as
+invisible, though perhaps not innocuous, cloud?
+
+All these questions were put, closely and precisely,
+four-and-twenty years ago, in the 1st chapter of the 7th part of
+'Modern Painters,' paragraphs 4 to 9, of which I can here allow
+space only for the last, which expresses the final difficulties of
+the matter better than anything said in this lecture:--
+
+"But farther: these questions of volatility, and visibility, and
+hue, are all complicated with those of shape. How is a cloud
+outlined? Granted whatever you choose to ask, concerning its
+material, or its aspect, its loftiness and luminousness,--how of
+its limitation? What hews it into a heap, or spins it into a web?
+Cold is usually shapeless, I suppose, extending over large spaces
+equally, or with gradual diminution. You cannot have in the open
+air, angles, and wedges, and coils, and cliffs, of cold. Yet the
+vapor stops suddenly, sharp and steep as a rock, or thrusts itself
+across the gates of heaven in likeness of a brazen bar; or braids
+itself in and out, and across and across, like a tissue of
+tapestry; or falls into ripples, like sand; or into waving shreds
+and tongues, as fire. On what anvils and wheels is the vapor
+pointed, twisted, hammered, whirled, as the potter's clay? By what
+hands is the incense of the sea built up into domes of marble?"]
+
+[Footnote 9: The opposed conditions of the higher and lower orders
+of cloud, with the balanced intermediate one, are beautifully seen
+on mountain summits of rock or earth. On snowy ones they are far
+more complex: but on rock summits there are three distinct forms of
+attached cloud in serene weather; the first that of cloud veil
+laid over them, and _falling_ in folds through their ravines,
+(the obliquely descending clouds of the entering chorus in
+Aristophanes); secondly, the ascending cloud, which develops itself
+loosely and independently as it rises, and does not attach itself
+to the hill-side, while the falling veil cloud clings to it close
+all the way down;--and lastly the throned cloud, which rests indeed
+on the mountain summit, with its base, but rises high above into
+the sky, continually changing its outlines, but holding its seat
+perhaps all day long.
+
+These three forms of cloud belong exclusively to calm weather;
+attached drift cloud, (see Note 11) can only be formed in the
+wind.]
+
+[Footnote 10: 'Glaciers of the Alps,' page 10.--"Let a pound weight
+be placed upon a cube of granite" (size of supposed cube not
+mentioned), "the cube is flattened, though in an infinitesimal
+degree. Let the weight be removed, the cube remains a little
+flattened. Let us call the cube thus flattened No. 1. Starting with
+No. 1 as a new mass, let the pound weight be laid upon it. We have
+a more flattened mass, No. 2.... Apply this to squeezed rocks, to
+those, for example, which form the base of an obelisk like the
+Matterhorn,--the conclusion seems inevitable _that the mountain is
+sinking by its own weight_," etc., etc. Similarly the Nelson statue
+must be gradually flattening the Nelson column, and in time
+Cleopatra's needle will be as flat as her pincushion?]
+
+[Footnote 11: 'Glaciers of the Alps,' page 146.--"The sun was near
+the western horizon, and I remained alone upon the Grat to see his
+last beams illuminate the mountains, which, with one exception,
+were without a trace of cloud.
+
+"This exception was the Matterhorn, the appearance of which was
+extremely instructive. The obelisk appeared to be divided in two
+halves by a vertical line, drawn from its summit half-way down, to
+the windward of which we had the bare cliffs of the mountain; and
+to the left of it a cloud which appeared to cling tenaciously to
+the rocks.
+
+"In reality, however, there was no clinging; the condensed vapor
+incessantly got away, but it was ever renewed, and thus a river of
+cloud had been sent from the mountain over the valley of Aosta. The
+wind, in fact, blew lightly up the valley of St. Nicholas, charged
+with moisture, and when the air that held it _rubbed against the
+cold cone_ of the Matterhorn, the vapor was chilled and
+precipitated in his lee."
+
+It is not explained, why the wind was not chilled by rubbing
+against any of the neighboring mountains, nor why the cone of the
+Matterhorn, mostly of rock, should be colder than cones of snow.
+The phenomenon was first described by De Saussure, who gives the
+same explanation as Tyndall; and from whom, in the first volume of
+'Modern Painters,' I adopted it without sufficient examination.
+Afterwards I re-examined it, and showed its fallacy, with respect
+to the cap or helmet cloud, in the fifth volume of 'Modern
+Painters,' page 124, in the terms given in the subjoined note,[A]
+but I still retained the explanation of Saussure for the lee-side
+cloud, engraving in plate 69 the modes of its occurrence on the
+Aiguille Dru, of which the most ordinary one was afterwards
+represented by Tyndall in his 'Glaciers of the Alps,' under the
+title of 'Banner-cloud.' Its less imaginative title, in 'Modern
+Painters,' of 'Lee-side cloud,' is more comprehensive, for this
+cloud forms often under the brows of far-terraced precipices, where
+it has no resemblance to a banner. No true explanation of it has
+ever yet been given; for the first condition of the problem has
+hitherto been unobserved,--namely, that such cloud is constant in
+certain states of weather, under precipitous rocks;--but never
+developed with distinctness by domes of snow.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+But my former expansion of Saussure's theory is at least closer to
+the facts than Professor Tyndall's "rubbing against the rocks," and
+I therefore allow room for it here, with its illustrative wood-cut.
+
+"When a moist wind blows in clear weather over a cold summit, it
+has not time to get chilled as it approaches the rock, and
+therefore the air remains clear, and the sky bright on the windward
+side; but under the lee of the peak, there is partly a back eddy,
+and partly still air; and in that lull and eddy the wind gets time
+to be chilled by the rock, and the cloud appears, as a boiling mass
+of white vapor, rising continually with the return current to the
+upper edge of the mountain, where it is caught by the straight wind
+and partly torn, partly melted away in broken fragments.
+
+"In the accompanying figure, the dark mass represents the mountain
+peak, the arrow the main direction of the wind, the curved lines
+show the directions of such current and its concentration, and the
+dotted line encloses the space in which cloud forms densely,
+floating away beyond and above in irregular tongues and flakes."
+
+[Footnote A: "But both Saussure and I ought to have known,--we did
+know, but did not think of it,--that the covering or cap-cloud
+forms on hot summits as well as cold ones;--that the red and bare
+rocks of Mont Pilate, hotter, certainly, after a day's sunshine
+than the cold storm-wind which sweeps to them from the Alps,
+nevertheless have been renowned for their helmet of cloud, ever
+since the Romans watched the cloven summit, gray against the south,
+from the ramparts of Vindonissa, giving it the name from which the
+good Catholics of Lucerne have warped out their favorite piece of
+terrific sacred biography. And both my master and I should also
+have reflected that if our theory about its formation had been
+generally true, the helmet cloud ought to form on every cold
+summit, at the approach of rain, in approximating proportions to
+the bulk of the glaciers; which is so far from being the case that
+not only (A) the cap-cloud may often be seen on lower summits of
+grass or rock, while the higher ones are splendidly clear (which
+may be accounted for by supposing the wind containing the moisture
+not to have risen so high); but (B) the cap-cloud always shows a
+preference for hills of a conical form, such as the Mole or Niesen,
+which can have very little power in chilling the air, even
+supposing they were cold themselves; while it will entirely refuse
+to form huge masses of mountain, which, supposing them of chilly
+temperament, must have discomforted the atmosphere in their
+neighborhood for leagues."]]
+
+[Footnote 12: See below, on the different uses of the word
+'reflection,' note 14, and note that throughout this lecture I use
+the words 'aqueous molecules,' alike of water liquid or vaporized,
+not knowing under what conditions or at what temperatures
+water-dust becomes water-gas; and still less, supposing pure
+water-gas blue, and pure air blue, what are the changes in either
+which make them what sailors call "dirty "; but it is one of the
+worst omissions of the previous lecture, that I have not stated
+among the characters of the plague-cloud that it is _always_
+dirty,[A] and _never blue under any conditions_, neither when deep
+in the distance, nor when in the electric states which produce
+sulphurous blues in natural cloud. But see the next note.
+
+[Footnote A: In my final collation of the lectures given at Oxford
+last year on the Art of England, I shall have occasion to take
+notice of the effect of this character of plague-cloud on our
+younger painters, who have perhaps never in their lives seen a
+_clean_ sky!]]
+
+[Footnote 13: Black clouds.--For the sudden and extreme local
+blackness of thundercloud, see Turner's drawing of Winchelsea,
+(England series), and compare Homer, of the Ajaces, in the 4th book
+of the Iliad,--(I came on the passage in verifying Mr. Hill's
+quotation from the 5th.)
+
+                    "[Greek: hama de nephos eipeto pezon.
+     Hos d' hot' apo skopies eiden nephos aipolos aner
+     Erchomenon kata ponton hypo Zephyroio ioes,
+     To de t', aneuthen eonti, melanteron, eute pissa
+     Phainet', ion kata ponton, agei de te lailapa pollen;
+     Rhigesen te idon, hypo te speos elase mela;
+     Toiai ham Aiantessin areithoon aizeon
+     Deion es polemon pykinai kinynto phalanges
+     Kyaneai,]"
+
+I give Chapman's version--noting only that his _breath_ of
+Zephyrus, ought to have been 'cry' or 'roar' of Zephyrus, the
+blackness of the cloud being as much connected with the wildness of
+the wind as, in the formerly quoted passage, its brightness with
+calm of air.
+
+                            "Behind them hid the ground
+    A cloud of foot, that seemed to smoke. And as a Goatherd spies
+    On some hill top, out of the sea a rainy vapor rise,
+    Driven by the breath of Zephyrus, which though far off he rests,
+    Comes on as black as pitch, and brings a tempest in his breast
+    Whereat he, frighted, drives his herds apace into a den;
+    So, darkening earth, with swords and shields, showed these with
+        all their men."
+
+I add here Chapman's version of the other passage, which is
+extremely beautiful and close to the text, while Pope's is
+hopelessly erroneous.
+
+                            "Their ground they still made good,
+    And in their silence and set powers, like fair still clouds they stood,
+    With which Jove crowns the tops of hills in any quiet day
+    When Boreas, and the ruder winds that use to drive away
+    Air's _dusky vapors_, being _loose_, in many a whistling gale,
+    Are pleasingly bound up and calm, and not a breath exhale."]
+
+[Footnote 14: 'Reflected.'--The reader must be warned in this place
+of the difference implied by my use of the word 'cast' in page 11,
+and 'reflected' here: that is to say, between light or color which
+an object possesses, whatever the angle it is seen at, and the
+light which it reverberates at one angle only. The Alps, under the
+rose[A] of sunset, are exactly of the same color whether you see
+them from Berne or Schaffhausen. But the gilding to our eyes of a
+burnished cloud depends, I believe, at least for a measure of its
+luster, upon the angle at which the rays incident upon it are
+reflected to the eye, just as much as the glittering of the sea
+beneath it--or the sparkling of the windows of the houses on the
+shore.
+
+Previously, at page 10, in calling the molecules of transparent
+atmospheric 'absolutely' unreflective of light, I mean, in like
+manner, unreflective from their _surfaces_. Their blue color seen
+against a dark ground is indeed a kind of reflection, but one of
+which I do not understand the nature. It is seen most simply in
+wood smoke, blue against trees, brown against clear light; but in
+both cases the color is communicated to (or left in) the
+_transmitted_ rays.
+
+So also the green of the sky (p. 13) is said to be given by
+transmitted light, yellow rays passing through blue air: much yet
+remains to be known respecting translucent colors of this kind;
+only let them always be clearly distinguished in our minds from the
+firmly possessed color of opaque substances, like grass or
+malachite.
+
+[Footnote A: In speaking, at p. 11 of the first lecture, of the
+limits of depth in the rose-color cast on snow, I ought to have
+noted the greater strength of the tint possible under the light of
+the tropics. The following passage, in Mr. Cunningham's 'Natural
+History of the Strait of Magellan,' is to me of the greatest
+interest, because of the beautiful effect described as seen on the
+occasion of his visit to "the small town of Santa Rosa," (near
+Valparaiso.) "The day, though clear, had not been sunny, so that,
+although the snowy heights of the Andes had been distinctly visible
+throughout the greater part of our journey, they had not been
+illuminated by the rays of the sun. But now, as we turned the
+corner of a street, the chain of the Cordillera suddenly burst on
+our gaze in such a blaze of splendor that it almost seemed as if
+the windows of heaven had been opened for a moment, permitting a
+flood of _crimson_ light to stream forth upon the snow. The sight
+was so unexpected, and so transcendently magnificent, that a
+breathless silence fell upon us for a few moments, while even the
+driver stopped his horses. This deep red glow lasted for three or
+four minutes, and then rapidly faded into that lovely rosy hue so
+characteristic of snow at sunset among the Alps."]]
+
+[Footnote 15: Diffraction.--Since these passages were written, I
+have been led, in conversation with a scientific friend, to doubt
+my statement that the colored portions of the lighted clouds were
+brighter than the white ones. He was convinced that the resolution
+of the rays would diminish their power, and in _thinking_ over the
+matter, I am disposed to agree with him, although my impression at
+the time has been always that the diffracted colors rose out of the
+white, as a rainbow does out of the gray. But whatever the facts
+may be, in this respect the statement in the text of the
+impossibility of representing diffracted color in painting is
+equally true. It may be that the resolved hues are darker than the
+white, as colored panes in a window are darker than the colorless
+glass, but all are alike in a key which no artifice of painting can
+approach.
+
+For the rest, the phenomena of diffraction are not yet arranged
+systematically enough to be usefully discussed; some of them
+involving the resolution of the light, and others merely its
+intensification. My attention was first drawn to them near St.
+Laurent, on the Jura mountains, by the vivid reflection, (so it
+seemed), of the image of the sun from a particular point of a cloud
+in the west, after the sun itself was beneath the horizon: but in
+this image there were no prismatic colors, neither is the
+constantly seen metamorphosis of pine forests into silver filigree
+on ridges behind which the sun is rising or setting, accompanied
+with any prismatic hue; the trees become luminous, but not
+iridescent: on the other hand, in his great account of his ascent
+of Mont Blanc with Mr. Huxley, Professor Tyndall thus describes the
+sun's remarkable behavior on that occasion:--"As we attained the
+brow which forms the entrance to the Grand Plateau, he _hung his
+disk upon a spike of rock_ to our left, and, surrounded by a glory
+of interference spectra of the most gorgeous colors, blazed down
+upon us." ('Glaciers of the Alps,' p. 76.)
+
+Nothing irritates me more, myself, than having the color of my own
+descriptions of phenomena in anywise attributed by the reader to
+accidental states either of my mind or body;--but I cannot, for
+once, forbear at least the innocent question to Professor Tyndall,
+whether the extreme beauty of these 'interference spectra' may not
+have been partly owing to the extreme _sobriety_ of the observer?
+no refreshment, it appears, having been attainable the night before
+at the Grands Mulets, except the beverage diluted with dirty snow,
+of which I have elsewhere quoted the Professor's pensive
+report,--"my memory of that tea is not pleasant."]
+
+[Footnote 16: 'Either stationary or slow in motion, reflecting
+unresolved light.'
+
+The rate of motion is of course not essentially connected with the
+method of illumination; their connection, in this instance, needs
+explanation of some points which could not be dealt with in the
+time of a single lecture.
+
+It is before said, with reserve only, that "a cloud is where it is
+seen, and is not where it is not seen." But thirty years ago, in
+'Modern Painters,' I pointed out (see the paragraph quoted in note
+8th), the extreme difficulty of arriving at the cause of cloud
+outline, or explaining how, if we admitted at any given moment the
+atmospheric moisture to be generally diffused, it could be chilled
+by formal _chills_ into formal clouds. How, for instance, in the
+upper cirri, a thousand little chills, alternating with a thousand
+little warmths, could stand still as a thousand little feathers.
+
+But the first step to any elucidation of the matter is in the
+firmly fixing in our minds the difference between windless clouds,
+unaffected by any conceivable local accident, and windy clouds,
+affected by some change in their circumstances as they move.
+
+In the sunset at Abbeville, represented in my first diagram, the
+air is absolutely calm at the ground surface, and the motion of its
+upper currents extremely slow. There is no local reason assignable
+for the presence of the cirri above, or of the thundercloud below.
+There is no conceivable cause either in the geology, or the moral
+character, of the two sides of the town of Abbeville, to explain
+why there should be decorative fresco on the sky over the southern
+suburb, and a muttering heap of gloom and danger over the northern.
+The electric cloud is as calm in motion as the harmless one; it
+changes its forms, indeed; but imperceptibly; and, so far as can
+be discerned, only at its own will is exalted, and with its own
+consent abased.
+
+But in my second diagram are shown forms of vapor sustaining at
+every instant all kinds of varying local influences; beneath,
+fastened down by mountain attraction, above, flung afar by
+distracting winds; here, spread abroad into blanched sheets beneath
+the sunshine, and presently gathered into strands of coiled cordage
+in the shade. Their total existence is in metamorphosis, and their
+every aspect a surprise, or a deceit.]
+
+[Footnote 17: 'Finely comminuted water or _ice_.'
+
+My impression that these clouds were glacial was at once confirmed
+by a member of my audience, Dr. John Rae, in conversation after the
+lecture, in which he communicated to me the perfectly definite
+observations which he has had the kindness to set down with their
+dates for me, in the following letter:--
+
+                    "4, ADDISON GARDENS, KENSINGTON, _4th Feb., 1884._
+
+DEAR SIR,--I have looked up my old journal of thirty years ago,
+written in pencil because it was impossible to keep ink unfrozen in
+the snow-hut in which I passed the winter of 1853-4, at Repulse
+Bay, on the Arctic Circle.[A]
+
+On the 1st of February, 1854, I find the following:--
+
+'A beautiful appearance of some cirrus clouds near the sun, the
+central part of the cloud being of a fine pink or red, then green,
+and pink fringe. This continued for about a quarter of an hour. The
+same was observed on the 27th of the month, but not so bright.
+Distance of clouds from sun, from 3 deg. to 6 deg..'
+
+On the 1st February the temperature was 38 deg. below zero, and on the
+27th February 26 deg. below.
+
+'On the 23d and 30th (of March) the same splendid appearance of
+clouds as mentioned in last month's journal was observed. On the
+first of these days, about 10.30 a.m., it was extremely beautiful.
+The clouds were about 8 deg. or 10 deg. from the sun, below him and
+slightly to the eastward,--having a green fringe all round, then
+pink; the center part at first green, and then pink or red.'
+
+The temperature was 21 deg. below zero, Fahrenheit.
+
+There may have been other colors--blue, perhaps--but I merely noted
+the most prominent; and what I call green may have been bluish,
+although I do not mention this last color in my notes.
+
+From the lowness of the temperature at the time, the clouds _must_
+have been frozen moisture.
+
+The phenomenon is by no means common, even in the Arctic zone.
+
+The second beautiful cloud-picture shown this afternoon brought so
+visibly to my memory the appearance seen by me as above described,
+that I could not avoid remarking upon it.
+
+                         Believe me very truly yours,
+                         JOHN RAE." (M.D., F.R.S.)
+
+Now this letter enables me to leave the elements of your problem
+for you in very clear terms.
+
+Your sky--altogether--may be composed of one or more of four
+things:--
+
+     Molecules of water in warm weather.
+     Molecules of ice in cold weather.
+     Molecules of water-vapor in warm weather.
+     Molecules of ice-vapor in cold weather.
+
+But of the size, distances, or modes of attraction between these
+different kinds of particles, I find no definite information
+anywhere, except the somewhat vague statement by Sir William
+Thomson, that "if a drop of water could be magnified so as to be as
+large as the earth, and have a diameter of eight thousand miles,
+then a molecule of this water in it would appear _somewhat larger
+than a shot_." (What kind of shot?) "_and somewhat smaller than a
+cricket-ball_"!
+
+And as I finally review the common accounts given of cloud
+formation, I find it quite hopeless for the general reader to deal
+with the quantity of points which have to be kept in mind and
+severally valued, before he can account for any given phenomena. I
+have myself, in many of the passages of 'Modern Painters' before
+referred to, conceived of cloud too narrowly as always produced by
+_cold_, whereas the temperature of a cloud must continually, like
+that of our visible breath in frosty weather, or of the visible
+current of steam, or the smoking of a warm lake surface under
+sudden frost, be above that of the surrounding atmosphere; and yet
+I never remember entering a cloud without being chilled by it, and
+the darkness of the plague-wind, unless in electric states of the
+air, is always accompanied by deadly chill.
+
+Nor, so far as I can read, has any proper account yet been given of
+the balance, in serene air, of the warm air under the cold, in
+which the warm air is at once compressed by weight, and expanded by
+heat, and the cold air is thinned by its elevation, yet contracted
+by its cold. There is indeed no possibility of embracing the
+conditions in a single sentence, any more than in a single thought.
+But the practical balance is effected in calm air, so that its
+lower strata have no tendency to rise, like the air in a fire
+balloon, nor its higher strata to fall, unless they congeal into
+rain or snow.
+
+I believe it will be an extreme benefit to my younger readers if I
+write for them a little 'Grammar of Ice and Air,' collecting the
+known facts on all these matters, and I am much minded to put by my
+ecclesiastical history for a while, in order to relate what is
+legible of the history of the visible Heaven.
+
+[Footnote A: I trust that Dr. Rae will forgive my making the reader
+better aware of the real value of this communication by allowing
+him to see also the following passage from the kind private letter
+by which it was supplemented:--
+
+"Many years in the Hudson's Bay Company's service, I and my men
+became educated for Arctic work, in which I was five different
+times employed, in two of which expeditions we lived wholly by our
+own hunting and fishing for twelve months, once in a stone house
+(very disagreeable), and another winter in a snow hut (better),
+_without fire of any kind to warm us_. On the first of these
+expeditions, 1846-7, my little party, there being no officer but
+myself, surveyed seven hundred miles of coast of Arctic America by
+a sledge journey, which Parry, Ross, Bach, and Lyon had failed to
+accomplish, costing the country about L70,000 or L80,000 at the
+lowest computation. The total expense of my little party, including
+my own pay, was under fourteen hundred pounds sterling.
+
+"My Arctic work has been recognized by the award of the founder's
+gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society (before the completion
+of the whole of it)."]]
+
+[Footnote 18: 'You can't get a billiard ball to fall a shivering on
+its own account.'--I am under correction in this statement by the
+Lucasian professor of Cambridge, with respect to the molecules of
+bodies capable of 'epipolizing' light. "Nothing seems more natural
+than to suppose that the incident vibrations of the luminiferous
+ether produce vibratory movements among the ultimate molecules of
+sensitive substances, and that the molecules in return, _swinging
+on their own account_, produce vibrations in the luminous ether,
+and thus cause the sensation of light. The periodic times of these
+vibrations depend upon the periods in which the molecules are
+_disposed to swing_." ('On the Changes of Refrangibility of Light,'
+p. 549.)
+
+It seems to me a pleasant conclusion, this, of recent science, and
+suggestive of a perfectly regenerate theology. The 'Let there be
+light' of the former Creation is first expanded into 'Let there be
+a disposition of the molecules to swing,' and the destinies of
+mankind, no less than the vitality of the universe, depend
+thereafter upon this amiable, but perhaps capricious, and at all
+events not easily influenced or anticipated, disposition!
+
+Is it not also strange that in a treatise entering into so high
+mathematical analysis as that from which I quote, the false word
+'swing,' expressing the action of a body liable to continuous
+arrest by gravitation, should be employed to signify the
+oscillation, wholly unaffected by gravity, of substance in which
+the motion once originated, may cease only with the essence of the
+body?
+
+It is true that in men of high scientific caliber, such as the
+writer in this instance, carelessness in expression does not affect
+the security of their conclusions. But in men of lower rank, mental
+defects in language indicate fatal flaws in thought. And although
+the constant habit to which I owe my (often foolishly praised)
+"command of language"--of never allowing a sentence to pass proof
+in which I have not considered whether, for the vital word in it, a
+better could be found in the dictionary, makes me somewhat morbidly
+intolerant of careless diction, it may be taken for an extremely
+useful and practical rule, that if a man can think clearly he will
+write well, and that no good science was ever written in bad
+English. So that, before you consider whether a scientific author
+says a true or a false thing, you had better first look if he is
+able properly to say _any_thing,--and secondly, whether his conceit
+permits him to say anything properly.
+
+Thus, when Professor Tyndall, endeavoring to write poetically of
+the sun, tells you that "The Lilies of the field are his
+workmanship," you may observe, first, that since the sun is not a
+man, nothing that he does is workmanship; while even the figurative
+statement that he rejoices _as_ a strong man to run his course, is
+one which Professor Tyndall has no intention whatever of admitting.
+And you may then observe, in the second place, that, if even in
+that figurative sense, the lilies of the field are the sun's
+workmanship, in the same sense the lilies of the hothouse are the
+stove's workmanship,--and in perfectly logical parallel, you, who
+are alive here to listen to me, because you have been warmed and
+fed through the winter, are the workmanship of your own
+coal-scuttles.
+
+Again, when Mr. Balfour Stewart begins a treatise on the
+'Conservation of Energy,' which is to conclude, as we shall see
+presently, with the prophecy of its total extinction as far as the
+present world is concerned,--by clothing in a "properly scientific
+garb," our innocent impression that there is some difference
+between the blow of a rifle stock and a rifle ball; he prepares for
+the scientific toilet by telling us in italics that "the something
+which the rifle ball possesses in contradistinction to the rifle
+stock is clearly the power of overcoming resistance," since "it can
+penetrate through oak-wood or through water--or (alas! that it
+should be so often tried) through the human body; and _this power
+of penetration_" (italics now mine) "_is the distinguishing
+characteristic of a substance moving with very great velocity_. Let
+us define by the term 'Energy,' this power which the rifle ball
+possesses of overcoming obstacles, or of doing work."
+
+Now, had Mr. Stewart been a better scholar, he would have felt,
+even if he had not known, that the Greek word 'energy' could only
+be applied to the living--and of living, with perfect propriety
+only to the _mental_, action of animals, and that it could no more
+be applied as a 'scientific garb,' to the flight of a rifle ball,
+than to the fall of a dead body. And, if he had attained thus much,
+even of the science of language, it is just possible that the small
+forte and faculty of thought he himself possesses might have been
+energized so far as to perceive that the force of all inertly
+moving bodies, whether rifle stock, rifle ball, or rolling world,
+is under precisely one and the same relation to their weights and
+velocities; that the effect of their impact depends--not merely on
+their pace, but their constitution; and on the relative forms and
+stability of the substances they encounter, and that there is no
+more quality of Energy, though much less quality of Art, in the
+swiftly penetrating shot, or crushing ball, than in the
+deliberately contemplative and administrative puncture by a gnat's
+proboscis, or a seamstress' needle.
+
+Mistakes of this kind, beginning with affectations of diction, do
+not always invalidate general statements or conclusions,--for a bad
+writer often equivocates out of a blunder as he equivocates into
+one,--but I have been strict in pointing out the confusions of idea
+admitted in scientific books between the movement of a swing, that
+of a sounding violin chord, and that of an agitated liquid, because
+these confusions have actually enabled Professor Tyndall to keep
+the scientific world in darkness as to the real nature of glacier
+motion for the last twenty years; and to induce a resultant
+quantity of aberration in the scientific mind concerning glacial
+erosion, of which another twenty years will scarcely undo the
+damage.]
+
+[Footnote 19: 'Force and pace.'--Among the nearer questions which
+the careless terminology on which I have dwelt in the above note
+has left unsettled, I believe the reader will be surprised, as much
+as I am myself, to find that of the mode of impulse in a common
+gust of wind! Whence is its strength communicated to it, and how
+gathered in it? and what is the difference of manner in the impulse
+between compressible gas and incompressible fluid? For instance:
+The water at the head of a weir is passing every instant from
+slower into quicker motion; but (until broken in the air) the fast
+flowing water is just as dense as the slowly flowing water. But a
+fan alternately compresses and rarefies the air between it and the
+cheek, and the violence of a destructive gust in a gale of wind
+means a momentary increase in velocity and density of which I
+cannot myself in the least explain,--and find in no book on
+dynamics explained,--the mechanical causation.
+
+The following letter, from a friend whose observations on natural
+history for the last seven or eight years have been consistently
+valuable and instructive to me, will be found, with that subjoined
+in the note, in various ways interesting; but especially in its
+notice of the inefficiency of ordinary instrumental registry in
+such matters:--
+
+                    "6, MOIRA PLACE, SOUTHAMPTON, _Feb. 8th, 1884_.
+
+DEAR MR. RUSKIN,--Some time since I troubled you with a note or two
+about sea-birds, etc.... but perhaps I should never have ventured
+to trouble you again, had not your lecture on the 'Storm Clouds'
+touched a subject which has deeply interested me for years past. I
+had, of course, no idea that you had noticed this thing, though I
+might have known that, living the life you do, you must have done
+so. As for me, it has been a source of perplexity for years: so
+much so, that I began to wonder at times whether I was not under
+some mental delusion about it, until the strange theatrical
+displays, of the last few months, for which I was more or less
+prepared, led so many to use their eyes, unmuzzled by brass or
+glass, for a time. I know you do not bother, or care much to read
+newspapers, but I have taken the liberty of cutting out and
+sending a letter of mine, sent on the 1st January to an evening
+paper,[A] upon this subject, thinking you might like to know that
+one person, at any rate, has seen that strange, bleared look about
+the sun, shining so seldom except through a ghastly glare of pale,
+persistent haze. May it be that the singular coloring of the
+sunsets marks an end of this long period of plague-cloud, and that
+in them we have promise of steadier weather? (No: those sunsets
+were entirely distinct phenomena, and promised, if anything, only
+evil.--R.)
+
+I was glad to see that in your lecture you gave the dependants upon
+the instrument-makers a warning. On the 26th I had a heavy
+sailing-boat lifted and blown, from where she lay hauled up, a
+distance of four feet, which, as the boat has four hundred-weight
+of iron upon her keel, gives a wind-gust, or force, not easily
+measured by instruments.
+
+                         Believe me, dear Mr. Ruskin,
+                                   Yours sincerely,
+                                   ROBT. C. LESLIE."
+
+I am especially delighted, in this letter, by my friend's
+vigorously accurate expression, eyes "unmuzzled by brass or glass."
+I have had occasion continually, in my art-lectures, to dwell on
+the great law of human perception and power, that the beauty which
+is good for us is prepared for the natural focus of the sight, and
+the sounds which are delightful to us for the natural power of the
+nerves of the ear; and the art which is admirable in us, is the
+exercise of our own bodily powers, and not carving by sand-blast,
+nor oratorizing through a speaking trumpet, nor dancing with spring
+heels. But more recently, I have become convinced that even in
+matters of science, although every added mechanical power has its
+proper use and sphere, yet the things which are vital to our
+happiness and prosperity can only be known by the rational use and
+subtle skill of our natural powers. We may trust the instrument
+with the prophecy of storm, or registry of rainfall; but the
+conditions of atmospheric change, on which depend the health of
+animals and fruitfulness of seeds, can only be discerned by the eye
+and the bodily sense.
+
+Take, for simplest and nearest example, this question of the stress
+of wind. It is not the actual _power_ that is immeasurable, if only
+it would stand to be measured! Instruments could easily now be
+invented which would register not only a blast that could lift a
+sailing boat, but one that would sink a ship of the line. But,
+lucklessly--the blast won't pose to the instrument! nor can the
+instrument be adjusted to the blast. In the gale of which my friend
+speaks in his next letter, 26th January, a gust came down the hill
+above Coniston village upon two old oaks, which were well rooted in
+the slate rock, and some fifty or sixty feet high--the one, some
+twenty yards below the other. The blast tore the highest out of the
+ground, peeling its roots from the rock as one peels an
+orange--swept the head of the lower tree away with it in one ruin,
+and snapped the two leader branches of the upper one over the
+other's stump, as one would break one's cane over some people's
+heads, if one got the chance. In wind action of this kind the
+amount of actual force used is the least part of the business;--it
+is the suddenness of its concentration, and the lifting and
+twisting strength, as of a wrestler, which make the blast fatal;
+none of which elements of storm-power can be recognized by
+mechanical tests. In my friend's next letter, however, he gives us
+some evidence of the _consistent_ strength of this same gale, and
+of the electric conditions which attended it:--the prefatory notice
+of his pet bird I had meant for 'Love's Meinie,' but it will help
+us through the grimness of our studies here.
+
+                                   "_March 3d, 1884._
+
+My small blackheaded gull Jack is still flourishing, and the time
+is coming when I look for that singularly sudden change in the
+plumage of his head which took place last March. I have asked all
+my ocean-going friends to note whether these little birds are not
+the gulls _par excellence_ of the sea; and so far all I have heard
+from them confirms this. It seems almost incredible; but my son, a
+sailor, who met that hurricane of the 26th of January, writes to me
+to say that out in the Bay of Biscay on the morning after the gale,
+'though it was blowing like blazes, I observed some little gulls of
+Jacky's species, and they followed us half way across the Bay,
+seeming to find shelter under the lee of our ship. Some alighted
+now and then, and rested upon the water as if tired.' When one
+considers that these birds must have been at sea all that night
+somewhere, it gives one a great idea of their strength and
+endurance. My son's ship, though a powerful ocean steamer, was for
+two whole hours battling head to sea off the Eddystone that night,
+and for that time the lead gave no increase of soundings, so that
+she could have made no headway during those two hours; while all
+the time her yards had the St. Elmo's fire at their ends, looking
+as though a blue light was burning at each yard-arm, and this was
+about all they could see.
+
+                         Yours sincerely,
+                         ROBT. C. LESLIE."
+
+The next letter, from a correspondent with whom I have the most
+complete sympathy in some expressions of his postscript which are
+yet, I consider, more for my own private ear than for the public
+eye, describes one of the more malignant phases of the plague-wind,
+which I forgot to notice in my lecture.
+
+                         "BURNHAM, SOMERSET, _February 7th, 1884_.
+
+DEAR SIR,--I read with great interest your first lecture at Oxford
+on cloud and wind (very indifferently reported in 'The Times'). You
+have given a name to a wind I've known for years. You call it the
+plague--I call it the devil-wind: _e. g._, on April 29th, 1882,
+morning warmer, then rain storms from east; afternoon, rain
+squalls; wind, west by south, rough; barometer falling awfully;
+4.30 p.m., tremendous wind.--April 30th, all the leaves of the
+trees, all plants black and dead, as if a fiery blast had swept
+over them. _All the hedges on windward side black as black tea._
+
+Another devil-wind came towards the end of last summer. The next
+day, all the leaves were falling sere and yellow, as if it were
+late autumn.
+
+                         I am, dear sir,
+                                   Yours faithfully,
+                                     A. H. BIRKETT."
+
+I remember both these blights well; they were entirely terrific;
+but only sudden maxima of the constant morbific power of this
+wind;--which, if Mr. Birkett saw my _personal_ notices of,
+intercalated among the scientific ones, he would find alluded to in
+terms quite as vigorously damning as he could desire: and the
+actual effect of it upon my thoughts and work has been precisely
+that which would have resulted from the visible phantom of an evil
+spirit, the absolute opponent of the Queen of the Air,--Typhon
+against Athena,--in a sense of which I had neither the experience
+nor the conception when I wrote the illustrations of the myth of
+Perseus in 'Modern Painters.' Not a word of all those explanations
+of Homer and Pindar could have been written in weather like that
+of the last twelve years; and I am most thankful to have got them
+written, before the shadow came, and I could still see what Homer
+and Pindar saw. I quote one passage only--Vol. v., p. 141--for the
+sake of a similitude which reminds me of one more thing I have to
+say here--and a bit of its note--which I think is a precious little
+piece, not of word-painting, but of simply told feeling--(_that_,
+if people knew it, is my real power).
+
+"On the Yorkshire and Derbyshire hills, when the rain-cloud is low
+and much broken, and the steady west wind fills all space with its
+strength,[B] the sun-gleams fly like golden vultures; they are
+flashes rather than shinings; the dark spaces and the dazzling race
+and skim along the acclivities, and dart and _dip from crag to
+dell, swallow-like_."
+
+The dipping of the shadows here described of course is caused only
+by that of the dingles they cross; but I have not in any of my
+books yet dwelt enough on the difference of character between the
+dipping and the mounting winds. Our wildest phase of the west wind
+here at Coniston is 'swallow-like' with a vengeance, coming down on
+the lake in swirls which spurn the spray under them as a fiery
+horse does the dust. On the other hand, the softly ascending winds
+express themselves in the grace of their cloud motion, as if set to
+the continuous music of a distant song.[C]
+
+The reader will please note also that whenever, either in 'Modern
+Painters' or elsewhere, I speak of rate of flight in clouds, I am
+thinking of it as measured by the horizontal distance overpast in
+given time, and not as apparent only, owing to the nearness of the
+spectator. All low clouds appear to move faster than high ones, the
+pace being supposed equal in both: but when I speak of quick or
+slow cloud, it is always with respect to a given altitude. In a
+fine summer morning, a cloud will wait for you among the pines,
+folded to and fro among their stems, with a branch or two coming
+out here, and a spire or two there: you walk through it, and look
+back to it. At another time, on the same spot, the fury of
+cloud-flood drifts past you like the Rhine at Schaffhausen.
+
+The space even of the doubled lecture does not admit of my entering
+into any general statement of the action of the plague-cloud in
+Switzerland and Italy; but I must not omit the following notes of
+its aspect in the high Alps.
+
+                              "SALLENCHES, _11th September, 1882_.
+
+This morning, at half-past five, the Mont Blanc summit was clear,
+and the greater part of the Aiguilles du Plan and Midi clear
+dark--all, against pure cirri, lighted beneath by sunrise; the sun
+of course not visible yet from the valley.
+
+By seven o'clock, the plague-clouds had formed in _brown_ flakes,
+down to the base of the Aiguille de Bionassay; entirely covering
+the snowy ranges; the sun, as it rose to us here, shone only for
+about ten minutes--gilding in its old glory the range of the
+Dorons,--before one had time to look from peak to peak of it, the
+plague-cloud formed from the west, hid Mont Joli, and steadily
+choked the valley with advancing streaks of dun-colored mist.
+Now--twenty minutes to nine--there is not _one ray_ of sunshine on
+the whole valley, or on its mountains, from the Forclaz down to
+Cluse.
+
+These phenomena are only the sequel of a series of still more
+strange and sad conditions of the air, which have continued among
+the Savoy Alps for the last eight days, (themselves the sequel of
+others yet more general, prolonged, and harmful). But the weather
+was perfectly fine at Dijon, and I doubt not at Chamouni, on the
+1st of this month. On the 2d, in the evening, I saw, from the Jura,
+heavy thunderclouds in the west; on the 3d, the weather broke at
+Morez, in hot thunder-showers, with intervals of scorching sun; on
+the 4th, 5th, and 6th there was nearly continuous rain at St.
+Cergues, the Alps being totally invisible all the time. The sky
+cleared on the night of the 6th, and on the 7th I saw from the top
+of the Dole all the western plateaux of Jura quite clearly; but
+_the entire range of the Alps_, from the Moleson to the Saleve, and
+all beyond,--snow, crag and hill-side,--were wrapped and buried in
+one unbroken gray-brown winding-sheet, of such cloud _as I had
+never seen till that day touch an Alpine summit_.
+
+The wind, from the east, (so that it blew _up_ over the edge of the
+Dole cliff, and admitted of perfect shelter on the slope to the
+west,) was bitter cold, and extremely violent: the sun overhead,
+bright enough, and remained so during the afternoon; the
+plague-cloud reaching from the Alps only about as far as the
+southern shore of the lake of Geneva; but we could not see the
+Saleve; nor even the north shore, farther than to Morges! I reached
+the Col de la Faucille at sunset, when, for a few minutes, the Mont
+Blanc and Aiguille Verte showed themselves in dull red light, but
+were buried again, before the sun was quite down, in the rising
+deluge of cloud-poison. I saw no farther than the Voirons and
+Brezon--and scarcely those, during the electric heat of the 9th at
+Geneva; and last Saturday and Sunday have been mere whirls and
+drifts of indecisive, but always sullen, storm. This morning I saw
+the snows clear for the first time, having been, during the whole
+past week, on steady watch for them.
+
+I have written that the clouds of the 7th were such as I never
+before saw on the Alps. Often, during the past ten years, I have
+seen them on my own hills, and in Italy in 1874; but it has always
+chanced to be fine weather, or common rain and cold, when I have
+been among the snowy chains; and now from the Dole for the first
+time I saw the plague-cloud on _them_."
+
+[Footnote A: 'THE LOOK OF THE SKY.
+
+'_To the_ EDITOR _of the_ ST. JAMES'S GAZETTE.
+
+'SIR,--I have been a very constant though not a scientific observer
+of the sky for a period of forty years; and I confess to a certain
+feeling of astonishment at the way in which the "recent celestial
+phenomena" seem to have taken the whole body of scientific
+observers by surprise. It would even appear that something like
+these extraordinary sunsets was necessary to call the attention of
+such observers to what has long been a source of perplexity to a
+variety of common folk, like sailors, farmers, and fishermen. But
+to such people the look of the weather, and what comes of that
+look, is of far more consequence than the exact amount of ozone or
+the depth or width of a band of the spectrum.
+
+'Now, to all such observers, including myself, it has been plain
+that of late neither the look of the sky nor the character of the
+weather has been, as we should say, what it used to be; and those
+whose eyes were strong enough to look now and then toward the sun
+have noticed a very marked increase of what some would call a
+watery look about him, which might perhaps be better expressed as a
+white sheen or glare, at times developing into solar halo or mock
+suns, as noted in your paper of the 2d of October last year. A
+fisherman would describe it as "white and davery-like." So far as
+my observation goes, this appearance was only absent here for a
+limited period during the present summer, when we had a week or two
+of nearly normal weather; the summer before it was seldom absent.
+
+'Again, those whose business or pleasure has depended on the use of
+wind-power have all remarked the strange persistence of hard
+westerly and easterly winds, the westerly ones at times partaking
+of an almost trade-wind-like force and character. The summer of
+1882 was especially remarkable for these winds, while each stormy
+November has been followed by a period about mid-winter of mild
+calm weather with dense fog. During these strong winds in summer
+and early autumn the weather would remain bright and sunny, and to
+a landsman would be not remarkable in any way, while the barometer
+has been little affected by them; but it has been often observed by
+those employed on the water that when it ceased blowing half a gale
+the sky at once became overcast, with damp weather or rain. This
+may all seem common enough to most people; but to those accustomed
+to gauge the wind by the number of reefs wanted in a mainsail or
+foresail it was not so; and the number of consecutive days when two
+or more reefs have been kept tied down during the last few summers
+has been remarkable--alternating at times with equally persistent
+spells of calm and fog such as we are now passing through. Again,
+we have had an unusually early appearance of ice in the Atlantic,
+and most abnormal weather over Central Europe; while in a letter I
+have just received from an old hand on board a large Australian
+clipper, he speaks of heavy gales and big seas off that coast in
+almost the height of their summer.
+
+'Now, upon all this, in our season of long twilights, we have
+bursting upon us some clear weather; with a display of cloud-forms
+or vapor at such an elevation that, looking at them one day through
+an opening in the nearer clouds, they seemed so distant as to
+resemble nothing but the delicate grain of ivory upon a
+billiard-ball. And yet with the fact that two-thirds of this earth
+is covered with water, and bearing in mind the effect which a very
+small increase of sun-power would have in producing cloud and
+lifting it above its normal level for a time, we are asked to
+believe that this sheen is all dust of some kind or other, in order
+to explain what are now known as the "recent sunsets": though I
+venture to think that we shall see more of them yet when the sun
+comes our way again.
+
+'At first sight, increased sun-power would seem to mean more
+sunshine; but a little reflection would show us that this would not
+be for long, while any considerable addition to the sun's power
+would be followed by such a vast increase of vapor that we should
+only see him, in our latitudes, at very short intervals. I am aware
+that all this is most unscientific; but I have read column after
+column of explanation written by those who are supposed to know all
+about such things, and find myself not a jot the wiser for it. Do
+you know anybody who is?--I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
+
+                              'AN UNSCIENTIFIC OBSERVER. (R. LESLIE.)
+                              _January 1_.']
+
+[Footnote B: "I have been often at great heights on the Alps in
+rough weather, and have seen strong gusts of storm in the plains of
+the south. But, to get full expression of the very heart and
+meaning of wind, there is no place like a Yorkshire moor. I think
+Scottish breezes are thinner, very bleak and piercing, but not
+substantial. If you lean on them they will let you fall, but one
+may rest against a Yorkshire breeze as one would on a quickset
+hedge. I shall not soon forget,--having had the good fortune to
+meet a vigorous one on an April morning, between Hawes and Settle,
+just on the flat under Wharnside,--the vague sense of wonder _with
+which I watched Ingleborough stand without rocking_."]
+
+[Footnote C: Compare Wordsworth's
+
+    "Oh beauteous birds, methinks ye measure
+     Your movements to some heavenly tune."
+
+And again--
+
+                         "While the mists,
+    Flying and rainy vapors, call out shapes,
+    And phantoms from the crags and solid earth,
+    As fast as a musician scatters sounds
+    Out of an instrument."
+
+And again--
+
+    "The Knight had ridden down from Wensley moor,
+     With the slow motion of a summer cloud."]]
+
+[Footnote 20: 'Blasphemy.'--If the reader can refer to my papers on
+Fiction in the 'Nineteenth Century,' he will find this word
+carefully defined in its Scriptural, and evermore necessary,
+meaning,--'Harmful speaking'--not against God only, but against
+man, and against all the good works and purposes of Nature. The
+word is accurately opposed to 'Euphemy,' the right or well-speaking
+of God and His world; and the two modes of speech are those which
+going out of the mouth sanctify or defile the man.
+
+Going out of the mouth, that is to say, deliberately and of
+purpose. A French postilion's 'Sacr-r-re'--loud, with the low 'Nom
+de Dieu' following between his teeth, is not blasphemy, unless
+against his horse;--but Mr. Thackeray's close of his Waterloo
+chapter in 'Vanity Fair,' "And all the night long Amelia was
+praying for George, who was lying on his face dead with a bullet
+through his heart," is blasphemy of the most fatal and subtle kind.
+
+And the universal instinct of blasphemy in the modern vulgar
+scientific mind is above all manifested in its love of what is
+ugly, and natural inthrallment by the abominable;--so that it is
+ten to one if, in the description of a new bird, you learn much
+more of it than the enumerated species of vermin that stick to its
+feathers; and in the natural history museum of Oxford, humanity has
+been hitherto taught, not by portraits of great men, but by the
+skulls of cretins.
+
+But the _deliberate_ blasphemy of science, the assertion of its own
+virtue and dignity against the always implied, and often asserted,
+vileness of all men and--Gods,--heretofore, is the most wonderful
+phenomenon, so far as I can read or perceive, that hitherto has
+arisen in the always marvelous course of the world's mental
+history.
+
+Take, for brief general type, the following 92d paragraph of the
+'Forms of Water':--
+
+"But while we thus acknowledge our limits, there is also reason for
+wonder at the extent to which Science has mastered the system of
+nature. From age to age and from generation to generation, fact has
+been added to fact and law to law, the true method and order of the
+Universe being thereby more and more revealed. In doing this,
+Science has encountered and overthrown various forms of
+superstition and deceit, of credulity and imposture. But the world
+continually produces weak persons and wicked persons, and as long
+as they continue to exist side by side, as they do in this our day,
+very debasing beliefs will also continue to infest the world."
+
+The debasing beliefs meant being simply those of Homer, David, and
+St. John[A]--as against a modern French gamin's. And what the
+results of the intended education of English gamins of every degree
+in that new higher theology will be, England is I suppose by this
+time beginning to discern.
+
+In the last 'Fors'[B] which I have written, on education of a safer
+kind, still possible, one practical point is insisted on
+chiefly,--that learning by heart, and repetition with perfect
+accent and cultivated voice, should be made quite principal
+branches of school discipline up to the time of going to the
+university.
+
+And of writings to be learned by heart, among other passages of
+indisputable philosophy and perfect poetry, I include certain
+chapters of the--now for the most part forgotten--wisdom of
+Solomon; and of these, there is one selected portion which I
+should recommend not only school-boys and girls, but persons of
+every age, if they don't know it, to learn forthwith, as the
+shortest summary of Solomon's wisdom;--namely, the seventeenth
+chapter of Proverbs, which being only twenty-eight verses long, may
+be fastened in the dullest memory at the rate of a verse a day in
+the shortest month of the year. Out of the twenty-eight verses, I
+will read you seven, for example of their tenor,--the last of the
+seven I will with your good leave dwell somewhat upon. You have
+heard the verses often before, but probably without remembering
+that they are all in this concentrated chapter.
+
+1. Verse 1.--Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than
+a house full of good eating, with strife.
+
+(Remember, in reading this verse, that though England has chosen
+the strife, and set every man's hand against his neighbor, her
+house is not yet so full of good eating as she expected, even
+though she gets half of her victuals from America.)
+
+2. Verse 3.--The fining pot is for silver, the furnace for gold,
+but the Lord tries the heart.
+
+(Notice the increasing strength of trial for the more precious
+thing: only the melting-pot for the silver--the fierce furnace for
+the gold--but the Fire of the Lord for the heart.)
+
+3. Verse 4.--A wicked doer giveth heed to false lips.
+
+(That means, for _you_, that, intending to live by usury and
+swindling, you read Mr. Adam Smith and Mr. Stuart Mill, and other
+such political economists.)
+
+4. Verse 5.--Whoso mocketh the poor, reproacheth his Maker.
+
+(Mocketh,--by saying that his poverty is his fault, no less than
+his misfortune,--England's favorite theory now-a-days.)
+
+5. Verse 12.--Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man, rather
+than a fool in his folly.
+
+(Carlyle is often now accused of false scorn in his calling the
+passengers over London Bridge, "mostly fools,"--on the ground that
+men are only to be justly held foolish if their intellect is under,
+as only wise when it is above, the average. But the reader will
+please observe that the essential function of modern education is
+to develop what capacity of mistake a man has. Leave him at his
+forge and plow,--and those tutors teach him his true value, indulge
+him in no error, and provoke him to no vice. But take him up to
+London,--give him her papers to read, and her talk to hear,--and it
+is fifty to one you send him presently on a fool's errand over
+London Bridge.)
+
+6. Now listen, for this verse is the question you have mainly to
+ask yourselves about your beautiful all-over-England system of
+competitive examination:--
+
+Verse 16. Wherefore is there a price in the hand of a fool to get
+wisdom, seeing he hath no heart to it?
+
+(You know perfectly well it isn't the wisdom you want, but the
+"station in life,"--and the money!)
+
+7. Lastly, Verse 7.--Wisdom is before him that hath understanding,
+but the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth.
+
+"And in the beginnings of it"! Solomon would have written, had he
+lived in our day; but we will be content with the ends at present.
+No scientific people, as I told you at first, have taken any notice
+of the more or less temporary phenomena of which I have to-night
+given you register. But, from the constant arrangements of the
+universe, the same respecting which the thinkers of former time
+came to the conclusion that they were essentially good, and to end
+in good, the modern speculator arrives at the quite opposite and
+extremely uncomfortable conclusion that they are essentially evil,
+and to end--in nothing.
+
+And I have here a volume,[C] before quoted, by a very foolish and
+very lugubrious author, who in his concluding chapter gives
+us,--founded, you will observe, on a series of 'ifs,'--the latest
+scientific views concerning the order of creation. "We have spoken
+already about a medium pervading space"--this is the Scientific
+God, you observe, differing from the unscientific one, in that the
+purest in heart cannot see--nor the softest in heart feel--this
+spacious Deity--a _Medium_, pervading space--"the office of which"
+(italics all mine) "appears to be to _degrade_ and ultimately
+_extinguish_, all differential motion. It has been well pointed out
+by Thomson, that, looked at _in this light_, the universe is a
+system that had a beginning and must have an end, for a process of
+degradation cannot be eternal. If we could view the Universe as a
+candle not lit, then it is perhaps conceivable to regard it as
+having been always in existence; but if we regard it rather as a
+candle that has been lit, we become absolutely certain that it
+cannot have been burning from eternity, and that a time will come
+when it will cease to burn. We are led to look to a beginning in
+which the particles of matter were in a diffuse chaotic state, but
+endowed with the power of gravitation; and we are led to look to an
+end in which the whole Universe will be one equally heated inert
+mass, _and from which everything like life, or motion, or beauty,
+will have utterly gone away_."
+
+Do you wish me to congratulate you on this extremely cheerful
+result of telescopic and microscopic observation, and so at once
+close my lecture? or may I venture yet to trespass on your time by
+stating to you any of the more comfortable views held by persons
+who did not regard the universe in what my author humorously calls
+"this _light_"?
+
+In the peculiarly characteristic notice with which the 'Daily News'
+honored my last week's lecture, that courteous journal charged me,
+in the metaphorical term now classical on Exchange, with "hedging,"
+to conceal my own opinions. The charge was not prudently chosen,
+since, of all men now obtaining any portion of popular regard, I am
+pretty well known to be precisely the one who cares least either
+for hedge or ditch, when he chooses to go across country. It is
+certainly true that I have not the least mind to pin my heart on my
+sleeve, for the daily daw, or nightly owl, to peck at; but the
+essential reason for my not telling you my own opinions on this
+matter is--that I do not consider them of material consequence to
+you.
+
+It _might_ possibly be of some advantage for you to know what--were
+he now living, Orpheus would have thought, or AEschylus, or a Daniel
+come to judgment, or John the Baptist, or John the Son of Thunder;
+but what either you, or I, or any other Jack or Tom of us all,
+think,--even if we knew what to think,--is of extremely small
+moment either to the Gods, the clouds, or ourselves.
+
+Of myself, however, if you care to hear it, I will tell you thus
+much: that had the weather when I was young been such as it is now,
+no book such as 'Modern Painters' ever would or _could_ have been
+written; for every argument, and every sentiment in that book, was
+founded on the personal experience of the beauty and blessing of
+nature, all spring and summer long; and on the then demonstrable
+fact that over a great portion of the world's surface the air and
+the earth were fitted to the education of the spirit of man as
+closely as a school-boy's primer is to his labor, and as gloriously
+as a lover's mistress is to his eyes.
+
+That harmony is now broken, and broken the world round: fragments,
+indeed, of what existed still exist, and hours of what is past
+still return; but month by month the darkness gains upon the day,
+and the ashes of the Antipodes glare through the night.[D]
+
+What consolation, or what courage, through plague, danger, or
+darkness, you can find in the conviction that you are nothing more
+than brute beasts driven by brute forces, your other tutors can
+tell you--not I: but _this_ I can tell you--and with the authority
+of all the masters of thought since time was time,--that, while by
+no manner of vivisection you can learn what a _Beast_ is, by only
+looking into your own hearts you may know what a _Man_ is,--and
+know that his only true happiness is to live in Hope of something
+to be won by him, in Reverence of something to be worshiped by him,
+and in Love of something to be cherished by him, and cherished--forever.
+
+Having these instincts, his only rational conclusion is that the
+objects which can fulfill them may be by his effort gained, and by
+his faith discerned; and his only earthly wisdom is to accept the
+united testimony of the men who have sought these things in the way
+they were commanded. Of whom no single one has ever said that his
+obedience or his faith had been vain, or found himself cast out
+from the choir of the living souls, whether here, or departed, for
+whom the song was written:--
+
+    God be merciful unto us, and bless us, and cause His face to shine
+        upon us;
+    That Thy way may be known upon earth, Thy saving health among all
+        nations.
+
+    Oh let the nations rejoice and sing for joy, for Thou shalt judge
+        the people righteously and govern the nations upon earth.
+    _Then_ shall the earth yield her increase, and God, even our own God,
+        shall bless us.
+    God shall bless us, and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him.
+
+[Footnote A: With all who died in Faith, not having received the
+Promises, nor--according to your modern teachers--ever to receive.]
+
+[Footnote B: Hence to the end the text is that read in termination
+of the lecture on its second delivery, only with an added word or
+two of comment on Proverbs xvii.]
+
+[Footnote C: 'The Conservation of Energy.' King and Co., 1873.]
+
+[Footnote D: Written under the impression that the lurid and
+prolonged sunsets of last autumn had been proved to be connected
+with the flight of volcanic ashes. This has been since, I hear,
+disproved again. Whatever their cause, those sunsets were, in the
+sense in which I myself use the word, altogether 'unnatural' and
+terrific: but they have no connection with the far more fearful,
+because protracted and increasing, power of the Plague-wind. The
+letter from White's 'History of Selborne,' quoted by the Rev. W. R.
+Andrews in his letter to the 'Times,' (dated January 8th) seems to
+describe aspects of the sky like these of 1883, just a hundred
+years before, in 1783: and also some of the circumstances noted,
+especially the variation of the wind to all quarters without
+alteration in the air, correspond with the character of the
+plague-wind; but the fog of 1783 made the sun dark, with
+iron-colored rays--not pale, with blanching rays. I subjoin Mr.
+Andrews' letter, extremely valuable in its collation of the records
+of simultaneous volcanic phenomena; praying the reader also to
+observe the instantaneous acknowledgment, by the true 'Naturalist,'
+of horror in the violation of beneficent natural law.
+
+"THE RECENT SUNSETS AND VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS.
+
+"SIR,--It may, perhaps, be interesting at the present time, when so
+much attention has been given to the late brilliant sunsets and
+sunrises, to be reminded that almost identically the same
+appearances were observed just a hundred years ago.
+
+Gilbert White writes in the year 1783, in his 109th letter,
+published in his 'Natural History of Selborne':--
+
+'The summer of the year 1783 was an amazing and portentous one, and
+full of horrible phenomena; for besides the alarming meteors and
+tremendous thunderstorms that affrighted and distressed the
+different counties of this kingdom, the peculiar haze or smoky fog
+that prevailed for many weeks in this island and in every part of
+Europe, and even beyond its limits, was a most extraordinary
+appearance, unlike anything known within the memory of man. By my
+journal I find that I had noticed this strange occurrence from June
+23d to July 20th inclusive, during which period the wind varied to
+every quarter without making any alteration in the air. The sun at
+noon looked as black as a clouded moon, and shed a ferruginous
+light on the ground and floors of rooms, but was particularly lurid
+and blood-colored at rising and setting. The country people began
+to look with a superstitious awe at the red lowering aspect of the
+sun; and, indeed, there was reason for the most enlightened person
+to be apprehensive, for all the while Calabria and part of the Isle
+of Sicily were torn and convulsed with earthquakes, and about that
+juncture a volcano sprang out of the sea on the coast of Norway.'
+
+Other writers also mention volcanic disturbances in this same year,
+1783. We are told by Lyell and Geikie, that there were great
+volcanic eruptions in and near Iceland. A submarine volcano burst
+forth in the sea, thirty miles southwest of Iceland, which ejected
+so much pumice that the ocean was covered with this substance, to
+the distance of 150 miles, and ships were considerably impeded in
+their course; and a new island was formed, from which fire and
+smoke and pumice were emitted.
+
+Besides this submarine eruption, the volcano Skaptar-Joekull, on the
+mainland, on June 11th, 1783, threw out a torrent of lava, so
+immense as to surpass in magnitude the bulk of Mont Blanc, and
+ejected so vast an amount of fine dust, that the atmosphere over
+Iceland continued loaded with it for months afterwards. It fell in
+such quantities over parts of Caithness--a distance of 600
+miles--as to destroy the crops, and that year is still spoken of by
+the inhabitants as the year of 'the ashie.'
+
+These particulars are gathered from the text-books of Lyell and
+Geikie.
+
+I am not aware whether the coincidence in time of the Icelandic
+eruptions, and of the peculiar appearance of the sun, described by
+Gilbert White, has yet been noticed; but this coincidence may very
+well be taken as some little evidence towards explaining the
+connection between the recent beautiful sunsets and the tremendous
+volcanic explosion of the Isle of Krakatoa in August last.
+
+               W. R. ANDREWS, F. G. S.
+               Teffont Ewyas Rectory, Salisbury, January 8th."]]
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
+
+Pages 7 & 18: Standardized spelling of "thundercloud."
+
+Page 20: Standardized quotation marks surrounding poem.
+
+Page 22: Retained inconsistent hyphenation of "thunder-storm" in
+quoted material.
+
+Pages 26, 58 & 70: Retained inconsistent hyphenation of "billiard-ball".
+
+Pages 29 & 62: Standardized hyphenation of "now-a-days."
+
+Pages 31-68: Adjusted placement of footnotes.
+
+Pages 37 & 59: Standardized spelling of "hill-side."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth
+Century, by John Ruskin
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORM-CLOUD ***
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